Intermarried couple honors each other’s beliefs

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – Before David Ogul and Sharon Wilson were married, they learned about each other’s faiths.  David attended Mass at Sharon’s Catholic church.  Sharon attended Friday night Shabbat services at David’s Reform temple in Riverside, the city where the two had met and worked for the daily Press-Enterprise.  David was a reporter there, and Sharon worked in the finance department.

They had known each other casually for four years, and only started dating Sept. 22, 1994, after realizing that in the period since they had first met, both had become divorced from their previous spouses.  Their dating, and learning about each other’s religions, was approximately a 2 ½ -year long process, finally culminating in their civil marriage on a racquetball court April 5, 1997, officiated by a Protestant minister who agreed not to invoke the name of Jesus during the ceremony.  David shared custody of his two sons, Justin and Jeremy, then 5 and 3, with his former wife.  Sharon had no children by her first marriage.

Today, Sharon continues to attend and actively volunteer at a Catholic church in San Diego, where they moved after David accepted a job as an editor with The San Diego Union-Tribune and she found work as an accountant for a property management company.  David, who subsequently opened his own public relations firm, continues to be active in his Jewish congregation, Tifereth Israel Synagogue.  So active, in fact, that David recently was elected as the Conservative congregation’s president – a reflection of the fact that Jewish congregations throughout the nation are reaching out more and more to intermarried couples.  There was once a time that David, or any other Jew who had married “out of the faith,” could not even serve as a member of a synagogue board, much less become the congregation’s president.

The couple had one child together, Allison, who they had agreed to expose to both faiths and let her decide for herself which one she would choose.  Ultimately, Allison opted for Judaism.  Recently she was elected president of her Jewish sorority, Sigma Alpha Epsilon Pi, at Colorado State University, where she is an undergraduate.

A Pew study released in 2013 suggests that intermarriages involving a Jew and a non-Jew have become increasingly common.  At that time 64 percent of all the nation’s Jews were married to other Jews while 36 percent had non-Jewish spouses.  However, if one looked only at marriages entered into between 2008 and 2013, 45 percent of the Jews married during that period had Jewish spouses, while a majority—55 percent—had non-Jewish spouses.

Sixty-nine percent of the Jews who did not affiliate with any denomination were married to non-Jews; 50 percent of those affiliated with the Reform movement had non-Jewish partners as did 27 percent in the Conservative movement (like David Ogul) and just 2 percent in the Orthodox movement, according to that Pew study.  At Tifereth Israel Synagogue, slightly less than 11 percent of the Jews in the congregation have non-Jewish spouses.

The Oguls were asked during an interview to relate the process by which they learned about each other’s religions and what customs they followed after they were married.

Sharon said she remembered thinking at her first Erev Shabbat service how lively was the music, played by a cantor on his guitar.  She contrasted the upbeat melodies favorably with the organ music of a Mass. On the other hand, David remembered being “definitely uncomfortable” attending a Mass.  “I wasn’t going to kneel, I just sat there,” he recalled.

In discussions between them that followed, David insisted “don’t try to convert me,” and Sharon said, “Don’t make me give up my religion.”  They agreed they would honor each other’s beliefs.

Before Allison was born, said David, “we ultimately resolved that I would be free and uninhibited to take the child to services, and adhere to Judaism, and that Sharon would be free to take the child to church, but there would be no baptism and no bar/ bat mitzvah or confirmation unless the child was old enough to make an informed decision, with no influence from one parent or the other.”

If Allison had been born a boy, would he have had a brit milah?  “My mom is a nurse, and from the medical standpoint, circumcision is standard,” Sharon responded. “But as far as having a religious ceremony associated with it, I don’t know if we would have done that.”

Allison went to pre-school run by San Diego State University, and later on attended a public elementary school.  But after attending services at church and at synagogue, she decided that she wanted also to attend Torah school, and not go to Mass anymore.

Asked why she made such a choice back then, Allison, who studies political science and sociology, responded: “Here is a weird analogy.  Sometimes certain areas of academia don’t make sense to me.  I don’t like physics because I don’t understand why it is, but I understand social sciences really well … it is something that I can wrap my head around … Judaism, the whole philosophy, is something I can wrap my head around.  I think tikkun olam (repair of the world) was a really big deal for me; also there were discussions about trying to be good, about being cognizant of what it actually means to be a good person, and to do good things, rather than thinking that I have to be a good person because there is something in it for me.  That was pretty valuable for me when I was a kid.”

When Allison made her decision for Judaism, David was worried for Sharon.  If Allison didn’t go to Mass, then Sharon would be all alone when she went to church.  But Sharon accepted the decision, as did her mother Doreen.  Later, when Allison started studying to become a bat mitzvah, Doreen was the one who patiently would listen to her repeat the prayers that had been recorded for her by Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal of Tifereth Israel Synagogue. Before Allison’s bar mitzvah, she needed to formally convert, which she did before a beth din at the University of Judaism (today called American Jewish University.)  The rabbis permitted Sharon to accompany Allison into the mikvah, even though Sharon was not herself converting.

Household observances were agreed upon by David and Sharon early in their marriage.  David would have a Chanukah celebration and after it was over, Sharon would put up a Christmas tree, one which grew smaller and smaller year by year because of Sharon’s concern for the ecology.  Now the couple purchases a boxed tree.  If Chanukah and Christmas shared the same date, then Sharon would wait until December 23^rd to put up her tree.

When they were first married, David was less observant than he is today.  But after a time, David started wearing a kippah and tzitzit and became increasingly shomer Shabbos.  With Sharon’s agreement, a mezuzah went up on the door.

David’s sons, meanwhile, spent some time with him, and even more time with their mother.  Jeremy, today a legislative advocate with Madaffer Enterprises, said that like Allison, he would go to Friday night services and also attend services at different churches while growing up.  This was the time before David became so observant, Jeremy said, so “there was never any strong religion either way.”

Asked how he identifies religiously today, Jeremy answered, “Probably, I would say agnostic, although I identify culturally more with Judaism than Christianity.”

Sharon said her advice for anyone considering an intermarriage is that “you have to totally respect the other person’s beliefs and you have to make sure that you are okay with them.”

David said if religion is an important part of one’s life, then one must seriously consider the potential problems.  “When the relationship is new and there is a lot of excitement, couples have the tendency to think everything will be all right.  But there are complications and we would be lying to you if we were to say that this has been a tension-free marriage, that religion has not created conversations and disagreements, because it has.  We are both devout in our faith and even when I was not practicing as closely as I am now, I was always devout in my faith.”

Further, said David, “You have to be aware that you are going to get criticism, if not from your family, then from other people.  What I tell those people in my community who say things that I don’t necessarily appreciate is ‘Read about Moses: His wife was a Midianite, she was not Jewish’ and ‘Read about Ruth, who is the great-grandmother of King David, who by some accounts is in the line of the moshiach (messiah)…’”

Allison commented that while she still is single, she is aware that “there are some things you have to bring up with your partner if you are going to have a life together.”  For example, she said, some sects of Christianity oppose a woman’s right to choose, and “that really needs to be talked about.   It has a lot to do with family planning…”

Having parents of two different faiths can provide a child with the “advantage of seeing things from a different perspective,” Jeremy said. “I think that made me a better person because I became used to and learned how to see the world from different people’s perspectives.”

Those Jews who oppose intermarriage contend that it will lead to complete assimilation, if not in this generation, then in subsequent ones.  Those most vehemently opposed to intermarriage call it finishing the job that Hitler started of eradicating the Jewish people.  The Ogul family rejects this notion, saying that just as Allison and Jeremy felt closer to Judaism than to Christianity, so too may other children of intermarriages – provided that the Jews with whom they associate either in synagogue or elsewhere are welcoming.

The Oguls credited two leaders in Tifereth Israel Men’s Club “Keruv” (“Bring Close”) program – Phil Snyder and Norman Katz – for helping to establish the tone at the Conservative synagogue where intermarried families feel welcome.  Sharon recalled that Rabbi Rosenthal, now retired, enabled her side of the family to participate on the bima in Allison’s bat mitzvah.

“I think that our community has this thing going that because we think the religion is dying, we try to police the Jewish identity and that does more harm than good,” Allison said. “If someone tells me that because I haven’t gone to shul for while I am less Jewish, I would probably deck them, because it is not in their right.”

Sharon said while some people at her church are not thrilled about her intermarriage, “others say, ‘Oh my gosh, I love the Jewish people; they are guardians of the faith.”

David plays guitar in the Shir Hadash (New Song) band that leads musical Erev Shabbat services the third Friday of every month at Tifereth Israel Synagogue.  That is just one way that the synagogue is evolving, says the congregational president.  “This is a congregation open to tradition as well as to new ideas.  We are not afraid of accepting the LGBTQIA community, nor interfaith marriages, nor people who have never been to synagogue before in their lives.”

Sharon attends Jewish services and events periodically, and has surprised David with the amount of Hebrew she has picked up.  One night at a family Thanksgiving celebration, Sharon asked if she could say a prayer.  She then proceeded to surprise the family by reeling off an English translation of the  Shehekiyanu prayer, in which supplicants thank God for allowing them to arrive at this special moment.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com