I’m 25 and as the years creep by I feel increasing pressure to marry a Jewish woman. The halachic rule of Jewish lineage – Jewish mother equals Jewish child – sets a hard line for men. Intellectually, I know it is an arbitrary injunction but emotionally it has so much sway.
Maximilian with his grandparents
Not least for my Orthodox Mizrahi grandparents who have told me they are disappointed that most of the women I have dated since leaving my Jewish secondary, have not been members of the tribe. Of late my grandmother has been getting more vocal on the matter. As we sat with enjoying a bustling kiddush at her synagogue the other week, she said, with deceptive innocence: “Look around and tell me if there are any women here you like.”
In the past her remarks have been more tactful. “You want to marry a Jewish girl, trust me, it will be easier for you,” she said implying she’d looked into my future and seen the misery awaiting should I build a life with a non-Jewish woman.
Dating advice: Maximilian with his grandmother Judith Mansoor in Hyde Park
Then there was the time she reached for the sky and declared: “I wish to see you marry a Jewish woman before I die, Baruch Hashem!”
So there’s a pressure to honour my grandparents’ wishes, but if I am honest that pressure also speaks to one I put on myself. When I consider what my family has suffered for its faith, for being Jewish – my grandfather was forced out of Aden during the country’s anti-Jewish riots in 1947, my grandmother and her family left Iran in the 1920s and came to London decades later as penniless immigrants – it feels that marrying a non-Jew is too big a step, ethnically, religiously and culturally, to take.
What’s more neither my brother, nor my male cousins, have demonstrated any inclination to marry in, and this increases the pressure. My sisters do not have the same worries, of course. Their kids will be halachically Jewish whoever they have them with. If I marry a non-Jew, will there be a difference, a distance perhaps, between my children and their first cousins?
My mum sympathises, and has tried to reassure me that as long as it’s the right person, the things I am worried about do not matter so much. But the other day I was speaking to a Jewish friend who’s dating a non-Jew. He said everything was perfect, except that she is not a member of the tribe.
I recognised my own feelings in him and it seems my non-Jewish ex does too for when we were together she said she would convert. But I’m unsure whether I would want someone to convert for me. Unless she truly wanted it for herself, it feels like her sacrifice and my debt. Although having attended numerous Jewish events, including fasting through a nine-hour Yom Kippur service, she has certainly put in the groundwork.
She has also asked if I would see any future children of ours as Jewish, and I couldn’t give a proper answer. It feels something I can’t predict. In addition, I worried that, if I pushed Judaism on our children, it might be a point of insecurity for them throughout their lives. I guess it’s something I feel those potential children would have to decide for themselves. What I do know is that my uncertainties around these questions contributed to the breakdown of our relationship.
What I also know is that having a non-Jewish father means my own Jewish status has been called into question. A friend of mine once said his halachically Jewish mum saw me as a half-Jew. Some time later, I was cornered by that mum at a party. I mentioned a synagogue service I’d attended and she looked at me puzzled. “But your father isn’t Jewish?” she said
Chaverim: Maximilian with a Charedi friend
It felt demeaning and I am sure people with non-Jewish mothers get it a lot worse. If I had a child with a non-Jew, I would hate for them to feel insecure about their Jewish status, or to feel they couldn’t be members of the tribe, if they wanted to be.
In the wake of October 7, feeling confident in one’s Jewish skin, one’s identity, feels more important than ever. It’s unpredictable how people will react to our being Jewish. One woman’s demeanour changed enitrely when she found out I was, and she immediately asked if I was pro-Palestine. Many non-Jews see Israel, and anything Israeli, as inherently bad. Conversation among young people can take a strong anti-Israel turn very quickly indeed.
And if the social climate is tense, the dating scene is even more so. It no longer feels like a choice between Jews and non-Jews, more that there are those who allow you to be comfortably Jewish and express yourself without reproach, and those who do not. Put another way, when you meet non-Jewish women who are wholly supportive, it feels more valuable than ever.
“It will be easier for you,” said my grandmother. But is it easier to be with someone because they are Jewish or because they are the right person? Surely the latter is a better foundation for building a family. A crossover would help, but as Fiddler on the Roof reminds us we cannot choose who we love any more than we can legislate who our children become.
I went to see the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production of Fiddler this summer. After the show, someone sitting near us said it was sad that Tevye had rejected his daughter Chava who married out. My grandmother corrected them: “He said ‘God be with you’ and sent his blessing.”
Chava grew up in a shtetl in the Pale of Settlement at the turn of the 20th century and she still married out. London, some 120 years later, is a whole other ballpark. I’m sorry, Safta, but love at first sight at the kiddush just doesn’t seem that likely. But whatever comes to pass, I hope you will send your blessing.
