Reading material I

I have just finished reading two books about intermarriage, Double or Nothing? by Sylvia Barack Fishman and Interfaith Families by Jane Kaplan. Both try to get across the personal stories of intermarried couples, rather than focus on dry statistics. Among the (minor) points which alternately fascinated and horrified me:
• The couple who brought up their sons as Jews, their daughter as a Catholic
• The woman who converted to Judaism 20 years ago – and still hasn’t found a way to tell her Catholic parents
Recurring themes:
• Jewish men who actively dissuaded their wives from converting
• Catholic women saying Judaism was hard for them to understand, because for them religion meant being serious about going to church and participating in other rituals – whereas to be Jewish “you don’t really have to do anything” (attitudes presumably picked up from their husbands)
• Catholic parents who secretly baptize their Jewish grandchildren
• Wives whose first and often only step in trying to make their homes more “Jewish” is to drag out Kosher cookbooks
• Kids in Jewish day schools who go to church on Sundays

I’ll be writing up a review of the books later this week, for The Jerusalem Post.