Keeping the Faiths : Holiday Season Can Test the Balance of Beliefs for Many Interfaith Marriages

Religion wasn’t really an issue for Terry and Heather Balagia. At least, not at first.

Terry, raised a Roman Catholic in Austin, Tex., and Heather, schooled in Orthodox Judaism in Brooklyn, N.Y., had met at a Peter, Paul and Mary concert in New York’s Central Park in 1978. After a five-year relationship, they were married in the United Nations chapel by a Reform rabbi and a Catholic monsignor.

But in 1984, when Heather was pregnant with their first child, the Balagias decided they had to make a choice about how to raise their children--a decision an increasing number of Jewish-Christian couples face each year.

In the rising tide of interfaith marriages, some couples find differences of faith irreconcilable, especially during the December holiday season, when tensions that simmer all year can boil over. Nearly one-third of mixed-faith marriages end in divorce, compared to only 17% when both partners are Jewish, according to a City University of New York study.

The Council of Jewish Federations, in its study released this year, found that 52% of American Jews are choosing non-Jewish partners--double the number who married outside the Jewish faith 20 years ago. The report also said that nearly three-quarters of the children in intermarried families are raised with no religious training or in a religion other than Judaism. Further, only 10% of the children of such mixed marriages marry Jewish partners.

But the majority of interfaith couples find ways to blend their distinctive beliefs, rituals and traditions into enduring family patterns.

One spouse often converts to the faith of the other. Other couples maintain the original faith of each partner and try to teach their children the essence of both. Even after years of marriage, however, many interfaith families must still contend with disgruntled parents and other relatives who don’t understand.

The Balagias, Gerry and Burt Belzer, Barbara and Jonathan Levitt, Janet and David Shalinsky and Diane and David Brounstein are five Southland couples who have made mixed-faith marriages work.

While the Balagias lived in New York, Heather decorated her first Christmas tree, and the young couple observed Jewish and Christian holidays in the homes of their respective parents. On special occasions they attended church and temple activities.

Before they moved to Hermosa Beach in 1988, Heather and Terry began to raise their children Catholic.

“To bring them up in both faiths . . . is just too confusing for the kids,” said Heather, 35.

The choice was not difficult at the time, Heather said, because “I had my Jewish family all around me. And Terry was more connected to the church than I had been to the temple.”

Three of the Balagias’ four children--Terence, 7, Sarah, 5, and Rebecca, 2--have already been baptized into the Catholic faith. Adam--6 months old--will be baptized this month when the Balagias visit Terry’s family in Austin.

Heather admits she is, nevertheless, “struggling with the loss” of her Jewish family identity. “It would be easier for me if I were raising our children Jewish,” she said.

“But it’s worth it,” she added. “Terry was the right person for me. My love was so strong, we wanted to be together and . . . our families were so supportive.”

In contrast, Gerry and Burt Belzer’s marriage stirred dissension in their families.

Gerry and Burt, both 65, have known each other since junior high days in Wisconsin. He attended Hebrew school and was confirmed in a Conservative synagogue.

“Religion really wasn’t an issue for us ,” said Burt, who owns a metal distribution business in the South Bay. “But for our families, it was very traumatic. . . . The pressures (against interfaith marriage) were greater in our generation.”

The Belzers, married in Methodist ceremonies in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1949, moved to Southern California that year. Because of Burt’s strong feelings, they had agreed before the wedding to raise their children Jewish.

For a while, “we mixed in some Christmas,” Gerry said. One year, their oldest son got a tree and their youngest put a menorah on it. But now, she said, “it’s a real struggle to buy Christmas presents” for their grandchildren who are growing up in a Presbyterian home. Their other two sons and their families practice Judaism.

Gerry says she has always felt “fully accepted” at Temple Menorah, a Reform congrgation in Redondo Beach, where she has chaired the adult education program. Culminating a spiritual pilgrimage that began with her Methodist upbringing and a college-age encounter with Presbyterianism, she underwent the 20-minute mikvah , a purification rite in water that marks conversion, at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles on Dec. 12.

“Now she knows more Judaism than I do,” Burt said with a smile.

In an effort to stem the intermarriage tide and strengthen Jewish identity, some synagogues are reaching out to the non-Jewish partners while trying to discourage single Jews from marrying outside the faith. There are about 6 million Jews in the United States.

Learning about Judaism and being Jewish in the 1990s is a high priority at Temple Menorah, where Rabbi Steven Silver is launching an innovative eight-week program for interfaith families with young children who aren’t affiliated with a temple.

Called the Shalom Club, the program, which will begin next month, is funded with a $14,500 grant from the Council on Jewish Life of the Jewish Community Foundation and the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.

“It’s unique,” said Rabbi Lavey Derby, executive director of the Council on Jewish Life. “The goal is family education so parents can give their children Jewish knowledge. By opening the synagogue doors to interfaith couples, it’s our hope they will want to raise their children in Judaism.”

Silver said interfaith couples represent about 40% of the younger families in his 425-member temple. “Without this contact,” he said, “they and their children will be forever lost to the Jewish community.”

Barbara and Jonathan Levitt of Redondo Beach decided to raise their children Jewish.

Barbara, a native of Ontario, Canada, was brought up a Presbyterian but dropped out in her mid-teens. A registered nurse, Barbara, 31, moved to Southern California in 1981 and soon met Jonathan, 38, a South African Jew raised in the Orthodox tradition. He also dropped out as a young teen-ager. They were married in a civil ceremony in a Las Vegas chapel in 1984.

“Getting married was a dilemma,” said Jonathan, the co-owner of an auto repair shop. “What religion, and what place--how to please everyone--those were the questions.”

Barbara, who had no plans at the time to convert to Judaism, said: “We just wanted unity, we just wanted to have faith.”

The Levitts joined an interfaith marriage group at the University of Judaism, celebrated Jewish and Christian holidays and “got connected” with other Jewish-Christian couples.

“For me, it allowed me to say, ‘I’ll raise the kids Jewish,’ ” said Barbara. So when Kyle was born in 1986, the Levitts observed the Jewish naming ceremony and had him circumcised according to Jewish law. But Barbara still observed Easter and celebrated Christmas during the annual trek to visit her family in Toronto.

After Jared, now 3, was born, the Levitts joined Temple Menorah. “They welcomed me,” Barbara said, adding that the rabbi did not require her to attend any special ceremonies or classes.

But in order for the children to convert to Judaism, they had to be dunked during the mikvah ceremony. The experience prompted 5-year-old Kyle to comment: “Look, Mommy, a Jacuzzi!”

Barbara enrolled the boys in “tot Shabbat” preschool at Temple Menorah while she joined a class in basic Judaism and gradually became more active at the temple.

“I realized I liked the Jewish religion,” she said. “It didn’t offer the guilt associated with Christianity. With there being so many good people who don’t believe in Christ, the concept of going to hell if you don’t repent of your sins doesn’t make sense.”

The Levitts still make a small concession to the secular spirit of Christmas, hanging stockings and preparing for the arrival of Santa. But they celebrate all the Jewish holidays and observe a candle-lighting Shabbat in their home on Friday evenings.

Kyle likes to receive Easter cards from his Canadian grandparents, whom he knows are not Jewish. “You are a little bit not Jewish, too,” he tells his mom.

Barbara may someday take the full plunge--the mikvah --into Judaism. Right now, she’s taking one day at a time. “Maybe, when I can explain it to my parents, they will be ready to accept my conversion and I’ll be ready to do it,” she said.

Some Southland couples are integrating both faiths into their family life and child rearing.

Considering himself a cultural rather than a religious Jew, David Shalinsky converted to Christianity while a student at Cal State Chico in 1977. There, he met his future wife, Janet, an evangelical Christian. Married in a nondenominational community church, they have an adopted daughter born to Latino Catholic parents, and a 7-month-old biological daughter.

“When we visit my Jewish family, they respect our Christianity and yet they don’t view us as part of the Jewish community,” said David, 33, a pharmacologist at the UC San Diego Cancer Center. “We basically do the Jewish celebrations with them. And when we go to Janet’s Gentile family, we are seen as fitting naturally into that tradition.”

David and Janet are members of an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation in San Diego. David, who is vice president of the church council, said they strive to foster Protestant, Catholic and Jewish traditions.

“For our particular family,” he said, “it’s just fine to raise them exposed to both faiths. Realistically, I don’t think they’ll grow up Jewish, but I’d like them to have an appreciation of it.”

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T he Shalinskys are among 482 couples who responded to a survey sent to 1,400 interfaith couples this year by Milton Kohut of Sunland. A missionary for Jewish outreach with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Kohut compiled the list of couples from the rosters of Messianic Jewish congregations and Jews for Jesus, a Messianic ministry that proclaims Jesus as the promised Messiah of Israel.

According to Kohut’s survey, 18% of the Jews who had converted to Christianity reported family rejection as their greatest problem. Conflict in following customs and traditions ranked second, cited by 8% of the respondents.

But 27% said “unity in Christ” was the major reward in their marriages. And most spouses listed “renewed awareness and appreciation of their Jewish heritage and tradition” as a positive factor, Kohut found.

“Even those who worship . . . at Christian churches place a high value on their children’s growth and knowledge of their Jewish roots and observe all the major Jewish holidays and festivals,” Kohut said.

Over the years of their marriage, David and Diane Brounstein of Costa Mesa have fashioned a distinctively eclectic approach in raising their son Matthew Paul, 14--one that, they feel, has deepened their understanding of both faiths.

“We have combined Jewish and Christian holidays at our home since before he was born,” said Diane, 40, who was reared in an Irish Catholic family and attended parochial schools on Long Island. “We have an Advent wreath as well as a Hanukkah menorah in our home.”

Their spiritual pathway has been circuitous.

The couple have repeated their wedding vows three times during their 21 years of marriage: once in a Reform synagogue in New York, again in a Pentecostal service in Florida and on their 15th anniversary in a Roman Catholic ceremony in Newport Beach.

David, 41, born in New York City, followed an Orthodox and Reform upbringing but found it difficult to accept the “works system” of Jewish ritual law required to deal with sin. He met Diane, who was considering becoming a nun, at Nassau Community College, and they engaged in long and intense conversations about religion.

“We found we had more in common than differences,” said Diane.

Eventually they were married by a rabbi after Diane studied Judaism and converted. No one from her side of the family attended the wedding.

“It became very uncomfortable and I had moved in with David’s family,” Diane said. “But once we were married, my parents were reconciled to the situation.”

The Brounsteins say that for a while they were “not very religious.” Later, Diane began to study the prophetic books of the Old Testament and joined an interdenominational prayer group that met in a Catholic church in St. Petersburg, Fla. Eventually, David became active, professed faith in Jesus and was baptized.

“My family wasn’t real happy--but they didn’t have a funeral for me,” said David, an accountant. “It was interesting to find the Jewishness of Jesus--a completion of the Old Testament that fit hand in glove with what the prophets had said. . . . It just seemed to click.”

When the Brounsteins moved to Southern California in 1976, they joined Calvary Chapel, a large, evangelical church in Costa Mesa that emphasizes Bible study and prayer. When Matthew Paul was born, he was dedicated there and attended Sunday school.

But 10 years later, Diane decided to re-examine her heritage and felt drawn to the Catholic Church.

She began going to Catholic Mass and became a volunteer catechist, teaching “the gospel in a Jewish context.” David, meanwhile, felt a need for liturgical worship and became active at an Episcopal Church, teaching a course on “how Jesus celebrated the feasts.”

The Brounsteins also worshiped on Saturdays at Ahavat Zion, a Messianic Jewish congregation in Beverly Hills, but they decided after several years that it was too far to go every weekend. They are still active in the Catholic and Episcopal churches.

Matthew Paul, now an altar server and member of the handbell choir at Our Lady Queen of Angels parish in Newport Beach, says: “I’m a Messianic Jewish Catholic believer.”

Matthew’s grandparents seem to have adjusted to all the “churching and journeying,” according to Diane.

“They used to send us secular cards,” she said. “This year David’s mother sent one that said ‘Merry Christmas’--and she wrote in, ‘Happy Hanukkah.’ ”