Have you ever tried to stop a intermarriage?

LubavitchLeah

Wed, Jan 17 2007, 6:24 pm

Hi Ribbie Danzinger,

Thank you for sharing your letter to your family member. Great letter, although perhaps ypou could make it more emotive to her feelings and emotional bonds , its great intellectualy though, eg I love you type of thing.
Hatzlacha!!!!!!!!

LubavitchLeah

Wed, Jan 17 2007, 6:47 pm

Hi Ribbie,

I just realised that you probably have no connection to the letter personaly- shortsighted of me to assume.
Great letter though if Chas Vashalom its ever needed, think Ill make a copy, if thats ok.

ny21

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 10:55 am

these are all good answers .

Last edited by ny21 on Sat, Jan 27 2007, 8:46 pm; edited 1 time in total

amother

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 12:00 pm

Our neighbor is Jewish and is engaged to a non Jewish man. Her father and step mom are frum and she has some frum cousins.
She didnt grow up frum at all, as her mother wasn't frum and her father didnt become frum until he remarried.
This girl is very interested in Jewish things, doesn't know much at all, but it is such a shame.
This guy she is engaged to is really nice, but he's not Jewish. Sad

We've had them over a few times but what can you do?

Meema2Kids

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 12:09 pm

My best friend called me last week to tell me that her longtime non-Jewish boyfriend proposed to her. Sad

I'm not going to try to stop her, because what can I say that would convince her? Nothing. But I will continue to try to be her link with Judaism.

JRKmommy

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 1:23 pm

In high school, my sister dated "Chris" for a while. My mom got upset, was given books at the Jewish library like "How to Stop an Intermarriage" and "Why be Jewish", and quickly realized that much of what was in those books was totally inappropriate for our family. For example - my dad wasn't about to go on a hunger strike!

Mom did start making the effort to do Shabbos dinners again, and she also got my sis to go on an Israel program that summer.

She also realized eventually that my sister probably prolonged the relationship with Chris just to bug her, or avoid making it seem like she was giving in. She later told me she knew herself that it wouldn't work when she had dinner at his house on Pesach and refused to eat the bread. BH, she's married to a great Jewish guy now!

ny21

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 2:51 pm

:arrow:

Last edited by ny21 on Thu, May 17 2012, 4:16 am; edited 1 time in total

chocolate moose

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 3:18 pm

My brother ended up marring "Suzy" a few weeks ago; when my mom and sister wanted to talk aboutit and show the pictrures after, I showed disinterest.

But that's from a distance; no idea how I'll handle the future . . .

bandcm

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 3:33 pm

As we speak, my husband is sitting in the other room with a Jewish girl and her non-Jewish boyfriend. They want my husband to convert him fast and marry them!
Pray that Hashem puts the right words in this mouth, because he is sooo nervous...

IBR

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 4:10 pm

Meema I don't know how you stand with this friend but if you care for her and you do why don't you say to her like " are you sure you want this?' or something of that sort to make her think twice before saying 'I do" Ita big tragedy today if anything can stop it we should give it our best try.

ny21

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 6:31 pm

my best friend has intermarried and we are still close.

julia

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 7:39 pm

A good friend met a girl on the internet serveral years ago. He wasn't observant but he had many friday night dinners with our family. He forgave us for not going to the wedding- she didn't. He doesn't see us much anymore. It's a loss for our family- and we tried to explain this to him. They have a very comfortable life and that seems what he has chosen/ I get emails that indicate their material sucesses have increased more and more. I feel sad for him. Sad

Meema2Kids

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 8:38 pm

IBR - I will think about it. But right now I feel I would do more harm than good to voice any objection. She knows I'm against it, just like she knows in her heart that it's wrong. If I said something that would push her away not only from me but from what little connection she has to Torah (ie would turn her off).

BTW, I estimate that of the kids I grew up with at my Conservative synagogue, youth group, Hebrew school - AT LEAST 75% have married non jews. shock

julia

Thu, Jan 18 2007, 9:12 pm

Keeping th connection is what is important. Even if you can't do other things. I try to say that we care in other ways.
I hope the feeling gets conveyed. It is painful though.

mumoo

Fri, Jan 19 2007, 1:53 am

Hi Julia

Even though we know we have to do something, sometimes there really is nothing- I remember the (generic) story about the man who hears his daughter (lo aleinu) is going to marry out. He runs, panicking, to his temple's rabbi. "Rabbi what should I do? My daughter is going to marry a [gentile]? An the Rabbi looks at him and asks, "Who are you?"

For some people it's too late. I have some secular nephews (all Jews). We have them for Shabbos and Y'"T and they know we will NOT be any part of a marriage to non-Jews. We try to plant the seeds early.

julia

Fri, Jan 19 2007, 3:42 pm

right you are mumoo.

dandelion

Thu, Dec 23 2010, 2:33 pm

BS"D - Promising looking book on intermarriage entitled, guess ---

"How to Stop an Intermarriage" @ http://preventintermarriage.com/. It's available for purchase and also free online. There is also a long questionnaire you can adapt for your purposes free from the same link. The book is written for anyone interested in stopping an intermarriage, seems very practical...and is designed to assist in the stopping of a relationship that is developing into intermarriage in it's tracks. Of course, there are no guarantees, especially at a late stage.

Most of the materials I have found recommend prevention. Of course, this is the best way and we need to keep it in mind, but we need emergency measures as well.

Lati

Sat, Dec 25 2010, 3:14 am

no. a friend's father sat shiva after she married an atheist. they're now frum. another girl is a jew now but converted from casual christianity and she deepened her husband's commitment to yiddishkeit even though lots don't consider her "frum" or "really jewish." hashem brings people together and to him on personalized schedules and being kind and loving is the best way to demonstrate a full life.

momaleh

Sat, Dec 25 2010, 1:39 pm

I am reminded of an article I read about Rabbi Ilan Feldman in Atlanta, when dealing with the JCC opening on shabbos - you have to strengthen your own observance. There is nothing else to do except how that Shabbos is better than whatever they have.
I think you need to express disapproval but love no matter what to keep the doors open, or they might never come back, and go about your best loving being Jewish and showing that.

freidasima

Sat, Dec 25 2010, 1:59 pm

I have several cases in my family and was torn between cutting them off for good, dissaproval, and trying to keep the Jewish connection alive. It's really hard and depends how old your own kids are and what messages you want to give them. Here it was easy, we were in EY and they were in America. But I know of one case which ended up interestingly and gives one hope.

A relative was about to marry a non Jewish girl. This was many years ago and my father z"l was alive. He flew to the states to meet with this relative and his fiance and talked with her and said that although she was Xtian she was very sympathetic to Judaism. Turns out that her first husband (she was divorced) was Jewish too. Then my father talked to her some more and it seems that her mother was born Jewish and converted to Xtianity to marry her father. So my father sits with her some more and tells her of the beauty of Yiddishkeit and that actually she is Jewish because a Jew can't convert "out" so her mother was Jewish and she is halochically Jewish if she is willing to see herself as such. She said that she agreed, her mother was long dead but she remembered her Jewish grandmother, however she didn't want to cut ties with her father or her siblings who didn't consider themselves Jews at all...my father told her that it was ok to continue to respect your father....but now there was another problem...she needed a Get from her first husband if she was Jewish even if they were married civilly because of the sofek!

So my father gets on the phone and gets his rabbonish friends all over the USA to look for this guy and they find him in Los Angeles and he isn't about to fly cross country to give a get so they set up a beisdin with a shaliach who goes to this guy's house - the entire beisdin - good my father had good friends - and gets a get from him given to the shaliach who flies cross country to deliver the get to the beisdin in the city where my father and this relative and his fiance are and the beisdin gives her the get with the whole ceremony and lo and behold...she is divorced.

Now the mazel was...that the relative she was marrying was a Levi and not a cohen. My father's side was all Leviim.

So my father went back to EY and three and a half months later he and my mother flew back to America to be there at the chasuneh of what was now a Jewish couple. Since then he made sure until his death to send them all sorts of Jewish stuff, make sure that they would be running an (albeit not frum but at least) Jewish home....and they had four children one after the other (I guess to make up for lost time)...my father was zocheh to see three of them born and as he was old and already not well he gave the parents money to put away for each one's bar or bas mitzva to get them a present or tfilin for the bar mitzva from him...the fourth one was born a few months after he was niftar....and was named for him, to this day the only name that my father z"l has.

So you never know what can happen from what looks like an intermarriage. What if my father hadn't been upset enough to fly from EY to America to meet this young woman? What if he hadn't given her the third degree about her family and no one would have known that her mother was Jewish? What if they coudln't have found the first husband? What if he would have held her up financially for the get? What if the Beisdin in Los Angeles wouldn't have been so wonderful to go to his HOUSE and appoint a shaliach and do the get thing that way?

But it all happened. For real. So go know. Siatda Dishmaya.
Which, I guess, means, never give up.