Today is Day Two of Week Two of the
Omer. That is Day Nine of the Omer. The
theme of the Week is Relationships.
If you know me, you know that one of my all-time favourite movies
is My Big Fat Greek Wedding. (The
sequel, My Big Fat Greek Wedding II, not so much; it was just okay.) Clara and I can recite much of the dialogue
from MBFGW. When we first saw it,
we barely stopped laughing between the film’s start and its finish. The movie was well-done to be sure, one of
those low-budget sleepers that ends of succeeding wildly. But what brought it alive for us, was that
they could have substituted ‘Jewish’ for ‘Greek,’ and then it would have just
about told the story of our – Clara’s and mine – meeting, courtship and
marriage. Because, even though we’re
both Jews-by-Birth, our family backgrounds are so different as to make use
seem, at times, like the unlikely couple of ‘Ian Miller’ and ‘Toula Portokalos.’ Ever since we saw MBFGW the first
time, Clara has taken to referring to my family as ‘toast family,’ and there’s
more than a germ of truth in that.
Being from such
different backgrounds – I Ashkenazi, American, small family; Clara Sephardi,
Israeli, big family to name a few aspects – I’ve tried to broker my marital
experience into a perspective that can help others in ‘mixed marriages’ find
clarity. I’ll never forget the first
time I had an Aha! moment that this might be a unique calling for
me. A couple came to me for counselling
when I was stationed in Germany. They
had asked specifically for me, because I was his unit chaplain and he had heard
me speak at a Commander’s Call. So the
couple came into my office, and they were an ‘unlikely’ couple: he a white Southerner, she an African-American. They unloaded their respective stories and my
first thought was: Yes! I can help this couple! I have an insight to share with them! And it was based in the differences
between their respective cultural backgrounds.
One of their
presenting issues had to do with family.
He didn’t understand her rejection of his ‘calling the shots’ about
minor issues. The difference stemmed
from the authority structure in their respective cultures. Southern white culture is somewhat patriarchal.
The husband and father as the head of
the household doesn’t feel compelled to consult his wife on every small
decision. He just decides, and
acts. African-American families have a
very different feel. Decisions are much
more consultative; nothing is decided until everybody – and usually not just
the husband and wife, but members of the extended family as well – has had his
or her say. So she couldn’t understand
why he would decide something - no
matter how small – without first discussing it.
For her part, she had a hard time accepting that they include his
parents – for example, in time spent visiting with them – since they had not
embraced her very warmly and made little effort to reach out to them. I explained to her that among white
Southerners, respect for elders is not as conditional as for
African-Americans. Her husband’s parents
didn’t have to earn his love and respect.
It was just a given.
This couple had additional
issues, with which I struggled to help them.
But on the cultural divide I had the clarity to share with them, that
helped them to understand and transcend part of the conflict between them. I suppose that, as a Jew operating in a
non-Jewish milieu, and as an Ashkenazi married to a Sephardi, I had enough
personal experience with cultural divides to understand them.
This is a theme that
I see playing itself out over and over in marriages. In our highly mobile societies, we don’t mix
only with others of similar cultural backgrounds. This, unlike the Jews of Adass Yisroel
in Melbourne, a community of the Belz Chassidic sect that was the subject of a
recent installment of the program Untold Australia on the SBS
channel. (If you didn’t catch it, you
can see it here: http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/665379395693/strictly-jewish-untold-australia) Members of that community mix almost not at
all with Jews outside their own sect, much less non-Jews. But for the rest of us, in the workplace, in
the university, in our neighbourhoods…we mix freely and often comfortably with
people from cultural backgrounds quite different from our own. This is the biggest driver behind the
phenomenon of Jews ‘intermarrying’ or, as it is more often referred to here in
Australia, ‘out-marrying.’ But even when
a Jew marries another Jew, as I found in my personal life, there are often
different cultural cues that conspire to provide for difficult moments.
Remember West
Side Story, and the attraction between Anglo Tony and Hispanic Maria? What did the other Puerto Rican girls say
when they found out? There was a song in
the score: Stick to your own kind /
One of your own kind! I never
thought about it as marching orders, but once a friend repeated that line from
the song in telling me about his first, failed marriage to a woman very a very
different cultural background – he an Italian Catholic, she a WASP – and his
more successful second marriage to a woman from a background more similar to
his. It’s true that marriage is a
difficult enough proposition that a couple might find it easier to succeed in
the relationship if they do share the same cultural cues. But it’s not a guarantee of success, nor is
it required for success. Because at the
end of the day, the important element is to understand, respect, and accept one
another’s unique set of cultural assumptions and find a modus vivendi through
them.
An inability to see
and navigate the cultural differences between them, is a very frequent source
of marital tension. It is especially
difficult, because the principals often can’t see the source of the differences. They can’t articulate that they stem from
different cultural backgrounds. But they
are important. The specific culture out
of which each of us came, is a complex composite of race, religion, region,
education, and other elements. It is
difficult to define and characterise.
But it is an essential part of who each one of us is. If we could better recognize our own cultural
cues, and accept our partner’s, we would have far less marital strife in the
world. Let’s get to work!
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