Couples Share Their Faith Hanukkah And Christmas Come Together

Tonight is Christmas Eve. It’s also the second night of Hanukkah. It’s a dilemma for many families - but an opportunity for some.

Two Spokane families, the Schultz-Fixes and Goldstein-Robertses, will gather tonight for a blended holiday party which is becoming more and more popular in Spokane - and across America.

The Spokane couples and their children will light two candles on their menorahs, exchange presents and spin dreidels. Then the families will settle down for a traditional Christmas Eve feast, with a few latkes on the side.

These couples are among a growing number of interfaith families in Spokane trying to blend Jewish and Christian traditions.

For them, having Hanukkah overlap with Christmas, as it does this year, is more of a puzzle than a predicament.

“In some ways, it makes it more realistic,” said Flora Goldstein. “It really forces us to spend more time in the education mode.”

She’s certain Mara, her 10-year-old daughter, understands the difference: that Hanukkah is the Jewish celebration of religious freedom and Christmas is the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus.

Even more, Mara understands how one holiday has impacted the other: that Hanukkah has been falsely elevated in the Western world as the “Jewish Christmas,” which it is not.

Goldstein’s 6-year-old son doesn’t quite get it. Sam knows both holidays involve gift-giving and decoration. But his understanding becomes clearer every year, she said.

Interfaith marriages of all forms are on the rise in America. Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Jews intermarry more frequently than they did three decades ago, according to agencies that represent the various world religions.

More than half of Jewish marriages performed last year in the United States involved a gentile spouse. That compares with just 20 percent in the 1960s.

Comparably, 21 percent of American Catholics live in an interfaith household. That’s true for 30 percent of Mormons and 40 percent of Muslims.

Overcoming hurdles

The conflicts in an interfaith marriage often surface at several points. The wedding ceremony is the first big hurdle. Children are next. But every year, decisions must be made about how to handle the holidays.

Should the house be decorated in green and red for Christmas, or blue and white for Hanukkah? Should there be a tree? A wreath on the door? A menorah in the window? A flashing dreidel?

Debra Schultz, who grew up in a Jewish enclave in Chicago, never realized the importance of her heritage until she moved to Spokane, where everyone is presumed to be Christian.

“Living in this environment strengthened my desire to be Jewish and make sure my children have that identity,” she said. “At the same time, Christmas is fun.”

Even though her parents were both Jewish, they could hardly ignore Christmas, a national holiday. Rather than viewing it as a religious holiday, it was a secular celebration, a time to gather with friends and family.

When she married Penn Fix, a secular Christian, they decided their children would be Jewish. But he had no desire to convert.

As their daughter Louisa, now 6, began asking questions about God and the world, Schultz said she realized it would take more than her own resources to give her daughter and son, Pierce, now 3, a good religious education.

Rather than attend Spokane’s lone synagogue, the Schultz-Fixes and the Goldstein-Robertses joined five other families to form their own “Havarah,” or friendship group.

For four years they have met twice a month to educate themselves and their children about Judaism.

“We were looking for a way of educating our children religiously, but recognizing that we did not want a real conservative view,” Goldstein said. “We wanted our kids to be really open to the fact that one of their parents was not Jewish and that was OK.”

Earlier this year, the group held a bat mitzvah in the Moran Prairie Grange for one of its teens.

Since then, more families have asked to join, presenting a new problem.

“We want to keep it intimate,” Goldstein said. “But we also know there is nothing out there (in Spokane) for families like us.”

The dilemma is similar for other interfaith couples in Spokane and the Inland Northwest. There are no mosques in the region, and only three Buddhist centers.

Many interfaith families gravitate to Unitarian Universalist Church on Fort Wright Drive. That congregation describes itself as a community of seekers. They celebrate holidays and feasts from many religious traditions.

But even that church is less than satisfying for many Jewish parents, said the Rev. Linda Hart, pastor of the Unitarian congregation.

“We can’t give families a grounding in the Jewish tradition,” she said. “We celebrate Judaism as a vital religious tradition and community, but we are not it.

“There is a culture and unique way of being in the world that you really can only find in a Jewish community.”

Goldstein, whose parents survived the Holocaust, made it clear to her husband that she could never replace her heritage with her marriage. While her husband wasn’t very religious, having gatherings for friends and family at Christmas was important to him.

Religious criticism

So they celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah.

“We all decorate a Christmas tree with non-religious ornaments,” Goldstein said. “Every year, my husband attempts to make a fruitcake.”

But interfaith families are not without their critics, and they are attacked from all sides. The main criticism: children of mixed-faith families grow up confused and ungrounded in any religion.

Spokane Rabbi Jack Izakson said he frequently counsels the offspring of dual-faith families as they reach adulthood.

“They end up really floundering,” he said. “I urge parents to pick a religion and stick with it.”

While he doesn’t turn mixed-faith couples away, he won’t participate in their wedding ceremonies. Instead, he counsels them and refers them to another rabbi.

But Schultz said that argument doesn’t make sense to her. She has many childhood friends who were raised in a synagogue, only to drift away as they reached adulthood.

“What we do is just as valuable and viable,” she said. “I think my children will do a lot more in helping other people understand Judaism.”

Hart, the Unitarian pastor, said she is impressed with the members of Havarah and their commitment to building their own community.

“We are pretty limited in our ability to see the world and understand the world, and make sense of what we are supposed to do,” she said.

“We are best served with people around us who can help us understand the world. We can’t do it by ourselves. We need a community to help us see more clearly.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo