Tuesday, January 4, 2011

What Do Religious Women Want?

The Messianic Intermarriage Series

Yet side by side with these couples, there are quite a few for whom the searching phase is never ending. Some have been searching for years, have met hundreds of potential partners and have broken up with all of them, or have been broken up with. At the end of the day, they're alone. In a study carried out by Audrey Leiman, a couples' councilor, in her thesis on Being Single in Religious Society for Lesley University, Leiman discovered that for religious women, the process of searching for a partner is even more difficult.

Study: What (religious) women want
Tzofia Hirschfeld
YnetNews.com

Men have been asking (and continue to ask) "what do women want" probably ever since Adam had his first "disagreement" with Eve, and we men still don't know the answer. The comedy film What Women Want (2000) highlighted this question (and potentially the correct response) when misogynist ad man Nick Marshall (played by Mel Gibson) gained the (unwanted) ability to hear women's thoughts (and they aren't always pretty thoughts, especially if they're about guys).

Fiction aside though, what do women want in a man? More so, what do religious women want?

Couples counselor Audrey Leiman attempts to answer this question from a religious Jewish perspective in her soon to be published study on the topic, but this could have implications in the Messianic world as well.

Some of what religious women want in a man is what I think many women want:
"An additional paradox is the conflict between the traditional views on marriage and relationships and the sector's modern views. Today most religious women have an equalitarian view yet at the same time, still have the traditional view with regards to a man's role – from the religious domain and through to the internal management of the household."
While Leiman is describing "the Zionist religious sector of (Israeli) society", and in spite of almost 50 years of American feminism, women still want a "life partner" who she can respect and (even secretly) one whose accomplishments outstrip her own, at least in some areas.

But Leiman's target population is extremely unlikely to marry outside of their faith group, even to the degree of marrying a secular Jew, must less a Christian or (heaven forbid) a Messianic Jew. How can her data be applied to us?

I once knew a fellow who was (and I suppose still is) a brilliant scholar and linguist. Although not Jewish (even though he looked classically Ashkenazi), he had a command of multiple languages, including fluent Hebrew and Greek, and he was scrupulously observant in many Jewish religious practices. He was also young and single and finding a mate was a rather painful "adventure" for him.

He has since married (and I'm sorry to say, I never got the opportunity to meet his bride), but I remember the discussions we had over his quest to find a proper mate, who would not only have to share his religious convictions, but be intellectually and characterologically challenging for him.

In the Messianic world, can we always find mates to match our unique requirements?

I suppose, for Jews in the Messianic movement, that's why they intermarry so often. How many truly observant Jewish people are Messianic? The "potential mate" pool must be rather thin. However, there are a ton of Gentiles who call themselves "Messianic" swimming in the same pool and some of them are really cute.

Also, it's not unheard of for Jews in "the movement" to marry "straight up" Christians or, for a Jew and a Gentile to self-identify as Christians, worship in a church setting, meet and marry in a Christian context, and then transition into a Messianic religious context (and a variation of the latter is what originally happened between my wife and me).

Another viewpoint about what Jewish women want is represented by my daughter. She's Jewish and not Messianic (like her mother) and she's told me that, after two trips to Israel, she has no intention of marrying a Jewish man. She finds Jewish men controlling and overbearing, even secular Jewish men. Being a moderate feminist, she wants to be treated as an equal, not an object. She's not alone:
"Most religious women still hold with the traditional views that the man must be more than them – taller, more educated, earns more. The problem is that they themselves have advanced and hold key positions. Earn well, have masters and doctorate degrees. These two conflicting views must live together under one roof, and they don't have a clear message."
Even among the Zionist religious population of Israel, women are adopting an attitude of equality where they can pursue greater levels of personal advancement than past generations. Religious women want what many secular women want; equal access to resources such as education and employment, while still establishing and sharing a religious Jewish home with a compatible mate. As these different worlds collide, it becomes more difficult to find a match. How much more so in the Messianic community, where potential spouses must meet so many different and sometimes conflicting requirements.

What is the future of marriage in the Messianic movement? Can intermarriage be reduced or eliminated? Probably not in the short run. The religiously observant Jewish population of Messianic Judaism would have to increase by a significant factor to provide an adequate pool from which mates could be matched. However, there are a multitude of Gentiles available to choose from as potential mates. Unless you want to perform a world wide search for, not just an observant Messianic Jewish partner, but one who matches all of your other specific requirements, Gentile Messianic or Christian men and women are a more viable, or at least readily available option.

Gentiles in "the movement" don't face the same challenge because we're so plentiful, relative to observant Jews. Finding a Gentile mate is fairly easy, at least in larger population centers with a sufficient number of "Messianic" congregations. Also, since many Gentiles in the movement married while still affiliated with a Christian church and then transitioned into "Messianism" as a "unit", no dissonance in the relationship ever occurred.

I just ordered Making a Successful Jewish Interfaith Marriage by Kerry M Olitzky and Joan Peterson Littman. Up until a few years ago, I never considered myself part of a mixed marriage, but that has changed. Now with me worshiping in the "Messianic" realm and my wife being affiliated with the Chabad, our paths, though joined in marriage, have diverged in faith. We aren't experiencing any (or at least not very much) day-to-day dissonance in our relationship, but I do want to visit the larger world of Jewish and Christian interfaith marriages for my personal development. It's part of why I've been reading books such as Choosing Judaism by Lydia Kukoff and Choosing a Jewish Life by Anita Diamant, since a Christian converting to Judaism often stems from a Christian/Jewish interrelationship or marriage.

I'm sure the Olitzky and Littman book will fuel additional blog posts in my Messianic Intermarriage Series.

Oh, and apologizes for "borrowing" an image from Judah's blog for the photo at the top of the page, but they make such an adorable intermarried couple.

13 comments:

Gene Shlomovich said...

"She's Jewish and not Messianic (like her mother) and she's told me that, after two trips to Israel, she has no intention of marrying a Jewish man. She finds Jewish men controlling and overbearing, even secular Jewish men."

Funny, Jewish men think exactly the same of Jewish women:) I think this is just the case of grass is greener on the other side.

"Being a moderate feminist, she wants to be treated as an equal, not an object."

There are plenty of liberal Jewish men to go around (probably more of them than of any other kind, at least in the States), some of whom are male feminists (yes, there is such a thing).

James said...

While I desire she marry a Jewish man for the sake of her future, I know that I can't demand such a thing from her. Every time my wife and I try to broach the topic, she gets very defensive (and it's a good thing she doesn't read my blogs).

She's also very picky about guys, so she doesn't date all that often. That saved me a lot of headaches during her high school years. As a young adult, she has to make her own decisions and make her own mistakes, just as we did at that age.

Gene Shlomovich said...

"As a young adult, she has to make her own decisions and make her own mistakes, just as we did at that age."

I've known a few Jewish families that have successfully controlled their children's choice of mates by threatening to withhold money or refusing to attend a wedding:) [one case was the fact that the bride's mother's mother was not Jewish).

James said...

My daughter isn't even dating currently, so I don't think we have a lot to worry about right now. In any event, I don't think I could use extortion to "control" my daughter's "mating" selection and, if you knew my very strong-willed daughter (she's a lot like her mother), you'd know it wouldn't work. She'd just run off with the fellow and that would be that.

I did have significant concerns when my son David decided to marry a non-Jew and for that matter, a non-believer. David has a history of making impulsive choices, but he's as strong willed as his sister and mother, so there was no talking him out of it (and believe me, we tried). Now they're married and we have a 22 month old grandson.

His wife is family now and, whether we originally approved or not, we would be less than gracious if we didn't accept her as such just because David didn't marry the woman we would have picked out for him. If we love him, we must love his wife as well. If we shun her, what damage do we do to our relationship with our son and how could we be good grandparents to our grandchild?

The hardest thing a parent ever has to do is to let their children grow up and make their own choices.

Gene Shlomovich said...

"If we shun her, what damage do we do to our relationship with our son and how could we be good grandparents to our grandchild?"

Of course not, I can't imaging shunning my children even if I thought they made a serious mistake - after all, G-d doesn't shun us either.

"The hardest thing a parent ever has to do is to let their children grow up and make their own choices."

I know what you mean. My kids are still toddlers and there's still time to influence them, but I am not looking forward to any potential parental heartaches that come with them becoming adults and entering life on their own.

James said...

Gene, you've got a long way to go. :D

Parenting is much easier when your kids are young and you can "influence" them. The funny thing is, we raise our kids so that, at the right time, they can think and live as independent human beings. There's no guarantee however, that they'll think independently in the way we want them to.

Dan Benzvi said...

My daughter is halachically Jewish because my wife, her mother is Jewish. She married a non-Jewish man.

The sad irony is that the "pure" Jews within MJ will accept the child of a goy (my granddaughter) as Jewish, but will not let her father the goy to make alia laTorah...

And the plot thickens......

Gene Shlomovich said...

"The sad irony is that the "pure" Jews within MJ will accept the child of a goy (my granddaughter) as Jewish, but will not let her father the goy to make alia laTorah..."

Why is that "ironic"? One is halachically Jewish (has a Jewish mother) and the other is not Jewish AT ALL. This is all very basic Judaism, not even "messianic".

Dan Benzvi said...

Gene,

Of course you don't get it....Why should a blind person like you get it?

James said...

Disagreeing is one thing. Making it personal is something else. Chill out guys or take it into the realm of dueling emails. I encourage debate, but name calling is something else. I don't want to have to start deleting comments.

Gene Shlomovich said...

James, you and I can and do disagree, but we don't get personal and always stay respectful. So, from now on I will simply ignore Dan's comments anywhere I see them. That should quite things down.

Yahnatan said...

James,

What a nice looking couple--10 points for the awesome image opening up your article! :-D

Yahnatan

James said...

Thanks. I'm sure Judah and his wife will like the complement as well.