FAMILY | DIVERSITY
America is Full of Stories About Families and Religions
And how they juxtapose.
It was 3:45 AM.
Our Uber ride, a white, lighted Hyundai with water vapor drifting from its tailpipe, was waiting outside to take us to the airport for a 6:20 AM return Flight to Kansas City.
Story One
My partner Rebecca and I had been in Marblehead, MA for a week to attend Emily and Aviv’s son Ilan’s Bar Mitzvah.
I asked if I could take pictures during the ceremony and was told yes. The photo above was of the open Arc that had just received back the Torah scrolls. Rebecca’s grandaughter Irene and son Jonathan closed the chamber doors. Irene attends an Episcopal school.
Protestant Rebecca and Catholic Paul read a Prayer for Peace.
On the day of Ilan’s Bar Mitzvah, another car stood guard outside the synagogue.
Rebecca’s daughter Emily married Aviv 20 years ago. He had come with his family to America from Israel a few years before they met.
A decade after they married, Emily converted to Judaism. Illan’s sister Sivan will Bat Mitzvah in two years.
Story Two
The driver met us and our three bags on the top porch step.
He looked about sixty and easily stuffed the bags into the SUV’s trunk.
Once we were buckled in, he moved the car slowly forward and started talking about how much he enjoyed early morning pick-ups.
His easy chatter gave Rebecca permission to ask questions.
In the thirty minutes to the Boston airport, we learned our driver:
Is Korean; came to the USA 40 years ago, after his parents immigrated; has five younger sisters; lived 20 years in Florida and 20 in Atlanta; moved with his wife to Boston six months ago to be near their two daughters and grandchildren; one daughter is an Endocrinologist, the other Director of Medical Services; Ubers 4–8 am every day; and plays golf once a week with his pastor.
When he said pastor, I knew Rebecca would ask, “Are you Presbyterian?”
Our new friend said “Yes, of course.”
You might ask how we knew.
Not only have we watched all five seasons of Netflick’s Kim’s Convenience, a series about Canadian Koreans who are Presbyterian, but Rebecca is Presbyterian and knows about Presbyterianism in South Korea.
Our driver “talks to Jesus everyday.” And worries that so many young people are leaving the church. But is more proud of his daughters’ religious values than their material successes.
Story Three
Rebecca and I were as comfortable with our new Korean friend’s God talk as we were with his compressed life story.
As comfortable as Christian Rebecca is with a converted Jewish daughter.
As comfortable as Catholic Paul is with Presbyterian Rebecca and his 33 years teaching at Luther College.
Jesus and Torah
Francis and Calvin
Side by side, in peaceful co-existence.
The wondrous consequence of the American Constitution’s religious clauses.
It’s easy to take this comfort for granted.
Last fall Rebecca and I spent three months in Romania. When she told one of our Romanian friends about her daughter Emily’s marriage to Aviv and subsequent conversion, he said neither of these would happen in Romania and followed with
“America is thirty years ahead of us.”
Story Four
But the police car reminded us of another story that will not go away.
Maybe America is ahead of Romania, but it’s not yet to the promised land.
Antisemitic incidents, according to the Anti Defamation League, are at a 40 year high, thus the police car outside Illan’s synagogue.
This fear of those not in our religious tribe is deep in America.
And not just among anti-semites.
It resides in our memories and families.
My first girlfriend was Jewish. It was 1966. My Catholic mom was not happy, and said, “You know, you can’t get serious.” Her parents were also opposed but tolerated me probably thinking it would not last. It didn’t.
My mom would also have opposed me dating a Presbyterian, even an Episcopalian.
Much of America then was like Romania now, where Christians don’t marry Jews and Orthodox don’t marry Catholics.
I don’t know what my agnostic, protestant-raised father thought about Sharon, my Jewish girlfriend.
But I do know what he thought about Catholicism.
Before he and my mom married in 1948, my father began meeting with a priest as part of the Catholic conversion process. Apparently the priest treated my even-tempered dad so badly my father refused to continue.
For my dad, this priest’s intolerance became a proxy for much of what was bad about organized religion. At the same time, my father loved the Sisters of Charity, BVM and particularly, Sister Marilyn Thomas, his sister-in -law. I know he took solace in their prayers for him later, as he was slowly dying of cancer.
He tolerated his three sons being raised as Catholics but his refusal to become Catholic was always a tension in their 45-year marriage.
My dad died of sinus cancer in 1993. As our family left the funeral home parlor before they closed his casket, I turned around and saw my mom place a rosary on my father’s defenseless hands.
I’ve thought about that image for thirty years.
If I could relive that moment, I would have waited for her to leave the room, and removed it.
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