Love, love, love

Even though Tu B’av is a minor Jewish holiday, I would never miss a chance to celebrate the lovely and challenging story I am writing along with my husband. I work with a few religious guys, so I always go to them to get clarification about the Jewish holidays. Turns out Tu B’av is more about finding your person than celebrating the one you already found.

Old traditions dictate that people would dress in white and gather to get to know each other, the similar clothes would cover the “differences”, whether you come from different families, status, etcetera, and you would like the person for who they are. My husband and I met at a museum, our similar clothes were our fascination for history and nerdiness. I met him on a cold day in May, days before Passover.

You need to stop stealing our men – an Israeli student yelled that at me when sharing my story on how I ended up in Israel during the first session of a class we were taking together. Another student next to me asked me if I wanted her to answer back, I said no and moved on with my day. It was not the first time that something like that happened to me. I am aware that Judaism goes through the mom and it was in fact one of the first serious questions I asked my husband when we made it official that we were dating. He said the most important thing was that his kids would have the Israeli culture embedded in them. That they would be as Israelis as he was. That took the religious pressure out of the way, really.

There is much talk about how much of a disgrace it can be for the Jewish community when a Jewish man chooses to build a family with a shiksa or a goya – my husband hates both terms but I gotta say I am very fond of the first, it sounds exotic, different, not from around, just like me. I know many Jewish families who put serious boundaries to their kids’ partners if they are not Jewish: they can’t come to the shabbat dinners or the chagim events, they won’t sign any documents to help them in their visa process, they need to dress/act accordingly if they wanna be in family events, and more.

But, how much do we know about the non Jewish partner’s family and the fact that their kid married someone outside of their culture/religion? I was raised in a Christian conservative family, my parents work for the church, I grew up volunteering at the church and leading a counseling group for teenagers. My husband was the first man I ever talked to my parents about. My dad told me in my teen years that he did not want to meet random guys, just the real ones, and that was my husband, a real steady dude.

I was finishing my master studies when our relationship became real. He invited me over to meet his family. It was his mom, sister and brother, the dad called to excuse himself, he was caught up at work. It was a wonderful afternoon. We laughed, we ate cake and fruits. His mom asked about my family, my plans, and I was more nervous than when I did my interview application for the master program.

Later that week I called my dad. Told him I was seeing someone, he was local, that he was Jewish. Pause. The reason why I mentioned he was Jewish is because part of me always thought my parents wanted me to marry within my church/religion/ethnicity. End of the pause. He asked me: are you happy with him? I said yes and he said he would love to meet him over zoom with my mom.

Judaism is a very complex and diverse community, so for our families, it might take a while to understand our partners’ culture. For example, my husband is secular but grew up in a country where most of the restaurants are kosher by definition. It is not normal for him to eat pork in any presentation. It is not forbidden, he does not think it is wrong, but it is just not a normal dish he would find any day in Jerusalem. Peruvian dishes have pork in many presentations, and all of them are very yummy.

My husband has never attended church either. He goes with me when we are in Peru, and I believe he learns more about who I am while being part of those meetings and spending time with my community. Because Christianity and Judaism share a lot of history and also values, having our families understand each other has been quite easy, but unfortunately it is not like that for many inter-religious couples.

I could not do this partner visa process if my man did not have my back. And he has my back because he was raised right. He stands next to me in the hard times and in the fun ones, too. He holds my hand to calm my nervousness and to share my excitement. I would not change a thing about him. Okay, maybe the stubbornness but it comes with the Jewish package, apparently.

There is this famous expression: it takes a village, and I agree. It took his Jewish village and my Christian village to make us the people we are, and it takes our villages to help us build this hybrid village. It takes understanding, open mindedness, tolerance, even curiosity, to make this work. I am grateful for my Israeli family, they welcomed me into their family and became part of my Peruvian family. No borders nor languages can stop genuine intentions of love.

So no, we are not here taking your men, if anything, they are taking us out of our home countries to bring us to their safe space and build a life together. We met here or there, but at the end it is the same outcome, them asking us to uproot our lives with the promise of a never ending love story, and with my man, I want all the stories I can get, he is my charming Israeli viking.

There are many attempts by the Gamara to find the origin of Tu B’av (check here). According to the Talmud, Ta’anit 30b, on this day the tribes of Israel were permitted to mingle with each other, or in other words, to marry women from other tribes. And I have chosen to believe that part of the Judaism studies somehow finds a reasonable, biblical, godly explanation to understand and accept my intercultural/interreligious marriage. We are mixing tribes, we are complying with Tu B’av and that makes me happy.