For Zaidy Cohn Gomez, 23, her parents’ divorce led to a crisis of faith. “Religion was used as a weapon,” she said in a recent interview. After the divorce of her Catholic Puerto Rican parents, Gomez was raised partially by her Jewish adoptive father.
Gomez, a Milwaukee native who now lives in Chicago, felt torn between the wishes of her Catholic grandmother and her adoptive father, who enrolled her in Congregation Shalom’s religious school to prepare for becoming a bat mitzvah. But rather than feel enriched by having a dual identity, Gomez felt confused.
She always proudly accepted her Latina roots, she said, but she didn’t know how to handle the two religions that were being pushed upon her.
Since Catholicism felt “more natural” to her, she said, she rebelled against the less familiar Jewish traditions.
“Had I been raised from the beginning half-and-half, I think I would have been able to adjust better,” she said. “When my father adopted me I was already immersed in Latin culture and life. It was just too late to change my identity.”
That inconsistent approach to religion is a result of poor judgment in her upbringing, she believes. And it could have been prevented had her parents made clear and consistent choices.
“I think it’s important for couples to have an open discourse before having kids, to talk about what kind of upbringing they will supply their children. It can totally consist of a mixed religion background but nothing should be forced. It should be a natural progression,” she said.
As Gomez sorts out her identity, many children of interfaith families are similarly grappling with their place within the Jewish community and their definitions of themselves.
Who is a Jew?
While the Jewish religious denominations have varying views of what makes someone Jewish — the Conservative and Orthodox streams count as Jews only those with Jewish mothers, whereas the Reform and Reconstructionist movements sanction Jewish lineage from either side — the denominations are united in their opposition to the notion of one being “half-Jewish.”
Yet the “half” term is gaining currency, particularly among those with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers. The phenomenon is encouraged by Web sites, books and groups that celebrate or support these self-proclaimed half-Jews, from www.halfjew.com launched to establish “an identity for HalfJews,” to the short-lived student group at Brown University called “The Half-Jew Crew.”
Many children of intermarriage say they simply cannot turn their backs on the non-Jewish half of their identity. Their rabbis may say they are Jewish, but in their hearts they are also whatever grandma and grandpa are.
This openness to multiple identities is particularly true among college students, according to Daniel Klein and Freke Vuijst, who interviewed hundreds of students for “The Half-Jewish Book” published in 2000.
Klein says that those who consider themselves to be half-Jewish “feel they are a combination, they are an amalgam, they are bicultural.”
A 2005 survey by Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life found that 48 percent of college students who consider themselves Jewish come from intermarried homes. It’s from this population that a new subculture is emerging of “people who draw from both sides of their heritage and synthesize their cultural halves into a remarkable new identity,” the authors write.
It’s something to celebrate, not hide, they argue.
Milwaukeean Fred Konovalenko, 25, grew up with a Jewish mother and a Christian father. His parents decided to raise the kids with both religions. Though the family was not religious, Konovalenko said, when his grandmother was alive there was an emphasis on the Jewish traditions.
He identifies with both religions equally, not choosing one over the other. Neither did he encounter much confusion growing up in the mixed household, he said.
Sara Laev, 23, of Milwaukee, also considers herself “half and half” but feels unconnected to both her father’s Judaism and her mother’s Catholicism. “I would say I don’t feel I am only one religion or even necessarily both at once. My lack of faith doesn’t drive me to feel any way,” she said.
Baptized Catholic, Laev chose not to be confirmed. She didn’t learn much about either religion and never belonged to a synagogue, she said.
Her parents’ divorce made it easier for her to celebrate holidays from both religions, she said. “I was never pulled in any one direction to practice one and ignore the other, and both my parents were accepting of each other’s religion.”
Still, she said, if she were to settle on one religion, she thinks she would lean toward Judaism because it feels more comfortable to her, despite the possible disapproval from her mother.
According to the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey, almost half of American Jews are intermarrying. It is predicted that as more interfaith families become a part of the Jewish community, their role will become more influential in how their identity is viewed.
As said by outreach activist Robin Margolis, who launched the Half-Jewish Network, “We’ll be the majority of Jews in this country by 2030. Then the playing field changes. If we’re the majority, we’ll decide who’s a Jew.”
Sue Fishkoff of JTA contributed to this article.
A former Chronicle intern, Leah Blankenship is a senior at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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