c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Eli Hecht is a member of Judaism’s Lubavitch Hasidic sect. He is director of Chabad of South Bay in Lomita, Calif., and vice-president of the Rabbinical Alliance of America. He can be reached on via e-mail at rabbieh(at)aol.com.)

(RNS)-There was once a man who had two wives. The younger wife plucked out his white hairs. The older wife plucked out his black hairs. His once attractive head became bald, pleasing nobody.

For some interfaith couples, a wedding ceremony performed by both a rabbi and a priest seems like a reasonable solution. But what about after the wedding? When children are born, strong religious conflicts often arise. Each party wants his or her religion to be dominant. As in the story of the man with two wives, each party pulls for his or her side. The result is a non-religious home-a bald head, pleasing nobody.

As a rabbi, I perform no interfaith marriages. But I do plenty of marriage counseling. And frequently, intermarried couples present me with grave problems that always relate to religious differences. I wish I knew a way to make them happy, but I don’t.

What I have found, however, is a rather startling phenomenon. People who choose to accept their spouse’s religion usually have no real understanding of their own religion.

A young man comes to see me, saying he will leave Judaism and join the local church. I ask him why he feels the need to change. He explains that the church has wonderful prayers that he finds very inspirational.”I love `The Lord is my Shepherd,'”he tells me.”It gives me faith and comfort.”Doesn’t he know that Psalm 23 was created by King David, the founder of the Jewish Davidic dynasty?

A young Christian lady visits me, explaining she wants to convert to Judaism. Jesus was Jewish, she reasons, and if Judaism was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for her.

Her understanding of what Jesus meant to the world and his contribution to humanity is totally lost. Why give up a religion she never studied?

A gentleman in his late 60s asks me to perform a holy marriage ceremony, explaining that his fiancee doesn’t believe in any religion.”With my being Jewish and her being an atheist,”he reasons,”everything should work out just fine.” How wrong he is. Nothing will work out.

A young Jewish woman tells me she finds Christianity more tolerant than Judaism. There are too many Jewish groups, each at the other’s throat. I opened a magazine and showed her the latest conflict between Catholics and Protestants. I told her how many innocent people keep on getting killed in the name of the Christian religion. I asked her to pick the more tolerant one-Catholicism or Protestantism.

Some people simply give up on religion. They rationalize their choice:”The rabbi was a bum,”they say.”The priest was a child abuser.”One bad experience leads them to believe that all religions are false.

Would you give up wearing shoes if you were sold a bad pair? A clear-thinking person would tell you to find a better shoe store. Yet, when it comes to religion, the flimsiest excuses suffice.”I am going to raise my child to be a good Catholic, just like I am,”the rock star Madonna said recently in an interview, explaining how she would raise her out-of-wedlock child. How incongruent we have become.

Yes, a large percentage of people have no idea what religion is all about. And any clergy who preside at interfaith marriages may be fooling themselves into thinking such unions will succeed.

By presiding at such rituals, we are not saving the innocent couple. We are hurting them. We give them the wrong message. They are bound together with two religions and they don’t know what to practice.

Once and for all, I ask members of the clergy to be realistic about the implications of intermarriage. They should demand that potential converts and marriage partners of different religions, first and foremost, know their own religion.

People must understand and appreciate the religion in which they were born and raised. Only then can they contemplate conversion or making a marriage with a person of another faith.

MJP END HECHT