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How a big-city Jew made room for a small-town Cheesehead

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When, as a small-town Wisconsin Cheesehead, I came to marry a fun-loving Jewish girl from the Bronx, her poetic “New Joisey” uncle toasted this union as the joining of the “Empire State and the State of Cheese” — and some of our differences were about that vivid.

Those differences stood out on my first visit to the Nichols’ Bronx, New York home as we sat down to festively served fresh bagels and lox, a thinly sliced salmon delicacy I had never seen before. I watched carefully how to eat this long, raw, thin, pink tongue, assuming I could never dodge my culinary initiation.

But as table conversation ensued, this became the least of my worries. Between bites, I began to notice how hard it was to get a word in edgewise in this family circle. In fact, it suddenly seemed as though I were on Survivor, in a social survival of the fittest, and I was definitely the lowest on the chain.

If you hadn’t seen the play or read the book that was being discussed — or the New York Times reviews of them — sorry, that was just your fault. No offense. You just had nothing to say.

Remember My Big Fat Greek Wedding? I soon identified with that overwhelmed, culturally steamrolled son.

But after seven days of this, I dare say I felt invisible and very concerned. And on the night before our departure, I was up all night, sweating bullets. I realized that if I wanted to marry Vicki, I had to confront this.

So the next morning, as we sat down to breakfast, I asked for the floor. Now Vicki was sweating bullets. Here’s where you could say I qualified to be included in my own Courage Files series.

I put aside my eggs and toast and said, “(Eh-em), I have to say…I’m honestly concerned about marrying into this family. Where I’m from…we ask questions of guests and find out about their lives. I still haven’t had a chance to share anything about me. I do want a relationship with you, but it has to be two-way.”

I looked up and over at Nick who, to my relief, showed no signs of anger. In fact, just the opposite. With tears in his eyes, he said, “Thank you for your honesty. No one has ever said that to us. I can see you’re telling us because you care. We do need to be better listeners.”

INTENTIONAL LOVE

That was the beginning of a humbling connection, and a feeling in all of us that our relationship was worth any changes in us that might be required.

This willingness to question one’s own assumptions — to yield to another person despite our own strong feelings and thus to learn — was the first of several surprising discoveries and kindred qualities shared between the alpha dogs in our families, my 84-year-old father-in-law and I, since we met 25 years ago.

We all put our best feet forward, of course. Vicki and I were married beneath a Jewish canopy and said a Hebrew prayer of blessing, though we were married by a Christian pastor in a Christian church. We ate mostly Scandinavian foods at our reception, but danced in the Jewish tradition, four men holding each of us on chairs overhead, flying about in a figure 8 with a handkerchief held between us. (What a blast!)

But what has caused our relationship to continue to grow has been much more than kind deference. It’s been a commitment that felt like one we ALL made in our wedding vow — to a proposition that intentional, daily and sacrificial “love never fails.”

I’ve felt this parental love and commitment through unexpected, weekly telephone calls just to see how we’re doing. We have always shared a mutual love and care for one another — something that was needed given our differences in background, lifestyle, and economic standing — for the merger to be successful.

But Nick’s intentional love and concern has been expressed on an even more unexpected patch of common ground, our heartfelt expressions of care, beyond ourselves, for the world’s welfare, even in distant lands.

WORLD CONCERN

“What will your generation do to stop the world’s boundless greed and ethnic warfare when we are gone?” Nick has asked this on numerous occasions, and waited for an answer, literally choking away tears.

His love is broad and inclusive, something I have rarely experienced to this degree, even in religious communities.

Early in our relationship I was hired as editor of an ecumenical Christian newspaper intended to foster communication between churches. When Hope in Action folded due to a lack of funding, it was one of the only times I remember Nick scolding me. He said, “Why didn’t you tell me of your financial need?” I thought the reason was obvious. A Jewish man rescuing a Christian enterprise?

Yes, I’m his son-in-law, so his sympathy may be expected, but it goes deeper. “I believe in the Jewish concept of Tikkum Olam, the repairing of the world,” he said. If that means bringing Christians into broader sympathy for one another, he is in favor of it, especially with his son-in-law at the helm.

Many have scratched their heads at Jesus’ benchmark virtue, loving even one’s enemies. Fewer have embodied it, and religious institutions have not always fostered this inclusivity.

Both Nick and I grew up with what we later considered restrictive and exclusive forms of religious faith. Nick’s father, though an atheist, required Nick to attend Hebrew School into his high school years, beyond the customary age of his Bar Mitzvah.

When I interviewed him, Nick recalled attending synagogue worship on Sabbath, but then bee-lining down the block to the theater where movies were a treasured escape from a poorly fitting religious education. He sought to connect with the world, not be isolated from it.

This reminded me of a time when my dogmatic Christian grandmother stole my evil transistor radio and perched it, out of reach, on top of her refrigerator because I was listening to (cover your ears) jazz music. I’ll never forget looking up “jazz” in the dictionary to prove to her that it did not come from the pit of hell.

I too rejected what Nicholas Wolterstorff calls a “world-avertive” kind of faith in favor of one that is “world-formative.” Though from very different backgrounds, Nick and I have both tried to live what Mary Ann Evans called “a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human.”

I’ve been privileged to share with my father-in-law a common quest for the betterment of not only our own lives but the lives of others. Somehow we know that the peace-making love that a world restoration would require is something we must first learn and live out with each other.

Allow me to share two more things I appreciate about the Manhattan doctor Nick Nichols, a man with whom I once shared little more than a goatee.

INTELLECTUAL HONESTY

Nick Nichols was raised in the only Jewish family in a Catholic Italian neighborhood. “It was very violent,” he said. “We were persecuted and frequently told we were Christ-killers.”

“My only saving grace,” he said, “was that I was tall and was accepted on stick ball teams. I was the second best athlete in my neighborhood.”

He had every reason to hate Christians, and, due to this anti-Semitic history, Vicki did tell us to cover up the crosses in our Christian church where we were married, but the Nichols were gracious, entered with joy, and never raised the issue. In fact both warmly welcomed their daughter’s marriage to a Christian pastor’s son.

Now that did not absolve me of the kitchen speech from Mrs. Nichols when I was on her turf — another day I’ll never forget — when I received an appropriate earful about how any God who allowed the extermination of six million Jews had obviously died in the Holocaust.

And incidentally, the Nichols say, it is quite unfathomable how one could believe in a creator with the evidence for evolution.

Yet, though I may have held my breath through this lecture, wondering if this history would banish me by association, it did not. It just made their generous hospitality toward me as a devout Christian and future son-in-law seem all the more remarkable.

NOTE: I find I have to explain to many Midwesterners whom I tell about my family how one can be a Jewish atheist or Jewish agnostic, which some assume are oxymorons. But being Jewish, is to some, primarily an ethnic and cultural reality, not necessarily a religious one.

But this relationship has caused the issue of atheism, for me, to take a back seat to something greater – an openness or closedness of heart — whether one has less regard for people one disagrees with, and whether one is actually listening during a conversation. I’ve found the Nichols’ intellectual honesty and civility more common ground that draws me to them.

Tolerance, to them, does not mean an undiscerning acceptance of what anybody thinks, or being so open-minded that our brains fall out. No, it’s respecting one another and our opinions enough to listen carefully and be informed by how another person thinks.

To be honest, what I’m more used to are the many people who know what they believe but not necessarily why they believe it — who have not wanted, or simply have not had to, think through their faith because they’ve stayed in the safe cocoon of relationships with those who think and feel as they do.

I’d much rather hang out with the Nichols. They may not believe in the plagues of Egypt, but at Passover, I, the believing Christian at the table who believes God did miraculously deliver his people from Egypt, is at least allowed to speak; and I never tire of hearing their perspectives.

AESTHETIC ENJOYMENT

Artist friends of mine from Madison, Wisconsin were commissioned by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America to produce a video called “Faithful Earthkeeping” in which they try to imagine the grandness of the primitive world, and the amazement of its first creatures.

In it you see the first humans rise early before dawn each day to gather and welcome — that blazing ball of fire! As the narrator puts it, “The glow of that astonishing occurrence, the rising of the sun, stayed with them all day long.”

However, soon the first creatures grew bored, quit gathering, and slept in.

They quit applauding and dancing and singing…God continued doing only wonders, but no one noticed. They would wake up alive, but failed to be astonished at that. They would…eat and drink and kiss good-bye on the way to work, but all without a single ounce of awe. Birthing, breathing, laughing, crying, working…It all went on. God kept doing only wonders, mornings like the first morning, but no one gathered to feel creation anew.

You might say, the feeling was lost, and a loss of belief followed.

Ironically, it’s been my “non-believing” in-laws who have taught me most about “gathering to feel creation anew.” They’ve made sure my landlocked Midwestern family gets out to the ocean annually, flying us to Sanibel Island, Florida, or Cape Cod if they have to, where we are reminded of the glory of playful dolphins, the healing meter of crashing Gulf waves, and the miracle of oyster pearls.

And yes, the wonder of the nightly, unobstructed views of that orange-and-pink-framed, glowing golden ball as it slowly sinks into the shimmering Gulf waters.

How did the value of quiet enjoyment of something so grand and glorious drop so precipitously in our culture? Is it because such reflective moments have no apparent usefulness or economic value except to sell a poster, television show, or solar panel?

In his book Carpe Diem (or Seize the Day), Sociologist Tony Campolo suggests that what he calls the deadness of personality, or depleted emotion, found in many modern Americans was caused not only by materialism, but by our hyper-rationalist Enlightenment, and over-thinking Greek and Roman roots.

I remember on my first visit to the ocean being overwhelmed, not knowing what to do, and returning to my Greco-Roman fixation with books and writing in my journal. I was living in my head. I would enjoy the horizon as a background to conversation with someone, but could hardly hold my gaze on the beauty itself.

DEVOTED CONTEMPLATION

One vacation day while I felt the pull of yet another televised game of the college basketball tournament — something that appealed to my analytic self — my in-laws took their pilgrimage, strolling arm-in-arm, quietly reveling in yet another staggering horizon of changing hues. Finally I joined them, releasing the many things that distract me, and was richly rewarded.

The contrast between the grand and trivial things of life brought to mind a lyric by musician Steven Curtis Chapman:

What is this thing I see
Going on inside of me?
…Sometimes it’s like …
I’m playing Gameboy standing in the middle of the Grand Canyon
I’m eating candy sittin’ at a gourmet feast
I’m wading in a puddle when I could be swimming in the ocean
Tell me, What’s the deal with me?
Wake up and see the glory!

Nick has admitted a secular age of scientific rationalism has been inadequate to explain the inspiring beauty of art and nature, and I’ve seen the limitations of my adherence to a belief-system content to worship by words alone. We both feel a need to rise above our technologically isolating, hell-bent, and nonobservant world. He, at times, seems more devoted to the contemplation of higher things than I am.

As a doctor in one of the most stress-producing cities of the world, Nick spent his lunch hours at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum, gazing upon the created beauty of the ages, quietly nourishing his heart and soul.

In his retirement, even into his 80’s, while reading classic literature and learning languages, Nick dances, paints and sculpts. He’s an avid birder, enjoys theater, and goes to the opera. Though not a Jewish believer, he occasionally visits the synagogue to find community where he can.

And alas, Handel’s Messiah is, hands down, his favorite piece of music. “Listening to this work is definitely a religious experience for me, so maybe I do believe,” he concedes in good humor.

Recalling the image of the first humans, I’m inclined to think I’ve lost something, perhaps described by believers, but more primary than mere description. It’s a quality that Nick has.

EMOTIONAL ENTHUSIASM

Soon after Vicki and I were married, the Nichols gifted us with a visual extravaganza, a trip to Italy. One of my favorite moments was our visit to the Sistine Chapel where, high overhead, we saw Michelangelo’s classic, flowing rendition of the first human, hand and forefinger outstretched to that of his creator.

I was captured by the emotional impact of a purely visual telling of the creation story, necessary to convey the Biblical story on cathedral walls everywhere in Europe to the less-literate masses. I pondered the greater awe they must have felt — before faith became so complicated.

Please excuse me for a momentary but important tangent, one I’m making since many of my readers would call themselves Christians. According to historian Phyllis Tickle, Christians in the 21st century are in the midst of a great re-sorting — deciding which personal faith commitments to toss and which to keep — a kind of giant, nationwide, spiritual rummage sale.

It’s important to understand that a major cause of our lost innate sense of wonder in America was the redefinition of Christianity by Fundamentalists, one that removed and distrusted emotions. Before the early 1920’s, compassion in most liberal and conservative communities of faith in America produced hospitals, universities, soup kitchens, anti-slavery and later, civil rights campaigns.

But as a backlash to liberal de-mythologizing theologians in the 20’s, Fundamentalists created a list of orthodox or fundamental beliefs — after which, the goal of faith became to simply believe those beliefs, a very heady and world-aloof requirement.

Thereafter, faith became for some as dry as a dictionary definition. It was a mere matter of assenting to the “right” logical propositions. It was then, Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer says, that many passionate 20th century believers became hollow “paper people,” lacking thoughtfulness, personality, and emotion.

Charles Moore addresses the confusion this way:

“Christianity is not a worldview nor a set of beliefs…not a mental state. It is a pattern of acting and being. As Soren Kierkegaard put it, ‘Christ is the truth in the sense that to be the truth is the only explanation of it…Truth is not a sum of statements, not a definition, not a system of concepts, but a life.’ Christ sought followers, not ‘believers.’ He did not come to describe the world — he came to… transform the world.”

REJOINING VITALITY, THOUGHT AND FEELING

While explaining this contrast, Campolo says that Jewish and Italian storytelling traditions have preserved a more visual, creative, embodied faith, and a more vivacious expressiveness, including lifestyles that can be more spiritually alive. He suggests that people in the Western world who wish to reclaim this joy and vitality will need to “feel their way back to God.”

“Emotion is what life is all about for me,” Campolo continues. “Those rationalists (whether scientific or religious) with their computer-like minds seem to have lost most of their humanity. Call it my Italian temperament if you want, but to me to live is to laugh and dance. It is to embrace the tragic with desperate tears and to give myself to love with intensive abandon.

“My religious colleagues…view God in such static, rational and sophisticated terms. The Jews, you see, never considered Yahweh to be like that. For (them) God was a person who loves His children, a God of intense emotions. He could hate, be angry, weep and laugh…it was in graphically exotic terms that the writer of the Song of Solomon blurred the line between communion with God and the ecstasy of sex. My more rational friends (have no idea) what the Song of Solomon is doing in the Bible.”

There wasn’t much art, sun-gazing, emotion, or laughter in my Scandinavian family, so I needed to see a more vivacious life to believe it. But I’ve gotten an eye, ear and even mouthful of beauty, music and fine dining since I first sat around that Nichols family table.

I watch my mother-in-law, famous for saying the best thing to do with 30 minutes on the New York subway is to meet someone. She loves her neighbor with more lively interest and genuine empathy than most believers I know.

I watch my wife’s intense curiosity about the light reflections of the ginkgo tree, her amazement at the 2000-mile path of the Monarch butterfly, or contagious joy during a night-time gaze at the belt of Orion.

I watch my father-in-law’s insatiable appetite for art, knowledge, cultures, music, nature and cuisine. And his generosity: the Nichols’ charitable contributions are well above that of America’s average tithing Christian.

And it seems to me that their spiritual lives, even as non-believers, are often more robust and God-honoring than mine. Oh, I know they consider me to be a good and passionate person as well. But my point is this. I was not surprised one day to discover that the root meaning of the word enthusiasm, what I consider to be a hallmark of the Nichols, is en-theos – being in God.

© 2012 Todd Svanoe. Unauthorized reproduction of this copyrighted material is prohibited.


Todd can be reached via the Contact page.

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