Ruth Duskin Feldman

The "waters that rose up from the deep" at the end of 2004 swallowed, at last estimate, as many as 300,000 people in Southeast Asia — Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and Jews. This tragic event has been called "a catastrophe of biblical proportions" — an "act of God," as insurance policies put it.

But why would God, if he exists, either cause or permit such wanton destruction? How can the faithful explain it? Click here to read more

In the 1940s, only 7 percent of born Jews in the United States chose non-Jewish mates. Between 1985 and 1990, according to the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, 52 percent married out of the tribe. The accuracy of that figure has since been challenged, but the trend is clear.

The causes of the intermarriage boom are not mysterious. In a secular culture, Jews and non-Jews meet at school and at work and often find that they share common values and interests. Jews have become acceptable to Christians as marriage partners, greatly expanding the field our young people have to choose from. It's not surprising that many of them choose non-Jews. Click here to read more

As a busy professional writer reveling in the freedom of the empty nest, I never expected to go back to baby-tending. Yet twice a week, while his mother works, I am doing exactly that for my grandson. And after nearly two years, 1 find that I'm loving it!

Everybody talks about the day-care crisis, but few people mention one solution that could benefit children and their whole families: part-time care by a grandparent. For people who have the time, the patience and the inclination, it can bring new dimensions to family relationships. Click here to read more

It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
— Soren Kierkegaard

Reaching the half-century mark forces the realization that possibilities are not forever. So, the August after my fiftieth birthday and my daughter Laurie's law school graduation, we kissed her dubious father good-bye and set out on a ninety-six-mile journey down Utah's Green River. Our route lay through Desolation and Gray canyons, which stretch end to end on the site of an ancient lake. The rapids increase gradually in turbulence — numerous and rough enough to challenge novices, yet not too dangerous to paddle. Click here to read more

"To me [as a child]," writes Eli Wiesel in Messengers of God, "the Akeda [the biblical story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac at God's command] was an unfathomable mystery given to every generation, to be relived if not solved." It is a story of devotion and victimization, which has found echoes from the crucifixion of Jesus to the devastation of the Holocaust. Click here to read more

In the 1940s, only 7 percent of born Jews in the United States chose non-Jewish mates. Between 1985 and 1990, according to the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, 52 percent married out of the tribe. The accuracy of that figure has since been challenged, but the trend is clear.

The causes of the intermarriage boom are not mysterious. In a secular culture, Jews and non-Jews meet at school and at work and often find that they share common values and interests. Jews have become acceptable to Christians as marriage partners, greatly expanding the field our young people have to choose from. It's not surprising that many of them choose non-Jews.

Historically, intermarriage has been seen as a threat to the Jewish community and its distinctive religion and culture. The ban on intermarriage, instituted as a safeguard against assimilation, goes back to the Babylonian exile. This ban was enforced retroactively upon the return to Judea, forcing the breakup of thousands of families and, in effect, the expulsion of many intermarried Jews.

Intermarriage did flourish during the Hellenistic period, when Jews were exposed to the philosophical ferment of the Greek world. During Greco-Roman times, thousands of non-Jews converted to Judaism, and the Jewish population mushroomed. But the ascendancy of Christianity and centuries of persecution and ghettoization solidified the boundaries between Christian and Jew. Sholem Aleichem's Tevye, sitting shiva for his daughter who married a gentile, represented a prevalent Jewish attitude toward intermarriage.

Marriages between Jews and non-Jews are no longer commonly ostracized and mourned, but they are often seen as a problem. As Eli Wiesel has said, "They used to kill us; now they marry us." Ten years ago, the World Jewish Congress warned that within three decades a combination of assimilation, intermarriage, and low birth rates might cut the Jewish population outside of Israel in half. The demographer Sergio Della Pergola, writing in the Forward of October 25, 2002, speculates that intermarriage is responsible for an apparent decline in the self-identified American Jewish population.

At first the rabbinic reaction to the intermarriage crisis was to close ranks and stand firm. Today, parts of the Jewish establishment, especially in the Reform movement, are waking up to reality and are trying to attract, rather than reject, intermarried couples -- once they are already married. Outreach and conversion have become the magic words. But participating in a mixed marriage without conversion is another thing altogether, and many such couples still have trouble finding a rabbi to marry them. Sometimes the Jewish partner has grown up in a Reform or Conservative congregation and is deeply hurt when his or her lifelong rabbi will not officiate. As a madrikha, a member of Humanistic Jewish clergy, I have been called upon to marry many such couples. Some Reform rabbis now will perform such a ceremony, but only if the couple agree to conditions they may not be willing to accept, such as promising to have a Jewish home and raise the children exclusively Jewish. Often there is pressure on the non-Jewish partner to convert.

Humanistic Judaism starts from a different premise. We see a mixed marriage, like any other marriage, as an occasion for celebration, hope, and respect. As humanists, we put people first — we believe that Judaism should serve people's needs and not the other way around. We are concerned about Jewish continuity, but not at the expense of human happiness. Furthermore, in our view, shutting the door on Jews who want their weddings to reflect their Jewish identity is not a smart way to keep them and their families in the fold.

Humanistic Jewish clergy are neither for nor against intermarriage; we simply accept it as a fact of life in the present-day American Jewish community. Nor do we minimize the special challenges it may involve. But we believe that two human beings who have fallen in love and plan to marry should have our wholehearted support, whether or not they are both Jewish. We further maintain that both partners are equally entitled to respect for who and what they are. This is why so many such couples seek us out.

Often we find, upon talking with them, that these couples are intercultural rather than interfaith. They may share a similar world view but differ in their cultural backgrounds — the way they and their families celebrate holidays, rituals, and life-cycle events. Many of these couples find common ground in a nondenominational spirituality and in the idea that ethics ("being a good person"), not divinity, is the essence of religion. Because intercultural couples generally agree on what matters most to them — their basic beliefs and values — they may have much more in common than a pair of Jews, one of whom is Conservative or Orthodox and the other atheist or agnostic.

Intercultural couples often feel more comfortable with a Humanistic ceremony than with a traditional sectarian one. Some couples — about one in four in my experience — choose to have non-Jewish clergy coofficiate. I, like many other Humanistic clergy, am happy to participate in such a wedding as long as it is balanced and truly represents both partners and their backgrounds.

How Intermarriages Turn Out: A Survey
What happens to mixed couples who begin married life with a Humanistic Jewish wedding? To find out, in late 1998 I mailed a questionnaire to fifty-nine such couples — all but one of those whose weddings I had officiated or coofficiated during the five years since my certification as a madrikha. (For one couple I was unable to find a current address. ) I received forty-two replies, a 71 percent response.

Who are these men and women ? What are their backgrounds? The vast majority are college-educated; many hold advanced degrees. They tend to be in professional, business, or managerial occupations, teaching, or the arts. At the time of their weddings, most ranged from the mid-twenties through the thirties, and some were in the forties or fifties. Thirteen of the marriages — about 30 percent — were second marriages for one or both partners, and two were third marriages. Five brides and seven grooms had children who predated the current marriage, some of them grown. Several of the partners were themselves products of mixed marriages.

More than two-thirds of the couples had known each other at least three years before tying the knot, several for ten years or more. Most had lived together before marriage, as is common today, and four of the brides were pregnant.
Many couples had begun as friends and eventually realized they were more than that. Some had debated for a long time about the decision to marry and its religious dimensions.

Finding 1: A Decline in Religiosity
When we compare the early backgrounds of the Jewish partners in my survey with the way they describe themselves as adults, it is easy to discern a process first described by the sociologist Egon Mayer in the late 1970s and early 1980s: a generational decline in Jewish identity, observance, and commitment. Among the forty-two Jewish partners, seventeen had Reform family backgrounds or upbringing, fifteen Conservative or Orthodox, and one Reconstructionist. About twenty had been bar or bat mitsvah and/or confirmed, or had attended Hebrew School. A few came from secular or culturally Jewish families. Several had grandparents or other relatives who were prominent in Jewish life. Yet, by the time I first met them, only four identified or were affiliated with any branch of congregational Judaism. More than one-fourth described themselves as not religious or not observant. About one-fourth said they were agnostics or atheists; one-fourth said they believed ill God but had little or no involvement in organized worship. Some were High Holiday Jews. Several regarded their Jewish identity as a cultural or ethnic, not a religious, one. Still, almost all identified as Jews.

A decline in conventional religious belief and practice had occurred among many of the non-Jewish partners as well. Some — both Jews and non-Jews — were turned off by what they saw as the regimented or hypocritical aspects of organized religion. Some had lost faith after the death or divorce of a parent.

As Mayer suggested, intermarriage did not bring about this decline in religiosity; it already had taken place. In more than eight out of ten couples, my survey shows, both spouses’ level of religious activity remained about the same after marriage as before. About three out of four rarely or never attended church or synagogue. In line with other recent findings, only five men and women had converted or were considering conversion — four of the non-Jewish spouses and one of the Jewish ones. The threat to Jewish continuity posed by such marriages is not one of Christian influence but of indifference. Intermarriage may be a symptom but is not the cause of that indifference.

Finding 2: Stable Marriages
One of the arguments frequently used to discourage outmarriage is that such marriages are likely to end in divorce, and published statistics seem to bear this out. According to studies done in the 1980s and early ‘90s, the divorce rate from a first marriage is almost twice as high for intermarried as for inmarried Jews — about 32 percent as compared with 17 percent.¹

So, how many of “my” couples have fallen by the wayside? The surprising answer at the time of my survey was: none. No divorces or separations. Furthermore, all the respondents said that marriage was as good as, or, in most cases, better than they had expected. None reported major problems due to religious differences; one-third had had minor problems, and two-thirds little or none.

What about the couples who didn’t respond to the survey? Might they be the ones whose marriages didn’t work out? Possibly in some cases, but probably not in most. From informal contacts with family or friends, I know that at least six of the seventeen nonresponders are together and doing fine. I have heard recently of just two couples who are now divorced.

Is it too early to tell how these marriages will turn out? Perhaps — but studies show that breakups tend to occur early in a marriage, with the first year being the peak year for separations and the third year for divorce. Most marriages that break up do so by the seventh or eighth year. Since all but four of my couples had been married at least a year at the time of my survey, and two-thirds for two to five years, it would seem, statistically speaking, that some of these marriages should have been in trouble by then. But they weren’t.

The apparent stability of these marriages is also interesting from another perspective. It used to be true that couples who cohabited before marriage, as most of these did, were more likely to divorce, and some research suggests that this is still the case. But my guess is that this picture, too, is changing now that cohabitation (like intermarriage) is more widely accepted.

Three factors that probably worked in favor of these couples’ marital success are their relatively advanced age and high socioeconomic status and the length of time they had been together before marriage. A fourth factor may be the serious advance consideration many of them gave to the viability of their relationships. Intermarriage may force a couple to think through their attitudes toward many issues, large and small, that inmarried couples may take for granted. These particular couples, being predominantly intercultural rather than interfaith, shared the same basic outlook and values. Religious differences were not very important to many of them, nor was religion itself. Finally, couples who seek out a Humanistic officiant are likely to be independent thinkers. Perhaps it should not be surprising that their marriages do not follow the usual patterns.

Whatever problems did arise in these marriages were chiefly in the areas we might expect: relations with parents and relatives, and decisions about children’s upbringing. In my experience, most Jewish and non-Jewish parents today accept their children’s intermarriage gracefully. No doubt there are often misgivings, but as the parents get to know their future son-in-law or daughter-in-law, these feelings are generally overcome. I know of only a few cases in which parents or other family members expressed overt hostility. Sometimes submerged tension surfaces after the marriage or when children come; but only seven of my forty-two couples reported such problems, none of them major.

Finding 3: Raising the Children
A more sizable minority had problems, but again, not major ones — in deciding how to raise children, a decision some had failed to come to grips with before their marriage. About half of the couples had had babies, or were expecting, by the time of my survey, and all but four others planned to have children. Of these thirty-eight couples, thirteen — about one-third — planned to raise their children Jewish, were leaning that way, or expected to make Judaism the primary family identity while also exposing the children to the non-Jewish partner’s religious or cultural heritage. Only six — less than half as many — were going to raise their children as Christians or make that the primary identity. Nine wanted to raise their children as “both,” or to expose them to several religions and let them choose. Eight to ten — including several of those who already had babies — were still undecided.

It seems likely, then, that most of these couples are offering their children at least some Jewish exposure and identification. However, some of the Jewish partners admitted that they are ill equipped to teach their children what they themselves do not know. And, of course, people don’t always do what they say they plan to do, especially when their commitments are relatively shallow. This has proven especially true of dual-religion couples — those who try to raise their children with both Jewish and Christian identities. After all, it’s pretty hard for a child to be in two places at once on Sunday morning!

Still, for those concerned about Jewish continuity, my findings are more encouraging than most previous ones. In comparison with a national study of mixed marriage done in 1993,² I found well over twice as many families in which the only or primary identity was, or was expected to be, Jewish and only one-third as many Christian or Christian- oriented families.
Intermarried families and their children may be more likely to identify as Jews if they can find what they consider a meaningful way to do so. For some, Humanistic Judaism is the answer. As many as 90 percent of the membership of our congregations are intermarried families. They join us, not only because we welcome them from the start, but because the welcome never wears out. Non-Jewish members are treated exactly the same as Jewish members; they can stand on the bima at their children’s b’nai mitsvah, and they can serve on our boards of directors. Some even have been presidents of our congregations.

Conclusion
So, is intermarriage good or bad for the Jews? Most experts take one of two views. Pessimists, such as Della Pergola, see only gloom and doom. Optimists, such as the sociologist Calvin Goldscheider, argue that “the Jewish community gains rather than loses members through intermarriage.” (A case in point is my intermarried older daughter, who is raising six Jewish children.) Even if there is no conversion (and there wasn’t in my son-in- law’s case), many, if not most, intermarried Jews and their spouses retain close ties with Jewish friends and family and see themselves as part of the Jewish community. “Intermarriage, therefore,” said Goldscheider, “is not equivalent to assimilation nor does it automatically lead to communal dissolution. Those who leave the community through intermarriage are the most marginal to it.”³ In other words, intermarriage may weed out uncommitted Jews and replace them with the more numerous spouses and children of more committed intermarried Jews.

Much depends on the relative intensity of the Jewish and non-Jewish partners’ commitments. My findings support Goldscheider’s contention that many, if not most, intermarried families are likely to retain some connection with the Jewish people, though that connection may take unconventional forms or may involve some dilution of religious purity. For the couple themselves, intermarriage may be less risky and less painful for the families than in the past.

A more fundamental question, which most Jewish leaders and survey-takers do not ask, is: Even if we view intermarriage as a threat to Jewish continuity, what, exactly, is being threatened? What makes Jewish identity worth preserving? In an open society, what does it mean to be Jewish, and what is Judaism’s relevance to contemporary life?

Intermarriage challenges us to look squarely at such questions. It also offers an alternative vision of the Jewish future. A culture is a living organism; without growth, it will die. The infusion of new blood into the Jewish people may give it new life, as marriage partners and their families mutually transform themselves and each other, adapting old customs and ideas and creating new and unforeseen ways to define who they are and to celebrate what they believe.

NOTES
¹Barry Kosmin, Nava Lerer & Egon Mayer, Intermarriage, Divorce, and Remarriage among American Jews, 1982-1987. (New York: North American Jewish Data Bank, 1989). A 1993 national mixed marriage study echoes these findings, as does a more recent study of Los Angeles Jews.

²Bruce A. Phillips, Reexamining Intermarriage: Trends, Textures, and Strategies. (Susan and David Wilstein Institute of Jewish Policy Studies and American Jewish Committee, 1993).

³Calvin Goldscheider & Alan S. Zuckerman, The Transformation of the Jews. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 179.

Back to top of page

As a busy professional writer reveling in the freedom of the empty nest, I never expected to go back to baby-tending. Yet twice a week, while his mother works, I am doing exactly that for my grandson. And after nearly two years, 1 find that I'm loving it!

Everybody talks about the day-care crisis, but few people mention one solution that could benefit children and their whole families: part-time care by a grandparent. This is, of course, not an option that will work for everyone. But for people who have the time, the patience and the inclination, it can solve many problems — and actually bring new dimensions to family relationships.

I discovered this truth almost accidentally. Naturally I was excited about my first grandchild's birth. But I wasn't prepared for the intense distress that hit me three months later when my daughter Laurie announced that she would soon return to her job as an assistant U.S. attorney. A sitter would care for Daniel.

From the outset, Laurie had made plain her desire to resume part-time work after her maternity leave, but when her bosses refused her request, she agreed to try it full time. I understood her wish to stay on track, because I had interrupted my career for parenthood and later had to struggle to catch up. Still, I secretly hoped that she would put parenting first.

Instead, there was this sitter in the picture — a capable neighbor who cared for two other children full-time in her home. I worried: What would happen when the baby got sick? Even more upsetting was the idea of a stranger raising my grandson.

I swallowed the impulse to offer my services, although, since I live only 10 minutes away, the idea wasn't out of the question. "Don't do it — you'll be sorry!" more than one of my friends warned. Meanwhile, a trial run at the babysitter's was shaking Laurie's resolve. She felt depressed when she left Daniel there. Then a visit with her husband's stay-at-home sisters and their families reaffirmed her original preference to work only part-time. She began searching for a suitable job and found it (and flexible hours) with the state's attorney's office. But where would she find high-quality part-time child care?

The answer was obvious to me. I hadn't been willing to give up my work entirely, but I thought I could manage a cutback. And sharing in the raising of my grandchild was something that, I had come to realize, I very much wanted to do.

Daniel is now well past his second birthday, and I have been caring for him in my home since he was six months old, catching up with my work while he naps. The arrangement has been good for Laurie, good for Daniel, good for my husband (who also gets some extra time with his grandson), and good for me. We call our arrangement "shared parenting," and we've discovered several other families who are doing the same thing.

Why "shared parenting"? I'm not Daniel's mother, but I am a partner in guiding his development. Because I'm his grandmother, what I do with him goes beyond babysitting — beyond keeping him fed, dry and out of danger. I wonder how many babysitters are willing to shop for just the right toy or seek out neighborhood playmates and compare notes with their parents. Daniel and I are not merely passing time together a few times a week; we're building a relationship that's important for both of us.

Let's face it. We're not talking about simply child care. We're talking about child rearing: about sensory stimulation, socialization and skill-building. Studies show that the home is the biggest influence on children's development and that parents, or whoever stands in for them, are a child's first and most important teachers. Especially during the crucial period when physical and mental abilities are expanding most rapidly and emotional attachments are being formed, it makes a real difference if the adult on hand during the better part of the day has a personal stake in the outcome.

I am not someone who comes into Daniel's world only when his mother leaves. I'm not here today and gone tomorrow; I'm in his life for keeps. He knows from the way I hold him and hug him — from my delight when he learned to fit a square block into a square hole, or when he toddled for the first time across our family-room floor — that I love him in a special way. My husband and I are family. He feels at home in our house, as he showed one day when he went into his nursery (Laurie's old room) and pointed to his crib (the one she slept in) to let me know he was ready for a nap. When he's home with Laurie, he often telephones (with her help) to proudly tell "Gamma" about his latest accomplishment.

Beyond the benefit to my relationship with my grandson, shared parenting affects my relationship with my daughter. There is now a special bond between us. Because we're partners, it's natural for Laurie to report to me what the doctor said at Daniel's checkups, to tell me about changes in his diet and schedule, and to discuss with me her concerns about his latest behavior.

She calls me from work to hear what he's doing and relays the information to her husband, Steve, who still is eager for my run-through that evening. Because we're dealing with the same issues (a disliked food, a "hitting streak," toilet training or how much freedom to give a young explorer), it's easier for me to share my experience and my views without being perceived as pushy. Of course, as I sometimes have to remind myself, Laurie and Steve have the final say. Above all, because our communication is so thorough and our parenting philosophies are basically in sync, Daniel benefits from continuity, consistent discipline and emotional security.

Grandparent-care is an old idea whose time has come again. When parents worked in fields or factories, a grandparent, aunt or uncle was generally on hand to help with the children. Kids developed a dose relationship with their kin, and parents received some respite and reinforcement. This pattern faded with increased mobility and the eclipse of the extended family, except among families without other resources.

Today we're seeing a quiet resurgence of this time-honored tradition among the middle class (along with an upsurge in the number of grandparents forced by such circumstances as parental divorce, drug addiction, or teenage pregnancy to take over the upbringing of their grandchildren. According to a study by the Census Bureau, nearly 25 percent of children under age 5 who are not supervised by a father while the mother works are in the charge of a grandparent. More than 10 percent are in the care of other relatives. A survey by Louis Harris and Associates showed that the average working parent would prefer to have a family member mind the kids.

The beauty of shared parenting is that it doesn't require a full-time commitment from the grandparent. And part-time work may be the best option for many mothers and their children as well. (Although more fathers are taking a hand in baby-tending nowadays, it's still the mother who usually has both hands full. Neither businesses nor fathers themselves have fully accepted the idea of sharing this responsibility.)

A number of studies indicate that more and more employed mothers are returning home or wish they could. Unfortunately, the high cost of housing, health care and college tuition, the difficulty of resuming suspended careers, and inadequate child support for divorced parents keep more than half of all mothers of infants, toddlers and preschoolers in the labor force. According to a Rand Corporation study, two-thirds of working women are back on the job within three months after having a baby. Grandparent-care offers the best of both worlds. Because it most often is done solely for love rather than money, the mother's part-time income stretches further. And although there may be some sacrifices on both sides, the gains far outweigh them.

"I'm having my cake and eating it, too," says Laurie. "I can be home with Daniel most of the time, yet also keep up with my profession and help with expenses. And when I'm at work, he's with someone I'd want him to spend time with anyway."

As for me, watching my grandson grow is a reprise of the joys of motherhood, with the seasoning of experience. There's a deep satisfaction in fulfilling what psychoanalyst Erik Erikson calls generativity — the urge, in later life, to pass on one's wisdom and values to the next generation.

Obviously, shared parenting won't work for all families. Many grandparents -- perhaps half, according to one sampling -- live too far away. Some aren't in good enough health. Some work full time themselves or have other pressing obligations. Still others choose not to spend their long-awaited spare time taking care of children.

Child psychiatrist Arthur Kornhaber, author of Grandparents/Grandchildren: The Vital Connection, argues that many grandparents have abdicated their traditional role of guiding the young. According to Dr. Kornhaber, who has studied 15,000 three-generation families, only one child in five today has a vitally close connection (both emotional and geographic) with a grandparent.

As a group, grandparents now are more active than any previous generation. They also have fewer grandchildren — an average of three —among whom to spread their love and attention. Yet many grandparents seem reluctant to pitch in. As I see it, there's no retirement from parenting. When our adult chi1dren — and their children — need us, they're entitled to know we'll be there.

I would be less than honest if I said my own situation is always perfect. Daniel and I have our hard days: days when he's out of sorts, days when I must juggle an unexpected work crisis, days when I wonder whether, at 56, I really have the stamina and patience to keep up with a toddler. But my greatest reward -- and the true sign of my success -- is the smile that lights his face when I pick him up in the morning. And the question Laurie uttered immediately after she announced that she was pregnant again: "Mom, can you handle two?"

Back to top of page

It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
— Soren Kierkegaard

Was it ten years ago that I came across the Kierkegaard quotation and tacked it on my bulletin board? It must have been about the same time that a friend told me about a white-water rafting trip she and her husband had taken. The idea appealed to the little girl in me — the midwestern city kid who at twelve had gone to camp in the north woods, hiked in the mountains, and stared at the stars.

"Rafting!" hooted my acrophobic spouse. "You've got to be crazy!"

Nevertheless, I wrote to a couple of outfitters. Late at night, in the kitchen of my safe suburban home, I pored over the brochures. "Maybe next year," I would tell myself, and file them away.

Reaching the half-century mark forces the realization that possibilities are not forever. So, the August after my fiftieth birthday and my daughter Laurie's law school graduation, we kissed her still-dubious father good-bye and set out on a ninety-six-mile journey down Utah's Green River with Adventure Bound, Inc., an outfitter that has run river excursions for nearly a quarter-century in Utah and Colorado. Our route lay through Desolation and Gray canyons, which stretch end to end on the site of an ancient lake. The rapids increase gradually in turbulence — numerous and rough enough to challenge novices, yet not too dangerous to paddle.

"A region of wildest desolation," wrote Major John Wesley Powell when he charted the area for the United States government in 1869. More than a century later, the deep canyon walls stand guard against development. Fur traders, beaver trappers, gold miners, cattle ranchers, and dam promoters have failed to tame that wilderness. Hikers still stumble upon petroglyphs, rock carvings left by ancient Indians.

We were to be out of touch with civilization for four days; but somehow the fact had not fully sunk in until Laurie and I waited at Walker field in Grand Junction, Colorado, for the forty-minute flight to Sand Wash, Utah, our expedition's departure point. As we climbed aboard a Cessna 182 four-seater, our Frontier Horizon flight from Chicago to Denver the evening before, with its china-silver-and-linen dinner service, seemed a distant dream. I remembered leaning back, on the second-leg takeoff from Denver, in a darkened Frontier 737 jet, watching the grid of urban pinlights recede into the dusky glow of the enfolding mountains. The angular Grand Junction terminal had materialized like a futuristic mirage in the mesa-ringed desert — the mesas, cardboard shadows on a moonlit backdrop. ("Folks say a giant took a scythe and sheared off the tops of these mountains," said the driver who took us to Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge for a last night's sleep in real beds.)

Now, in the bright morning sunlight, a fleet of small planes deposited us and sixteen fellow adventurers on one of those mesas, a mile and a half above our launch point. Instead of riding the baggage truck, most of us made the steep, rocky descent on foot.

At the river's edge, we clambered onto a pair of nine-passenger neoprene paddle rafts and straddled the tubular frame. Our sneakers (more protective than sandals) sucked up the muddy ooze. Our pad¬dle guides, Dave Stowell and Jama Amos, set us to practicing synchronized paddling. "Reach! Push that water — don't grab air," commanded Dave, the strapping young towhead who captained my raft.

Tim Newell, the trip leader, ticked off the rules: "No littering — the animals down here got along for millions of years without our orange peels. If you fall out, don't breathe until you see the sky. Then float downstream in a sitting position, hands behind your fanny to protect your tail from rocks. Get to an eddy if you can, and we'll come down and. pick you up. And hang onto your paddle no matter what."

Someone asked the time. "11:05 a.m.," Tim replied. "It's always five after eleven on the river."

We were to be towed between rapids. With each paddle raft hitched to a supply raft, our colorful caravan chugged downstream — orange life vests, red paddles, and blue tarps catching the glaring sun. For protection we wore light shirts and pants over our swimsuits, and hats or visors tied on to keep them from washing away. Though temperatures reached 100 degrees, the dry air and my son's old Boy Scout canteen kept me surprisingly comfortable.

By chance, Laurie and I found ourselves on an all-female raft. Apart from being the same sex, we were a motley crew, and conversation at first was as sluggish as the becalmed water. Our ages ranged from nineteen to my fifty; our occupations from nurse and social worker to lawyer and controls engineer. Only four of us were new to rafting, but none had taken an extended trip before. Three others, like me, had left leery husbands at home.

A cheer went up when we finally heard the distant rush of Rock House Rapid. Dave had us position the raft perpendicular to the bank, then, at the last moment, swing into the tongue of the rapid for maximum flexibility and control. I learned to ride the waves by hugging the undulating tubing with my knees as if sitting a bareback horse, lifting my outside foot to avoid submerged rocks and rolling with the river's motion.

That first day's rapids were "maybe one-half" on an international scale of one to ten, Dave estimated, but he assured us we would be working up to "about a six." The river is swiftest when swollen by spring rains; now, in August, the exposed rocks offered a more visible challenge.

We camped on the west bank at the mouth of Cedar Ridge Canyon, one of Desolation's numerous byways, in a sandy pocket below a bend. Tapering sunlight lit the golden canyon walls as we pitched our tents and changed to dry clothes while the guides set up the portable potty, chopped wood, and grilled steaks. It felt strange to camp out and be waited on, yet after a day of strenuous paddling it was a relief to be responsible for nothing but oneself. Huddled by the campfire, we watched the buttes become silhouettes against a blushing sky. "How early does it get light out here?" someone asked.

"Right around sunrise," Dave smiled. The thought of being confined in a pup tent made me claustrophobic, so Laurie and I spread our sleeping bags under the stars. A full moon floodlit our celestial ceiling, and an occasional drizzle brought out mosquitoes. We slept fitfully until a glow crept down the canyon's western flank.

At breakfast we mingled with the occupants of the other raft; but when it came time to reboard, the nine of us unhesitatingly resumed our positions. Michelle and Sarah, the youngest, stationed themselves on either side of the bow, where they would face the full brunt of the rapids; I, near the stern, in front of Dave. Kathy, a daredevil, perched on the prow with a puckish grin, bouncing up and down whenever the wave action was too tame to suit her.

In preparation for our first serious white water at Steer Ridge Canyon, Dave taught us to watch out for back eddies, boilers, and suckholes — hazards not necessarily to be avoided but conquered. Fear and exhilaration were subsumed by the effort of concentration; to keep one's seat was a small but significant triumph.

Dave gave us no reason to doubt his boast that he was "probably one of the best readers of current and waves in America today." He burst with exuber¬ance and doted on danger. He could avoid a collision with a single deft stroke. He delighted in diving into the raft's billowing bottom with an immense splash or dousing an unsuspecting passenger with the bail bucket. Yet he rode herd on us when we slacked off: "Paddle! This ain't no amusement park ride!" We followed his orders as if our lives depended on it — which, indeed, they did.

Around a bend, Steer Ridge awaits the unwary. Here, on July 11, 1869, Powell's boat capsized. While the tubular thwarts kept our craft amazingly steady, the shock of sudden waves threw two of my companions into the middle, and the backlash sent me flying out, precarious inches from the sheer canyon face. Hugging my paddle to my chest with my right arm, I grasped for a metal ring on the side of the raft with my left hand, clutching it tightly to avoid being crushed between the boat and the rock. Strangely, I felt no panic — only chagrin at missing the ride. As the raft skirted a suckhole, Dave reached over and gripped my wrist. After we had safely cleared the rapid, he seized my life preserver by the armholes and yanked me up and over the side.

"Look! I held onto my paddle!" I reported — a pupil expecting a gold star.

"I was so busy saving you that we missed the suckhole," Dave retorted dryly.

That evening we set up camp at Big Canyon, more than fifty miles from our starting point, and Tim led a hike up the canyon. Weaving through prickly brush and silvery creosote, we climbed to a creek bed so dry that the cracked red clay crumbled underfoot like broken pottery. Then, blocked by mammoth boulders, we picked our way back down to the bank through the rapidly enveloping dusk.

On the edge of a beached raft, Donna, the fluffy-headed social worker, broke out a bottle of wine. Adrenaline had loosened our inhibitions; we no longer were strangers.

"I'm not a thrill-seeker," Donna admitted. "Linda talked me into this."

"I'm used to being in control — it's hard to relinquish the reins," said Linda, manager of a Chicago office complex. She remarked on the predominance of women on the trip: "It used to be men who were the adventurous ones. Women wanted to go to a hotel and sit by a pool."

Later by firelight, Marty, the nurse, confided, "I've wanted to do this for quite a while, but I hesitated to spend the money on just me. When my husband went on four trips this year, I decided it was my turn. And you know," she added, a quiet smile creasing her hearty, large-boned face, "I looked around when I woke up this morning, and I thought, 'There's no place I'd rather be.' "

Our tent, once Laurie and I managed to crawl in, was less cramped than I had feared and surprisingly airy. I zipped it up and crushed the platoon of tiny ants scurrying over the floor. Camping with a grown daughter was a singular pleasure. Sleeping bags edge to edge, we shared impressions of an experience new to both of us. Yet occasionally I caught myself protecting, directing, or taking over.

We awakened to the sound of rhythmic blows; one of the women was chopping firewood. We pushed off that third morning like seasoned river rats, singing and bantering, our voices echoing in the canyon's eerie stillness.

Kathy jumped in the water and, ignoring Dave's warnings, floated downstream. Suddenly we detected a now-familiar gurgle. Dave grabbed the map (as he had done several times before): "That must be Wire Fence Rapid — I didn't think it was so close!" We paddled furiously to catch up with Kathy's bobbing head, and Michelle pulled her in just before we hit the threatening white surge.

It was then that Dave confessed: he had never been down the Green River before — he'd been transferred from his normal beat.

"I noticed you were always looking at the map," said Donna. "I was worried at first."

"How do you think 1 felt," Dave replied, "knowing it was my first time on this river and I had a boatload of girls?"

At Three Fords Canyon, where a Major Powell crewman had fallen overboard, a steep chute dumped us into a series of rock-studded roller coasters. As our boat careened, three paddlers tumbled into the center, and Dave put out his hand to steady me. But we emerged intact and with feminine satisfaction looked back to see that two men had fallen out of the other raft.

A barrier had been broken — we were a team, our camaraderie solidified by the bond of gender. We seemed to have known each other a long time. We talked about men, women, and marriage. We compared sunburns and traded riddles. Kathy passed a pouch of trail mix. I offered sips from my canteen. Marty lent Laurie her lip balm. Mickey bailed. Dave whistled, and the canyon played back his tune.

But the river soon revealed its threatening side. Plunging down Rabbit Valley Rapid, just past the entrance to Gray Canyon, we found the other raft beached in a secluded cove. Evelyn, a middle-aged schoolteacher, was leaning against the raft in a state of semi-shock, bleeding from the forehead, teeth chattering. She had fallen in, and a paddle had struck her left brow. Jama, her guide, was applying an ice pack. Marty volunteered to dress the wound while Jama wrapped Evelyn in a jacket. When we pushed off, Donna, shaken and tired, joined a still-dazed Evelyn on one of the supply rafts.

Our toughest tests lay just ahead. At Coal Creek, the site of a dam that had washed away in the torrential stream, we rode out the river's initial assault, only to face a massive, thundering black hole. Laurie and Sarah fell inward, but the rest of us hung on as if to a bucking bronco. Dave beamed: "I'd run anything with you!"

Rattlesnake Rapid curls treacherously in a sharp bend. We positioned ourselves on the far end, so that as we negotiated the first half of the crescent, we could take advantage of a transverse current to shift direction. The swirling stream tossed us sideways full force into an eight-foot wave, which brushed us frighteningly close to the looming cliff. We paddled with all our strength until, at the last moment, a crosscurrent snatched us to safety. Donna, on the supply raft, spread her arms in a V for victory.

We congratulated ourselves on how we had mastered the water's rhythms, making them our own. Incredibly, since my dunking at Steer Ridge, not one person on our raft had fallen out. But the afternoon's events had been sobering. "When Sarah and I stared into that black hole at Coal Creek," said Michelle, "we looked at each other like ‘this is goodbye.’”

It was nearly dusk when we reached our final campsite, a beautiful curved promontory between Butler and Sand Knolls rapids. Shivering and weary, shoulders and palms sore from protracted straining, we sat in a subdued semicircle on the hillock.

"What are you going to do first when we get back to Howard Johnson's?" asked Marty.

"Jump in the shower," said Linda.

"Do laundry," said Mickey.

"Buy a comb," I put in — I had lost mine at Steer Ridge.

The sky, with its myriad stars, clouded over at moonrise. A restless wind rattled the thin nylon walls of our tent. I crept down to the beach and sat on an over¬turned raft as the river slept under a blanket of moonglow. By dawn, the wind raged and ashen clouds smothered the canyon. Our omelets were leavened with raindrops, but the sky cleared as we loaded the rafts for the last time.

Our final hurrah was the diversion dam at Tusher Wash. Approaching the glassy edge head-on, we teetered on the brink, watching foam boil up from the base. Three of us touched the concrete bottom and briefly suspended paddling, but — "we made it!"

We lunched afloat on a table of crossed paddles and talked of meeting on a more advanced trek the following summer. In the warm intimacy of the moment it was possible to believe that such a reunion actually might take place.

As we chugged toward Green River State Park, where a bus would take us back to Grand Junction, Dave sat up ahead on our supply raft, shooting the breeze with George, the other guide. In a last gleefully mutinous act, we decided to unhook ourselves and navigate the last half-mile under our own power. Surreptitiously Linda inched up on the taut rope and snapped our umbilical cord.

Dave, thinking we had got loose by accident, dived in and with quick, strong strokes overtook us. "I would have let you do it," he said when we owned up. So, under his supervision, we proudly paddled ashore. I pulled out my waterproof watch. It was 2:07 p.m., not 11:05, and our adventure was over. We stuck our paddles in a bucket and, in a final burst of collective horseplay, pushed Dave into the river.

While my comrades headed for a washroom and a change of clothes, I stripped off my pedal pushers and wet sneakers and swam into the current until my strength was spent, then sank onto a wooden float, breathing heavily and contemplating the brilliant blue sky. My arm was bruised from my baptismal spill, and my coccyx bone was saddle-sore, but I never had been more content.

I recalled the correspondent in Stephen Crane's The Open Boat, who, cast adrift with three shipmates, knew at the time that it was the best experience of his life. Our situation had been far less perilous, the finish unmarred by tragedy. But we too had escaped a certain danger and experienced exhilaration in following our possibilities down river.

Back to top of page

My father taught chemistry in the Chicago public high schools, back in the days when most students took it. He used to come home with stories of the tricks he employed to help adolescents visualize chemical bonding: “Tim, come up here — you’re Mr. Sodium. Nancy, you be Miss Chlorine. Now, the two of you hold hands.” (Titters and giggles.)

Such enlivening moments made Dad’s classes popular — and effective, Any students worth their salt were not likely to forget what sodium plus chlorine yields.

But Dad didn’t believe in spoonfeeding. Someone who asked an unnecessary question was told to look it up or figure it out. One of Dad’s favorite expressions was “If you use your head, you won’t have to use your feet.”

On his retirement, his classes presented him with a plaque. It read: “Use your head.”

"To me [as a child]," writes Eli Wiesel in Messengers of God, "the Akeda [the biblical story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac at God's command] was an unfathomable mystery given to every generation, to be relived if not solved." It is a story of devotion and victimization, which has found echoes from the crucifixion of Jesus to the devastation of the Holocaust.

The mystery arises in no small part from the contrast between the story's weighty, life-and-death themes and the sparse simplicity of the text. "The Biblical narrative," writes Wiesel, "is of exemplary purity of line, sobriety and terseness. Not one superfluous word, not one useless gesture. The imagery is striking, the language austere, the dialogue so incisive, it leaves one with a knot in one's throat."

To most of us today, of course, the appropriate way of dealing with a person who claimed to have heard a voice telling him to kill his son and set him on fire -- and who then set out to do just that — would be commitment or incarceration. But these were times when gods were believed to speak directly to people, and such a call was not to be ignored. In fact, Abraham's original odyssey from Haran, a Mesopotamian city on the Euphrates River, to the land of Canaan was in response to just such a command from God: "Go forth from your native land and from your father's house to the land that I will show you." And Abraham, leaving home and family behind him, went forth obediently, without a word, just as he did years later when commanded to sacrifice his son.

In the first instance, however, God held out the promise of a reward:

"I will make of you a great nation,
And I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
And you shall be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you
And curse him that curses you;
And all the families of the earth
Shall bless themselves by you."

The promised reward depended, of course, on the existence of offspring; and it was not until 25 years later that a child, a son, was — amazingly — born to Abraham and Sarah, when he was 100 years old and she was 90. Therein lies the irony of the sacrifice God later demanded — it would destroy the whole premise upon which Abraham's faith had rested. Faith in a promise as yet unfulfilled was one thing; faith despite the dashing of all hope for its fulfillment would be quite another.

To fully appreciate the excruciating dilemma with which God's demand faced Abraham, we need to think back to an earlier episode, in which the aging Sarah, despairing of ever being able to bear a child herself, gives Abraham her handmaiden, Hagar, as a kind of surrogate mother. Hagar gives birth to a son, Ishmael; but Sarah becomes jealous of Hagar and mistreats her. Then, when Sarah finally gives birth to Isaac, she demands that Abraham throw Hagar and Ishmael out. God, seeing Abraham's distress, counsels him: "Whatever Sarah tells you, do as she says, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued for you. As for the son of the slave-woman, I will make a nation of him, too, for he is your seed."

And so, Abraham turns out his concubine and his firstborn son into the wilderness, with nothing but a hunk of bread, a skin of water, and God's promise to ensure their survival.

The Akeda, then, is not merely the story of a man asked to sacrifice his son, though that would be terrible enough. It is a story freighted with even heavier emotional baggage. In a way, Abraham is being asked to sacrifice a son for a second time — the son on whose behalf the first "sacrifice" was made.

The story, on the surface, has a "happy ending," yet it is a deeply troubling one. The motives and actions of its characters are both terrifying and puzzling, and scholars have grappled with them for centuries. Why would God make Abraham wait until the age of 100 for the birth of the son who was needed to carry out God's promise to make of him a great nation, and then ask Abraham, as a supreme test of devotion, to kill that long-awaited son -- an act that would render the promise impossible to fulfill? Why would Abraham be instantly ready to obey such an irrational, unspeakable order, his hand restrained at the last moment only by a countervailing divine command? What about Isaac? Did he know what was happening to him, and, if so, why did he go along? And where was Sarah — she who had so jealously protected Isaac's interests? Why was she kept in the dark at this crucial time? Above all, we as Humanistic Jews must ask, why should a God who would manipulate his creatures in such a heart-rending way be worthy of worship and obedience?

A traditional rationalization of the Akeda is that the substitution of the ram for the boy signalled the historic shift from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice. But scholars have challenged that view, pointing out that animal sacrifice was already common in Near Eastern religions at the time. Nor does the story contain a denunciation of human sacrifice. Instead, the biblical narrative treats the demand for sacrifice of a child as an extraordinary one, the most severe test of faith, something already beyond the norm. Indeed, the traditional explanation concerning rejection of human sacrifice was probably an effort to sugar-coat the appalling picture of God that merges from this story: the picture of a deity who would put his faithful servants through such a dreadful, cruel test in order to demonstrate the importance of obeying him at any cost.

Still, as a story of human beings caught in a tragic situation, the Akeda has a power unmatched in literature. The genius of the Bible — its truth and fascination — lies in the honesty with which it portrays human beings and human relationships, with all their flaws and inconsistencies. Sarah's jealousy, Abraham's striving after his promised place in history, Isaac's touching trust in his father — all ring as true to us today as thousands of years ago.

One of the most haunting aspects of the story is the silence that pervades it. When God issues his terrible order, what does Abraham say? Does he plead for his son's life? Does he show distress, as he did when asked to abandon Ishmael to the wilderness? Does he protest the injustice of the command — he who, not long before, when God confided in him his intention to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, had lectured God about the injustice of destroying the innocent with the guilty? No, as far as we know, Abraham the questioner, the legendary iconoclast, says nothing. He goes home and, early the next morning, sets out on the three-day journey to Moriah, as God has told him to do.

And what does Abraham say to Isaac by way of explanation for their strange, silent expedition? Again, we are given no clue. Only after Abraham and Isaac have left the servants to wait at the bottom of the mountain does Isaac ask his father, "Where is the sheep for the burnt offering?" And Abraham replies, "God will see to the sheep." Then father and son walk on together — in silence.

Does Isaac now guess what is about to happen to him? Some interpreters say yes, that father and son, as they walk on together, are now bound together in a silent bond of obedience to their god — that Isaac is now in collusion with Abraham in participating in his own sacrifice. Otherwise, how can we explain Isaac's apparent passivity at the climactic moment when his father binds him and lays him on the altar, on top of the firewood? Does Isaac struggle? Does he cry out? Does he protest, or beg for his life? The text does not say. We are left to imagine the poignant scene.

We are also left to imagine whether Abraham, if not stopped by the angel's voice, actually would have gone through with the murder of Isaac. Did Abraham know all along that he was being tested — that the entire episode was a grotesque charade, from which both he and God would pull back just before the brink? Abraham's statement to Isaac that God will see to the sheep for the burnt offering is what in fact happens. And then there is Abraham's statement to the servants: "The boy and I will go up there; we will worship and we [both of us] will return to you." Those statements, if taken at face value, may suggest that Abraham never intended to harm his son.

Yet one puzzle remains; for we read, in the last line of the story, that Abraham returns to his servants and they depart together for Beersheba. Where is Isaac? Why is he no longer with his father? The term akeda — often mistakenly translated as "sacrifice" — actually refers to the binding of Isaac to the altar. The sacrifice did not occur. Or did it? That opaque final line suggests that perhaps Abraham paid a very high price: the sacrifice of Isaac's innocence and trust.

So much in this story is left to the imagination that it has become the subject of many midrashim — stories that embellish and interpret the biblical tales. In one contemporary midrash by Linda Kersh Steigman, Isaac is so traumatized by the experience on top of the mountain that he runs away and never sees his parents again. (We do know that in the Bible we never again hear him speak to his father — just as Abraham never again speaks to God.) A more traditional midrash has Isaac, under the upraised knife, permanently blinded by his father's tears — which may explain why, years later, he cannot tell his own sons apart when they come to him for blessing.

Then there is Sarah, whose voice is never heard in the story. How did she feel when she woke up and found her husband and her son gone? Did she guess what awful business was about to transpire? If so, what did she do? Norma Rosen, in Biblical Women Unbound, paints a picture of an enraged Sarah, rushing up the mountain after Abraham, screaming at God to stop this cruel game. But the Bible itself tells us only that Sarah died not long after this — of a broken heart? Again, we can only surmise.

Although we probably can never fully unravel the puzzles of the Akeda, there are important issues to ponder and lessons to learn. What are our highest priorities: Our children? Our achievements? The beliefs and causes to which we dedicate our lives? What happens when these priorities conflict — for example, when we have a key project to prepare for work and our son or daughter asks us for help in getting ready for an athletic tryout or an important test?

To Jerald Bain, a leader of the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations, writing in the Summer 1997 issue of Humanistic Judaism, the lesson of the Akeda is that an overriding commitment to a cause, whether it be belief in God or concern for the environment, is no virtue if it leads us to use another person as an object to meet our own needs. "How often do we humans emulate Abraham's selfish and self-serving behavior?" Bain writes. "Every day and many times a day — without thinking, without understanding. . . . Parents. . . often act as though we believed that our children are extensions of us; our sense of self, our joy and gratification, are bound up with them. But . . . what if their vision and our vision differ? What if they see life unfolding for themselves in a way with which we do not identify? Abraham fails us as an exemplary parent. His concern was not for Isaac; it was for himself. Isaac was incidental. . . ."

The recognition that we should not treat others as objects, "as mere means to our own ends," applies to all relationships. It is a recognition that is easy to speak of but much harder to put into practice.


Back to top of page

Human beings have always wondered how the world in which we live came to be. How did we get here? What purpose does life serve? Many ancient peoples, including the Hebrews, had creation myths in which gods and monsters played central roles. Although science has found some answers as to how life began and evolved, the ultimate question of "why?" remains a mystery, and even the "how" is under challenge by fervent fundamentalist religionists who seek to substitute the Book of Genesis for Darwin.

In the famous Scopes trial, dramatized in the film Inherit the Wind, John Scopes, a high school science teacher, was accused of violating a Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of evolution in state-supported schools. In the movie, Scopes' attorney, Clarence Darrow, makes mincemeat out of the opposing attorney, William Jennings Bryan, by catching him on inconsistencies in the biblical story of creation. In the actual trial, however, Scopes was found guilty by a local jury and fined $100. The law that Scopes violated remained on the books in Tennessee until 1968, when the Supreme Court struck down a similar Arkansas law as violating the First Amendment, which prohibits government "establishment" of religion.

But the battle was far from over. Recently we have seen a resurgence of efforts by anti-evolutionists to get around the constitutional problem by insisting that "creation science" be taught along with evolution — the "equal time" or "fairness" argument. In 1987, a Louisiana law to that effect was struck down by the Supreme Court as being a thinly veiled attempt to teach religion in the public schools. Since then, several state Boards of Education, such as those in Kansas and Nebraska, have tried to get around that decision by adopting curriculum standards that weaken or restrict the teaching of evolution. Alabama, Oklahoma, and Georgia decreed that a sticker be placed in every biology text, describing evolution as a "controversial theory," but courts generally have overruled such laws.

Of course, evolution is "only a theory," but it is a theory that so far has overwhelming evidentiary support and is widely accepted in the scientific community. Yet that is not true of the general public, according to recent polls. A November 2004 Gallup poll found that only 35 percent of Americans believe Darwin's theory is supported by evidence, and just as many — 35 percent — believe it is not, while 29 percent say they don't know enough to have an opinion. A CBS News poll in the same month found that most Americans do not think humans evolved, and if they did, God guided the process. A July 2004 poll by the Bama group found that almost 6 out of 10 adults favor teaching creationism in the public schools. In a 2005 Gallup poll, only 1/3 of Americans regard Darwin's theory as well supported by empirical evidence, and 45 percent (!) believe God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago. And a 2005 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 42 percent of respondents had strict creationist views, agreeing that “living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” Of the 48 percent who believed that humans had evolved over time, 18 percent said that “evolution was guided by a supreme being. A total of 64 percent were open to the idea of teaching creationism along with evolution, and 38 percent favored teaching replacing evolution with creationism. In fact, the teaching of both evolutionism and creationism was favored by majorities of secular respondents, liberal Democrats, and those who accept the theory of natural selection.

In response to these startling results, an Aurora man named Harry E. Hough wrote to the Chicago Sun-Times: “It is apparent that many feel it is only fair to give alternative views. Would it not also be fair to teach astrology wherever astronomy courses are given, to teach alchemy wherever chemistry courses are given, and to teach phrenology wherever psychology courses are given? Are we going to allow the uninformed and the uneducated to determine what is worthwhile to learn?”

Meanwhile, a new, more sophisticated version of creation science has quietly reared its head: Intelligent Design theory. ID has been called “creationism in pseudoscientific clothing” or “creationism light.” One of its best known advocates is Phillip E. Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial and Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds. Johnson helped found the Discovery Institute at the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture in Seattle, which has become the intellectual spearhead of the ID movement. It is well funded and well connected in right-wing political and Christian circles.

What is the difference between creation science and ID theory? Old-style creationists insist on literal biblical interpretations, including claims that the earth is less than 10,000 years old — a claim science has demolished. ID advocates criticize only biological evolution — the origin of species, as Darwin put it. Many ID advocates are scholars affiliated with academic institutions, and they speak the language of academia rather than of the pulpit. Some even claim to be doing research to prove their theory, but they have published very little. Most scientists agree that intelligent design is not legitimate science because thus far it has no objective evidence to support it.

In a nutshell, the argument for ID theory is based on logic and intuition: the presumption that a complex design such as the universe or the human brain must have a designer. This argument was first stated by the theologian William Paley in 1802. Paley argued: Suppose we came upon a watch lying on the ground? Wouldn't the precision and intricacy of its design force us to conclude that it must have had a maker who designed it for its intended purpose? So too, said Paley, such works of nature as the human eye or brain could not conceivably have come into being without a designer--they are too irreducibly complex to have developed incrementally. But Darwin's Origin of Species, published 57 years later, demonstrated to the satisfaction of almost all scientists today that Paley's analogy was false. Richard Dawkins, in The Blind Watchmaker, presents extensive evidence that the only watchmaker in nature is the blind force of natural selection, along with other scientific processes such as mutation.

Some ID advocates — and some scientists — seek to reconcile ID with evolution. There are two forms of ID: (1) God set process of evolution in motion, then withdrew (similar to Deism); and (2) God continues to intervene in process. The first is compatible with science and with humanism; the second is not. Many scientists believe in a God who set the forces of nature in motion but not in one who intervenes in those forces. Most agree with Stephen Jay Gould’s view that science speaks with authority in the realm of what the universe is made of (fact) and why it works as it does (theory), whereas religion holds sway over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value.

Thomas Flew, an 81-year-old British philosophy professor and a self-proclaimed atheist for most of his life, has now bought the first type of ID theory. He says that because of the unbelievable complexity of DNA and the arrangements necessary to produce life, there must have been some sort of intelligence or first cause, a creator, but not one who is continually and actively involved in the development of the universe or in people's lives.

The ID movement has had notable success in reviving the issue over the teaching of evolution in the public schools. Several states have adopted the “teach-the-controversy” approach, and President Bush and Senate majority leader Bill Frist endorsed the teaching of ID in the public schools “so people could understand what the debate is about.“ This “fairness” tactic is extremely effective with the American public. As Jodi Wilgoren, writing in the New York Times, said, “the institute has in many ways transformed the debate into an issue of academic freedom rather than a confrontation between biology and religion.”

Senator Rick Santorum tried to slip “teach the controversy” language into the No Child Left Behind Act. His amendment did not make it into the final bill, but the conference report stressed that “Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students understand the full range of scientific views that exist,” and DI spokesmen have used this language to claim that Congress endorsed the teaching of ID.

Not only scientists, but some religionists are deeply concerned about mixing science and religion. Richard Collins, who calls himself a devout conservative Christian, chairs the biology department at Olivet Nazarene University, a fundamentalist Christian college, where he teaches evolution to his students. In his book Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Conect with Creator, he says, "Evolution has stood the text of time and considerable scrutiny." He claims that the theory of evolution is "fully compatible with the available scientific evidence and also contemporary religious beliefs." He says of other Christian conservatives, "Denying science makes us look stupid. People should not have to deny reality in order to experience their faith."

We humanists,too, need to be concerned about protecting religion, as we should about any serious effort to unravel the mystery of being. But creationism — and some forms of intelligent design theory — cross the line when they become dogma that hinders or threatens the open-minded pursuit of truth.

Back to top of page

Biomedical ethics has become a hot topic. New high-tech procedures that allow humans to tinker with the natural processes of birth and death have raised unprecedented ethical issues. For example, the mapping of the human genome, the sequence of all genes in the human body, may soon enable prospective parents who can afford it to genetically enhance their child's traits or enable doctors to repair defective genes in the womb, thus creating a genetically superior class. Is that fair? Is it ethical? Turning to the end of life, technological advances enable doctors to keep a comatose person alive indefinitely, even if there are no signs of life, unless the patient has left a clear advance directive to pull the plug — and then the directive is not always followed. The Terri Schiavo case is an example of the ethical, religious, legal, and family problems that can arise when an advance directive is not written down and made known to the family and physician.

Principles of biomedical ethics sometimes conflict. For example, the principle of autonomy, the patient's right to make his or her own decisions about treatment, may conflict with the principle of beneficence, which holds that doctors should do what they believe is medically best for the patient. The principle “Do no harm” depends on how we define harm. Doing what one person perceives as harm — for example, aborting a fetus — may be seen as helpful by others, such as the parents who sought the abortion.

In 1998 a researcher at the University of Wisconsin first derived stem cells from developing human embryos. (Actually, stem cells are formed at a pre-embryonic stage, called a blastocyst, which consists of only about 100 cells. But, like most nonscientists, I will use the term "embryo" for simplicity.) Embryonic stem cells can grow into any type of cell in the body, so they could conceivably be used to replace damaged or diseased cells and extend life. Ultimately, researchers hope to use embryonic stem cells to cure cancer, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, and many other conditions. Stem cell research can, but does not necessarily, involve cloning, which was overwhelmingly banned by Congress in 2001.

So why is stem cell research controversial? The dispute hinges mainly on whether an embryo is a person. Fundamentalist Christian doctrine holds that human life is a gift from God, which begins at conception. For believers in this doctrine, research that entails the destruction of the embryos from which the cells are taken amounts to murder, just as does abortion. Indeed, the late Pope John Paul compared stem cell research to infanticide, and Pope Benedict has condemned it.

Legally, in the United States, the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade held that an embryo is not a person — nor is a fetus — until it can be viable outside the mother's womb. Of course, that very likely could change with the appointment of the next justice to the Court. Meanwhile, the same right-to-lifers who bitterly oppose abortion (yet also oppose restrictions on handguns and assault weapons) also oppose embryonic stem cell research. The irony is that most of this research is done on surplus embryos discarded after fertility treatments; some 400,000 frozen embryos exist, the vast majority of which are destined to be destroyed. It is quite a stretch to consider them persons. Even Senator Orrin Hatch, an ardent foe of abortion, understands that "a frozen embryo is more akin to a frozen unfertilized egg or frozen sperm than to a fetus naturally developing in the body of a mother." But that does not appease the fundamentalists, who consider these fertility procedures themselves immoral.

Not all Christian theologians oppose stem cell research. In Congressional hearings, representatives of the United Church of Christ and other liberal Christian denominations as well as the liberal wing of the U.S. Catholic church spoke in favor of increased federal funding for this research.

A "pro-life" argument can be made without resort to theology. Some argue that an embryo is a person, or will be, because it contains all the DNA coding that defines a human being. But an embryo does not yet have, and may never have, the physiological, psychological, emotional or intellectual properties normally associated with personhood. As a position paper from the Center for Inquiry notes, an embryo is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree. An embryo's becoming a person depends on whether it can survive gestation within a woman's uterus. As many as 50 percent of embryos do not. Incidentally, I haven't seen any opponents of stem cell research drumming up support for research to increase the survival rate of embryos.

Some ethicists assert that allowing stem cell research would lead to desensitization to the value of human life. This argument, in a society already suffused with easy violence, seems disingenous. Then there is the claim that taxpayers who believe in the sacredness of life should not be forced to pay for its destruction. In a democratic society, to accept that position would be to hold the entire community hostage to the religious or ethical beliefs of a part of it. I doubt that’s what the framers of the First Amendment had in mind. If these “conscientious objectors” feel so strongly on the subject, they have the same options as other conscientious objectors — withhold their tax payments and risk criminal prosecution, or leave the country. Furthermore, I doubt many of these objectors would refuse the benefits that may accrue from this research if their children or grandchildren were in need of them.

Promising results with adult stem cells taken from bone marrow, skin, or umbilical blood have led some to suggest that embryonic research is unnecessary. But embryos are the most versatile source of stem cells because they have not yet differentiated by function. Also, adult stem cells are harder to isolate and to grow in test tubes. And stem cells from embryos can proliferate indefinitely, whereas adult cells cannot. On the other hand, embryonic research is still in its infancy, and despite the excitement over its potential, there is no guarantee it will fulfill that promise.

Despite strong public and bipartisan Congressional support for embryonic stem cell research, President George Bush in 2001, seeking to pacify the religious right yet to leave some leeway for the research to continue, ended all federal funding except for approximately 60 existing stem cell lines. Of course, the compromise did not satisfy either side. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed it despite survey findings that most U.S. Catholics, like most non-Catholics, support the research. Many of the 60 approved stem cell lines turned out to be contaminated or unusable, and most scientists believe that more lines with varying genetic profiles are needed to increase the chances of unlocking the expected medical benefits. In March 2009 President Barack Obama reversed Bush's funding ban.

The Jewish position on stem cell research is surprisingly liberal. Although Hitler's "medical experiments" left most Jews with a strong aversion to human experimentation, Jewish rabbinic and lay organizations, including the orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, have spoken in favor of carefully regulated embryonic stem cell research. According to Rabbi Elliot Dorff, professor of philosophy at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, an embryo outside the womb will not become a child, and therefore it is appropriate to use it for research.

Stem cells and their uses were, of course, unknown in talmudic times, but the rabbinic consensus was that human life does not begin until birth. The Talmud defines any embryo up to 40 days old "as if it were mere fluid." (Forty days is approximately the time of "quickening," when a fetus begins to move.) Even birth does not confer an indelible mark of humanity, according to our ancient sages. Halakha (Jewish law) holds that if a baby dies within the first 30 days, the parents should not say kaddish. Not until after that dangerous period was a life considered established.

The strongest consideration for most rabbis is the principle of pikuakh nefesh, the obligation to save or preserve life. Pikuakh nefesh is the highest obligation in Jewish law, overriding almost all other laws. For example, if a person takes ill on Shabbat, it is permissible to ride a bus or drive to a hospital, which otherwise would violate the commandment to rest on the Sabbath. And, although halakha forbids saving one life at the expense of another, it does permit abortion if the mother's life is in danger. Thus, destroying an unimplanted embryo to save a living human being is a fulfillment of pikuakh nefesh. Whereas Christian doctrine is concerned with preserving unborn life, Jewish tradition focuses on preserving the living.

It may well take a Solomon to resolve the issue of stem cell research, but I believe that we should be in the forefront of this battle, both as Humanists and Jews.

The value we place on life versus the quality of life is also the key to the question, Do people have a right to die? If so, under what circumstances? Should a terminally ill person who wants to commit suicide be allowed or helped to do so? Should a doctor prescribe medicine that will relieve pain but may shorten the patient's life? What about giving a lethal injection to end a patient's suffering? Is there an ethical difference between letting someone die and killing? Who decides that a life is not worth prolonging? Whose life is it anyway? For most religions, including traditional Judaism, the answer is clear: God gives life, and only God is entitled to take it away. Reform Judaism is still struggling with these issues. Humanists, atheists, agnostics, and many secular persons give a different answer: that human beings own our own lives.

Although suicide is no longer a crime in modern societies, there is still a stigma against it, based in part on religious prohibitions and in part on society's interest in preserving life. Nevertheless, more than 31,000 Americans kill themselves every year, and the true figure is probably higher. The number of unsuccessful suicide attempts is far greater. There is now a professional research field called suicidology. The American Association of Suicidology, founded in 1968, publishes journals and hosts conferences for researchers, clinicians, and other mental health professionals as well as for “survivors” who have lost a loved one to suicide. Nevertheless, in some quarters suicide remains taboo. A person who expresses suicidal thoughts may be diagnosed with depression, sometimes with good reason. On the other hand, a growing number of people defend a mature adult's deliberate choice of a time to end his or her life, especially if the person is terminally ill and in excruciating pain.

Euthanasia, which means "good death," is more controversial. A lethal injection is an example of active euthanasia (sometimes called mercy killing), action taken deliberately to shorten a life in order to end suffering and allow a person to die with dignity. This is in contrast to passive euthanasia, withholding or discontinuing treatment that might extend the life of a patient, such as medication, life-support systems, or feeding tubes. Active euthanasia is generally illegal, even when the patient requests it; passive euthanasia, when the patient has voluntarily requested it, no longer is.

In both types of euthanasia, someone other than the patient does the deed. In assisted suicide, it is the patient who does it — with help. A physician or someone else may help a person bring about a self-inflicted death by, for example, prescribing or providing drugs or enabling the patient to inhale a deadly gas--the method used by the notorious Dr. Jack Kevorkian. In the United States, assisted suicide is illegal in almost all states. The American Medical Association opposes physician-assisted suicide as contrary to a practitioner's oath to "do no harm." Doctors are, however, permitted to administer drugs that may shorten a life if the purpose is to relieve pain. It's called morphine sedation, and it's done more than is generally realized.

All of these are forms of aid in dying, or hastening death, and, some ethicists argue (though this is controversial), the ethical issues are not really different as long as the death is self-chosen. The central ethical argument for aid in dying is the principle of autonomy: that mentally competent persons should have the right, if they so choose, to control the quality of their lives and the timing and means of their death. Proponents place a high value on preserving the dignity and personhood of the dying human being; they hold that a doctor is obligated to take all measures necessary to relieve suffering. They argue that legalizing assisted suicide would permit the regulation of practices that now quietly occur under the table. They predict that aid in dying, if openly available, would reduce fear and helplessness by enabling patients to know they have control over their own fate.

Aside from religious arguments about the sacredness of life, ethical arguments against physician aid in dying center on the belief that taking a life, even with consent, is wrong and that it is incompatible with a physician's role as healer. Opponents fear that poor or disabled persons may be pressured into choosing suicide or may not want their families to waste limited resources on their prolonged care. Other arguments include the possibility of misdiagnosis or faulty prognosis and the possibility that new treatments will become available. Opponents also maintain that adequate safeguards to ensure that a patient's decision to die is truly voluntary are impossible to devise or enforce. Some opponents contend that assisted suicide would lead down a "slippery slope" to involuntary euthanasia for people whose quality of life is perceived as diminished. They claim that people who want to die are often temporarily depressed and might change their minds with treatment or palliative care (pain relief).

Both supporters and opponents point to evidence from the few places that have legalized aid in dying. Before 2001, both assisted suicide and active euthanasia were technically illegal in the Netherlands, but physicians who engaged in these practices could avoid prosecution under strict conditions of reporting and government oversight. In 1995, only 2.5 percent of deaths in the Netherlands resulted from euthanasia or assisted suicide, but critics claimed that some doctors had slid down the slippery slope to involuntary euthanasia. In 2001 voluntary euthanasia was officially legalized for patients in a state of continuous, unbearable, and incurable suffering. In such cases, doctors now can legally inject a lethal dose of medication. Belgium followed suit the following year.

With increasing numbers of Americans — 3 out of 4 in a 2005 Gallup poll — favoring euthanasia for a patient who is incurably ill and wants to die, some U.S. doctors have acceded to such requests. In a nationwide survey of 1,902 physicians whose specialties involve care of the dying, about 7 percent of those who had received requests for help with suicide or lethl injections said they had complied.

Measures to legalize assisted suicide for the terminally ill have been introduced in several states. In 1994, Oregonians voted to let mentally competent patients who have been told by two doctors that they have less than six months to live request a lethal prescription with strong safeguards to ensure that the request is serious and voluntary and that all other alternatives have been considered. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act survived two U.S. Supreme Court challenges and a repeal referendum. In 2002 a federal district court overruled an attempt by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to block the operation of the statute by making doctors criminally liable for prescribing lethal drugs to help patients end their lives. The Supreme Court upheld that decision 6-3, again leaving decisions on aid in dying in the hands of the states, where they belong.

What has been the experience under the Oregon law? During the first two years of operation, physicians reported granting about one-sixth of the 221 requests for lethal prescriptions, but nearly half of these patients changed their minds and did not take the medications, often after receiving pain-controlling drugs or entering a hospice program. In 2003, 42 terminally ill patients out of the 68 for whom prescriptions were written actually took their lives; in 2004, it was down to 37 out of 60. Hardly an avalanche.

One salutary result of the aid-in-dying controversy has been to call attention to the need for better palliative care and closer attention to patients' state of mind. When doctors talk openly with patients about their physical and mental symptoms, their expectations, their fears and goals, their options for end-of-life care, their family concerns, and their need for meaning and quality of life, ways may be found to diminish these concerns. In terminally ill patients, the will to live can fluctuate greatly, so if aid in dying is contemplated, it is essential to ensure that the request is not just a passing one. Sometimes a psychiatric consultation may discover an underlying disturbance masked by a seemingly rational request. If lethal measures are taken, it is important that a physician be present to ensure that the death is as merciful and pain-free as possible.

Issues of hastening death will become more pressing as the population ages. In years to come, medical ethicists, governments, and families will be forced to come to terms with these issues as increasing numbers of people claim a right to die with dignity and with help.

Back to top of page

We are, all of us, American Jews, descended from immigrants. So the story of the Jewish immigrant experience in America is for each of us a highly personal one.

There were four major waves of immigration of Jews to America. First, the Sephardic (Spanish) Jews who trickled in from the time of Columbus to the American Revolution and formed at that time only 1/20th of 1 percent of the population. Second, the Ashkenazic German Jews who arrived in the mid-nineteenth century. Third, dwarfing these two, the huge flood of more than 2 million Eastern European Jews that poured in during the decades before and after the turn of the twentieth century, fleeing czarist oppression and revolutionary unrest. And finally, the victims of Naziism who found refuge here before and after World War II.

At least 85 percent of American Jews today are descended from the third wave, as am I. I want to sketch the story of that immigrant generation by sharing with you a bit of my family's experience, as recorded primarily by my father and my aunt Gert. Perhaps their stories will resonate with you.

My father, Boris Duskin, was born in 1902 in Luninyets, a small village near Pinsk, which during the previous century had shifted back and forth between Polish and Russian control. The village had unpaved streets and planks for sidewalks. The peasants lived in thatched-roof huts with pigs wandering in and out. They must have resented my grandfather, Boris Diatlovitsky, a Jewish merchant who was the wealthiest man in the village. But this my father did not know or say, for his father died a month before his birth.

My grandmother, born Sarah Funk — the daughter of a celebrated cantor and the granddaughter of a rabbi in Windau, Latvia — already had two daughters, Rose and Leah, from a previous marriage. After my grandfather's death, a matchmaker found her a third husband, Isaac Mandelbaum. Isaac took Sarah and her daughters to the New World by way of Manchester, England, where he had a brother in the silk business, leaving the infant Boris behind with his father's former wife's family.