New Branches

By Sally S. Stich

PAULA HELLMAN approaches the Jewish holidays with conflicting emotions. The 60-year-old education director at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, a reform congregation in Great Barrington, Mass., has grown more deeply involved with the Jewish community in recent years, but her daughter Tara has chosen a different path. She married a Baptist in 1995, converted to his religion and is raising their child Caleb in that faith. "Each year, as I get ready for the High Holidays, I think how much I miss sharing the holidays with my grandson," she says. "I love Caleb so much and want to support his path to God, but when I see the children from my congregation running around my backyard and eating bagels and cream cheese at break-the-fast on Yom Kippur, I just wish Caleb were one of them."

Hellman might be frustrated at times, but she isn't angry with her daughter. If anything, she blames herself. "You ask yourself if you should've done more religiously when your kids were younger," she says. And she has moments--like when her grandson shows her something he has made in church--that clutch at her heart.

It's not an uncommon feeling for many grandparents today who, like Hellman, face a new generation following different religious practices. Although there are few hard statistics tracking the incidence of interfaith marriages in decades past, the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (the latest year for which results are available) reported that about 28 million adults, 22% of the U.S. population, lived in mixed-religion households. Many of those who are parents end up choosing one religion for their kids.

That can leave grandparents confused, with few places to turn for advice. "Often [grandparents] have no one to talk to about ways to cope," says Sheila Gordon, president of the Interfaith Community in New York City. While many synagogues and churches have focused their efforts on welcoming young interfaith couples and providing strategies for raising a family, Gordon says grandparent issues are often shunted aside.

To help fill the void, several nonprofit organizations have cropped up with advice specifically tailored to grandparents. A Jewish nonprofit advocacy organization and website, interfaith family com provides an archive of articles about grandchildren in mixed-faith marriages. Dovetail Institute (dovetail institute.org) a nonprofit, nondenominational group, is also devoted to interfaith families. And Manhattan's 92nd Street Y began offering a course this fall called "Workshop for Parents of Interfaith Couples."

For many, religion comes with a slew of traditions and rituals that have been cherished over a lifetime, and when that can't be passed down to the next generations, the emotions run deep. "The initial reaction to hearing that your grandchild is going to be Muslim or Catholic when you are not," says Edmund Case, publisher of interfaith family.com "can be a trauma--a huge sense of loss." Grandparents aren't always ready to relinquish the idea of sharing the family christening gown or family togetherness at holy days. One devoutly Catholic 72-year-old grandfather in Greene County, Ohio, speaks of a sense of hurt and emptiness that not one of his 10 grandchildren is being raised Catholic. "I feel deprived of the richness of the dreams I wanted to share with my grandkids," he says. "It's a sadness I deal with, even though I try not to show it."

The emotions sometimes tap into a number of thorny issues. Some older parents resent their child's spouse, or they blame the other set of grandparents for pushing the couple to raise the grandkids in their religion. "As we age, we all confront issues we've never faced before," says James Davidson, a sociology professor at Purdue who studies trends among American Catholics. "For many, that leads to reclaiming the religion in which they were raised."

Although some are outspoken about their feelings, many are not. "Parents are afraid to be seen as meddling, so they don't ask questions or say how they feel," says Joel Crohn, a psychologist in San Rafael, Calif., and author of Mixed Matches (Fawcett Columbine). "And adult kids often assume they know what their parents are thinking, so they also avoid saying anything." Crohn counsels grandparents to take the lead in getting these concerns out. And they have to let their adult children know when they are uncomfortable, "as long as they add that they still love and respect their child's choice," adds Crohn.

Paulette Mann, 69, a Jewish grandmother in Maplewood, N.J., has always tried to show respect to her son and daughter-in-law who are raising their two sons Catholic. "When the grandkids were younger, I asked my daughter-in-law if I could send Hanukkah gifts, and she said no, it would be too confusing," says Mann. "So I took my cues from her." Several years later, when her grandson called to tell her that he was being confirmed in the Catholic Church, Mann recalls thinking, "I'd love to ignore this, but how can I diminish such a milestone in his life?" She sent a congratulatory card--though she could not bring herself to buy one with a cross or a mention of Jesus.

Living 3,000 miles apart means that this grandmother and her grandsons don't have to deal with day-to-day, in-your-face religious differences. During a recent visit to the West Coast, however, Mann heard her 10year-old grandson ask, "Is Grandpa Catholic?" No, she explained, he's Jewish. "I'm Catholic, and I'm going to stay that way," the boy replied. Mann wasn't worried. "He was simply making a statement," she says. "It wasn't self-righteous or malicious, just a statement about who he is."

In the end, grandparenting experts agree on one thing: loving relationships trump religious beliefs. For Joan Hawxhurst, 40, founder of Dovetail Institute and a Methodist married to a Jew, her father's reaction to her raising Jewish children (even though she did not convert) was initially hurtful. He refused to support his granddaughter Sarah's Judaism for the first three years after she was born. Finally, that December, he softened and sent a Hanukkah-themed Tower of Treats from Harry and David. "He couldn't use words, so he did that instead," Hawxhurst says. He died two years later, and although they never discussed his earlier feelings, that small gesture made a world of difference. "I know in his heart he never fully accepted having grandkids of a different faith," she says, "but as a parent myself, I also understand that his actions were guided by love for me and my family."