Everyone said it would be difficult to raise kids within the framework of a “mixed marriage” and they were right. After a decade of marriage and the birth of three cute kids, my Jewish–Israeli wife would be the first to tell you that married life in Israel with a Jewish-American husband hasn’t always been as smooth as Philadelphia cream cheese on a delicious whole wheat bagel (and she would never use such an American metaphor).
While trying to raise our tribe in a way that is mutually satisfying, we’ve discovered some helpful rules for successfully navigating a “mixed” Israeli-American marriage:
1. Pick a language for your kids to mangle: one of the most common questions we get is, “Which language do you speak at home?” My wife and I mostly speak English to the children (thankfully her English is superb), while the kids speak to us in a mixture of Hebrew and English (often in the same sentence!). My five-year-old daughter says things like, “Abba (dad), I found my ‘mishkafayim’(glasses) – they were ‘al ha’ (on the) bed!”
Obviously your kids will be much stronger in their native language than they are in the adopted one – my kids do fine in English, but Hebrew is their native language. Also, be prepared for diminishing returns. With most mixed families I’ve seen, the oldest kid speaks the second language the best, the next oldest kid speaks it a little less, and the third kid is lucky if s/he can ask where the bathroom is.
By the way, you haven’t lived until your Israeli child screams “DIE!!!!” at you in an American supermarket and the other shoppers look on in horror (“Die” means “enough/stop” in Hebrew).
2. Decide where to build your bayit (home): I’m a bit of an exception. I made Aliyah from the U.S. in the summer of 2001 and I have remained in Israel. North Americans make Aliyah with the best of intentions, but the majority eventually return to America. My wife and I have gotten close to countless Americans in Israel who suddenly decided that they missed Sundays off and the extra Passover seder.
On the other hand, some Israelis find the language and cultural barriers in America challenging. Mixed couples need to think long and hard about where they want to raise their kids, with an eye toward how they might feel in five or ten years.
3. Fight “Santa Clause” syndrome: we manage to see my parents and two siblings, all of whom live in America, at least once a year. Feeling a bit guilty about the separation, they shower the children with cool presents. And when we go to visit my family in America, it’s one fun activity after the other (today the amusement park! Tomorrow the children’s museum!).
Naturally, the kids start to develop a skewed view of a country that seems like non-stop fun and gifts. It helps to remind the kids that people who actually live in America don’t go to amusement parks every day (and Israelis don’t go to the Kotel seven times a week).
4. Prepare for cultural confusion: I’ve had to quickly learn about soccer (something that didn’t feature prominently in my American childhood, but is HUGE in Israel), Israeli songs and TV shows, and why Israelis think their kids will melt if they go outside in the rain. My wife, meanwhile, pretends to understand when my son eagerly describes the plots to the He-Man and GI Joe DVDs that my brother gave him.
My seven-year-old boy once said:
Abba, I’m 50 percent Yemenite (my wife is of Yemenite descent), 50 percent American and 100 percent Israeli.
OK, so the kid probably isn’t going to Harvard, but at least he understands his heritage (sort of). On a related note, and I wish I were making this up, he went through a phase where he was eating hummus and ketchup sandwiches.
On second thought, maybe that is the perfect marriage of the two cultures. And “mixed marriages” can be perfect, with a little forethought, planning and lots of patience – which is necessary when you have to explain to the other shoppers that the word “die”doesn’t mean what they think it means…
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