Five Lessons for Couples from The Big Bang Theory

Bernadette & Howard from Big Bang Theory

Credit: CBS

Two of the hit TV show The Big Bang Theory’s main characters, Howard and Bernadette, announced that they are having a baby. Mere moments after hearing the news, the father-to-be was fretting about how they would raise their child since they come from different religious backgrounds. “How’s this all going to work? You’re Catholic, I’m Jewish. What religion do we raise it?! And if it’s a boy, do we get him circumcised?”

While their different backgrounds have bubbled up in past episodes, I imagine that Wolowitz’ rant in this scene hit home for many interfaith couples. Navigating two distinct backgrounds is often quite simple…until someone is holding a positive pregnancy test in hand.

When does the topic of religion usually come up in interfaith relationships? Some begin talking about religion before anything gets serious, especially when a faith background is very important to one or both people. But the reality for many couples from different religious or cultural backgrounds is that they only start to discuss these potential differences well into their relationship. For those who plan to have children, conversations about raising children often occur only after having them. Bringing a child into the world can rouse religious questions for the first time. In fact, the least religiously connected time of many people’s lives is young adulthood, so when they meet a partner, religion may be the last thing on their minds.

My advice is to talk early and often. Try introducing the topic with these conversation starters—either before having kids or when kids are young:

1.  Talk about your respective backgrounds. Do you both come from a religious heritage that is significant to you? Or just one?

2.  Imagine your life about 5 or 10 years down the road. Do you picture particular religious rituals occurring (ie. baby namings, baptism, bris/Jewish ritual circumcision, bar or bat mitzvah, confirmation, etc)? Religious education? Explain to each other what is important to you and why—even if you never had to articulate it before.

3.  Talk about holidays and milestones. Which will you celebrate? Why are they important to you? With whom will you spend them? How will you explain your decisions to your child so they feel pride and ownership over their identity or identities?

4.  How will you include family members who don’t share traditions and celebrations you choose to observe?

5.  You don’t have to have it all figured out right this minute, but setting the stage will help tremendously. You will develop a shared language and a better understanding of what is important to each of you. When issues do arise, it won’t be the first time you’ve thought about religion together.

The clearer you are about the decisions you are making, the clearer you can be with your kids, in-laws and other extended family and friends. Don’t shy away from talking about religion. You will actually become stronger as a couple when you learn to communicate about delicate subjects without fear of threatening the relationship between the two of you or extended family. Plus, as you learn more about one another’s backgrounds, hopes and desires, you could actually be uncovering stories that allow you to know each other on an even deeper level. If you feel more comfortable having a guide with you as you broach these questions, the InterfaithFamily staff is here to help.

Are Bernadette and Howard too late to figure out the logistics of an interfaith family? Not at all. But better to not be taken by surprise.

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Why We’re Talking About Princesses: Long Island


Cast members Princesses Long IslandSince the new Bravo reality show Princesses: Long Island began a few weeks ago, many blogs have popped up in the Jewish and secular media berating the show and the network for its portrayal of Long Island Jewish women. The bloggers’ responses range from horror to amused disgust to acceptance. JTA has a whole guide to blogs about the show.

If you haven’t seen the show, it’s about six twenty-something Jewish Long Islanders who live with their parents, agonize over finding a husband to take care of them, and for the most part, do not work. They seem to have been encouraged to make Judaism a big part of the show, as they are constantly touting how Jewish their lifestyle is and making a scene over drinking Manischewitz and eating Shabbat dinner.

This all might sound harmless and hardly cause for alarm, if it weren’t for the fact that the women on the show are so horribly over the top in their dependency on their parents, men and money. More than that, they actively promote stereotypes about Judaism, and explicitly say that their lifestyle is typically “Jewish” and “Long Island,” when there’s nothing typical about anything they say or do.

When one cast member says that she’s a Reform Jew, which means “We’re not that Jewish,” what is someone who doesn’t know the difference supposed to think?

You may ask, if there’s so much already out there about this nonsense, why bother adding to the mix? Because I learned this lesson well: When something is happening that is damaging to Jews, or any ethnic/religious group, I have a responsibility to speak out. Am I being melodramatic? I don’t think New York Congressman Steve Israel (who represents the part of Long Island where the show is filmed) would think so. Yup, he’s blogged about it too:


Thank you, Steve. Because I found the response of Emily Shire, on The Forward’s Sisterhood blog more than a little offensive. Maybe because she says she’s familiar with the types of girls portrayed on the show from her own Long Island youth, she’s now desensitized to their behavior. But I can’t really accept her passivity on the subject: “I wish I could rally more ire for this show and be more outraged, but I can only shrug and watch with the same curiosity I approach other reality shows.”

While I can understand Shire does not find the show shocking, she has to imagine the repercussions it has on viewers with less familiarity with this small, not-at-all representative group of Jewish Long Islanders. Shire admits that she worries that people will think of the cast as models of Jewish women, but then she refers to Jersey Shore and says: “Even when I thought little of the cast, I never thought of it as an overall reflection of Italian-Americans, and anyone who thought six twenty-somethings on MTV spoke for an entire ethnic group was probably already going to be unfairly judgmental and somewhat racist.”

Does that make it OK?

What Shire is missing is the large population of our country (never mind the population of viewers in other countries who have access to the show) who know nothing about Judaism. Whether the viewer is judgmental or not, this is not the first glimpse of my religion I want them to see.

Imagine if you are a Jew dating someone who is not Jewish, who perhaps knows very little about your religion. I for one would feel embarrassed if he or his parents watched this show. And while you have probably introduced your wife who is not Jewish to your culture, does it help you to welcome her into your faith when the stereotype that stands out about Jewish women is that they’re spoiled, ignorant gold-diggers?

To give you a taste, in the very first episode, one cast member asks to be carried to her car after a mani/pedi (by someone who works at the shop) because she refuses to walk in shoes without heels.

Of course the other side of the argument is that all of this buzz we’re creating around the show is only bringing it attention, and probably more viewers. Joe Winkler suggests on JTA that “Maybe, instead of taking up arms in boycott, we could do a lot more by just looking the other way and waiting for them to shrivel into obscurity.” And while that might be true, I’m with Israel, who says:


Because I want Bravo to think again before airing another season of this show, or producing any other show that promotes such a negative stereotype of any religion or ethnicity.

I’m curious what other people think? Did you watch the show? If you are less familiar with Judaism, what did you think of how the cast portrayed the religion?

Being Jewish and Being Human




Being Human - wedding

photo via Entertainment Weekly (image credit: BBC America)










NCIS: Interfaith Couple?


NCIS: promo for "Sabbat Shalom"

I enjoy watching NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service), the CBS crime drama that airs Tuesday evenings. I appreciate the multi-culturalism on the show. Often I turn to my husband for a Spanish translation of a line here or there. I was excited when Cote de Pablo joined the cast in season three. She plays the Israeli former Mossad (Israel’s national intelligence agency) officer, Ziva David. For me, it is even more fun when they throw a little Hebrew into a show. I appreciate that they seem to “get it right” in both phrasing and accent.

Last week the episode “Shabbat Shalom” aired. Of course I was intrigued when I saw the title in my DVR. I assumed it had something to do with Ziva, why else the Hebrew title? As I watched the episode I learned that Ziva’s father, the head of Mossad, came to the U.S. to see her and to broker a peace agreement with his Iranian counterpart.

Little did I know that the episode was a cliffhanger. But this week on Tuesday night I was taking the red-eye to Boston to meet my InterfaithFamily coworkers in-person for the first time; I wasn’t able to watch the episode. As I was gathering my suitcase and heavy jacket, expecting it to be colder in Boston than it was in San Francisco, my best friend called me. She was also travelling for work this week and watched NCIS from her Maryland hotel room.

“What does Tony say to Ziva at the end of the episode?” she asked. I didn’t know, it wasn’t even going to air in California for another three hours. I was headed to the airport and wouldn’t be able to watch until Friday. She couldn’t wait until Friday for the answer; so, as any good friend would do, I googled it. “What does Tony say to Ziva at the end of NCIS?” Since the episode had just ended, there wasn’t much about it online yet. Apparently there was some buzz a few years ago when Tony said something to Ziva in Spanish. But that wasn’t what I was looking for.

NCIS: promo for "Shiva"

I added “2013” and “Shiva” (the title of this episode) to my search. IMDB wasn’t up-to-date yet so I had to rely on Yahoo answers where I found the question: “At the end of the newest NCIS episode tonight, what did Tony say to Ziva before she left? I think it was in Hebrew, but I didn’t catch it.”

Great! Someone must have posted the answer… the first two entries: “I love you” and “Ani ohev otach, I love you.” As much as I (and apparently others) want Tony and Ziva to get together, that didn’t seem right to me. I hadn’t seen the episode but I knew what happened last week and I was pretty confident it wasn’t time for Tony’s declaration of love for Ziva.

I kept reading the yahoo answers. “You are not alone.” Ok, that made more sense. The fifth post read: “he said ‘aht lo leh vahd‘ a translation thing on the internet said it means ‘you are not alone.'” I love that we can use the internet to translate Hebrew on mainstream TV in the U.S., and post the answer for others! I called my friend back and reported the two options. Having seen the episode she also ruled out “I love you.”

So this morning, finally back at home I watched the episode waiting (and waiting) for Tony’s line. He does say “aht lo leh vahd” which does mean “you are not alone.” What does it mean for the relationship between Tony and Ziva? All we can do is continue watching NCIS and see; I look forward to them being the next intermarried couple on TV.

A Christian Bar Mitzvah?





Here’s what I’ve figured out from the video:


As I said, I’m a bit confused by this.


What do you think?