With intermarriage and Jewish/Gentile families becoming the norm on the American Jewish scene, we receive lots of questions during the Passover and Easter seasons.  People ask things like, "Can we host a Passover seder at our home for our intermarried children even though we are Gentile Christians?" "How can my wife, she is Jewish, and I celebrate Easter when my Jewish in-laws come to visit?" The questions can be especially thorny this year, since the two holidays occur during the same week.  The first night of Passover begins on April 8, lasting for a week.  Easter Sunday falls in the midst of that period, on Sunday April 12.

Survival is a Jewish community core value driver.  So, some influential voices, like sociologist Steven M. Cohen, have called intermarriage, “the greatest single threat to Jewish continuity.” However, this generation is not the first to make Jewish-Gentile marriage a common phenomenon.
 
This month we find an excellent illustration in the events around the life of beautiful Queen Esther (486-465 BC). Esther and her uncle Mordecai were among the large Diaspora Jewish community that was deported from Judea to Persia in 586 BC during the Babylonian invasion.  They were part of a remnant that had remained in exile and settled there rather than return to Judea with the first returnees to Jerusalem.  

In the fable, The Emperor's New Clothes, two greedy men con the king.  They supposedly present him with magic cloth, which only wise men could see.  Sadly, the king commissioned a magnificent suit of clothes from the magical cloth, wanting to believe that it was truly worth the fortune. He wanted to believe that what he received matched his imagination and not the truth. The moral of the story has become an iconic warning against the dangers of ignoring reality.