"Out of Faith": Two Filmmakers Debate Intermarriage

Director Lisa Leeman's and Producer Mark DeAngelis' documentary Out of Faith follows three generations in one family as they struggle with conflicts over interfaith marriage. The grandparents are both Auschwitz survivors. Flash foward fifty years, as the film starts, and two of their grandchildren have "married out," and grandmother Leah and her grandson Danny have not spoken in six years. The film does not take sides; rather it follows the family for three years, ending with unexpected events as the first great-grandchild is expected.

The director and producer have different viewpoints on the issue of interfaith marriage, and their opposing perspectives are both re-published below. (This material originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com.)

A review of the film appeared in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

Visit the filmmakers' Web site for Out of Faith at http://www.outoffaith.net/

Out of Faith screens at 6:15pm at the DCJCC's Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater on Wednesday, December 6, 2006.

On Out of Faith and Intermarriage: The Director's Perspective
by Lisa Leeman

My new documentary feature film, Out of Faith, tackles the emotional subject of interfaith marriage. It follows three generations in a family headed by grandparents who are Holocaust survivors--all being pulled apart by interfaith marriage.

When Mark DeAngelis, the producer, and I began this film, we thought it would be a straight-forward documentary on Leah's remarkable experiences as a survivor (she's the grandmother). However, as we began filming, I learned that her family situation was causing her great pain--her first grandchild had married out of faith and Leah had not spoken to him in six years. And just months earlier, her second grandchild had "married out." The family was wrestling with a classic immigrant dilemma--how to honor, preserve, and pass on one's own ethnicity while integrating into today's multicultural society.

This resonated deeply for me. I am a product of an interfaith marriage. I grew up familiar with both traditions, while being steeped in neither. In December, we had a Hanukkah bush--usually a towering evergreen topped by a Star of David--and in the spring we celebrated both Easter and Passover. I identified as "half and half," partially belonging to both groups, fully belonging to neither.

At first, I didn't understand why interfaith marriage had caused such a deep rift in Leah's family. Then I began to hear some sobering (and hotly debated) statistics--that almost 50 percent of non-Orthodox American Jews marry out of faith, and less than a third of the offspring from those marriages grow up to identify as Jewish.

Some sociologists predict that if those statistics continue, the Jewish population could drop drastically, to less than a million by 2076. Leah's rigidity, which I had chalked up to close-mindedness, took on a new dimension--a deep grief and concern over the possible end of her people. I began to better understand her. And yet, I felt for her grandkids--they'd married for love. And who is to say that individuals must carry the weight of their heritage on their shoulders?

We could bandy about these statistics forever--it's hard to trust statistics; they can be "spun"; social trends change… etc. Concern and anguish over interfaith marriage is at the core of Leah's position in Out of Faith, and equally as compelling is her granddaughter Cheryl, who says that she always thought she'd marry "a blonde, blue-eyed yeshiva boy" (she says she "got everything but the yeshiva boy")… until she met someone she grew to like, then love, who wasn't Jewish. In other words, fate may throw you a curveball. I know that some would say that you can control who you fall in love with, but I don't think that's the case, or that life is so simple.

As we filmed, Leah's story became even more complicated. I learned that she was not an observant Jew--so just what was it that she objected to about her grandchildren's marriages? Slowly, I came to understand that Leah's refusal to accept her grandchildren's choices stemmed from a complex mix of reasons: she'd lost nearly her entire family in the Holocaust; she'd grown up in an extremely Orthodox family; when she was growing up in Slovakia, interfaith marriage was unheard of. Leah simply could not shake the feeling that if she condoned her grandchildren's interfaith marriages, she would be betraying her ancestors and contributing to the loss of her people.

When the wife of Leah's grandson Danny became pregnant during our filming, even more pressure was exerted on both Leah and Danny--would they reconcile before Leah's first great-grandchild was born? Although I don't want to reveal what happens, I will say that this film explores several themes--conflicting loyalties within families; family estrangement and how it can or cannot be resolved; conflicting loyalties between one's own tribe and the society in which one lives; issues of cultural continuity; and finally, the trajectory of assimilation in this country that seems to cause an inevitable loss of culture over generations.

I, and the film, make no judgments about interfaith marriage--indeed, if it weren't for interfaith marriage, I would not be here today! I think our producer and I come from opposite ends of the spectrum on this issue, and making this film has produced many hours of thoughtful and heated debate.

After working on this film for four years, I still feel that most of us cannot sacrifice our own lives or personal happiness for a sociological point, but at the same time, the film did make me realize that there are sobering ramifications to our "melting pot"/"salad bowl" beautiful diverse society. With pluralism and cultural mixing it up comes wonderful new things, but also a dilution and loss of culture. Making the film has made me re-examine what my own relationship to Judaism is, and what I want it to be, and what I want to leave for the future. I'm still working on it.

In addition to raising sobering questions about Jewish cultural continuity, this film also illustrates the wrenching consequences of family estrangements. When Leah's first grandson "married out," Leah chose to cut off contact. This resulted in her grandson's wife having no exposure to Leah, a Jewish grandmother, a survivor, and a living embodiment of Eastern European Jewish culture. Perhaps if Leah had chosen a different tactic, her grandson's wife and her great grandchild would have a better understanding and appreciation for Jewish life and culture.

I've been asked what the appropriate communal response to intermarriage should be--but I have no answers. I think each situation is unique and deeply personal, and each one of us must make our own decisions.

I can say that I wish my parents had given me a much deeper knowledge and understanding of both sides of my heritage. And that I would have rebelled against any "rules" about who I should date or marry. Ultimately, I think that more is accomplished through relationship than estrangement.

It's my hope that Out of Faith can be used as a springboard for discussion about interfaith marriage--certainly in Jewish communities, and in many other ethnic communities across the country. I hope the film stirs viewers to explore what their heritage means to them, how they want it to inform their lives, and what they want to pass on to future generations. I also hope the film can bring together people from opposite sides of the "intermarriage" divide. I hope that the film can help each "side" understand each other a little more and create a little more tolerance on each "side," so perhaps some families can avoid six-year (or lifelong) family estrangements.

Lisa Leeman is an independent documentary film director/producer based in Los Angeles. In addition to directing Out of Faith, credits include the recent Who Needs Sleep (co-directed with Haskell Wexler); directing Metamorphosis: Man Into Woman, Fender Philosophers, and Breaking Up. She is currently editing the indie doc Made in LA, and producing the feature doc Crazy Wisdom. She directed Out of Faith over a four-year period. It's a topic close to her heart, as she is the product of an interfaith marriage.


On Out of Faith and Intermarriage: The Producer's Perspective
by L. Mark DeAngelis

When I first considered producing a documentary about Leah Welbel, a woman who survived nearly three years in the infamous Nazi death camp of Auschwitz/Birkenau, I envisioned a film about her courage and tenacity. However, after spending more time with Leah and her family, the film's director, Lisa Leeman, and I quickly realized that Leah and her family were dealing not only with the residual trauma of her and her Survivor husband's experiences during the Shoah, but also with probably the most crucial issue facing the Jewish community today--assimilation through interfaith marriage. The interfaith marriages of two of Leah's grandchildren had broken her heart. And the conflicts that arose from Leah's frankness on the issue threatened to rip her family apart.

Early on in production, I agreed with Lisa that we would present the conflict regarding interfaith marriage in the Welbel family in as balanced a manner possible. Although Lisa will speak for herself in the counterpart to this essay, my reason for presenting a balanced consideration of this issue stemmed from my desire not to alienate people by lecturing them. Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I did not admit that I do want Out of Faith to motivate those who would normally not contemplate their individual roles in our collective survival to begin to do so. More precisely, I would like people, at a minimum, to recognize that if we care about the future of Judaism, we can only accomplish this through the creation of strong, two Jew unions.

However, prior to considering why we should each marry within our faith, it is completely appropriate to ask two questions: First, is interfaith marriage in fact leading to a decreased number of those who identify as Jewish? Does the evidence support the proposition that the Jewish population is shrinking precipitously? And second, if the evidence does support this proposition, does it really matter?

As space for this essay is limited, I will not spend a great deal of energy arguing that which should be obvious to even the most casual observers. If the comprehensive National Jewish Population Surveys do not convince you, just ask yourself how many Jews you know personally who are, for all intents and purposes, Jewish in name only? And of how many families do you know where none of the children have married Jews? Feel free to present me with evidence you feel suggests our community is not decreasing, let alone not growing proportionally with the national population.

The second question--does it even matter if we intermarry out of existence--is extremely important, but rarely considered. If our definition of Judaism is having Chinese food and going to the movies on Christmas Day and just “not being Christian,” why would it matter if we go the way of the dodo bird? I do not mean to be flippant. If we truly have nothing to offer the world, and there is no greater purpose in our being Jewish, is it not merely a bigoted tribalism that compels us to believe we should persevere as a distinct people when so many other ethnic groups have already lost nearly their entire cultural uniqueness? Because for all our warts, being just an American, and not a hyphenated one, is still pretty special.

Further, Judaism cannot merely be about honoring the memory of those lost in the Holocaust and supporting Israel. Jews should do both, but it is not enough to justify limiting one's pool of potential soulmates by several magnitudes--Leah unfortunately learns this the hard way in our film. Anti-Semitism, whether it manifests itself in Holocaust denial, anti-Zionism, or in some other way, cannot keep people Jewish, especially given that our society is the least anti-Semitic in history. As Alan Dershowitz states in his important book, The Vanishing American Jew, “Today's most serious threats [to American Jewry] come not from those who would persecute us, but from those who would, without any malice, kill us with kindness.”

So why be Jewish then? How about to preserve our special relationship with God? To mention God sends many Jews running. To mention Torah and mitzvot (commandments) makes these same people roll their eyes in condescending disapproval. However, without recognizing the predominance faith plays in Judaism, it is nearly impossible to recognize the sacred nature of marriage and justify any real reason for INTRAmarriage. Only when we honor the religious component of marriage can we begin to recognize why marrying someone of the same faith matters. Generally, we have denigrated the importance of the two-parent family in our society to our great peril. Jews are infected with this same disease. By reconnecting marriage with its spiritual significance, perhaps we can take great strides toward eliminating our precipitous fall into demographic insignificance.

In our secularly dominated society, it is difficult enough to instill Jewish values with two strongly identified Jewish parents, let alone with only one. Nearly everything in the Diaspora in which we live--the media, the public education system (although I am a strong advocate of Jewish day school education, not all can afford it, unfortunately), and the non-Jewish symbols everywhere--work against our efforts to instill in our children a sense of how important is their “Jewishness.” So if it does indeed “take a village,” the village isn't Jewish.

A strong family core is essential. So although I applaud the efforts many make to compensate for the fact that the deck is stacked against us, or to motivate “half-Jewish” families to explore and enhance their Jewish experiences, it is like trying to cure cancer with a Band-Aid. Yes, do what we can to bring people back into the tent, but if we have any chance at a meaningful survival, we need to concern ourselves more with how to keep people from leaving the tent in the first place.

L. Mark DeAngelis, a recovering attorney, left the Jakarta, Indonesia, firm with which he practiced law five years ago--just after September 11--to produce Out of Faith and find himself a nice Jewish girl. He and his wife Lindsey live together in the Chicago area with their two little gifts from Hashem, Esther Plia and Gavriella Leah.