Family celebrates shared traditions

Every year, Chris and Jill Van Hoewyk of Chesterfield County place a menagerie of inflatable holiday figures in their front yard: Santa, Mickey Mouse in a Santa suit clutching a "Merry Christmas" ornament and a pair of penguins on a sled.

Inside their home, the Van Hoewyks have a Christmas tree and a wall decoration wishing visitors a happy Hanukkah.

Chris grew up Catholic and Jill grew up Jewish. Before they married, the couple promised Jill's parents that their children would grow up as Jews. The Van Hoewyks' twin 6-year-olds, Grace and Ashley, attend Congregation Or Ami with their parents about once a month and are students in the congregation's weekly religious school.

At the religious school, which meets for three hours on Saturday mornings, Grace and Ashley learn Hebrew, study the Torah and make crafts. As they draw closer to their teenage years, they will prepare for their bat mitzvahs, when they will read the ancient words of Hebrew scripture aloud and profess the faith of their mother, her parents and their other ancestors as their own.

At home, the girls experience Christmas much as their gentile playmates do, hearing not only about Santa but also the birth of Jesus. They also celebrate the Jewish Festival of Lights, hearing of God's protection of Jews who lived in Israel under a hostile Syrian-Greek empire from 222 to 186 B.C., or 3538 to 3574 on the Hebrew calendar. Hanukkah's best-known symbol is the menorah, which celebrates the seven days of God's creating the world and the eight nights that God provided oil for the lamps of embattled Jews who had enough oil for only one night.

This year, the two holidays overlap. Hanukkah begins at sundown tomorrow, and families like the Van Hoewyks will light the fourth candle of Hanukkah on Christmas Eve.

The American Religious Identification Survey in 2001 found that interfaith marriages occur among 27 percent of Jewish couples, which is low compared with interfaith marriages among Episcopalians (42 percent) or Buddhists (39 percent). The National Jewish Population Survey for 2000-01 found that 47 percent of Jews who married since 1996 have intermarried, and two-thirds of the children of all intermarried parents are not being raised Jewish.

The Van Hoewyks' rabbi, Ben Romer, said that about half his congregation consists of interfaith couples. Or Ami is a Reform congregation, which places it in the more liberal stream of Judaism, but Romer encourages couples who enroll their children in the congregation's religious school to celebrate only Hanukkah in their homes. Romer suggests that couples reserve any Christmas observance for visits to their children's Christian grandparents or other family members.

"It's hard for me to say, 'Yeah, go ahead and do both.' Doing both creates a certain amount of spiritual dissonance," Romer said.

"If you take your tradition seriously, you don't do things just to make the children happy," he said. "Be serious -- not dour -- but treat it with the seriousness that spiritual matters require."

The Van Hoewyks consider their Christmas celebration an important way of honoring Chris' Catholic heritage and of easing any sense of alienation their girls might feel as Jewish children in a culture dominated by Christmas celebrations.

"Neither one of us makes our day-to-day decisions based on the Bible's teachings," Chris said. "Our faith in God is still very strong."

The Van Hoewyks say they're united about teaching Ashley and Grace the shared ethical traditions of Judaism and Christianity: obeying the Ten Commandments, loving your neighbor and being a kind and generous person.

"When they grow older . . . the hardest thing will be their leaving the house, not religion," Chris said of his daughters.

Chris and Jill Van Hoewyk express high regard for their rabbi. When the family first visited Or Ami on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur two years ago, Jill said, "Rabbi Ben had me at hello."

Chris has not converted to Judaism, but he feels at home at Or Ami. "When I'm at Temple and praying, I still feel as though I'm in church," he said. "The void of Catholicism has been filled by Rabbi Ben. His spiritual message is fantastic."