Rabbi, Help, I’ve Fallen in Love With a Christian!

What’s a young Jew to do when he loves a Christian woman, but doesn’t want to displease God?

By Israel Today Staff | | Topics: Assimilation, CHRISTIANS
Assimilation is a major concern for the Jewish people.
Photo: Illustration - Hadas Parush/Flash90

Assimilation is a major concern for the Jewish people. Some rabbis even rank it as a more serious threat than Iran’s nuclear weapons.

And one of the primary ways this happens is when a Jew marries a non-Jew. Especially if it’s a Jewish man marrying a non-Jewish woman, as their children will therefore not be considered Jews under Jewish religious law.

Given that, one can understand the desperation of a young Israeli Jew living in the United States who wrote to rabbi that he had fallen in love with a Christian woman and didn’t know what to do!

“She is my dream girl, and I would marry her without blinking, if only she were Jewish,” the love-struck man wrote. “I know it’s wrong, that it’s assimilation, but my heart calls to her, it cries to her.”

The Jewish man went on to say that he was strongly contemplating marriage, “but I am afraid that our Father in heaven won’t forgive me. I know that to marry her means church and Jesus, and saying that name as if he were my god, even though I still believe in the Almighty.”

The common misconception among many Jews today is that Christians worship Jesus as their God, full stop, just as Muslims worship Allah. According to this viewpoint, Christians have no connection to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Therefore, in their eyes, to accept Jesus in any way or form, even by marrying a Christian, would be no different to accepting one of the pagan gods.

And so this young man felt like he was being torn in two.

“Please put yourself in my shoes,” he pleaded with the rabbi. “Imagine you have found a woman whom your soul truly loves, but you know that our Father in heaven is looking at you in disappointment. My heart is breaking every day that I am not with her. I have no idea what to do.”

The rabbi, Danny Argaman, who answers questions on the Hebrew-language portal Kippa, was compassionate, but very blunt about what this young man must do.

“It’s hard, but consider this your ‘Sacrifice of Isaac,'” the rabbi replied, referring to God’s requirement that Abraham sacrifice his own son.

Argaman went on to expound on the Jewish notion that there is not only one perfect spouse for each person. “And surely the Lord would not send what you need in the form of a Christian woman,” he added. “Leave her and find a woman who is right for you, and then you’ll be unable to understand what you ever saw in that Gentile.”

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