Harold & Gayle Berman, Doublelife: One Family, Two Faiths and a Journey of Hope

Longhill Press, New York, New York 2013

REVIEWED BY DAVID BEDEIN, SOCIAL WORKER AND JOURNALIST.

Doublelife: One Family, Two Faiths and a Journey of Hope is a compelling and entertaining memoir of two newly observant Jews who emerged from an interfaith marriage. Offering the unique vantage point of a couple who has stood on both sides of the intermarriage divide and gained experience from both lives they have lived, the book is especially relevant in the wake of the Pew study. As the Jewish community grapples with the challenges of over 700,000 intermarried families and a non-Orthodox intermarriage rate of over 70%, Doublelife shows us that even the family that appears to be most distant from Jewish life can become one of the most engaged.

Harold and Gayle Berman share their experience with love, understanding and hope, never denigrating intermarried couples. Instead, they give us a candid behind-the scenes perspective of what it is like to be intermarried, what it is like to become a Jewish family, and how the two differ. That is what this book is about: perspective.

Harold and Gayle Berman were intermarried for their first sixteen years of marriage. Gayle grew up in a devout Christian home and was a Minister of Music in a Texas mega-church at the time they met. Their first marriage was performed by a Justice of the Peace, with the participation of Gayle’s minister.

Harold grew up in a Reform temple and was a member of the Reform Movement for a good part of his adult life. It was the Reform rabbi of his childhood, a survivor of Buchenwald, who planted in Harold his first lesson of faith in God in the face of adversity. It was another Reform rabbi who introduced Harold to the concept of Shabbat, and inspired him to take his first steps toward observing it.

Yet, despite a few tentative forays into the Jewish community, Harold and Gayle continued to live the life of an unaffiliated intermarried couple. But when they adopted their first child, they decided they would raise him Jewish, prompting serious reflection about why they were making this choice and what it would mean.

Initially, they sought out other intermarried couples, ranging from those who were completely unaffiliated to enthusiastic synagogue members to couples trying to raise their children in “both” and shuttling them between church school and Hebrew school.

Harold and Gayle took a different turn, when through a series of dramatic events, they decided to explore the possibility of living a full Jewish life. Harold and Gayle’s metamorphosis is sensitively chronicled, and explains their coming to terms with the realization that there is a profound difference between parents who agree to “raise their children with some amount of Judaism,” or are “willing to participate in certain Jewish rituals,” and those who commit themselves to a full Jewish life.

Unlike many books coming from a traditional perspective, Doublelife does not advocate that the community should close its doors to the intermarried. Quite the opposite. Nor does it advocate the liberal approach of setting a low bar for the intermarried with the hope that they will get involved at some level. This book instead poses a challenge: How to inspire an interfaith couple to examine the possibility of living a full Jewish life. Harold and Gayle’s example shows us that it is possible, but that the Jewish community must radically re-think its approach.