Here's an amazing story in the Chicago Tribune about a family divided by deceased dentist Max Feinberg's will, which said that any descendant marrying a gentile would be disinherited from his sizeable estate. Well oy–four out of his five grandchildren have married gentiles, and one, Michele Trull, is now suing her own parents over the payout. Sad. Great reporting by Ron Grossman. Probably took a blood to crack this case. Juicy excerpts:
But Judge Patrick Quinn feared that allowing the Jewish clause to stand could form a legal slippery slope. Suppose Max Feinberg had reservations about his descendants' marrying a black person. The judge asked: Do we really want courts "to enforce the worst bigotry imaginable?"… Max Feinberg's will defined offspring who married non-Jews as "deceased."
…
According to Michael Feinberg, this tangled affair began when his father discovered that a grandson was taking a gentile to the junior prom at Niles West High School in Skokie. "My father let my son, Aron, know he wasn't happy with the idea of diluting the family's Jewishness," Michael Feinberg said.
Michael Feinberg said that while he might not share the ideas his father wrote into his will, he feels obliged to uphold them. It's painful to be sued by your own daughter, he added.His wife, Marcy, said Trull's actions are something like the old adage about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
She might win in court, but she is exiled from the family dinner table."I have to think she misses the gefilte fish," Marcy Feinberg said.
Sad sad. I love gefilte fish. My mother happily serves it to my wife, who doesn't care for it. If this case sounds outlandish, you should understand that some of the energy behind this blog flows from the shaming/guilt that many Jews experience when they make the choice I made, to marry out. And note that in his book Faith or Fear, Elliott Abrams, Bush Middle East aide, rationalized shunning of the intermarried:
In calling for "wrenching changes in behavior" to end intermarriage, Mr. Abrams would seem to mean "scolding, rejection and exclusion" of Jews who marry out. He even seems to praise the idea of sitting shiva for a Jew who marries a non-Jew, in the belief that he or she is dead to the community.
OK, I know, Abrams is concerned with Jewish survival. But there have got to be ways to approach this issue without guilting young people who are following very American journeys (many of them wealthy, who, as Jane Austen reminds us, will naturally be the object of marital attentions).
