LOSING MY RELIGION

I was considered a nice couple who wanted my spare embryos. The issue on which I was stuck was religion. Being from the South, these women were Christian and church would be an important part of their family life.

As we got to know each other I had asked them a lot of difficult questions. In part I was doing this to try to weed them out since unlike me and the embryos they were not Jewish. None of the questions I was asking had a "right" answer. Everything they had told me sounded good, but there was a wide range of "good" which I would have accepted.

They owned their own house, but if they lived in an apartment or on a farm that would have been fine too. They worked in professions I admired, but a huge range of jobs would have sounded good to me. In fact, there were few employment situations I could think of that would make me reject a candidate: professional assassin wouldn't go over well. Recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan: not so good. Toxic waste dumper? Maybe not. Otherwise, I was flexible about this, and most other aspects of the embryo recipients' lives. I just wanted to make sure they were good people, and it sounded like these women were just that.

But the issue of religion was a sticking point for me. I strongly preferred a Jewish family because so many Jewish children have been lost to assimilation and worse. These women seemed pretty great, however. I was trying to decide if I could consider giving them Jewish embryos knowing the result could be Christian children.

Their religious denomination was the first question I had asked which definitely had a right and a wrong answer. I would not consider a lesbian couple whose judgement was impaired to the point of wanting to raise their children in a religious community whose official philosophy was to destroy gay families.

That includes many Christian denominations except for mainstream Protestants like Episcopalians. Islam, whose legal system still dictates collapsing a wall on gay consenting adults to kill them, was out of the question. Nor would I consider the more orthodox Jewish sects: I would not give the embryos to Hasidic Jews, for instance.

The only answer that would have delighted me was Universalist Unitarian. They are the one Christian denomination that fully respects the Jewish faith and acknowledges its roots in their own worship. My second choice was MCC (the "gay church"), closely followed by Episcopalian, since they seem to encourage the most thinking among their members.

Here is what Erin and Jenny told me about their religious background:

I [Jenny] was actually raised Baptist. Being from the South this is not a rarity! I went to church regularly until I was twelve and my parents gave me the option to explore other religions or stay at home on Sundays. I went to other churches with my friends and enjoyed the social aspect but never really found a church “home”. Religion is one thing that I have struggled with in adulthood. Being raised Baptist and being gay was a struggle. I had a problem with the fact that when I was ten a youth minister took me aside and asked me to “say a prayer” and “ask jesus into my heart” and I would be “saved”. All this being said, I suppose that I consider myself spiritual and I believe in God, I don’t necessarily have a denomination that I would identify with at this point.

Erin was raised Episcopalian. She stayed involved in church through summer camp until college. For a while, she didn’t really feel comfortable going to church as she struggled with her sexuality. Although the Episcopal Church is traditionally liberal, she still felt like she didn’t belong. Recently, she has been wanting to go back to church and raise a child within a church family that is welcoming and accepting. We have visited several churches and are considering joining a non-denominational church that seems very welcoming to us. We still attend church with Erin’s parents on
occasion but would rather find our own church home (she grew up with half the congregation!).

Although we are not Jewish, we would happily expose the children to their Jewish heritage. We plan to be very honest with our children at an early age about who they are and where they came from. We plan to share with them that their biological mother is Jewish and explain what that means. Although we know some things about Judaism, we would have to do research and would ask that you might also be a resource for us.

This was the best answer I could have hoped for but it still didn't feel quite right to me to deny children in my bloodline their full cultural heritage.

I struggled with my feelings: on the one hand I was liking these recipients more and more. They just sounded like wonderful women who would be great parents. On the other hand, the murder of over 95% of my family during World War II meant I had very few relatives. Giving the embryos to these women would mean cutting them off from a rich culture which sometimes seemed to be dying. I tried to picture a way past this sadness but I came up empty. So I continued to ask Jenny and Erin hard questions. Would their wonderful answers over-ride this seemingly insurmountable concern? Or might the increasingly intrusive questions scare them away? The embryos' fate hung in the balance as I waited to find out.

THE NITTY GRITTY

I was warming to a couple who had contacted me about spare embryos I had on ice. My dream for these embryos was to help strengthen the Hebrew people, decimated during World War II, by finding Jewish parents to take these genetically Jewish embryos. That goal, however, took a back seat to the greater importance of helping a lesbian couple overcome the ridiculous legal barrier gay couples face in having a child.

The lesbian couple with whom I was corresponding sounded great. But they were certainly not Jewish. Right off the bat I was asking them challenging questions. If they said "no" to any of them I would have a concrete reason to reject them as candidates and could continue looking for a Jewish couple. But they were agreeable to everything I asked of them and their friendly, open attitude drew me in.

Now we were moving on to the most challenging issues. First I asked them how they felt about an issue which had, luckily, been a deal-breaker with a couple I promised embryos to before discovering how unpleasant those candidates were. That issue was doing the embryo transfer at the excellent and reasonably-priced fertility clinic where the embryos were stored.

After explaining the fact that our clinic has the best success rates in the nation and costs one-third of what their clinic charges I asked if this new couple would consider traveling one trip of several hours by airplane to do the embryo transfer at my clinic.

On our two-hour car ride to visit my parents yesterday, we had actually talked about the possibility of traveling to a clinic to have a procedure if it would make the odds better for us. I would hope that the clinic would accept our fertility clinic's records. I can’t really think of any reason why not but that would be our only question, otherwise; we would certainly travel to your clinic.

Well that was easy. These women were just not being considerate about giving me reasons to reject them, other than their culture differing from mine. So I decided to tackle the thorny issue which was causing all of my concern: the differences between our religions and cultures.

So many Jewish people have forgotten their roots due to assimilation. Having lost nearly my entire family to anti-Semitic murderers during World War II how could I contribute to the extinction of my own culture by giving Jewish embryos to Christian parents? These nice women were promising to raise children from my embryos to know their genetic roots and learn about that heritage. But as the Jewish comedian Jackie Mason puts it, "You can't be both a table and a chair".

There is no such thing as a Christian Jew. Jews who believe that Christ is the Messiah promised in our Bible are no longer Jews, they are, by definition, Christians. The whole point of Judaism is to better ourselves and our people so the messiah can arrive on earth.

"Messianic Jews" are simply deluded. They are, by definition, ignorant of Judaism and have absorbed the anti-Semitic attitudes of the society in which they live. They may like Christ, but they all, to some degree, become Christian because it is easier than being Jewish in an anti-Jewish world. Clearly they lack the courage of their conviction: instead of becoming Christians and calling themselves Christian they create an intrinsically oxymoronic status. A Christian Jew is an inherent contradiction, like a vegetarian who only eats beef.

If children from my embryos are raised in a church they will not be Jewish. No one who believes that Christ is the Messiah is a Jew. That belief is simply incompatible with Judaism.

How could I even expect Christians to raise a Jew? The closest analogy I could make for myself would be if I were trying to adopt a child whose genetic and cultural heritage were Native American. I understand that these cultures were cruelly suppressed and members of those tribes murdered simply because of their genetic heritage. I agree that it would be unfortunate for cultural assimilation to absorb more children from those backgrounds into a bland European-American melting pot. Yet I am ignorant of what sorts of things a Navajo, Hopi, Cherokee, Cree or other aboriginal parent would want to impart to their child. If I were adopting an Indian child, what could I tell the genetic parents to assuage their concerns within my limited abilities to do so?

This is how I phrased my concerns:

Since you mentioned God would you mind telling me what denomination your families are?

Do you currently belong to a church?

If you have children from these embryos how would you help them understand the Jewish part of their heritage?

I wondered what Jenny and Erin would say. I wondered what, if anything, they could say that would work for me. They were batting 1000 so far. Would this, the most important question yet, be a home run or a strike out?