Latest / The Uncommons / Interfaith Marriage: Answering Your Real Questions About Making It Work | Ep 24
Transcript
- Parisa Bady: This is a special QA session about inner faith marriage. If somebody asks your kids, are you Jewish? What do they say? Instead of the Quran, we had a poetry book from one of our famous Iranian poets. What do we do for high holidays with our families? How do we bring them together if they celebrate different holidays? One of my employees is a Muslim and he's in just in absolute dire straits because He's in love with a woman that is not Muslim. Our marriage is invalid in the eyes of God. We should never be allowed to be married. When we grew up in Iran, most of our friends were Muslim. Wouldn't it be easier for your family to be more unified if you converted? Hi, welcome to another episode of the On Commons podcast, where we discuss what it really takes to build something meaningful. I'm Parisa. Paige. This is a special QA session about inner faith marriage. We had an episode recorded months ago and we talked about me being from a Muslim family, you from a Jewish family, and we're getting married, all the challenges we had, everything we went through, and how despite all the differences and challenges we could maintain a relationship and grow from there. And how our challenges kind of became a stepping stone for us for one more thing to overcome and get closer. And we got a lot of comments. ⁓ yeah. A lot of people saying that our marriage is invalid in the eyes of God. We should never be allowed to be married. Your kids are not Jewish because the mom is not Jewish. Some people took it as far as saying that I should not be alive because I have done this. Biggest sin ever to marry a Jewish guy and so forth. But there were also some genuine comments. A lot of you that reached out personally and asked for confidentiality, of course. So we will keep it confidential, but asked questions about how you can keep your relationship and you are in inner faith situations and you genuinely love someone and have a great relationship. But there is a problem being from different faith and different set of beliefs and different religion. I think we got over ten thousand comments about this. A lot of it was hate comments, so we'll just throw those away. And then we have all these good ones that I put here and let's pick some and respond to them. Yeah, great. But can I say something? Yes, please. I had one of My friends called me up and goes, Hey, listen, I have ⁓ one of my employees is a Muslim and he's in just in absolute dire straits because he's in love with a woman that is not Muslim and is just so torn and he just doesn't know what to do. And listen to the podcast. I didn't tell you this. ⁓ but he's like, you know, thank you so much because this this kid who was like I don't think it's a kid, it's a full on Adult. But is actually made some decisions about his life to be with this woman. And which is amazing. I'm so happy to hear that. But also all those people, I don't want to exclude all the people that hate comments about us about this, because I understand their point of view. And I think it's really interesting that in this era of the world where people kill each other over religion and being able to have such faith driven decisions. It's I understand it. It's like an absolute faith. And I learned something new. I learned that I didn't know this. That ⁓ Quran says Muslim women are not allowed to marry a man who's not Muslim. But Muslim men can marry Christians and like like two or three other faiths. I don't know about Jewish, but A lot of comments said that, so I got educated. But it's like e accepting the religion with absolute certainty that whatever it says, hundred percent. I live by that. I mean, I do not live hundred percent by Islam laws because I'm not covering my hair and my body. So as you can see. But and you're not living by some extreme like the Jewish ⁓ Hasidic Jews, laws. So we're not a hundred percent in that category, in case somebody didn't notice. But let's go through the questions. Okay. Ready? Yeah. A lot of people asked about our wedding. ⁓ yeah. What kind of efficient you had? How did you go based on this faith or that faith or different traditions from this religion or that religion? And I think we had a very beautiful and everybody who is there told us that we had the most beautiful ceremony that I've ever seen. It was like a mixture of everything, but it was so ⁓ non-religious, but it had some like we had the whole thing, the sofre with Persian Muslim way of doing it. And I don't know if it's just Muslim or Zoroastrian or whatever it is, but you know, with a bunch of candles and it was just beautiful. And instead of the Quran, we had A poetry book from one of our famous Iranian poets, which you know, you know, we both love and it was beautiful. And then we also had a Ketubah, yeah, which was covered with the Jewish thing, and then I broke the glass. Yeah. ⁓ which was you know, it was amazing. It was b really bringing two different cultures and religions together. Yeah, yeah. So we basically took whatever was important to either one of us from each side and we mixed them together. Yeah. And the offician that we picked was not religious. So we didn't go with a rabbi, we didn't go with an imam. We went with this lady. So each one of us had to fill out this paperwork and send it to her about what's value for us separately, what we respect in our culture separately. And then she basically mixed them both together. Right. And her point was that They are from different cultures, there are from different religions, but look at all this that we can find in common because love is a common language. So it was it was very beautiful. That was just yeah. I think there's a lot of value in accepting differences and bringing it together and making the most out of it. I think a lot of these religions have a lot in common. They do. ⁓ which is belief, doing good things, doing kind things and thus But the bottom line is. What do we do for high holidays with our families? How do we bring them together if they celebrate different holidays? Jewish holidays are all about family being together and eating. Right. Some prayers. But our family is not super religious and the gist of it is get all the family together and celebrate something. It's usually a celebration. ⁓ so we try to do that but sometimes we don't. Rosh Hashanah's coming up and we're not gonna be there. We're gonna be on a trip together, you and I. If we didn't have a previous commitment, we would for sure do it. Any reason for celebration, we don't miss it. That's right. And we bring both sides families together. Yeah. And your family has been very welcoming to mine, mine is welcoming to yours. So we just bring everybody together and celebrate. And I think it's just about respect. You know, like my mom doesn't show up to your family's traditions and be like, What is this about? She she's happy to be there, she's respectful. She participates she participates and the other way around, like we keep it respectful. It's not about ⁓ I'm not from that like there's no separation. We try to take the separations out. We celebrate the Persian New Year, which is much bigger in in your family than it was ours, but when we grew up in Iran Most of our friends were Muslim. You know, we celebrate all the celebrations. So we there were the questions about Idan Ramadan too. I I you you fast. I fast on Ramadan one one day. But I do it because a good Muslim friend of mine who's very Muslim, I love this guy, I respect this guy. He is probably the most one of the most incredible doctors I know. He would actually took care of my mom, and as she was dying. And he would go and pray for my mom. But he had prayers. Like who does that? So I I fast with him one day and we go break you know, break our fast together and ⁓ we have a beautiful relationship and I love that guy. And I don't fast for Ramadan. I've never done it since I was a child, 'cause I'm very petite and I cannot lose weight. And if I don't eat for that period of time I will lose weight and it's not good. Yeah. So I just can't do it. And also when I was a child, my mom wouldn't let me 'cause a lot of times Ramadan would be in the summer and you cannot drink water for a entire month during the day. So and there are long days during the summer. So it just became a thing that Parisa cannot fast no matter what. And we don't do it with our children either 'cause I don't want ⁓ not to drink. We live in the desert. We live to drink water. Yeah. I fast for the for the Jewish fasts and we do some some Passover stuff, right? We try not to eat bread and I don't know. But the kids eat it. The kids eat it. But I don't know. Yeah. At what age are they supposed to not do? Whatever, twelve, thirteen. I mean, but we follow some of both. ⁓ maybe a little bit more towards the the Jewish stuff because of the fact that it always brings the family together and we miss our family so much. The entire family gets together and everybody's there anyway and they won't miss it. This is more of a cultural thing. Yeah. Memories for the kids too. Yeah. So the next question was about a lot of people ask about kids. That what do you do that your kids won't be confused when they grow up? If somebody asks them, Are you Jewish or Muslim? like what's your religion? What do they say? They certainly know that we're the dad is Jewish. They they know that. And they know that I'm from a Muslim family. And they know that mom is from a Muslim family. Boy is going to Christian school. He has just started Christian And he's he was telling us about Noah and the what he's learning. And they go to church every week. And we we don't we don't stop that. We're like great, go learn. We respect all religions. That's what we try to teach ⁓ Yeah. That be respectful of differences. You don't have to be exactly the same and have exactly the same beliefs and exactly the same faith with someone to respect them. You can be actually very different and still be respectful, still find good in the other religion. Like we don't practice Christianity by any means but We respect it. We respect it. And everything he reads in Bible, it's common, you know, it's about love and humanity and Kindness and doing good by others. So why not? Yeah. Why not learn it? But I think there is a sense of community and identity. If somebody asked me, wouldn't it be easier for your family to be more unified if you converted? Then the kids would say we're from a Jewish family, you go to synagogue, like it would they would have that sense of belonging to a specific identity and culture. And I think that's what we are missing, honestly. We don't belong to a religious group. I know a lot of people, Christians who go to church, their best friends and their community is through church. A lot of people who belong to a synagogue, they have a very tight community. We don't have that. Right, right. So that's what our kids really miss. Things might change by the way. And we have a lot of Mormon friends, by the way. And we spend a lot of time with our Mormon friends and I love their values. I love the fact that they're sending their kids off for two years. Wish I could do it with our kids and I I might find a way to do it. I think it's just so evolving. And ⁓ I think I think the line for me is when religion separates people. Yeah. That is that is where the line is. If it starts separating and say you can't do this and this and this because the other person is Muslim or Jewish or Mormon or whatever, Christian, whatever whatever it is, that for me is like I want none of that. I w I don't want us to judge people. I don't want my kids to judge people. Because usually these things are inherited. You don't choose in your mother's womb what kind of religion you're gonna be born to. So Separating people based on that is basically separating them based on their color. This our point of view, and you know, for all the viewers ⁓ the listeners that were absolutely anti what we're doing because they have absolute belief that that's the right way, that's the only way, and that's what it is. I respect that. I respect that too. Even the Mormon church, like they all of them they they stick together and they marry within. They have no harm for anybody else. They come, we have a Shabbat dinner. Once in a while. Not every week, but we have it once in a while. And they come to Shabbat dinner with us. It's just I find it absolutely beautiful. Personally, I made a rule in my life. I am not gonna allow my religion to segregate me from anybody. And I dated Jewish women, I dated Muslim women, I dated Christian women, my ex fiance was Christian, and then my third fiance who was Muslim, I ended up marrying. Diversity and inclusion. Next question is about If somebody asks your kids, are you Jewish? What do they say? Do they say yes or no? We had a friend coming over and they're Jewish and their kids go to Jewish school. So we had candles for Friday night and they saw the eight candle holder, ⁓ which I don't know their name, and they looked at it and they're like, ⁓ you're Jewish? And my daughter looked and she's like, looking at me and looking at them. And looking at me again. And then she said, We celebrate yes. So I was a little bit caught off guard too. We didn't think about it. And the way she answered it, she I was like, ⁓ that's a good one. Yes, we celebrate. And we celebrate Christmas. And we celebrate Christmas. We buy we buy gifts. Any reasons to give ⁓ gifts. They love it. Things might change but for the time being, it's it's all working out. People always say wait till your kids get a little bit bigger, they need an identity, and maybe things will change at that time. Our oldest is eight and we are he's going to Christian school now, so we'll see how that turns out. We chose that school because of the friend, which I think is such a valuable thing. That's the thing, right? We had something that was very valuable for this child to have this friend in his life and be in the same school together. Because he's learning so much from him, he's so much more confident, he's coming out of his shell, he's trying new things. Like this friend has such amazing influence on him. And we chose a Christian school because this friend is going to. But if we were a little more strict and rigid, we would be like, No, you can't go to Christian school. I don't want you to study Bible when we have nothing to do with it. Even though going to this school is serving this kid in many other ways. Yes. So we basically decided have decided to put away a rigidity throughout this whole process and find what really serves us best and our family best and what brings us together rather than what separates us. Yeah. And I I think at one point if we really feel like our our children's identities causing an issue, then we could talk about at that point as a how we want to live our life. We don't identify and we don't restrict our love. depending on religion, we might restrict our love on depending on what they believe. Mm-hmm. Right? If their belief system is wrong. If their values are wrong. That's how we choose to identifying our values is more important than identifying our religion. And that's what we did. So before we got married, we sat down together for a few hours and we wrote our value system in a documentary. I call it the Bible. Our Bible. Our Bible, yeah. So we created our own Bible. Yeah. And we basically went through every scenario. We we follow the structure of family when it comes to friendships, when it comes to even partying, when it comes to celebrations, when it comes to holidays, when it comes to vacations, when it comes to kids. So we wrote down everything that was important to me, everything that was important to Paige. And then we went through all of it and came up with rules for our relationship. So we made our own Bible that's meets both of our needs. I think we should update our Bible. We review it. Yeah. If you want a template for it, I'll be more than happy to share. A lot of people ask me why didn't you convert? Why didn't one of you convert? And I think I answered this in the last video too, but I'm gonna say mine. I think your family really wanted me to convert. Your dad really, really wanted me to convert. And it was a hurdle, it was it was hard to say no, but it didn't feel right. I didn't want to convert to a religion that I don't 100% deep in my heart believe in. Because the way my thought process was, what would I tell my children? Because I gotta tell this story to them one day. And I don't wanna tell them I converted my faith and my belief and my religion. Because somebody pressured me. Because I don't want him to use that as an example that, ⁓ it's okay to change your identity or whatever because somebody's pressuring you. I didn't want him to think you can change your religion or your identity or your beliefs because you just love somebody. Like I didn't want my daughter to come and say, I love him, so I want to change my name. You know, she was asking me the other day, she's like, Do people change their names? I'm like, some do. She's like, why? I I don't know. I don't even know what I told her. But they they're they have questions, right? So now the last thing I want ⁓ to know is that it's okay to change your religion because somebody's pressuring you. Not because you down deep inside believe in it, but because you're in a situation. Like you're in love with someone or someone is forcing you or someone is demanding it and you can't say no. If I really get to a point that I'm like, I love this religion. And I truly believe in it. Let me change my let me convert, then that's like from me. That's right. But me meeting you and wanting to get married and converting is like I'm doing it for you. Yeah. And I don't want that to be an example for my kids. And I didn't want you to convert. Mm-hmm. The rabbi that we know came and pushed my dad and my dad talked to Parisa and you know she talked to me and back and forth. I'm like, and I'm not gonna convert because of that. There's no way. I grew up as a as a Jew kid in a Muslim country. You know, his kids wouldn't sit next to me because I was a dirty Jew. Right? And I hated that racism. And I wanna have nothing to do with anything that is causes segregation of human beings because it is painful. And I think that's a much bigger value to teach our kids that the differences are beautiful. We respect each other, we respect everybody, and we always find something in common. You know, we might not agree on things, but we find a common path. That we were both happy with it. Not compromising, but getting creative. It was a hurdle in front of us to get married. It was a little we called it a little bump in the road. We got into a tradition of calling our problems a little bump, because then they feel a little easier to overcome. So inconvenience. And overcoming it brought us together much much closer. And you know, for Those of you who are in a similar situation and you need to overcome this situation, it won't be the only thing that you overcome together. You know, it might be the first one, it might be one of the first few ones, and it might be the biggest one at the moment, but staying in a committed relationship for long term, things come up. And this would be one that would set the tone for overcoming bigger challenges one day. So it's a good start. Yeah. It's a good good challenge or problem or bump in a row to solve. And I agree with you. I I think we've had a bunch of these by the way, not just one, but this is one of them. And how you work together to get over it and how you unite as opposed to segregate is the biggest lesson that we've learned. And now people around us that thought that we're absolutely crazy and there's no way this is gonna work and now they're like, ⁓ my God, this is actually working and I don't think anybody would admit at any time that they were wrong. ⁓ but I feel the energy from those people and they look up to us. There are hard times within it too, because there are times that we're talking about it last night that people that are more religious from Jewish side, like they're saying prayers and if a Muslim person walks in they're like, ⁓ no, no, no, we wanna right. There are like times that are a little inconvenient and hard too, but Hey, it's a part of life. That's a little bump that you and I think what we have is a lot more worth than these little things that we have to deal with. But thank you for your interest in this. If you are in this situation and you still have other questions, like I said, there were like thousands of questions. If you do have any other questions that we didn't cover, please leave a comment or send a DM. I would love to talk to you. I've been Sending voice messages to everybody in on Instagram DM and I'm like answering as much as I can because I just would hate for people to fall apart because of something that they didn't have any control over. Right. And I think love should bring us together more. We don't need more separation. We need more unity. Celebrate the things that we have in you have in common and celebrate the unity that that your differences bring. And being able to oversee the differences, the unity becomes so much more beautiful and grander. And it's special. Yeah. You know, it's something that a lot of people can't overcome. And wh once you do overcome it, it becomes more special and more unique in its own way. Love you all.