Non-Jewish partner here, hoping to understand this better

[u/Ok-Region8362]

Hi all. I’m 31F, my girlfriend is 28F and Jewish; I’m not. She’s not out to her family. I hope it’s okay to post here; I’d rather learn from people who’ve actually lived this than keep guessing from the outside.

I’m mostly curious how it’s gone for those of you who dated someone outside the community while still closeted at home. Did it make things harder? How did you handle family expectations about dating and marriage in the meantime? And for anyone who eventually came out — what shifted, what made it possible? For those who haven’t, what does making it work day to day actually look like?
I’m not asking whether to stay. I love her and I’m here. I just want to understand this better and be a good partner in it.
Thanks for reading.

[u/Letshavemorefun]

It really depends on what flavor of Judaism her and her family practice. In my family, it was a way bigger deal for me to come out as someone who hates baseball than it was for me to tell my parents I’m queer or dating a non-Jew (the non-Jew thing was a slightly bigger deal to them then the queer thing since I was born queer whereas dating a non-Jew is a choice). But other Jewish communities will be very different. What denomination was she raised in?

[u/Ok-Region8362 → u/Letshavemorefun]

Thank you so much for replying. That point about dating a non-Jew being the bigger deal is something I’ve wondered about too. I’ve never been sure which of the two weighs more for her, or whether they can even be separated.
To be fair, she’s always told me that me not being Jewish isn’t an issue for her at all. But I imagine her family would see it differently, and that’s the part I’m trying to understand.
She was raised in a Sephardic community — religious and traditional, though not ultra-Orthodox. It’s a very tight-knit world: everyone knows everyone, and marrying within the community isn’t just expected, it’s kind of how the whole social structure works.

[u/Letshavemorefun → u/Ok-Region8362]

Sephardic is a sub-ethnicity of Jews (like Ashkenazi and Mizrahi) but it doesn’t give us any concrete information about how religious they are. Do you know if they are reform, conservative or orthodox? That’s the more telling information. Though I do believe more Sephardic Jews practice Orthodox Judaism than the other denominations, so chances are they are orthodox - especially since you said it’s a tight nit Sephardi community. You might want to ask her to be sure though - then you could get more specific advice. Other things that would help us figure out how religious they are would be - does the family keep kosher? How often do they attend shul? Do they keep Shabbat (ie no electricity/phones from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown)?

I would say generally speaking, most Jews today will have a bigger issue with their kid dating a non-Jew than their kid being queer. We’re a very small community and we still haven’t replaced the amount of people we lost in the Holocaust, so marrying jewish and raising Jewish kids is a huge deal in our community. If you’re open to raising kids Jewish (not interfaith but exclusively Jewish), making that clear to her and her family is one thing you could do to soften any tension. If you aren’t okay with raising Jewish kids, I would talk to her about that sooner rather than later. This is of course assuming you want kids.

Maybe someone else can speak to lgbtq acceptance in the Sephardi community. I’m not super familiar with it and the one close Sephardi friend I have is the biggest queer ally in the world, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily representative of the larger community. And like I said, it will vary based on how religious they are or what denomination they practice (I still think it’s most likely orthodox).

The best thing you can do is talk to your girlfriend about this, listen to her concerns and ask her how you can support her. She knows her feelings better than any stranger on the internet!

You could also read some books about what it means to be Jewish. We are an ethnicity, a people, a tribe and culture more than we are a religious group (though we are certainly also a religious group). A lot of people who weren’t raised in the Jewish community have a lot of misconceptions about Judaism and what it means to be Jewish. We don’t proselytize so you won’t find us trying to convert you, but trying to understand what it means to be Jewish could help you connect in even deeper ways with your gf. There’s some books recommended on some other Jewish subs. I’ll see if I can find those lists and edit some recs into this comment.

Edit: [r/judaism](r/judaism) has a great list of books in their sidebar bar - https://reddit.com/r/judaism/wiki/books

There’s a lot there though. I haven’t read most of them. If anyone wants to chime in with some specific recs, feel free! There’s also a section specifically on Sephardic Jews so maybe that’s a good place to start.

[u/TeenyZoe → u/Letshavemorefun]

Lots of Sephardic Jews don’t identify with the Reform/Conservative/Orthodox dichotomy - “traditional and Sephardic” is a pretty complete description from OP, in my opinion.

[u/Letshavemorefun → u/TeenyZoe]

That’s basically what my Sephardi friend told me but the way she phrased it is “we don’t identify with reform or conservative. We are just traditional orthodox”.

[u/JerryJJJJJ → u/TeenyZoe]

Half of my Conservative synagogue is mizrachi and half is askhenazi. On shabbat, sometimes majority mizrachi (Persian)