Meeting in Israel: Sahar & Maria Sadlovsky
Sahar is an Israeli Sabra and Maria is his thoughtful and gracious wife from Sweden. These two Millennials couldn't be from more different cultural worlds. However, they've found joy in daily discovery and the challenges of a complex cross-cultural relationship.
"What unites us and what made me to connect with Maria’s parents is our faith.”
Listen on…
Interview Transcript
Tuvya: This is Tuvya Zaretsky with Jewish-Gentile Couples, your host for “He Said...Then She
Said—Stories from Jewish-Gentile Couples from around the World.” I’m delighted today to be
with Sahar and Maria Sadlovsky who are speaking with us from Tel Aviv, Israel. You may have
seen them on the banner of our Jewish-Gentile Couples website. So, Maria, you are from
Sweden, and you grew up in a Lutheran family.
Maria: My family was not part of the state church, which is quite liberal. We were a small
congregation of not more than 100.
Tuvya: And is that kind of a congregation the minority in Sweden today?
Maria: Yes, definitely, because it’s not like in the US where there’s a lot of Christians. In
Sweden, most people don’t really have a religion at all, I think.
Tuvya: Okay. Before you ever met Sahar, had you ever been to Israel?
Maria: I had, maybe six years before I met him, I volunteered in a kibbutz in the north, a small
community where people live. They had fields where they grow things. I think I worked there for
three months. I always wanted to go to Israel, since I was little actually.
Tuvya: Why?
Maria: My parents and my grandparents and the generations before them were Christians, and
they loved the Jewish people. They believed in the Bible. So, it gave me a love for Israel and a
curiosity to meet the people living in Israel now.
Tuvya: Did you ever share that with people on the kibbutz?
Maria: No. Actually at that time, it was a period where I didn’t really want to be a Christian. I
kind of tried to run away and ignore everything that had to do with God. You can’t really live on
your parents’ faith. You have to figure it out yourself. So, that’s what I did. I was maybe 24. I
realized then I still believe in God. I can’t run away from that.
Tuvya: Sahar, you appear to be like a Sephardi Jewish guy, but your name is Ashkenazi. For
our readers, Sephardi Jews are from the Mediterranean Basin, and Ashkenazi Jews are from
Eastern Europe. Where is your family from?
Sahar: My family, going back three generations, are all born in Israel. That includes my
grandpa. He was one of those who helped establish and develop the country. He came from
Eastern Europe. My mom’s family came from Aden, which was a British colony in Yemen. She’s
considered Mizrachi Jewish, Middle Eastern
Tuvya: And they met in what would have been Mandate Palestine. Do you know where your
family from Eastern Europe came from?
Sahar: Yeah, my great grandpa, he was born in Austria. His family name was Gold. Right
before the First World War, he changed his name to Sadlovsky and moved to Ukraine. There,
he met my grandma. They moved to the Turkish area in Mandate Palestine.
Tuvya: So, you were born and raised in Israel. What did you want to become when you were
growing up?
Sahar: I wanted to play football, soccer. I played for 10 years from ages 9 to 19. I put all my
effort and my energy, and my hope was to become a professional player. It didn’t work out.
Tuvya: I’ve only seen it from the outside, and I saw the level of passion among Israeli soccer
fans. Football over there is very, very serious. What happened at age 19? You decided you
weren’t going to be able to play professional soccer. What did you do then?
Sahar: I got an offer to work in sales in Germany, in Munich. So, I moved to Munich for a couple
of months and to Berlin, and I worked in sales. I sold oil paintings. I went door to door and
knocked on people’s doors and sold them paintings. It helped me to be more outgoing, and that
helped me a lot in my social life.
Tuvya: Okay. Another thing that would help you in your social life would be your language skills.
So, you speak Hebrew and English. Did you learn German?
Sahar: No! And in fact, I didn’t even speak English when I went to Germany. I only learned the
speech that I should present to the people I’m engaged with. And being there, I improved my
English slowly, by slowly.
Tuvya: Okay. So, Maria how and where did you meet this guy?
Maria: I met him in Israel. It’s kind of funny because I’m in ulpan now, in Hebrew studies, and I
think like half of my class are girls who actually met their boyfriends or husband as tourists in
Israel. And I am one of those girls. I was a tourist. And on one of my last days, I visited a
church, a Lutheran church in Tel Aviv. After the service, I met Sahar. And we got to know each
other. It turned out that the day after, we were a couple. So, we went really fast.
Tuvya: Wow! How long after that did you guys get married?
Maria: One and a half years. I had to finish my studies back in Sweden.
Tuvya: So, Sahar, how did you come to be at that Lutheran church in Tel Aviv?
Sahar: Well, how did I end up in a church period? After Germany, I traveled to Ireland and then
back to Israel. I’d stayed in touch with my football friends. Some of them are Arab Christians.
They talked about their faith, and through them I got interested in reading the texts of their
religion. Looked on Google to find out what my friends believe. I felt stupid that I don’t know who
Jesus is. I wanted to know about Him.
Tuvya: So, you grew up in Israel, the land of the Bible. But you didn’t know anything about
Jesus? You didn’t learn about Him or in your Israeli school?
Sahar: Very superficially, just a couple of pages in history in the third grade. But we don’t really
know who Jesus was or what was written about Him in the New Testament. Or, if you are a
person who is attending synagogue and listen to rabbis, then you hear more about Him, but in a
very different way than what history has to say about Him, that is, the New Testament.
Tuvya: And you were really close with the guys you played soccer with. It seems the wonderful
thing about soccer is it doesn’t matter what somebody’s ethnicity is or what their cultural
background is, when you come together to play, you bond as a team. So, these guys were
talking to you about their faith, their Christian faith, and that was a whole new thing to you.
Sahar: They didn’t speak so much about Jesus, but I think it was more about their virtues. They
made me to be very jealous of their character. They were such better people than me. I can say
that it made me astonished.
Tuvya: Was the word Christian a positive thing in Israeli culture?
Sahar: It’s just something foreign for us. Christians in many ways means not being Jewish and
another religion, not bad, not good. It’s something that it’s not relating to you.
Tuvya: Yeah, it’s the same in the diaspora. I grew up in North America, and in the Jewish home
that I grew up in, both my parents were from the East Coast. My mom was from New York; my
father was from Toronto. When we talked about the Christians, it was synonymous with the
word Gentile. So, you are provoked to think by your soccer friends, those non-Jewish guys,
whose character strikes you to start looking for what it was that they believe?
Sahar: Yes! I was too uncomfortable to ask them about Jesus. So, I looked in Google,
searched, and then the New Testament came up in Hebrew. And it really stirred something in
my head, my thinking. I thought about Jesus. I didn’t understand why I never knew anything
about such an interesting person. And from interesting person, it became Savior. By the end of
reading the New Testament, I realized that He is the answer for the very thing that I always
wanted. He’s the Messiah. That’s the conclusion that I joyfully arrived at after reading the first
biography of Jesus, the Gospel of Matthew.
Tuvya: And it brought you to be with other Messianic Jews at a Lutheran church where you met
Maria. So, Maria, what happened after those couple days? You figure this guy is in a church,
he’s an Israeli, you find yourself as a couple. How long did that last?
Maria: From the first day, I was very sure that he was the one I was supposed to be with. And I
had made some really bad decisions about boyfriends before. But I had never been so sure
before. Actually, I prayed about it one week before I met him. I prayed to God, “I’m tired of trying
to make my decisions to find everything out myself. Now You’re going to have to help me. And if
You’re God and You care about me, then I’ll leave it up to You to put someone in front of me. If
I’m supposed to marry someone, put him in front of me, and take away the doubts that I will
know that this is right.” And it actually happened. Still today, I know that was true. It wasn’t an
illusion or something for me.
Tuvya: Maria, you’re from a European world that is very diplomatic, very gracious, and Israelis
are very direct and penetrating in their curiosity. Has that affected your interactions?
Maria: Yeah, it has. Slowly, slowly. Swedes are, I think, very, very polite and considerate and
don’t interrupt. They wait in the line. Israelis are the opposite. I realized that after some time
here. If you’re going to survive in Israel, you might as well start changing. And you have to start
interrupting because otherwise you would never get to talk. You don’t let people jump past you
in the line. You have to be more direct. It saves time and effort.
Tuvya: There’s a certain endearing quality about it, once you get used to the fact that it’s not
necessarily anything personal. They have just culturally developed this as a way of interacting.
Maria: Yeah, and when you think about it, all these different people from all over world, with
different languages and different cultures. There’s no wonder that you have to be direct for
things to work like they do here.
Tuvya: So, Sahar, Maria’s worked hard to adapt and survive within Israeli culture. What have
you picked up from her culture that’s had an impact and effect on you?
Sahar: The first thing is so much less stressful about things. I experienced it during our last
vacation in Sweden. Even during the COVID-19 crisis, people were calm. They weren’t over
stressed about it like I think it’s here in Israel. The way they deal with stuff and their calmness is
something that I appreciated very much.
Tuvya: People say about the Jewish people that we’re just like everybody else but more so.
There’s a greater intensity in Jewish life. What was it like for you relating to Maria’s family?
Sahar: When I was on my way to Sweden for the first time to meet Maria’s family, I was a bit
nervous. How would they treat me? Is there any code of behavior that I needed to adopt? I think
many spouses feel like that when they come to meet the parents of their spouse for the first
time. But when you come from Israel to an exact cultural opposite, you’re even more nervous
about it. But they embraced me very well. I was made to feel like I was at home.
Tuvya: Did the fact that you share the same faith have an impact on your connection with her
family?
Sahar: It did. Yes. In fact, it’s the main thing that impacts my relationship with my wife, with
Maria. The culture is one thing, and it’s very important, but what unites us and what made me to
connect with Maria’s parents is our faith—is when we look at the world in the same way, when
we hope for the same thing, when we believe in the same thing, when we know our problems,
that we’re not perfect, and we’re in need of help and compassion. This is what the acceptance
and understanding is based on.
Tuvya: Spiritual harmony with a couple is extraordinarily important. We know that when people
come from different cultures, different backgrounds, different religious backgrounds, that the
challenges are enormous. Sociology tells us that 75% of those marriages from different religious
backgrounds without finding some harmony results in either dissatisfaction or divorce. And
when they share the same faith, that statistic goes away. That’s why we’re so concerned to
serve people to find spiritual harmony. Now, Sahar, what would you guess is the Messianic
population in Israel?
Sahar: I don’t know. I’ve heard different numbers from five to ten thousand Jews who believe in
Jesus, and some say it reaches the twenty or the twenty-five. But one thing is for sure, that it’s
increasing every year in numbers.
Tuvya: Not only is it increasing numerically, but it’s increasing across the population as your
generation and those who are coming behind you are entering the military. They’re taking their
place in civic activity and in economic and business life and technology and medicine. It’s been
amazing to see that happening. Maria, have you learned a lot about Israeli culture?
Maria: Yeah. I am very curious about the Jewish holidays. Sahar comes from a traditional
family. They keep the traditions, and it makes me very interested to understand why they do
things and what do they believe.
Tuvya: So, because it’s common in the community to keep Jewish festivals and holidays, you’re
able to do that as part of your household, as a Messianic household. You’re also involved in a
Lutheran church. Is that right?
Maria: Yeah. So, the Lutheran church, a bit part of the people coming there, are not Jewish. So,
it makes it very mixed. So, we get two different church cultures.
Tuvya: Sure. We become culturally sensitized and understand better that all communication is
cross cultural. And it takes learning and growing from our experience together. The reason I
was so glad that we were able to feature you here is that you really represent a lot of the need
to learn from cross-cultural communication and to grow in understanding of one another and to
find spiritual harmony
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If you or someone you know would like support in your relationship, write to tuvya@jewishgentilecouples.com.
