Celebrating Jewish Identity: Simone & Mark Grismore
Simone and Mark are a couple of Millennials, now happily married. Their wedding was a filled with the typical cross-cultural challenges and interesting ways to navigate them. That's their story. Check out what they have to say about navigating an interfaith wedding.
"This sort of dialogue doesn’t start when you’re planning a wedding. Hopefully, you’ve been having these discussions about what Jewishness means for one of the partners.”
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Interview Transcript
Tuvya: Hi, everybody. Today we’re with Simone and Mark Grismore. I wanted to introduce and interview these two because of the challenges around planning a wedding ceremony. The questions and cultural challenges that we experience are common among Jewish-Gentile couples. Mark, I know that your family is from Wheaton, IL, and you’ve got your MBA just last month. Tell us a little bit about your family background and what you’re doing now.
Mark: Yeah, I grew up in Wheaton. I have a pretty normal suburban upbringing. Wheaton has something like the record for most churches per square mile, in the world, or something like that. So, if you lived there, odds are, you’re a Christian.
Tuvya: Did you have much association with Jewish people?
Mark: Almost none. There was, I think, one, or two kids who were Jewish at my elementary school and high school. Outside of that, though, nothing much.
Tuvya: And, full disclosure, I knew Simone’s mom and dad before they were married. So, Simone, tell us a little bit about your folks and your upbringing in New Jersey.
Simone: Yeah, so, my mom is Jewish. She grew up in a Jewish Conservative household. My father was not Jewish. He was Greek and raised in an agnostic household with a Jewish stepmother. Yup, Greek and Jewish. Both of my parents became Christians. They became believers in Jesus in their 30’s before they got married. So, they chose to raise us in a Christian household that also kept Jewish culture and customs. So, you know, this idea of interfaith, intercultural is something I was definitely raised in.
Tuvya: How about with their in-laws, their parents?
Simone: I would say, they weren’t very close with the in-laws. I didn’t know my grandparents very well. A lot of them had passed away on the younger end. So, extended family was really minimal. We really to our immediate family.
Tuvya: Was there pushback because your folks had intermarried?
Simone: Yeah, there was a little bit of pushback. One of my mom’s brothers didn’t like that she had married someone who wasn’t Jewish. And on my dad’s end, there were some broken relationships. There were some problems that had just really damaged relationships.
Tuvya: Okay. Did you know any Jewish people growing up in New Jersey?
Simone: Not in our area. At my school growing up, I was really one of the only Jewish kids. There were maybe two other Jewish kids, but it was pretty clear that my family did more Jewish things than the other families, and everyone knew it. However, every Saturday, we drove 45 minutes to go to a Messianic congregation. That’s a place of worship for Jewish people and believers in Jesus to come together and worship together. So that was really my main connection to Jewish people.
Tuvya: Okay. If people asked what was your identity, how would you describe yourself?
Simone: That’s changed at different stages of my life. There was a point in high school where I felt very strongly that I am Jewish. That is a strong identity for me. And as I get older, I find that it’s important for me to share both of those identities. I really feel that culturally I was born Jewish and it’s something I really identify with. And my faith in Jesus is also something I identify with.
Tuvya: I wanted to talk to you guys because you were married just nine months ago.
Simone: Oh, it was definitely a Covid wedding!
Mark: It was definitely a Covid wedding, yeah.
Tuvya: For anyone who slept through the last 18 months, there were many restrictions that made weddings very difficult in terms of measures required to protect people in gatherings. I’m sure, there were some interesting challenges that you had in planning that wedding. How about in the choice of a venue?
Mark: Yeah. So, we had originally set our sights on this really nice boat house in the suburbs. But they were limited on how many people we could have. It just didn’t make sense compared to how much money we would have had to pay for it. So, kind of in a scramble, we asked my parents if we could use their back yard. They have a huge backyard, and a nice big family room with a wall of windows. So, it was like this works great. They said, “Yes.” And they were glad that we asked because during the pandemic I moved back home. Simone had visited us, so we were hanging out for a while, and we just went from there.
Tuvya: Had the two of you ever thought about wanting to go someplace that had a religious connection? Or were you committed to picking only a neutral venue?
Simone: I definitely felt pretty strongly about just wanting to get married outside. And I felt that detaching it from a religious venue would just really simplify it and give us the freedom to have an intercultural ceremony.
Tuvya: Were you concerned about any impact on relatives if you picked the Messianic
congregation that you were attending or a church? Did that come into your considerations?
Mark: For me, no. Most of my relatives know Simone is Jewish but she’s also Christian. So, they all just trusted me. They’re like, well okay, she believes in Jesus, so that’s the biggest “Welcome in” factor that my extended family really cared about. So, from there, all the details were like, “That’s up to you guys.”
Tuvya: Sure, and Simone, what about for your extended family?
Simone: I mean on my family’s end, they were pretty supportive of what we wanted and how we wanted to do the ceremony. So, their questions were more about why we chose what we chose. There was no push back for our decisions. Everyone was coming regardless of the venue.
Tuvya: Okay. So, who did the wedding ceremony?
Simone: We had my brother-in-law, who’s an ordained minister. He is also half Jewish and a believer in Jesus, he led our ceremony for us. He’s from an intermarried family. He and my sister are both Jewish, and they are also an interracial couple. So, they really understood what we were going into. Our families really have a good grasp on the intercultural differences that we were going to face.
Tuvya: Here’s an interesting question. Simone, on which side of Mark were you standing during the wedding, if you can remember?
Simone: I was on the right side.
Tuvya: You were standing on Mark’s right hand?
Simone: Yes.
Tuvya: Simone, before the wedding plans did you have a sense about which side of Mark you
wanted to stand on?
Simone: No, I had no sense of it. I was going to do whatever David told us to do. Of all the
things to research, that wasn’t one.
Tuvya: Okay. And Mark, did you have any expectation?
Mark: No. I felt like traditionally, we did what was normal.
Tuvya: Traditionally, the bride stands on the groom’s left side at Christian weddings. And by tradition in a Jewish wedding, she’s on his right arm. It’s an interesting thing to notice when you look back at pictures. Were there other issues that the two of you talked about going into the wedding ceremony?
Simone: Well first and foremost, Mark had never been to a Jewish wedding. So, imagine trying to plan a Jewish wedding with your partner for whom everything is new. And I’d never anticipated that. So, everything was a discussion. Everything that I wanted to incorporate into the wedding needed to be reasoned, asking “why” and “here’s what it is.” So, planning was pretty involved for our ceremony. It was like everything was starting at ground zero. There wasn’t much that we both knew we wanted ahead of time. In fact, I can’t even think of anything that we agreed on right from the start in planning our ceremony.
Mark: Yeah, I always dreamed about getting married. The ceremony itself and how it would look, I figured would all fill in later.
Tuvya: Okay. Mark, can you tell me one or two issues that you had to discuss about the wedding plans?
Mark: Well before meeting Simone, my only interaction with anything Jewish was Hanukkah, like in pop-culture, and the movie Fiddler on the Roof. That was pretty much it. Of course, I’d read the Bible Old Testament. We had to pick out a Ketubah, and I had no idea what that was or why it was so special. We got one without a stated bridal price in the contract. (Laughter) But literally anything in the ceremony that was not in English or from the Bible was all brand new.
Tuvya: Any big surprises?
Mark: Nothing really. Simone’s good to say, “We need all these things.” So, we needed to construct the chuppah. And I’m like, “What’s a chuppah? Why do we need these?” And so, like through every aspect of it was like training wheels for me. I was asking a lot about, “What it’s for?” And “Why are we doing that?” I was like okay, done, done, done, got it.
Tuvya: You know, there’s something beautiful in that. We find very often that the Gentile of Christian partner is very interested in Jewish culture and Jewish things because of their exposure to the Old Testament. Even the Jewish background in their New Testament is familiar. So, it’s common among Christians to show great appreciation for Jewishness culture. In your case, you two are also able to share the same faith in the Messiah.
Tuvya: Was there anything that you took for granted, about the way things were going to be? Something that Mark seemed unprepared for?
Simone: I’d say that I expected some pushback, the questioning and needing me to explain because we’d been dating for two years. And I had invited him to join me, for almost all the Jewish holiday celebrations and lots of Shabbat dinners. He was always engaged, interested, and asking questions to expand his own knowledge. He has developed a deeper understanding. So, I confident that process would continue as we took up wedding plans. I knew that I would say, “I want to get married under a chuppah,” and he would say, “Sure, if you explain why.”
Tuvya: That’s terrific. Where did you come up with the list of things that you wanted in your wedding?
Simone: Well, I googled a couple different versions of what a Jewish wedding looked like. I crossed out what I already knew. Like, I didn’t want to walk seven circles around him after I walked down the aisle. There were a few things that I could say goodbye to, and a few things that I felt very strongly about. And then we did the same thing with the Protestant wedding stuff.
Tuvya: Okay, and the part about walking circles around him, is from a Jewish wedding ceremony where a bride circles her husband seven times.
Simone: Yes. It’s a beautiful tradition, but I knew it wasn’t for me.
Tuvya: And why wouldn’t that be for you?
Simone: Honestly, I don’t have a great reason. It’s just I wanted to say there are a few parts of a classic Jewish ceremony we’re gonna cut and we’re gonna make room for other new traditions of our own. I knew that I was gonna have to let go of a few things and that was one of them.
Tuvya: A lot of traditions get accumulated over 4,000 of tradition.
Simone: Exactly. If you try to keep everything you did in your holidays, and then you had to explain what and why you were doing it, you will cut out a few things, too.
Tuvya: Mark, is there anything that you would advise Christians who were planning part of a Jewish wedding that would help them?
Mark: I would say start planning early. Learn as much as you can about everything and anything Jewish related. I did, and it worked out fine. But have patience. Try to be open to learning new stuff. My wedding experience was completely different from what I’d imagined as I grew up. I didn’t imagine wearing a kippah (a Jewish man’s head covering) because I didn’t know what that was. So, just be open to learning new things. Trust that your partner has the best in mind for your special day.
Tuvya: Those are great suggestions. The openness to another culture is risky. It’s a struggle because all communication is cross-cultural. There is give and take in growing our understanding of what our partners mean. I also think your point about believing that your partner has the best of intentions for your day is essential. Trust is built on willingness to think
they’re not trying to make you look silly. They honestly want to do something that expresses meaning for your lives together. Simone, you have something healthy going on in being able to look at some traditions and say, “Well, that’s not really me or us.” It is important to know you don’t really have anything to prove. I’m sure that’s helpful for our listeners. Anything else?
Simone: Remember that this sort of dialogue doesn’t start when you’re planning a wedding. Hopefully, you’ve been having these discussions about what Jewishness means for one of the partners. And conversations about what it means to be spiritual don’t end with the wedding. That is something that’s ongoing. We’re regularly discussing, how we’re uphold our cultures, our values, and how we can continue growing together spiritually.
Tuvya: That’s perfect. I’m grateful for your time today. Thanks Simone and Mark. Shalom and blessings to you
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If you or someone you know would like support in your relationship, write to tuvya@jewishgentilecouples.com.
