I’m a Chinese American Married to a Jew, But Our Marriage Isn’t Trendy

By Lynnette Li-Rappaport for Kveller

I am often met by a “knowing look” when I (a Chinese American female) share that my husband is Jewish.

“Oh yeah, that’s a thing,” says [insert well-meaning person’s name here]. And you know, according to all sorts of sources–including the New York Times–it does seem to be a thing. It appears I’m one half of a “marriage trend” that’s sweeping the nation, or at least High Holiday Services. (A professor once mentioned to me that her synagogue had Asian women “sprouting up” all over the congregation.) People usually cite the most popular examples, e.g., Mark Zuckerberg and “his Asian wife,” Maury Povich and Connie Chung, Woody Allen and “his very young Asian wife.” (Hmmm, Connie excluded, I’d say we Asian women are getting the shaft in terms of name recognition. But this is all beside my point.)

Our marriage isn’t trendy. At first glance, we might fit the bill. But ours is not a Jewish boy meets Asian girl, and due to a number of conveniently shared values–“tight-knit families, money saving, hard work, and educational advancement” included–they fall in love kind of story.

We met in the choir room our freshman year of high school, where we rehearsed for The Sound of Music. As freshmen, we were lowly chorus members–he was a Jewish Nazi, and I, an evangelical Christian Chinese Austrian nun. Oh, and in the “So Long, Farewell” number, we got to put on fancy clothes and sing “Goodbye!” as the Von Trapp children marched off to bed. Our friendship began, developed, and thrived while we acted and sang over the course of those four years. It continued as each of us dated our own high school sweethearts. And it deepened over the next four years despite being on opposite sides of the country, he out at Stanford, I at Western Michigan.

People sometimes ask us, why didn’t you date sooner, wasn’t love in the air? We usually smile at each other, then give an innocuous “it just wasn’t the right time yet” sort of answer. But here’s the truth. I think I may have loved him for quite some time–maybe it started back in high school–but the faith gap between us was more than just a gap, it was a fiery-bottomed chasm.

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