Grace versus (Matrilineal) Descent, Part II

My friend Chagrin posts a very interesting comment, not least because it anticipates my next post in this thread.

She writes: "WASPs go to church for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is finding a life-partner or a business partner. They network."

Interesting, isn't it, that skeptic, humanist, agnostic that I am, I hung out in the chatroom on JDate.com, a Jewish dating website, married a (very) Jewish woman I met there in a Jewish ceremony (Note 1), and have expanded my connection -- certainly mostly cultural -- to Judaism through her, her enormous, very Jewish, family, and the Jewish community in her hometown? (Note 2.) It's even true, even though, as I say elsewhere, I married a a shayne maydeleh from Barranquilla, Colombia, that her family and my family are from the same area of Eastern Europe, then the Pale of Settlement, but now Poland.

More in my next post.

Note 1. I actually married my shayne maydeleh wife in two ceremonies: one civil, one religious. This is one of those things (the other was having a woman rabbi officiate at my bar mitzvah) that made much more sense to me, philosophically, after the fact. After all: what part of "Congress shall make no law" don't they understand?

Note 2. I even represent the Centro Israelita Filantropico, the Jewish community center in Barranquilla (and I have the permission of its President to disclose that -- but there's another blog post there).