Society gives young people job skills, but it doesn’t prepare them for marriage, says Naomi Schwartz, creator of a premarital workshop sponsored by the Peninsula branch of the S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services.
“People get married but they’re not taught how to communicate, problem solve, disagree without attacking each other,” said Schwartz, whose program “Starting Out Right for Couples Planning to Marry” is one of several JFCS-sponsored premarital workshops held in the Bay Area.
The workshops explore issues couples may not have considered, said Schwartz, a licensed social worker.
San Mateo resident Tim Rhodes, an accountant who participated in the Peninsula JFCS program, said he and his wife, Dominique, hadn’t considered the consequences of birth order before taking the course.
“I’m the middle child, she’s the baby, so we’re treated differently within our families,” said Rhodes, 31. “It’s good to think about these things before you’re married.”
Dominique Rhodes, a 36-year-old travel agent, said the class helped the pair look at their different family styles. “Everyone in my family knows what’s going on with each other,” she said. “It’s new to me not to be in everyone’s business.”
She said the workshop also strengthened the pair’s communication skills. “Instead of just letting things boil, we learned when to step away and say, `Let’s look at this and work on it.'”
The programs throughout the Bay Area include discussions on communication, financial management, sexuality and creating a Jewish home.
JFCS programs in San Francisco and Marin, as well as those sponsored by Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay, are based on Sylvia Weishaus’ workbook, “Making Marriage Work” and involve couples in a group setting.
The Peninsula program, created by Schwartz, borrows from Weishaus’ program but is geared toward individual couples.
All the issues are filtered through a Jewish lens.
Yael Moses, who launched San Francisco’s program a year ago, said a close reading of the Adam and Eve story gives insight into the Jewish view of marriage. Eve is called an ezer kenegdoh, usually translated as “helpmate.”
“The word `ezer’ means `help,’ and `kenegdoh’ means `in opposition to him’ or `face-to-face,'” Moses said. “It really highlights the tension in a marriage partnership. People need to help and support each other, but it happens through differences. I think it really summarizes the Jewish view of what marriage is all about.”
Sex, in the Jewish view, is a mitzvah, she stressed.
“It’s holy rather than profane, and if you talk to a Chassid, they will tell you that making love on a Friday night is the best way to be close to the Shechinah [imminent presence of God].”
Barbara Nelson, a therapist with the East Bay’s “Making Marriage Work” program, said the Jewish view of sex is egalitarian.
“It’s really important for the woman to feel pleasure and to have sexual satisfaction,” said Nelson, who also directs resettlement and immigration services at the East Bay JFCS. “That’s a fairly radical idea.”
Rabbi Marvin Goodman of Peninsula Sinai Congregation in Foster City recommends the Peninsula program to his congregants and is on board to work with couples in the “Creating a Jewish Home” portion of the program.
Living a Jewish life, he said, can strengthen a marriage.
“I think it adds a sense ofmeaning,” he said. “If a couple is going to have Shabbos together, it’s going to give them sacred time that they’re going to able to spend together when no outside distractions will impinge.”
Though the San Francisco program is specifically for Jewish couples, the Marin JFCS recently started working with interfaith couples.
Rabbi Aliza Berk, a therapist who works with the interfaith couples, stresses the importance of airing religious differences.
“We discuss different views of life after death, how symbols are used in both religions, what their reactions are to different symbols of both traditions. Our major focus is children. For interfaith couples who choose to have children, we explore the identity they choose. Are they going to raise the child Jewish, Christian or integrate both?”
Berk says there are time bombs in the life of an interfaith couple that explode over religious issues.
“Important lifecycle events, their wedding, the birth of their first child, whether the child will attend religious school. If so, which religious tradition? There’s a high divorce rate among interfaith couples, so there are challenges that it’s important for an interfaith couple to address.”
For all couples, the process of going from being a twosome to being a family can be a formidable one.
Jodi Shipper, an attorney who went through the Peninsula program, says the most valuable thing she learned was the “process of shifting from our families as being our primary connection to each other being our primary connection.”
Shipper and her husband, Michael Levinsohn, were married two months ago in San Francisco. During the ceremony, they circled each other, a modern spin on an old Jewish wedding tradition. As they were planning this part of the ceremony, they both started to laugh.
“We could both kind of hear Naomi [Schwartz] saying, `You’re going to be the center for each other now. Everything else is on the outside.'”