Will I Be Offending My Jewish Brother-in-Law?

Dear Rabbi and Susan,

I am a Christian. My husband’s family members are conservative Jews. Recently my brother-in-law had a serious health crisis. I wanted to tell him “I am praying for you.” But I did not know how he would react to that.

I am a Christian who prays, not from a prayer book, but from the heart, imploring God to intervene and heal someone. Would my Jewish relatives be offended if I made that statement of “I’ll be praying for you.”?

Karen M.

Dear Karen,

Before we answer, we want to point out for those Happy Warriors who aren’t familiar that the term ‘Conservative Jew’ (Upper case “C”) is not a political designation but rather a religious one. In fact, most Conservative Jewish congregations are politically liberal.

What is more, although Conservative Jews adhere to more Jewish practices than Reform Jews, they mistakenly consider Biblical law to be very flexible and open to change to accommodate the worst of modern culture. That is a very broad explanation but will suffice for this answer.

We want to start our response by quoting what we wrote in an Ask the Rabbi from May when we were asked if Jews would find it offensive for a Christian to put up a mezuzah on their door. We said:

We will note that we can’t think of anything that doesn’t arouse someone’s offense in our hypersensitive days. If we may rephrase your question, the question isn’t if anyone is offended, it is if your actions would actually be inconsiderate.

Not knowing your husband’s family, we have no idea how they would react to your comment about praying for your brother-in-law. From our perspective, God listens to heartfelt prayers in all languages and of all types. In fact, in our program Clash of Destiny we discuss how Ishmael’s very name and Moslems’ faithful adherence to prayer presents a challenge to Jews and Christians. It would be sensitive of you not to pray “in Jesus’ name” out loud in front of his family, but your wanting to call Heaven’s blessing down and your wishing your brother-in-law well should be appreciated.

May God grant your brother-in-law a complete recovery,

Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin

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