Embarking Together: Meet David and Lana!
At Embark, we know that being an interfaith couple looks different for everyone, and Dave and Lana, from Chicago, are loving how it looks for them – literally. “With the decor and everything, we’ve kind of made our house into this living, breathing altar space to our different traditions and backgrounds,” Lana explains, gesturing around her. “We have a mezuzah and we have an idol of Ganesha. We have Shiva and Shakti and between them, the book ‘Jewish Way to a Good Life.’”
“It’s like, we are in part a Jewish household, but we’re not only a Jewish household,” David agrees. Seeing their different traditions reflected throughout their home, “It feels very much like exactly who I am and what I’m about, and Lana as well.”
It’s hard to believe, seeing them together now, but apparently it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. “Our first date wasn’t the best. Famously, we didn’t really feel it at all,” David admits, as Lana laughs. “Yeah, we didn’t really like each other.”
“But I said, ‘do you want to be friends?’” Lana says. “Because we really did have so much in common. So, we would hang out as friends…and then we realized, what are we doing as friends? This is great!”
Now, they have been together for over six years and married for more than three.
As an interfaith couple, the pair says that their “independently developed, idiosyncratic spiritualities” really complement each other. “I was raised Catholic, but I left Catholicism and branched out on my own spirituality in my early 20s,” Lana explains. “I started practicing yoga nidra, and it really spun out from there. I am drawn to yogic philosophy, I sometimes attend a Buddhist sangha, and I’ve gone to UU [Unitarian Universalist] meetings. So, my spirituality is not really defined into one thing yet – I love studying all of it.”
For his part, David was raised in Reform Judaism. “As an adult, I am more secular,” he shares, “but I still very much identify with, and feel connected to, my Jewish heritage.”
For them, being interfaith doesn’t necessarily mean trying to balance two distinctly defined identities: “it’s more that we are both bringing different facets of our religious and spiritual identities into the relationship.”
They first heard about Embark while on a Honeymoon Israel trip to Buenos Aires, led by Rabbi Jonathan Posner. When they learned Rabbi Jonathan would be leading an Embark cohort in Chicago along with several couples they had met on the trip, it felt like a natural next step.
Once the cohort was underway, David was struck by the variety of experiences that fell underneath the ‘interfaith’ umbrella. “The partners who identify as Jewish are all very different in our Judaism, and the partners who don’t identify as Jewish are also all coming from different backgrounds and different places, so the couples are all different as a result,” he explains enthusiastically. Embark was “really an affirmation of that pluralism.”
Lana agreed, adding: “It was definitely an ‘all are welcome, bring it to the table’ sort of place.”
Both mention the retreat, where the cohort spends a weekend learning, relaxing, and celebrating Shabbat together, as a real highlight of the experience. For Lana, it also became an opportunity to share something meaningful from her own spiritual practice. “We did a Shabbat dinner, and a yoga class the next day…we even did Tarot one night,” she recalls, grinning at David. “It was fun just to talk and explore a lot of different things.”
The more they discussed, they said, the more they found to connect on. “I just have a lot of memories of things clicking for me of, oh, there’s this yogic philosophy, and then you find the parallel in Judaism. It’s like, oh, now I understand that side of things, too!” Lana says, as David nods. “Especially for what having a Jewish family looks like for us, we just saw so many similarities and parallels in what we were talking about.”
Those conversations feel especially meaningful now.
“We’re, Baruch Hashem, on the cusp of starting our family, and it’s all going to continue evolving,” David adds. “But just knowing that we have started these discussions makes me feel really comfortable about wherever they might end up leading to.”
For Lana, Embark also changed how she sees her role in Jewish life. “It used to be, if we’re going to have Jewish traditions, he’s going to have to take charge,” she says, gesturing at David. “But now, I’ve experienced enough of them, I can say ‘we should light a Yahrzeit candle’ or something else we should do. And it’s fun that I can really be personally involved and participate in that way.”
For future couples who are curious about the program, Lana is encouraging. “It is a very safe and welcoming space to explore your spirituality alongside your partner, and to learn about the Jewish background and everything. There’s no push in any way towards conversion. It’s more about, ‘this is what Judaism has to say about this.’”
David also found it a great space for interfaith couples to connect with each other. “There’s a lot of support just through realizing that this is not uncommon,” he shares. “And it’s really wonderful to be able to experience that.”