Too Loud, Too Quiet

"I grew up in a classic Ashkenazi family in Baltimore: at home we always valued restraint, quiet, personal boundaries, and half-whispers. My fiance comes from a big, close-knit, and very emotional Sephardi family of Moroccan descent. We're an incredible match for each other, but the meeting of our parents turned into a culture shock.

When we first came to them for a Shabbat dinner, my head was spinning. Fifteen people were talking, arguing, and laughing all at once. His mother kept trying to pile huge portions of spicy food onto my plate, and his father sang songs loudly, gesturing wildly. My parents at that gathering looked like frozen statues — they shut down under such an onslaught. After dinner his relatives decided that my family were 'cold, arrogant intellectuals.' And my mother, with tears in her eyes, said to me: 'Avital, they're going to crush you, they have no respect for quiet at all!' We're still balancing on that invisible border. We literally have to teach our parents that a different temperament isn't a lack of respect — it's just another planet."