Navigating the war in Israel when one spouse is Jewish and the other is not.

When Ava Friedmann and Michael Henein married, they used a tablecloth belonging to Mrs. Friedmann's grandmother as a huppah, or ritual canopy, held over the couple during a Jewish wedding. Mr. Henein's father, a Coptic Christian from Egypt, anointed them with holy oil.

That same interweaving of their cultural traditions has guided them over the past three months as they talked about the war between Israel and Hamas. Both were shocked by the Hamas attack on October 7, but Mr Henein instinctively worried about the Palestinian lives in Gaza that would be lost to Israel's military response. They decided to read identical news sources about the war to ensure they stayed on the same page.

“We really had to hear each other and share our perspectives, and make sure we created an environment that didn't lead to conflict between the two of us,” Ms. Friedmann said.

Many American Jews have reconsidered how they think about Israel and even their own Jewish identity since the Oct. 7 attack, in which Israeli officials say Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people. Israel's reprisals, a bombing campaign and invasion, have killed more than 26,000 people, Palestinian officials say.

For Jews in interfaith couples, regardless of what they believe about Israel, there is the added dimension of communicating with a partner who may not feel a deep-seated connection to Israel or other Jews. Their non-Jewish partners sometimes have very different feelings about the war and Israel, and even the most supportive spouses can struggle to understand their Jewish partners' emotions.

The number of Jewish intermarriages has increased in the United States. For decades, this trend has sparked fear among Jewish leaders in America, who fear it threatens the survival of the Jewish people. A Pew Research survey A 2021 publication found that in the United States, about 40 percent of Jews who married between 1980 and 1999 married non-Jewish partners. That number increased to 61 percent between 2010 and 2020.

These couples are in a unique position. Some partners among the more than a dozen interfaith couples interviewed described how they were dealing with new challenges around raising children and emotional distance in their relationships. Others said the topic of war was a hurdle but ultimately brought them closer.

Jamie Smith, 48, who lives in Washington DC, has noticed how differently she and her husband, raised by Lutheran parents, feel about anti-Semitic threats since the start of the war.

Concerned for the safety of her four children, Mrs. Smith, who is Jewish, encouraged her teenage son to cut his curly hair short so he would look less Jewish. (He refused.) And she wore a cross when she traveled with her children to Morocco and Turkey in December and early January.

“I definitely feel an acute and heightened sense of danger about what it means to be Jewish right now,” she said. “I talked to my husband about that and I don't think he understands.” Her husband declined to comment.

“Marriage can be hard enough,” she added. “If you also add a difference in religion, it adds an extra level of difficulty. I had never experienced that before.”

Some couples described a renewed sense of trust and connection in their relationships, as Jewish people leaned on non-Jewish partners for support, and both made leaps to try to see the conflict through the other's eyes.

“There is an opportunity here to connect and deepen the relationship through meaningful conversations,” says Denise Handlarski, a rabbi who counsels many married couples and also wrote the book “The AZ of Intermarriage.” “You can see your partner's pain or desire to be understood and try to be supportive.”

In Chicago, Ms. Friedmann, 36, and Mr. Henein, 33, began discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the complications of intermarriage well before Oct. 7. Ms. Friedmann had many moments since they started dating, when she turned to Mr. Henein and asked, “What do you think about marrying someone Jewish?” Their relatives initially had mixed feelings about the relationship.

When the war started, they were grateful that they were so used to these frank conversations.

“With us, everything is public,” Mr. Henein said, “which certainly helped us navigate not only the wedding and the wedding ceremony, but also these attacks and our cultural differences.”

One obstacle, some Jewish partners in interfaith couples said, is trying to convey the importance of Israel and solidarity among Jews.

Before meeting her future husband, 34-year-old Lindsay Schwartz had little contact with Judaism and grew up in a Methodist household in eastern Georgia. But she understood early in their relationship how important a bond with faith was for Jake Schwartz, 35, whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors.

“It was something you read in a book,” Ms. Schwartz said. “You hear about it, but I never in my life thought I would have children who are a direct descendant of people who survived the atrocities.”

The Schwartzes, who live in Atlanta, visited Israel in March on a trip sponsored by Romantic Honeymoon Israel group which specializes in cross-country tours for interfaith couples.

Since October 7, the Schwartzes, they said, have been aligned in mourning the Israeli victims and supporting the country's right to defend itself. Ms. Schwartz said she was considering Jewish day school for their future children because she and Jake were shocked by what they saw as a lack of interest in the attack on Israel and in anti-Semitism.

Kevan Link, 36, understood early in his relationship with Mindy Isser that pro-Palestinian activism would be part of their life together. Ms. Isser, 33, is a union organizer who is Jewish and involved with the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.

Mr. Link, who was raised Catholic, also understood that not raising their children Jewish would be “a deal breaker” for his wife.

They have hosted Passover Seders, celebrate Shabbat most Friday nights and are raising their toddler, whose first birthday was Oct. 7, in the faith. Mr. Link sees his role as a supportive sidekick, whether solo parenting when Ms. Isser was arrested during a pro-ceasefire protest, or stepping back when members of Ms. Isser spoke positively about Israel.

Mr. Link said that until recently he had not fully understood what it meant to be both a member of the Jewish community and sharply critical of Israel. In December, he attended a memorial service for Ms. Isser's father at the Conservative congregation of her youth, where enthusiastic support for Israel, manifested in prayers for the country and its military, conflicted with their religious beliefs.

Mr Link said he was surprised to see a young girl wearing a hoodie in support of the Israeli army in the synagogue.

“I told him so much about how the Israel issue is so intense and so much a part of Judaism, at least Conservative Judaism,” Ms. Isser said of her husband, adding, “he didn't really understand it until he saw It.”

For other couples, the war has raised new questions about the prospect of raising children in multifaith households.

Max Freedman, 35, and Morgan McGuire, 38, married in October in Brooklyn.

Mr. Freedman felt alienated from the traditionally pro-Israel Jewish community even before the war began, but that feeling was heightened during the war. He realized that he sympathized more with the priest at Ms. McGuire's church, who expressed concern about the death toll in Gaza, than with some rabbis he knows.

He now wonders what it will look like to guide future children through the complexities of Jewish identity.

“Because we have a multifaith relationship, it's up to me to bring Judaism forward,” Mr. Freedman said. “I can hardly be enthusiastic about that at the moment.”

Libby Shani, 42, and her partner, Lindsay Shani, 40, who was raised Catholic, were due to honeymoon in Israel in November but this was postponed due to the war. Instead, Libby, who was born in Tel Aviv and moved to the United States as a toddler, visited Israel in January on a trip sponsored by the Jewish National Fund, a pro-Israel nonprofit.

What should have been a shared experience ended up being a solo journey; Lindsay was concerned about safety and did not share Libby's feeling that this was an urgent time to volunteer for Israeli society.

But Libby said she had also felt closer to Lindsay in recent months because of the efforts Lindsay had made to support her, such as reading books about Israel.

“There's a level of rawness and openness that we hadn't experienced before,” Lindsay said. “Now we have this because of this.”