Conversion Shifts

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It feels like an inexplicable coincidence. On July 8 I wrote an appreciation of Gary Tobin, a leading Jewish thinker and supporter of outreach to interfaith families who just passed away. I remembered his support for us and our tactical disagreement about how much to promote conversion to non-Jewish partners in interfaith marriages. On the same day, the New York Jewish Week wrote about a major shift in the Conservative Movement about … how much to promote conversion as part of interfaith outreach.

Since InterfaithFamily.com got started, we have been interested in trying to help Conservative Jews respond positively to intermarriage. I grew up in a Conservative synagogue. At the Hornstein Program at Brandeis, I wrote a paper on the Movement’s response to intermarriage, analyzing responsa literature from the Committee On Law and Standards. In IFF’s early years we had eminent Conservative rabbis like Bradley Shavit Artson (dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at American Jewish University), Myron Geller (a long-time member of the Committee on Law and Standards) and Carl Perkins (author of the revised edition of Embracing Judaism published by the Rabbinical Assembly) write for us.

We were very supportive when the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs started its keruv initiative. Rabbi Charles Simon participated in the conference we held for outreach professionals in May 2007, and we reviewed the FJMC’s pamphlets The Role of the Supportive Non-Jewish Spouse in the Conservative/Masorti Movement and Let’s Talk About It: A Book of Support and Guidance for Families Experiencing Intermarriage and Synagogue Leadership.

Since we started listing Jewish organizations that welcome interfaith families back in 2001 and 2002, we have tried to recruit Conservative synagogues. When I spoke with Conservative rabbis in those days, pretty much the first question they would ask is, “what’s your position on conversion?” When I would say “conversion is a wonderful personal choice and we are delighted if any of our resources help people along that path, but we think that conversion should not be promoted too aggressively because it will turn away people who might otherwise come in and raise Jewish children,” many times the rabbi’s response would be “that’s not good enough.”

It appears that attitudes are adapting to the times. Slowly over the years, we have been able to recruit more than 70 Conservative synagogues and institutions to list on our organization directory. It has been widely reported that the growth in the Reform Movement and the decline in the Conservative Movement between 1990 and 2000 was due to the Reform Movement’s greater acceptance of interfaith families.

Now the Jewish Week article reports that all of the arms of the Conservative Movement have now signed off on a forthcoming pamphlet that will shift the movement away from an aggressive push for conversion. Rabbi Simon is quoted as saying that although “there is nothing wrong with saying conversion is important to us, we should be honest about it. There is not a realistic expectation in today’s life to set a goal of conversion. Couples set their own goals; that is not where I would start the game.”

Today I submitted this letter to the Jewish Week:

I write to applaud news of an important shift in the Conservative Movement’s approach to interfaith families (Conservatives End Push to Convert Intermarrieds, July 8, 2009) and the leadership of Rabbi Charles Simon and the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs on this critical issue. While conversion is a wonderful personal choice, all of the Movement’s arms apparently now recognize that engaging people in Jewish family life is the most important end result, and that promoting conversion too aggressively risks alienating couples who might otherwise get involved. The Jewish Outreach Institute’s Rabbi Kerry Olitzky is clearly right that conversion is not an outreach strategy, or, as Rabbi Simon says, the place to “start the game.” The fact that over 70 Conservative synagogues and institutions currently list on the InterfaithFamily.com Network of organizations that welcome interfaith families indicates that many Conservative congregational rabbis and lay leaders are already acting consistently with this positive new attitude.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Gary Tobin, An Appreciation

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I was very sad to learn that Gary Tobin died on Monday. He was a brilliant and provocative thinker, and a passionate advocate for opening Jewish communities to include interfaith families and Jews of color.

When I stopped being a lawyer and started working in the Jewish non-profit world in 1999, the first gathering I ever attended was an event around the publication of Tobin’s Opening the Gates: How Proactive Conversion Can Revitalize the Jewish Community. I still have that book on my shelf, with many post-it notes interspersed among its pages.

We asked Gary to write for InterfaithFamily.com and he contributed Proactive Conversion as Outreach. We were in our infancy at that point and it was a real boost to have such a distinguished thought leader write for us. Later we reprinted an essay Gary contributed to Sh’ma, Do We Want to Be Who We Really Are?

I didn’t always agree with Gary. In Opening the Gates: How Proactive Conversion Can Revitalize the Jewish Community — A Review, I agreed with a lot of his argument. He didn’t advocate for proselytizing, but defined “proactive conversion” simply as welcoming non-Jews to become Jews. He wanted the Jewish community to have a positive attitude about conversion and converts. But I thought then, and still do, that we would be better off promoting “proactive inclusion” than “proactive conversion” — we should include non-Jewish partners and encourage them to make Jewish choices, with conversion one possible wonderful outcome among others.

I visited Gary twice at the offices of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco. He was gracious with his time, interest and advice. I knew he had been ill in the past. But as recently as March, he was participating in an extended discussion I blogged about on the JOI JOPLIN listserv about whether programs specifically for interfaith families were still necessary.

In recent years, Gary’s inclusivity work focused on Jews of  color and helping Be’chol Lashon: In Every Tongue, a non-profit founded by his wife Diane. I talked with Diane only a month ago about ways our organizations could work together.

There aren’t many high-profile intellectual leaders who argue in favor of making Jewish communities more inclusive. That makes it all the more tragic that Gary Tobin died at the very young age of 59 — sadly, the same age at which we lost Egon Mayer, of blessed memory. Our sympathies go out to Diane and the Tobin children.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Rabbinical School and the Interfaith Marriage, Part 2

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Last week Ruth Abrams blogged about an important article by Jeremy Gillick in New Voices, The Coming of the Intermarried Rabbi, about men and women seeking to attend and be ordained by rabbinical schools that will not accept them because they are intermarried.  Shortly before the New Voices article came out, we published Why I’m Not A Rabbi, in which Edie Mueller explained her experience of this rejection 15 years ago. I’d like to now explain our position on this issue, prompted in part by a parallel discussion that is taking place on the Jewish Outreach Institute‘s JOPLIN listserv.

Years ago when David Ellenson, whom I respect tremendously, became president of Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement’s seminary, he was quoted in a publication as affirming the policy not to admit or ordain intermarried students because rabbis are “role models.” I wrote a letter to the editor suggesting that there could be no better role model for interfaith couples than an interfaith partner who is so Jewishly engaged that he or she is a rabbi.

For denominations that consider traditional Jewish religious law (halachah) binding, it may make sense to require rabbis to live in halachically recognized marriages. But the seminaries training rabbis for other denominations are free to consider that their graduates will be serving constituencies with many interfaith couples and families. Those rabbis presumably want to inspire their constituents to more Jewish engagement. Intermarried rabbis would be particularly inspiring to the interfaith couples who they served — and there is no reason they could not be inspiring to in-married couples as well.

When congregations hire rabbis, lay leaders are the ones who select them. Many congregations that want to promote in-marriage won’t hire rabbis that they perceive to encourage interfaith marriage. Presumably these lay leaders would chose not to hire an intermarried rabbi. Congregations that want to promote conversion as a solution to the issue of interfaith marriage presumably would chose not to hire a rabbi whose non-Jewish partner had not chosen to convert. But congregations that are focused less on these boundary lines and more on supporting the Jewish engagement of all community members might well welcome an intermarried rabbi. Congregations are diverse, and rabbis could be as well.

Over the years at IFF we have talked with a number of exceptional people who would have made great rabbis who were frustrated because they couldn’t be accepted at the seminaries because they were intermarried. David Curiel, the lead subject of the New Voices article, is one of them. Edie Mueller is another. We believe that turning these people away is a mistake.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Attracting Interfaith Families Through Jewish Spirituality

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Synagogue 3000 (S3K) has released a fascinating new study by Steven M. Cohen and Lawrence Hoffman, How Spiritual Are America’s Jews? Narrowing the Spirituality Gap Between Jews and Other Americans. Given some of Mr. Cohen’s previous writings on intermarriage, both the tone and the substance of this report are noteworthy for highlighting an important path to more Jewish engagement by interfaith families and their adult children.

The study’s first headline finding is that on all scales, Jews are less spiritual than white non-Jewish Americans — less spiritually inclined, less likely to have spiritual mentors, less involved with God (although 71% say they believe in God, as compared to 81% of non-Jews, only 35% have a “certain” belief in God, as compared to 58% of non-Jews), less attached to religion and prayer.

The second headline finding is that, unlike non-Jewish Americans, where older people are more spiritual, for Jews, younger adults are more spiritual and more religious than their elders. The authors describe this pattern as remarkable because on most measures of behavior and belonging, younger Jews trail older ones — Jewish association (marriage, friends, neighbors), Jewish affiliation (organizations, synagogues, federations, etc.) and Jewish ritual practice (e.g. observance of holidays).

For us, the most interesting findings highlight distinctions among sub-groups of American Jews. The Orthodox (8% of all American Jews) score highest on all spirituality scales, but Jews with just one Jewish parent are more spiritual than Jews with two Jewish parents. Because non-Jewish parents are more spiritual, children growing up with at least one non-Jewish parent are more likely to resonate with spirituality and be culturally pre-disposed to spiritual concerns.

The authors label a new category “Extended Jews-by-Choice” which refers both to children of mixed marriages (one Jewish parent and one non-Jewish parent), and to people who had no Jewish parents “but became Jewish anyway, sometimes as a personal journey of faith, but usually as a result of relationships with, or marriage to, born-Jews.” (The authors omit to say whether those who “became Jewish” formally converted or not.)

The higher rate of spirituality of younger Jews is explained by the shifting dimensions of the Jewish population. Among Jews 65 and older, 5% are Orthodox, 9% are Extended Jews-by-Choice, and 86% are non-Orthodox with two Jewish parents. In contrast, among Jews under 35, 15% are Orthodox, 28% are extended Jews-by-Choice, and only 57% are non-Orthodox with two Jewish parents.

The policy implications of this study are exciting. As self-described synagogue advocates, the authors state that spirituality is growing in importance as a gateway into meaningful Jewish life, and that since Extended Jews-by-Choice are one of two growth sectors of the Jewish populations (the Orthodox being the other), synagogues need to become spiritual communities.  Significantly, the authors acknowledge that “Accenting spirituality will especially broaden Judaism’s appeal… among Extended Jews-by-Choice, who sometimes feel marginalized among born Jews but find familiarity in spirituality.” The same could be said for interfaith couples and families generally. We believe that the more that Jewish communities emphasize spirituality, the more interfaith families will be attracted to Jewish life.

As a final point, I have never heard children of one Jewish parent called “Jews by Choice” before, and don’t think it’s a good idea. The authors appear to explain why they call the children of one Jewish parent “Jews by Choice” when they say that their “mixed parentage gave them the de facto familial choice to identify as Jewish or not.” I suppose that makes sense — when intermarried parents decide to raise their children as Jews, they are making a familial choice to identify as Jewish. However, children of intermarried parents raised by both of their parents as Jews should be regarded simply as Jews, not as a separate category of Jews by Choice. Using a category to draw a distinction as to their status will be off-putting, where acceptance and welcoming are in order.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

 

A Terrible Message from the “God Squad”

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We got a Google alert about an April 3 “God Squad” column that appeared in the Edmond Oklahoma Sun. In the column, Rabbi Marc Gellman responds to a young Jewish woman who wrote to him in pain, seeking advice because of her parents’ rejection of her Catholic boyfriend, even though she says she intends and her boyfriend accepts that their children will have the same connection to Judaism as she had. His response is a classic example of the wrong way for Jewish parents (and leaders) to speak to young adults about their interfaith relationships:

I’ve tried to write you an equally eloquent response that could have come from sensitive parents. It may not reflect your parents’ sentiments, but they are mine. I want you to understand how they view things, not so you’ll agree with them but so you might understand them. Hopefully, reconciliation will come on the far side of understanding.

To our dearest daughter:

We will always love you, and even in the heat of this disagreement, we believe in you and are happy you’ve found love. We don’t care about the color of your boyfriend’s skin, and we don’t hate his religion. What we do care about is your life and your duty to preserve the faith and traditions of the religion in which you were raised.

Our task in life is not merely to find love for ourselves, but also to honor and preserve the spiritual legacy and traditions bequeathed to us. Hundreds of generations of Jews before you have lived as Jews and sacrificed as Jews, even in the face of terrible oppression and death. If they could preserve their faith through times of hell, why can’t you preserve your faith in times of freedom?

The idea that Judaism will end in our family with you for no other reason than that you met a nice Catholic guy is devastating to us. There’s nothing wrong with him or with his faith, but there is something right about our Jewish heritage, and this fact must be weighed, even against your own personal happiness.

Furthermore, we disagree with you because of the rights of your future children. A child needs to be able to walk into a church or a synagogue and in one of the two places be able to say, “I am home here.” Despite your protestations, your children may not be able to do that with one Jewish parent and one onlooker.

May God forgive us, but we’d be more able to accept your conversion to Catholicism than your present plan. At least then your kids would have a single religious presence in the home and full and clear support from both of you to give them firm religious identities. Of course, if your boyfriend were to convert to Judaism, we’d be more than slightly happier, but that is his choice and cannot be coerced.

You get the idea…

I wrote this letter to the editor (and to Rabbi Gellman):

Rabbi Gellman’s response, conveying his sentiments about intermarriage, is based on two wrong assumptions. First, he says that children need a single religious presence in the home in order to develop a firm religious identity; the fact is that many intermarried parents — in Boston, 60% — are raising their children as Jews. Second, he says that a non-Jew willing to raise Jewish children has no good reason not to convert; in fact, many of the thousands of non-Jewish parents who are raising Jewish children have very thoughtfully decided not to convert for important reasons such as maintaining their own religious beliefs and lack of familiarity with Judaism.

Guilting young Jews with the notions that their ancestors preserved Judaism through persecution and that they should choose their Jewish heritage over their personal happiness, as Rabbi Gellman does, will alienate young Jews today who know that is a false choice. They know they can intermarry and still maintain their connection to Judaism and raise Jewish children — but being made to feel terrible about their choice by Jewish leaders is bound to push them away for Jewish involvement.

I surely hope this column is not picked up and published anywhere else.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Noah Feldman on Intermarriage

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I went to a fascinating “conversation” last night between Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, the president of Hebrew College, and Noah Feldman, the Harvard Law School professor and frequent New York Times contributor. Feldman’s July 2007 New York Times magazine article about the reaction of his modern Orthodox community’s reaction to his intermarriage was the subject of heated commentary that our Micah Sachs blogged about extensively at the time.

Hebrew College is a wonderful institution which had a major role in developing the Me’ah program of adult Jewish education, runs Prozdor, an outstanding supplmentary high school Jewish education program, and a few years ago created a trans-denominational rabbinical school, among many other things. Rabbi Lehmann, who only recently became president of the College, said that intermarriage had become a much bigger issue there particularly in the rabbinical school, with issues being presented about whether people who are intermarried could be admitted to the school, or whether people who developed interfaith relationships while in school could be ordained. (Coincidentally, we’ve just published an article by Edie Mueller about her experience fifteen years ago when she wanted to attend rabbinical school and was told she could not be admitted because she was intermarried.)  Rabbi Lehmann said that the issue of officiation at weddings of interfaith couples is also being raised among their rabbinic students.

It is difficult to capture the wide ranging conversation about intermarriage between Lehmann, Feldman and the audience. One interesting thread was when Feldman described an internal tension in the thinking of American Jews about how we should think about who people should marry. After pointing out that a Jew would experience as anti-Semitic a situation where a non-Jewish family objected to their child marrying a Jew, he asked why is it socially normative for only Jews, and possibly African-Americans, to say that they want their children to marry only other like them? Someone made the point that the child of a black person and a white person will still be black, therefore blacks have less reason to insist on endogamous marriage, but the same isn’t true of the child of a Jew and a non-Jew.

After saying that half of Jews are “voting with their huppahs,” Feldman said there is a deep and profound soul-searching going on in the Jewish community about intermarriage, with many people feeling that their Judaism is not incompatible with their being intermarried. I understood Lehmann to say in that context that intermarriage “will certainly weaken” Jewish affiliation or continuity or community, a point that I argued with him privately after the program ended. If there was a flash point in the discussion, that was it.  As is usual in my experience in this kind of setting, the points of view were all over the spectrum. A woman in the audience said with emotion that her intermarriage had not lessened her Jewish involvement in any way. A man in the audience said he was intermarried, very active in the Workmen’s Circle, and his three teenage sons were fluent in Yiddish. Another woman in the after-program private discussions said that the way to prevent intermarriage was for parents to forbid interdating.

Aside from the two audience comments, the one perspective that was not presented clearly by either Lehmann or Feldman was the view that intermarriage is an opportunity for enlarging and enriching the Jewish community. Feldman didn’t discuss how he and his wife are raising their children, and the importance of encouraging and supporting Jewish choices by interfaith couples and families in that regard was overlooked.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Programs Targeted to Interfaith Couples

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There is a very interesting discussion going on on a listserv for Jewish professionals maintained by our friends at the Jewish Outreach Institute. I wanted to share here the (very slightly edited) posting that I put on that listserv today.

I believe it is of utmost importance for Jewish organizations and communities to offer programs targeted to interfaith couples and families. It is more than a little dismaying to see uncertainty among the Jewish professionals on JOI’s listserv.

The discussion started with a question about ads and programs that are effective in attracting hard-to-attract interfaith couples. There were several helpful program ideas and observations – that just offering the programs conveys a welcoming message, that it may take a long time for repeated messages to finally trigger a response. I agree with Dawn Kepler’s concern that there are so few couples groups available around the country and her idea that if we all try to offer them we will increase our exposure and heighten couples’ knowledge that they exist. Certainly some couples don’t want to be segregated out, but Paul Golin (the Associate Executive Director of JOI) is exactly right that hosting interfaith-specific programs is not an “either-or” equation and

Somehow the discussion got diverted into whether the Jewish community views interfaith families as having not merely “issues” but “problems.” I agree that people won’t go where they are considered to be problems or to have problems. But programs that target interfaith families don’t have to convey that message. I completely disagree with Irwin Kula’s suggestion that focusing on a group problematizes or pathologizes that group. Every social intervention responds to a perceived need, often of a particular group. I also disagree with Irwin and Gary Tobin to the extent they are saying that intermarriage is not an issue, that interfaith families are not different, or that interfaith families no longer have issues particular to the fact of their interfaith relationships, so that programs to address those issues are no longer needed.

At InterfaithFamily.com our mission is to empower people in interfaith relationships to make Jewish choices (and to encourage Jewish communities to welcome them). Our motivation is a deeply held belief that engaging in Jewish life is a source of tremendous value and meaning that is open to people in interfaith relationships – perhaps what Irwin means by “a resource to construct one’s life” and “a toolbox of wisdom and practice.” Our theory of change holds that more interfaith couples and families would make Jewish choices if they were interested in and comfortable participating in Jewish life, and able to reconcile Judaism with the other tradition in their family; to get to that point, couples and families need to be able to learn about Jewish life, and to have welcoming positive Jewish experiences.

Of course born Jews and in-married couples also need to learn about Jewish life and have welcoming positive Jewish experiences or they won’t make Jewish choices either, but while the needs of interfaith couples overlap, they are also qualitatively different. I don’t mean to generalize — of course “the intermarried” are not a monolithic group, there is a wide range of different views and experiences among interfaith couples, and these often change over time – but as the most basic examples, many partners who are not Jewish are starting out with no knowledge about the Jewish “toolbox” and have experienced negative, unwelcoming comments and behaviors, whether from disapproving Jewish relatives, difficulties finding Jewish clergy to officiate at their weddings, etc. Perhaps the most important comment on this thread is from the self-described non-Jewish spouse who is pushing for more involvement, who was made to feel more comfortable in becoming acquainted with Judaism, being with people on a similar journey. Our discussion boards at IFF are filled with questions and responses from couples who are exploring Jewish life and asking for help to resolve issues that arise because of their interfaith relationship. Pretending that interfaith couples do not have at least two religious traditions in their backgrounds does not make any sense.

I am all in favor of opening up Judaism in ways that attract everyone, as Gary suggests, and making it accessible and usable, as Irwin suggests – but responding to the particular needs of interfaith families does not conflict with and in fact is an essential support for that strategy.

Edmund Case
CEO, InterfaithFamily.com

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Save Reform Outreach Again

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The Reform movement made a public announcement today that it is closing its regional offices and replacing existing program departments in its national office with teams of specialists. Everyone who cares about outreach to interfaith families should be deeply concerned about the implications of these developments on outreach to interfaith families, which the Reform movement pioneered and has led for more than 25 years.

Prior to 2003, the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ, the Reform movement) had a national outreach department and a part-time regional outreach director in each of its 14 regions around the country. Then the outreach department was combined with synagogue membership, and in 2003, because of stated budgetary concerns, most of the regional outreach positions were eliminated. At IFF we started a “Save Reform Outreach” campaign at the time, which some people say played a significant role in preserving some of the positions.

At present the URJ has a group of extremely talented professionals: a small national staff led by Kathy Kahn and regional professionals in Los Angeles (Arlene Chernow), Chicago (Julie Webb), the mid-Atlantic area (Ruth Goldberger) and the southeast (Carol Gross). These experienced and dedicated people focus on helping Reform congregations welcome interfaith families. Some people say that Reform synagogues are sufficiently welcoming, but we believe there is much room to do much more and that these professionals play a key role in making that happen. With the closing of the regional offices and the replacement of national program departments, it is not clear what will happen with these professionals and the programming they conduct.

Moreover, in Boston the northeast region of the URJ has several part-time outreach professionals who, with funding from the Boston federation, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, offer a very important, close to comprehensive set of programs for interfaith families who are not necessarily affiliated with  synagogues, as well as regular trainings for Jewish organizations and professionals. Paula Brody, Joyce Schwartz and Maria Benet do incredible work, serving more than 1,000 program participants each year; we believe they have had an enormous impact on the climate in Boston, that they have directly contributed to the fact that 60% of interfaith families in Boston are raising their children as Jews, and that their efforts should serve as a model for other communities.

We hope that as its reorganization takes shape the URJ will preserve and continue to utilize the expertise of its national and regional outreach professionals–and in particular, we believe it is critically important that the team in Boston stay together and continue with their very effective work.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Madoff and Intermarriage, Part 2

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Last week, Micah Sachs posted about Jonathan Tobin’s first article as editor of Commentary magazine. In a time of limited resources and funding difficulties facing Jewish non-profits, Tobin is arguing for a “circle the wagons” approach against reaching out to interfaith families. I wanted to share the letter to the editor that I’ve submitted:

Dear Editor,

I take exception to Jonathan Tobin’s comment (The Madoff Scandal and the
Future of American Jewry, February 2009) that “the results of the past two
decades suggest that the outreach model is a failure.” Tobin quotes Gary
Tobin’s estimate that the annual amount of Jewish philanthropic giving is $5
billion.  InterfaithFamily.com tracks all outreach programs that target
interfaith families; the Jewish community spends less than $4 million on
such programs — less than 1/10 of 1% of its total spending. The outreach
model cannot be deemed a failure because it has never been implemented on a
national scale.

Moreover, Tobin’s statement that “what data there are indicate that these
efforts have done little to renew the commitment of Jews on the margins…”
is also wrong. Boston is the only local community where the federation has
funded outreach programs for interfaith families in an organized and
comprehensive fashion and conducted regular demographic studies. Sixty
percent of Boston’s interfaith families are raising their children as Jews,
causing its Jewish community to increase in size, and CJP’s annual campaign
also has grown steadily, from $25 million in 2000 to $42 million in 2008.
The Boston example shows that a Jewish community that is open to and seeks
to engage everyone — including interfaith families — can indeed renew the
commitment of Jews and non-Jews on the margins to the community and its
future.

Edmund C. Case
CEO, InterfaithFamily.com

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Jesus and Christmas

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It’s our busiest time of year again at InterfaithFamily.com. I’m writing this on December 24th at 9:00 am — and we’ve already broken the record for the highest number of monthly unique visitors to our main website, with 30,831 so far. There is something about Hanukkah and Christmas that stirs up everything about interfaith relationships — and front and center in that swirl is Jesus.

Two weeks ago, Cathy Grossman, USA Today’s terrific religion writer, called about her December holiday story for this year. She said she was writing about the “taking Christ out of Christmas” phenomenon. In addition to the usual theories that Americans are more secular and more materialistic, she wondered if increasing intermarriage was a cause.

We did find in our fifth annual December holidays survey, as we have in prior years, that interfaith couples who are raising their children Jewish say, in high percentages, 87% this year, that their Christmas celebrations are secular. One of the most interesting statistics to me is that among that population, only 3%, as part of their celebrations, tell the Christmas story — a story which is of course fundamentally religious in nature, because it marks the birth of Jesus as the Christ, the divine savior.

Cathy asked about interfaith couples who were raising their children “both,” and raising them Christian. We had 106 couples in the survey who said they were raising their children both; of them, 23% said they tell the Christmas story — more than 3% to be sure, but not a very high percentage overall. We only had 29 couples who said they were raising their children Christian, which isn’t a very large sample on which to draw any general conclusions; of them, 45% said they tell the Christmas story — still not a majority.

To me, the relatively low percentages of couples who are raising their children partly or completely Christian and tell the Christmas story suggest that rising secularism and materialism are at the root of non-religious celebrations of Christmas. And we have to remember that even if interfaith couples raising their children as Jews do “take Christ out of Christmas” in resolving how they will celebrate the December holidays, the numbers of such couples are tiny compared to the numbers of Christian couples who are celebrating Christmas, with or without Christ. So people may continue to blame intermarriage for a lot of things, but I hope it won’t be blamed for taking Christ out of Christmas.

But if interfaith couples raising their children Jewish aren’t celebrating and telling the story of the birth of Jesus as Christ, the divine savior, do they need to completely remove Jesus from Christmas? We’ve covered the issue of talking about Jesus at InterfaithFamily.com in the past — just put “talking about Jesus” into the search box on our site. But wwo days ago, I read a wonderful op-ed on the subject by James Carroll, a wonderful author and columnist for The Boston Globe.

In Jesus and the Promise of Christmas, Carroll writes that violence was the normal condition of the world Jesus was born in, and that”acting in his Jewish tradition” he confronted and rejected it and proposed peace and justice to counter it. He continues, “The great religions of the world – Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism – and the no-religion of rationalism have all countered the normalcy of violence with assertions of compassion and loving kindness.” As a figure representing the ideal of peace and justice, Carrol concludes, Jesus has survived

even for those who regard him in purely worldly terms as an image of a hope that cannot be fully articulated, and that can never be exclusively claimed by any group, including Christians. In that sense, the observances of this week can belong to everyone who chooses to enjoy them.

Perhaps that’s a way for interfaith couples raising their children to include Jesus in their Christmas celebrations.

Happy holidays to all.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.