July 2006

This article first appeared in Aufbau, the German-Jewish newspaper, and was reprinted with permission.

“Mixed-marriage households can raise their children as Jews, and the Jewish community should be more open towards them,” says Edmund Case, publisher of InterfaithFamily.com, an online magazine on interfaith issues. Case deals with intermarriage on a daily basis, not only in his job, but also personally: His is an interfaith family, but a Jewish household. Before he started in this job in 1999, Case had worked as a senior partner in a large Boston law firm. In 1997, he left to attend Brandeis University where he got his masters degree in Jewish communal service.

Together with Ronnie Friedland, Case co-edited The Guide to Jewish Interfaith Family Life: An Interfaithfamily.com Handbook (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2001). The articles, written by members of interfaith families, as well as by educators or clergy, discuss issues like dating, weddings, relationships with in-laws and extended family members, raising children, and how to handle holidays and life-cycle events. Aufbau spoke with Edmund Case about the mission of InterfaithFamily.com, Jewish choices and his personal experiences.

Aufbau: Intermarriage is a social reality. According to the newest survey by Egon Mayer et. al., 33 percent of Jews in the U.S. are married to non-Jews. On the other hand, intermarriage is severely criticized by American Jews, especially the official voices of the community. They feel that the only way to preserve Jewish religion and culture is marriage within the faith, or at least conversion. Do you agree with that?

Edmund Case: No, I disagree completely. The mission of InterfaithFamily.com is to promote Jewish life and identity among interfaith families and their children. I think that it is very possible, and that many–although not enough–interfaith families do choose Judaism as the religion of their family and the religion of their children. I think that the North American Jewish community ought to do everything it can to encourage interfaith families to make Jewish choices.

I think that conversion is a wonderful thing, but it is a very personal choice. We don’t feel that conversion is required in order for children to be raised as Jews or for a family to have Judaism as their family’s religious identity. It is a difficult message to convey: We encourage conversion, but, at the same time, we want interfaith families to know that they are welcomed just as they are. I don’t think that we ought to have guards at the gates saying: If you have not converted you cannot come in.

Also, we are all for marriage within the faith. I have two marriage-age children, myself, and I would very much like it, if they married people who are Jewish. But my reason for that is because I hope that they will want to have a Jewish life for themselves, and the chances of having a Jewish life and a Jewish family life are much increased if two Jews marry. What really motivates me and my work is that the percentage of intermarried families who are raising their children as Jews is only about 28 to 30 percent. It is a substantial number, but it is not high enough. My goal is to have more people go that way. I am all for marrying in the faith but I think that can be promoted and encouraged in a way that does not, at the same time, make intermarried people feel badly about themselves or unwelcome.

And that is my criticism of some of the leaders in the Jewish community. They are promoting marriage between two Jewish partners and conversion in a manner which really puts off many interfaith families and discourages them from getting involved.

Aufbau: Which concept of interfaith families do you focus on in your work: On those families in which both faiths are practiced or those families that choose one family religion?

Case: The mission of InterfaithFamily.com is to encourage Jewish choices while respecting the traditions of both members of the family. Some of our readers say: This is not really interfaith, this is really very pro-Jewish. But we don’t hide that at all. We do not, in any way, recommend raising the children in two religions. If people inquire about that, I will say that there are other organizations and other web-sites where they can go, such as Dovetail (which encourages the maintenance of both faiths). We don’t condemn it, it is just not our mission. There is a whole range of behavior in interfaith families. I have one family–very close friends–where the mother is Catholic and goes to Mass every Sunday. And her teenage children are very committed Jews. The family often comes to services with the mother, and she is very involved in our synagogue. But when you ask her what her religion is, there is no question. She would say: I am a practicing Catholic, but my family is Jewish.

My own family is at the other end of the spectrum. If you asked my wife what she is, she would say that she lives “Jewishly,” but that she is not Jewish. She has never formally converted to Judaism, but she basically practices Judaism and does not practice any other religion. For example, she is the co-chairperson of the social action committee of my synagogue. She was raised Episcopalian. And then there is a whole range of behavior in between.

Aufbau: Life-cycle events like baby naming, brit milahs and bat or bat mitzvahs not only touch the core family but also the extended family. How is this handled?

Case: Again, there is a whole range of ways that families deal with this. We have online discussions on our web-site, and we have had many correspondents who describe their own experiences in which extended family members do participate in Jewish life-cycle events and are very happy about it. There are some very heartwarming stories. One couple was getting married and wasn’t sure whether the Jewish grandmother would come to the wedding. But, eventually, she came and danced with her new grandson-in-law, saying: “You are my grandson now.” We have had stories of non-Jewish parents coming to a brit (ceremony) or to a baby-naming and being very supportive of it. On the other hand, we printed a contribution by a grandparent who was unhappy when her grandchild was baptized. She felt that the Christian grandparents were not very sensitive to them. That was a very sad story.

Clearly there are challenges with the extended families. A lot of it depends on personal factors, and a lot of it has to do with education and communication–the way that adult children talk to their parents about what they are doing with their grandchildren.

Aufbau: Every year, many interfaith families also face the so called “December dilemma”: Can an interfaith family celebrate Christmas or have a Christmas tree in their house?

Case: We don’t say there are rules that are appropriate for every family. One of our articles was by a young woman who was not Jewish. During her engagement, she insisted to her Jewish fiancé that she would have to have a Christmas tree. And he insisted that they would not have a Christmas tree. Eventually he said to her: “You know, our relationship is more important than a Christmas tree. If you want to have one, we will have one.” Once he had indicated that the relationship was more important, she lost interest in having a Christmas tree.

We have seen that early on in an interfaith marriage there is often a lot of negotiation. And a lot of people will start off having a tree and end up not having a tree. And a lot of people will start off having some Christmas celebration in their home, and–especially if they decide that they will raise the children as Jews–will become uncomfortable with it eventually and cease to do it.

The question really is: What does participating in a Christmas celebration mean? There was a recent study (sponsored by the American Jewish Committee), which I criticized severely. It stated that intermarried families incorporated substantial Christian elements in their homes, and that this was an ominous development for Jewish identity. It turned out that “the substantial Christian elements” were, in many cases, nothing more than going to a Christmas dinner at the home of non-Jewish relatives. My point was that for many intermarried families, participating in a Christmas or Easter celebration has no religious significance to them. They are only participating in a family time, a social time, and they are not affirming any kind of religious doctrine.

My own example is the following: I go to my in-laws at Christmas and they have a Christmas tree. We exchange gifts at Christmas, and I do not feel like a traitor at all. Early on, when I was first married, I felt very uncomfortable with it. I do not feel uncomfortable with it now. My children–one is 23, one is 19–feel that there is no religious significance to Christmas whatsoever. They do not feel it makes them Christian, they just feel that it is a nice time to be with their grandparents who are not Jewish.

March 2006

In February 2006 the New Jersey Jewish News began a yearlong community dialogue called “The Next Big Think.” Editor Andrew Silow-Carroll wrote that the movements and causes that inspired Jews in the past–Zionism, absorption of Jewish immigrants in America and Israel, the fight against anti-Semitism, the redemption of Jewish captives the world over–had succeeded, and that the big social issues–the role of women and gays in religion, response to the intermarried, Who is a Jew?–had been largely resolved, were nearing resolution or had failed to galvanize large numbers of Jews. He invited Jewish thinkers to identify the “The Next Big Thing” in Jewish life: what issues will define the Jewish agenda and what we will need to address to grow and flourish in this “post-historical era.”

InterfaithFamily.com President Edmund Case wrote an article in inaugural February 9, 2006, issue of “The Next Big Think,” titled “The Next Big Thing is Now: Outreach to the Intermarried.” After the essay appeared, Steven M. Cohen requested that Case retract his statement about Cohen’s views on outreach to the intermarried. Case’s letter was published in the March 30, 2006, issue:

Steven M. Cohen has asked me to retract my attribution of certain views to him. I wrote:

Too many Jewish leaders, like Steven Bayme, Steven M. Cohen, and Jack Wertheimer, … don’t care if aggressively promoting conversion distresses and pushes away non-Jewish partners who are raising Jewish children–not to mention their Jewish partners and in-laws. These Jewish leaders sanctimoniously preach that such families can’t be called “Jewish,” that their homes can’t be called “holy.” Their take-away message: Unconverted non-Jews raising their children as Jews shouldn’t be included in the Jewish community–such people and their Jewish behaviors just aren’t good enough.

In an email to me dated March 14, 2006, Professor Cohen stated that he does not say, and has never said, that intermarried families raising Jewish children cannot be called “Jewish” or that their homes cannot be called “holy.” He stated that I had cast him “as, in effect, a bigot.” He also stated that he is “very proud of my long association with my friends and colleagues, Steven Bayme and Jack Wertheimer,” and he assured me that he had never heard them “express the sorts of views that you attribute to them and to me.”

The basis for the statements in question is “Revisiting and Promoting Conversion” (New York Jewish Week, January 13) by Drs. Bayme and Wertheimer. Decrying the “intemperate responses” to the new efforts to encourage conversion announced by the Reform and Conservative movements, they said: “Others go further, urging that the very term ‘interfaith family’ be changed to ‘Jewish family’ when gentile spouses agree to raise their children as Jews.” I understood that to mean that in their view, interfaith families raising their children as Jews should not or cannot properly be called “Jewish families.” Drs. Bayme and Wertheimer conclude their essay by stating that for intermarried families, “conversion offers the best hope to create ‘wholly’ Jewish homes as well as ‘holy’ Jewish homes.” I understood that to mean that in their view, in-married and conversionary families have “holy” homes, but intermarried families do not.

Although Professor Cohen’s friends and colleagues explicitly or implicitly said that intermarried families who raise their children as Jews cannot call themselves “Jewish families” and do not have “holy” homes, I acknowledged to Professor Cohen that I could not point to any evidence that he himself had made those statements. He requested that I write a letter to the New Jersey Jewish News retracting my attribution to him of those views, and I hereby do so.

As I told Professor Cohen privately, however, I believe that what I said was not unfair to him, given how allied to his friends and colleagues he stands on issues relating to intermarriage. Moreover, I invited Professor Cohen, a most formidable writer and debater, to himself write a letter to the editor of the New Jersey Jewish News, distancing himself from the views of his friends and colleagues; he chose not to do so.

What is important in this discussion is the message that interfaith families get from the Jewish community. In a recent paper, “Engaging the Next Generation of American Jews,” Professor Cohen suggests that the community has been very welcoming to the intermarried for fifteen years. But it is the polar opposite of welcoming when eminent Jewish leaders suggest to intermarried couples raising Jewish children that their families are not “Jewish,” nor their homes “holy.”

In his first email to me, Professor Cohen said that my position and actions are “counter to the best interests of the Jewish People and its future.” I do not presume to speak for the Jewish People, but I suggest that instead of insisting that I be more careful with attribution, Professor Cohen’s considerable talents would be far better spent persuading his friends and colleagues to be more careful not to express views that he himself characterizes as “bigoted.”

Steven M. Cohen’s response: Letter to the Editor of New Jersey Jewish News, Responding to Edmund Case:

To the editor,

For the record, and contrary to assertions made in a recent column by Mr. Case, I have never said, nor have I ever held the view, that intermarried families are not Jewish families. Nor have I ever said, nor have I ever held the view, that intermarried families are not holy.

My views on intermarriage can be summed up as follows:

I am deeply concerned that only 12% of the grandchildren of intermarried families identify as Jews. I am pained and worried that only about a third of intermarried families are raising their children as Jews. I am also anguished that intermarried families exhibit very low rates of affiliation with synagogues, or ritual practice at home, or patterns of involvement in organized Jewry. I wish that intermarried families were more active in Jewish life, and that they would all decide to raise their children and grandchildren as committed Jews.

Moreover, as a matter of principle, I believe that Jews should marry Jews, and that Judaism teaches that Jews should marry Jews. A Jew is anyone born or raised Jewish, or who converts to Judaism. The marriage of a Jew to a Jew-by-choice is an in-marriage and NOT an intermarriage.

We have a rich and wonderful culture, religion, community, people, and set of values–all of which we can introduce to the non-Jews who have become part of our families by way of marriage. While we should continue to teach that Jews should marry Jews, we should also encourage non-Jews who marry Jews to convert to Judaism. In the event that conversion does not take place, we should welcome into our families and communities the children of Jews and non-Jews, and advocate that they be raised unambiguously in one faith tradition–Judaism.

To be clear, we must welcome intermarried couples and their children into our families, our friendship circles, our synagogues and our community, as I have in my own family and my own life, and we should do all we can to welcome and encourage conversion.

December 2005

Ron Gompertz, founder of Chrismukkah.com, responds to Ed Case

“Nobody’s ever tried the peace thing. We are selling it like soap.” – John Lennon, 1969

Last year, Edmund Case wrote an editorial in InterfaithFamily.com headlined “Chrismukkah is a Bad Idea.” In his commentary, Case wrote, “The concept of a holiday that combines Hanukkah and Christmas is meant to be light-hearted. But below the humorous surface are serious issues of integrity and respect.”

I am the founder of Chrismukkah.com, the guy behind the bad idea. In most respects, I agree with Mr. Case. Indeed, just below the surface of Chrismukkah are some serious and troubling issues. However, for these very reasons, I believe that Chrismukkah is a good idea.

Clearly, Christmas and Hanukkah are totally different holidays. Even a Hebrew school dropout like me knows that Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus while Hanukkah commemorates the Maccabees’ triumphant victory against religious oppression. Other than calendar proximity, the two holidays have little “meaning” in common.

However, some, including Mr. Case, seem to have misinterpreted the true meaning of Chrismukkah. Chrismukkah is not intended to replace either Hanukkah or Christmas. Chrismukkah does not aim to diminish or make light of the religious significance of either holiday. It does not try to syncretize Christianity and Judaism. Truth be told, Chrismukkah is not even a holiday… not literally. It’s more a metaphor.

Like so many other start-ups, Chrismukkah.com began on our kitchen table. Two years ago, as newlyweds with a six-month old in the crib, my wife and I sent out hand-made “Happy Chrismukkah” greetings to friends and family. We were inspired by a satiric holiday portrayed in a trendy TV show and we wanted to make light of our new interfaith family. After getting positive reviews from recipients, we decided it might be fun to turn our faux holiday cards into a real-life product. The line between parody and reality blurred.

As a fledgling business, we hoped our cards and gift items would appeal to others in our same multi-faith boat. We wanted to solve an annual dilemma: what non-boring holiday greetings could one send to interfaith families or mixed-faith individuals? Only after we started receiving national media attention, some flattering, some critical, did we realize how subversive the Chrismukkah concept really was. Chrismukkah discussions appeared on countless blog sites and chat rooms. Some wrote to say just the name itself was offensive. When right-wing conservative pundits began issuing press releases denouncing Chrismukkah, we knew we had hit a nerve. We were fully aware that strictly theologically speaking, Chrismukkah was nonsense. But, with the frightening rise of religious fundamentalism in America and around the world, the notion of different religions celebrating in harmony seemed to be noble and idealistic.

One thing was clear. Were it not for the millions of families who already celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah under the same roof, Chrismukkah would not exist. For those of us who do, Chrismukkah is a befitting name to describe the hectic, sometimes stressful, often contradictory, yet generally wonderful time of year when we do our best to balance our mish-mash of traditions and obligations.

Rather than calling Chrismukkah a holiday, we began to think of it as a state of mind and a mirthful mythology in which we intermarried couples could conspire. Like an exhausted Santa Claus and Hanukkah Harry sitting down together to share a meal of latkes and eggnog after a long night’s schlep, Chrismukkah exists in our collective wishful thinking.

So how does one celebrate Chrismukkah? Any way you choose! There are no rules. There is no dogma. It’s completely customizable to the particular needs of each celebrant. Take your favorite secular parts from Christmas and Hanukkah… the food, the lights, the snowmen, the songs… then mush them all together, being careful to leave the religious parts alone. Go ahead, spin the dreidel under the mistletoe without gelt… ummm, guilt.

In my own family, we celebrate Chrismukkah with a dollop of curiosity and a sprinkle of self-deprecating humor. We found that by celebrating our new one-size-fits-all “holiday,” the playing field was leveled. Chrismukkah added a bit of levity to our own December dilemma. You see, in most ways we’re fairly typical, but in other ways we’re not.

Michelle’s father is a career pastor with the progressive denomination United Church of Christ. He marched on Washington with Martin Luther King in the early 60s and to this day remains a social activist. Michelle’s sister was born in Korea and adopted at the age of three. She and her husband, who is from India, have three children. Michelle’s brother and his half-Japanese wife have two kids. Michelle has traveled extensively around the world, spending much time in the emerging countries of Asia. Perhaps as a result, she leans towards the teachings of the Dalai Lama and Buddhism. Family gatherings are always interesting. My mother grew up in Germany during the 1930s. My grandmother’s parents, the Cohens, fled to Israel (then still Palestine) after Hitler came to power. My grandmother decided to stay in Germany with her husband, a Lutheran who was confident the Nazis were all talk and the trouble would blow over. A few years later, my mother was expelled from school because she was a “mischling”–a Jewish mutt. She lived through horrors I cannot imagine, but because her father was not Jewish, she was not sent to a concentration camp. After the war, my mother came to America.

Violence from religious fanaticism book-ended my father’s life. He grew up in a prominent Jewish family in the north of Germany. By 1938, things had become very difficult. In November, the Hitler Yugen destroyed their home and business on KristallNacht. They managed to get out just in time, losing everything except their lives. Eventually finding their way to America, my grandfather became a leader in the New York German-Jewish community. He co-founded the synagogue where I was later Bar Mitzvahed. For my father though, the traumas of his boyhood in Germany always haunted him.

Sixty-three years after KristallNacht, burning debris from the collapsing World Trade Centers rained down on my father’s building, shattering windows and setting it afire. He was stranded and missing for two days in his smoke-filled thirty-first floor apartment. He died two years later, never having recovered from the shock. He was a grandfather for less than a year. These milestone events were very much on my mind when we launched Chrismukkah.

Throughout my life, I have known the burdens and responsibilities I carry as a Jew. I am proud of my heritage. I am aware of community concerns about our zero population growth, the high incidence of intermarriage and what this could mean for Jewish continuity. Yet, when I met and fell in love with Michelle, her family’s religion was not an issue for me, nor mine to her.

Despite the role Chrismukkah has played in our lives, Michelle continues to celebrate Christmas and I Hanukkah just as we had before we married. I light the menorah and she the tree.

Like most interfaith couples, we enjoy sharing our rituals. After Thanksgiving, we go as a family to the Christmas tree farm to select the perfect conifer. Michelle loves sifting through her box of vintage heirloom ornaments, now together with our daughter, whom we have decided to raise as a Jew. Together we decorate the tree.

Over the years, Michelle has learned to pronounce “Baruch ata Adonai” with reasonable credibility. We look forward to the annual Hanukkah party at Temple Beth Shalom, spending time with fellow members, many of whom are also intermarried. Then we fly to Indiana to spend Christmas week with Michelle’s parents and siblings. I go with them to Christmas Eve candlelight service, always feeling a little awkward and self-conscious, yet enjoying the music and dare I say… feeling just a wee bit joyous.

Chrismukkah is not for everyone. If you’re married to someone of the same faith, it serves no purpose. Yet for people who fell in love with someone even though they were a little bit different from themselves, Chrismukkah might be just the thing. Chrismukkah celebrates free-thinking, non-conformity, open-mindedness, and the embracing of diversity. It’s a way to break down barriers that separate us. It’s a small act of defiance, a protest in a world where religious intolerance and killing continue to dominate the headlines. Most importantly, Chrismukkah celebrates what we have in common rather than what makes us different.

Yes, maybe it’s old-fashioned and naïve to think such thoughts, but then, I don’t think we’re alone.

Merry Mazel Tov to all and to all a good night!

“Imagine there’s no countries,
It isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you’ll join us,
And the world will live as one.” *

* Lyrics by John Lennon

Ed Case’s response: I Still Say ‘Chrismukkah’ is a Bad Idea

In December 2004 I wrote “Chrismukkah” is a Bad Idea for InterfaithFamily.com. This year, we invited Ron Gompertz, founder of Chrismukkah.com, to explain what “Chrismukkah” means to him and what he’s trying to accomplish with his business.

I’m sure Mr. Gompertz has good intentions. I’m glad that he continues to celebrate Hanukkah while his wife celebrates Christmas as before, that they share their rituals, and that they are raising their daughter as a Jew. But I don’t think he’s clear on what “Chrismukkah” is, or on what it adds to their lives.

At one point, Mr. Gompertz says “Chrismukkah” is a “time of year,” at another, “not a holiday.” I have less trouble with “Chrismukkah” as a season than as a holiday–but that’s exactly what the problem is, because at other points Mr. Gompertz does describe it as “our new one-size-fits-all ‘holiday’.” He adds: “Take your favorite secular parts from Christmas and Hanukkah… the food, the lights, the snowmen, the songs… then mush them all together,…” Once he ritualizes “Chrismukkah” in that way, giving it particular customs and family meanings, he has created another, competing holiday, whether he intended to or not.

I still think that “Chrismukkah” is a bad idea, for the same two reasons as last year. First, Hanukkah and Christmas are different holidays, each with a history and distinct traditions. Combining them eliminates the integrity of each.

Second, and more important, for interfaith families raising their children as Jews, it’s important to honor and respect the ethnic, cultural and religious traditions of both parents. But “Chrismukkah,” because it mushes distinct traditions together, can only confuse children being raised with one religious identity in an interfaith family.

In our second annual December Dilemma Survey, 57% of the respondents had heard of “Chrismukkah.” Seventy-eight percent said they thought it was a bad idea, for the same two reasons–losing the meaning of each holiday, and confusing children–and a third–that it combines the holidays for commercial reasons. Respondents used the following terms: “taints,” “undermines,” “waters down,” “lowers,” “cheapens,” “dilutes,” “trivializes,” and “offensive.” Here are some verbatim comments from the survey respondents:

The holidays are distinct in their meaning and history. To blend them dishonors both. We try to honor both traditions in our family, while raising our children Jewish. To blend the two makes it impossible to truly understand and appreciate what the holidays mean. It further secularizes the holidays because after eviscerating their meaning, commercialization is all that is left.

The fact that we are in interfaith relationships does not mean that we have an interfaith religion. Our religions are still two separate, individual traditions that should be honored as such. Celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah is one thing, but pretending they are the same holiday is another.

Religious diversity isn’t about blending traditions; it’s about recognizing and honoring different traditions in their own unique ways.

You can’t blend them like we combined Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays into Presidents’ Day. It insults both traditions.

Combining holidays commercializes even more and makes it just a trendy shopping gimmick.

It confuses children. I think they need to be given one clear and consistent message about which holiday is which, and why each is important in its own right. Mixing the two diminishes the meaning for both.

Who wants fruit salad when either the apples or the oranges are perfectly delicious by themselves?

So, I’m sorry, Mr. Gompertz, but I’m not persuaded. I still say “Chrismukkah” is a bad idea.

January 2005

I was intermarried for thirty years, until my wife converted to Judaism in October 2004. Both of our children, now twenty-six and twenty-two, have strong Jewish identities, but from the way we marked their births, it might not have looked like that would be the likely result.

When Emily was born, my wife and I had agreed that she would be Jewish, but I don’t think it even occurred to me to give her a Hebrew name. At that time, I don’t think that naming ceremonies were at all common for girls, but even if they were, it didn’t occur to me to have one for her. I vividly remember calling my parents to tell of the arrival of their first grandchild–they were thrilled, and immediately came to see her in the hospital. I knew it was a Jewish tradition to name a child after a deceased relative, and we hadn’t done that, and I thought that my parents were disappointed when I told them that her middle name was going to be her mother’s (very English-sounding) maiden name. But they, very wisely I think, didn’t push the subject of giving her a Hebrew name. Although they very much wanted her to be Jewish, they must have been aware, consciously or not, that it wasn’t a good time to push.

At some point that I can’t remember exactly, I think when she was three or four, Emily did get a Hebrew name. We were at a fair of some sort at the Children’s Museum in Boston, and one of the activities was getting your name written in calligraphied Hebrew letters. Emily said her English name, and the attendant looked in a book and found that that name meant “industrious,” and looked in another book and found that the Hebrew name that means “industrious” is “Tirzah,” so that became her Hebrew name.

When my son was born, I remember thinking that his Hebrew name would be the same as his English name, Adam. This time my wife and I had decided to use a middle name that started with the same letter as the name of my father’s mother, so we at least followed that tradition. But although I knew that it was traditional for a boy to have a brit, a ceremonial circumcision, it didn’t occur to me do so for Adam, and my parents didn’t raise the issue. He was circumcised by an Arabic-looking doctor while I watched from behind a thick glass window. I remember feeling vaguely uncomfortable, and saying a silent prayer that this would be a sign that he was a Jew.

By the time Emily started school, my wife and I knew that we wanted her to have a Jewish education, and she started a Sunday program, first at a local university, and then at our Reform synagogue. Nothing in particular happened at that time, or caused any major change in my or my wife’s thinking, as far as I can recall. We had always agreed that Emily would be Jewish, and getting to school age presented a clear point at which we would put that decision into effect. Fortunately, we didn’t have any disagreement on the issue; my wife thought it was important for our children to have a religion and didn’t propose any religion other than Judaism.

By the time Emily was about ten, and Adam was six, we had become active in our Reform synagogue. The kids had started religious school, and the question had come up whether they had Hebrew names. We were also looking ahead to Emily’s Bat Mitzvah, for which she would need a Hebrew name. We decided that we should formalize our impromptu choices of “Tirzah” and “Adam,” so our rabbi came to our house and we had a private naming ceremony, complete with an official certificate.

I’m glad my children eventually got Hebrew names, but looking back, I don’t think I would have done anything differently. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me now, it must not have seemed right to me to want such a ceremony when they were born. It may have to do with the dynamics of my relationship with my wife and her family–maybe I felt that pushing the children’s religious identity from the moment of birth might be counter-productive, leading to negative feelings from them. Maybe I unconsciously felt that we needed to learn to trust each other as parents together for a while before addressing the religious identity issue. My feeling that a naming ceremony isn’t essential to making a person a Jew, and doesn’t have the significance of a baptism, probably played a role as well.

In any event, I don’t feel that my children missed out on anything essential by not having a naming ceremony when they were born–which after all is more for the family and friends than it is for the baby. In fact, for us, I think it was better that the official naming came much later, when the kids could be aware of what was happening, and they were already clearly on the road of their Jewish education. I do think that naming ceremonies are very nice, and if intermarried parents can agree to have one, they’re a great way to mark the start of a Jewish life. But my own experience shows that for some intermarried families, having a naming ceremony isn’t that important, and not having one does not indicate that the children will not be raised as Jews. There are many different pathways that can lead to that result.

December 2004

Sorry to be a “grinch” or a “scrooge,” but “Chrismukkah” is a bad idea.

First depicted last December on the hit Fox TV show “The O.C.,” picked up by entrepreneurs selling “Chrismukkah” greeting cards, and featured again on “The O.C.” last week, “Chrismukkah” has been all the rage this December, with media coverage in USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, NPR and TV morning talk shows.

The concept of a holiday that combines Hanukkah and Christmas is meant to be light-hearted. But below the humorous surface are serious issues of integrity and respect.

Hanukkah and Christmas are different holidays. Ironically, Hanukkah commemorates the Jewish people’s fight to maintain its religious traditions in the face of an oppressive majority. Christmas, of course, remembers the birth of Jesus.

Over time, holidays take on additional and different meanings. Gift giving became part of Hanukkah celebrations in this country largely in competition with Christmas. For some, Christmas is more important as a family-centered celebration of values than for any religious significance. But each holiday has a long history and distinct traditions. Combining them undermines and obliterates the integrity of each.

Jews in the United States enjoy the great good fortune of living in a majority culture that, instead of oppressing religious and ethnic minorities, values multi-culturalism. But multi-culturalism by definition means respecting and celebrating distinct traditions–not blending them together.

“Chrismukkah” will never displace Christmas as a national holiday. From a Christian perspective, “Chrismukkah” may not appear to be problematic.

But for those who care about maintaining Jewish traditions, it is. And for Jewish-Christian interfaith couples and families, it’s even more of an issue.

There are only 5.2 million Jews in the United States today. Almost half of Jews who marry today are marrying people who are not Jewish. Of intermarried couples, only 33% say they are raising their children as Jews, and for those who care about maintaining Jewish traditions, it’s extremely important to support those couples and increase their number.

Most interfaith couples who decide to raise their children in one religion realize that they cannot do so without honoring and respecting the ethnic and religious traditions of both parents. In the recent December Dilemma Survey by InterfaithFamily.com, where 80% of the respondents were raising their children as Jews, 80% participated in both Hanukkah and Christmas celebrations, and 53% had a Christmas tree in their home. These couples resolve potential conflicts by treating Hanukkah, but not Christmas, as a religious holiday–75% of the survey respondents reported that their Christmas celebrations were more secular than religious.

Many survey respondents reported that their children’s Jewish identity was not weakened by their participation in Christmas celebrations, but in fact was strengthened. One said, “we have tried to teach our son respect for others’ holidays and traditions, while maintaining our own Jewish traditions, not as superior to anyone else’s, but rather our own, and therefore special to us.”

In contrast, “Chrismukkah,” as the antithesis of maintaining special traditions, could only confuse children being raised with one religious identity in an interfaith family.

Most importantly, more than two-thirds of the survey respondents said they kept their celebrations separate, instead of blending them. For interfaith couples raising their children with one religious identity, honoring and respecting the distinctive nature of the holidays is the way to go–not mushing them into one.

March 2004

I’ve seen it. It was painful to watch, excessively violent, clearly anti-Semitic in my opinion, and religious propaganda that leaves me uncomfortable. But Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is a powerful and provocative movie phenomenon that can’t be ignored. The most important point is that it won’t generate much anti-Semitism, at least not if the ways that interfaith families experience and resolve negative religious stereotypes serve as a model for people of good faith.

The movie is anti-Semitic because of the choices Gibson made in telling his story. He could have chosen to portray Pontius Pilate as the bloodthirsty dictator who crucified thousands of Jews. Instead, he portrays Pilate as virtually blameless in deciding to crucify Jesus, especially when Jesus says to Pilate, in effect, that “those who delivered me to you are responsible.” He could have chosen to portray the Jewishness of Jesus’ supporters, both before he was condemned and after, as well as the Temple priests and their followers who were threatened by him. Instead, the Jewish masses are nearly uniformly depicted–with but a handful of exceptions–as clamoring for Jesus’ death and then tormenting him on his way to the crucifixion. When Jesus dies, a “tear” drops from heaven, causing an earthquake that literally splits the foundation of the Temple. That’s an unequivocal message of Christian triumphalism that is out of step with current mainstream views that recognize Judaism as an authentic religious path.

The flashback scenes of Jesus’ life, especially talking with his disciples at the Last Supper, and the brief scene of the Resurrection, are filmed in a powerfully attractive way, bathed in golden light. They reminded me of the equally effective video shown at the end of the tour of the Mormon church’s headquarters in Salt Lake City. Slickly presented video images that make the viewer want to believe a particular theological point of view offend my liberal sensibilities.

I don’t begrudge Mel Gibson’s right to tell the story of Jesus’ death or to make Christian theology attractive. My wife noted something that I would have missed–it makes sense for the movie to focus on Jesus’ suffering in order to emphasize the Christian theological point that Jesus suffered in order to save humanity. But the movie could have depicted the suffering with considerably less violence and still made the point, the same way that it could have depicted the involvement of the Jewish leaders and masses in a more balanced way, and could have depicted Christian theology as attractive without trashing Judaism.

What impact will The Passion have on relationships between Christians and Jews? It is instructive to consider the ways that the tensions and concerns that surround the movie acutely affect Christians and Jews in the most intimate of relationships: the interfaith family. A tremendous increase in marriages between Christians and Jews has accompanied and contributed to declining anti-Semitism in the U.S. since the 1960s. According to the most recent National Jewish Population Survey, 47 percent of Jews now marry non-Jews, and 31 percent of all married Jews today are married to non-Jews. There are more than one million interfaith couples in the United States, plus millions more parents, siblings and cousins in their extended families, squarely in the path of the controversy swirling around Gibson’s movie.

Christians and Jews in interfaith families start with the same range of attitudes towards each other’s faith backgrounds as those held by Christians and Jews generally. Many Jewish partners are not familiar with Christian theology, and view Christian history as a progression of anti-Semitic persecution and anticipate that it will recur. Many Christian partners remember anti-Semitic teachings from their churches and clergy.

Growing up, people come to understand the world based on their own experiences and on what they learn from stories told by others. Many Christians have learned and internalized, from stories told by others, including the Gospels, negative images of Jews. When they have actual experience with Jews in personal relationships, their views change. One of our writers, Rosemary Brehm, a Catholic woman married to a Jew and raising Jewish children, recalled in an article the negative stereotypes of Jews she learned in her pre-Vatican II Catholic upbringing as “imprinting a picture of a flawed people–the people who rejected Christ–in my mind.” Although official church doctrine is supposed to have eliminated those negative perspectives, she still encounters them in the high school Catholic religion class she teaches, and worries that The Passion will reinforce them. But most people in interfaith relationships will reject any negative image of Jews that arises from The Passion because of their own experiences.

Intimate family relationships are transforming, because dealing with the real person in the relationship usually demolishes any stereotype brought to the relationship. Brehm, who grew up hearing “that Jews are cheap, outspoken and pushy,” knows that her Jewish husband and his relatives and their children are not. Likewise, despite growing up hearing that “the Jews had Christ killed”–and now re-hearing that message in The Passion–she knows that the Jews in her family are not responsible even if some Jews at the time of Jesus’ death had some involvement.

Many Christian partners report with some chagrin that they grew up unaware of the anti-Semitic nature of comments that they acquiesced or even participated in. Paula Yablonsky, another recent InterfaithFamily.com contributor, wrote: I never thought of remarks like “Jew him down” as being anti-Semitic, and I never thought it my job to correct anyone making these remarks–until I became involved with the Jewish man who is now my husband.

Christians have no monopoly on prejudice against the “other.” Christian partners in interfaith relationships too often report off-putting comments about “the goyim” from Jews. But interfaith partners become sensitized to comments and behaviors that make each other feel hurt or excluded, and discover how to be inclusive. As Brehm said, “We are intertwined. What hurts one, hurts all. We are extra aware of and sensitive to factors that most intra-faith families wouldn’t think of.”

Interfaith partners come to realize because of their relationship that prejudice against the “other” is personal to them. As another writer, Jim Keen, said ,

“Yes, I am Protestant. But my family is Jewish, and I now know a little bit about what it’s like to think and feel Jewishly. Before, I never thought much about what it was like to be hated by neo-Nazis. Perhaps that is the real issue. Maybe it had been my problem all along.”

They also realize that they can help to affect positive change because of their relationship, as when Brehm wrote: “I may not be able to change a person’s mind, but I can neutralize her image of Jews and provide a different perspective through educating her about who my family is and who Jews are.”

February 2004

Egon Mayer died on January 30, 2004 at age 59, after a six-month battle with cancer. The cause of Jewish outreach to interfaith families has lost a true pioneer and champion. I have lost a personal hero. Beyond his professional accomplishments, he was a man of extraordinary qualities, as ten friends, family members and colleagues who spoke at his February 1 funeral made clear.

I was a beneficiary of Dr. Mayer’s work long before I knew who he was. In the mid-1980s, I was able to find places in the Jewish community that would welcome my interfaith family. The work of two individuals, more than any other, made that possible. One was Rabbi Alexander Schindler, of blessed memory, who opened the Reform Movement to intermarried families through the Reform Jewish Outreach program and the doctrine of patrilineal descent. The other was Egon Mayer. He was an opinion leader who fostered welcoming attitudes toward interfaith families in significant parts of the organized Jewish communal world.

As his colleague Rela Geffen explained at the funeral, in the 1970s Egon Mayer was one of a small group of sociologists and demographers who began to study intermarriage and talk about it with Jewish communal professionals. His approach, unique at the time, was to see intermarriage not only as a threat to Jewish continuity, but also as a potential opportunity. In 1985, he wrote Love and Tradition: Marriage Between Jews and Christians, a ground-breaking work in which he explained the then-novel idea that an intermarriage did not necessarily mean a rejection of Jewish connections, and advocated for the importance of welcoming interfaith families to the Jewish community. In 1988 he became the founding director of the Jewish Outreach Institute. After the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey showed that half of Jews were intermarrying, he continued his research, and trained outreach professionals and developed outreach programs that have influenced countless interfaith families. When intermarriage was debated in the Jewish community — as it most vigorously was — and when news stories about intermarriage appeared, Egon Mayer invariably was the person articulately arguing for the pro-outreach view.

I met Dr. Mayer for the first time in January 1998. My class at Brandeis’ Hornstein Program in Jewish Communal Service was making a trip to New York to visit the major communal organizations. I contacted Egon and asked if he would meet with me, explaining that I was a “recovering” lawyer who wanted to do something, at that point undefined, in the outreach field. That was the beginning of a much-too-short relationship in which he gave generously of this time, wise advice, and encouragement at every step of my journey — after I joined Jewish Family & Life!, which had already created the online magazine InterfaithFamily.com, in 1999, and which for a time helped to maintain the Jewish Outreach Institute’s website; when I founded InterfaithFamily.com as an independent non-profit and acquired the website at the beginning of 2002; and as we thereafter expanded our work.

By 2001, when the Coalition to Promote In-Marriage made several particularly heated attacks on intermarriage, Egon told me he was tired of fighting with the anti-outreach forces. He continued to share his thoughts, and to advise and encourage my own writing and speaking out on the issues. I received no higher praise than a compliment from Egon, but his brilliance, insight and eloquence are unparalleled, and will be sorely missed.

What stood out most clearly at Egon’s funeral, however, were not his extensive professional accomplishments, but the descriptions of his character, which resonated completely with my own experience. Many of the ten speakers at the funeral said he was “kind,” “gentle,” “generous,” “supportive.” One referred to what were, for Egon, “effortless acts of loving kindness.” During his illness, his main expressed concern was the sadness and pain that those who loved him would experience. A close professional colleague said Egon was the finest person she had ever known, in terms of integrity, values, and most importantly, in the way he treated people; she explained that Egon was always kindly because he did not want to cause the people he dealt with any more pain than was necessary.

As his rabbi, Lee Friedlander, said, “how remarkable he was.” What struck me as most remarkable, was that such a caring person had devoted much of his professional life to such a controversial subject and yet maintained a positive outlook. Egon was no shrinking violet; he was brilliant, he was tenacious with ideas, and in private at least he could be quite acerbic in his assessment of opposing arguments. But as one speaker said, Egon had a characterological bent to see the glass as half full. That was his approach both to life in general, and to intermarriage in particular.

Pirke Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, relates that Hillel said, “Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving mankind and bringing them nigh to the Torah.” I’d like to think that Egon maintained his optimism because he knew in his heart what his brother said in his eulogy: that in his advocacy for inclusion in the Jewish community, Egon Mayer was indeed a “pursuer of peace.”

May his memory be for a blessing.

September 2003

When we announced the InterfaithFamily.com Network Essay Contest, “We’re Interfaith Families … Connecting with Jewish Life,” last April, little did we know that on September 10, 2003, two days before the date set to announce our contest winners, the long-awaited results of the year 2000 National Jewish Population Survey–including an intermarriage rate of 47% or 54%, depending on how it is calculated–would finally be revealed. The Jewish community once again faces the issue of whether we want to increase the numbers of interfaith families who raise their children as Jews, thereby strengthening our community.

There is a Talmudic expression, “go and see what the people are doing” (Eruvin 14b). Through the Essay Contest, we asked interfaith families who have made Jewish choices to tell us why they did, what it means to them, what discouraged and what helped them on their journeys. Here are some of the lessons we draw from their over 130 deeply personal statements.

1. Many Jewish partners and many children of intermarried parents express a very strong Jewish identity and commitment to Jewish life, and many non-Jewish partners are extremely supportive of their families’ Jewish involvement. Many writers revealed a very strong desire to identify as Jews and to perpetuate Jewish life, often arising out of a sense of connection with and obligation to parents, grandparents and ancestors, and expressing itself within their interfaith relationship. In perhaps the most powerful example, the Grand Prize essay, Hadassah, Andi Rosenthal tells how she was raised as a Catholic by a non-Jewish mother and a father alienated from his Judaism, and how a mysteriously strong attraction to Judaism began when she first heard Hebrew prayers at a friend’s Bar Mitzvah:

It was then, for the first time, that I felt my heart stand at attention. I did not read or speak Hebrew, and I had no intellectual understanding of what was being said. But it felt almost as if someone had called me by my true name…. That feeling did not go away.

Rosenthal began to study the Holocaust and “wanted to be able to identify with the strength and resilience that had helped a community to rebuild following catastrophe.” She discovered that her father’s mother was a convert to Judaism, and ends up converting to Judaism herself.

Similarly, in The Letter, the First Prize essay in the Raising Jewish Children category, Gary Goldhammer, an intermarried Jewish man, composes a moving letter in which he tells his deceased father how he is raising his five-year old daughter Alexandra:

I need you to know…. Dad, you won’t believe this, but she speaks Hebrew. She goes to synagogue and observes Shabbat. She almost knows more about our people and our religion than I do, probably because she pays more attention in services than I ever did. She is a Jew, dad. I want you to know that.

Annie Modesitt, author of Out on the Porch, the First Prize essay in the Engaging in Jewish Life category, is an extremely supportive non-Jewish mother. (Regular readers of InterfaithFamily.com may recall two of Annie’s previous articles, The Strength of Our Interfaith Marriage and An Interfaith Sweater. Gary Goldhammer’s wife Christine is “very supportive of [their daughter’s] Judaism.” She sings the Barechu “pretty well, too. Oh, and Christine also puts together the synagogue newsletter and is active in our Havurah. Not bad for a Lutheran.”

Two of our writers founded synagogues with their non-Jewish spouses; one child of intermarried parents is in rabbinical school, one plans to be a rabbi, and two were presidents of their colleges’ Hillel. As Joyce MacGregor said:

There are plenty of Reillys and Sullivans and O’Learys who have a Menorah on the shelf, some chopped liver in the fridge, and a deep meaningful connection to their Jewish heritage…. It will be passed to our children as best we know how and continue to be a source of comfort and sadness as we live our lives as part of today’s Jewish people.

Another writer, Felice Morel, said that although her husband never converted to Judaism, he “no longer refers to us as an interfaith family; he calls us a ‘Jewish family in which one parent is not Jewish.'” The Jewish community would do well to understand, accept and welcome that concept – a Jewish family where one parent is not Jewish.

2. Many people–including Jewish partners, non-Jewish partners, and children of intermarried parents–say that because they are in interfaith families, they can not take their Jewish involvement for granted, they have to think about what is important to them, they have to make conscious decisions, and they have to work harder at it. In Beatles Wisdom, the First Prize essay in the Loving Jewish Grandchildren category, Amy Elkes, an interdating Jewish woman, describes her feelings as she brings her non-Jewish boyfriend to meet her Holocaust-survivor grandparents:

I desperately wanted my grandparents to know that dating Nathan had not made me any less Jewish and had, in many ways, strengthened my personal commitment to a faith that was easy to take for granted in a Jewish home, a Jewish grade school, and a largely Jewish community.

And in I am Not a Crisis, the First Prize essay in the Claiming My Jewish Roots category, Anna Mills says,

What does it mean to be Jewish, and how Jewish are you? The questions have an added urgency for me–I can’t take Jewishness for granted.

Today, when everything is a matter of choice, and different activities and affiliations compete for people’s limited time, many people aren’t going to get involved in Jewish life just because they’re born Jewish. Too many Jews–including those married to other Jews–are unaffiliated and apathetic. If we believe, as InterfaithFamily.com does, that engaging in Jewish life is a great source of meaning and purpose and fulfillment, and that people who think about and explore Jewish life will agree that that is the case–then it is a very promising development that people in interfaith families have to make conscious decisions about Jewish life as an option.

One writer, Sara Prentice-Manela, made this very thought-provoking comment:

The biggest challenge interfaith families present to the Jewish community is that we point out to them, by our very existence, that belonging to a community is like being in a marriage–a continuous collaboration, and search, and deliberate choice to belong. That kind of commitment is not entered into lightly.

3. Many parents recognize the importance of giving children one religious identity, and there are particular aspects of Jewish life–theology, Shabbat observance, being non-dogmatic–that appeal to people in interfaith families and could be promoted in outreach efforts. One parent, Joanne Hartman, realized that not choosing led to confusion: “By not choosing we were treading water in a swirling current of religions, without a boat to claim our own.” Another parent, Angela Meyer, said:

Religion is like clothing. It is the parents’ responsibility to dress the very young child appropriately. (“Here is your red coat.”) As the child gets older, explanations may be added, but the clothing decision is still ultimately the parents’. (“You need your red coat because it is very cold today.”) Eventually, the child will be able to choose between a red coat, a blue coat, or even no coat at all. Undoubtedly, if my husband and I had only spoken of religion in the theoretical sense, our children would have been running in the snow with shorts on, and wondering why they were cold.

Several committed Christians said they were comfortable choosing Judaism for their children and family because Jewish theology is not inconsistent with their beliefs, and they recognized that Christian theology is inconsistent with Jewish beliefs. Rosemary DiDio Brehm, for example, said that the question came down to how they could best worship as a family.

Many writers said that they had found Shabbat observance to be particularly meaningful. For example, Cheryl Coon said: “When we sit down together, there’s a peacefulness that comes over us. Something about it, about the ancient Jewish prayers, about being linked to a worldwide tradition, about sharing it together, all of us, has truly brought the beauty and bond of Judaism into our intermarried home.”

Many appreciate how Judaism values questioning, searching, and struggling for answers. Samie Faciolo: “I enjoyed the Jewish encouragement of asking and answering questions. I am still fascinated that through the guidance of texts, traditions and teachers, I have the freedom to question my religion and search for answers.”

4. The power of loving gestures–by both Jews and non-Jews–to invite and support the Jewish choices of people in interfaith relationships cannot be underestimated. In the Grand Prize essay, Andi Rosenthal writes that when she explained to her Catholic mother what becoming Jewish would mean to her:

I had been so afraid of hurting or disappointing her. But she pulled from her purse a small box, which contained a Star of David pendant. She said, “Now I understand what this means to you. I know you want to convert. It’s fine with me. I understand now.”

In the First Prize essay in the grandparenting category, Amy Elkes tells how her Holocaust-survivor grandfather ended his first meeting with her non-Jewish boyfriend by “giving him the same good-bye kiss he usually reserves for his grandchildren”:

There are few moments in my life that have been as meaningful as that kiss on the cheek. My courageous grandfather chose to show affection to a boy who likely represents some of his greatest fears, rather than make his granddaughter feel bad about who she loves.

5. Many interfaith families resolve the fact that there are two identities and traditions in their family by viewing their children as having two cultural identities but one religious identity. Participation in Christmas celebrations should be viewed in this context. About a third of our writers wrote about Christmas. Except for one or two, they all participate in Christmas celebrations, in varied ways. Some don’t have any Christmas in their own home but go to relatives. Some don’t go to church, others do. But without exception, our Jewish writers, including the children of intermarried parents, do not experience Christmas as having religious significance (even those who accompany a non-Jewish parent to church). Their participation is a way of honoring, respecting and caring for the tradition of the non-Jewish partner or parent.

Jemi Kostiner Mansfield, a Jewish educator whose child goes to a day school, has a Christmas tree in her home, because her husband,

wanted our boys to appreciate the traditions from both sides of the family without necessarily identifying with anything outright Christian…. As we see it, our job is to make our family’s Jewish identity so natural, so much a part of us, that it’s not threatened by the presence of a Grand Fir in our living room for one month out of the year.

Judaism is a very family-oriented religion. We can’t expect an interfaith family to cut off half of its background. But we can understand that respecting a parent’s tradition does not have to compromise a child’s religious identity–it does not make the child Jewish “and something else.” As Jo Kaiser wrote,

I also hope to show my daughter that she doesn’t have to banish one part of herself to embrace another. I am not worried that the sight of Santa will turn her into an instant Christian. I have faith in the power of Judaism as a religion and as a way of life. Assimilation happens because what is outside, over there, looks better than what is inside. You don’t guard against it by building a higher wall between you and the rest of the world. What you do is make sure the life you have is irresistibly worth leading.

In another thought-provoking comment, in the First Prize essay in the Engaging in Jewish Life category, Annie Modesitt said,

I have the nerve, chutzpah and joy to believe that marriages and families such as ours will usher in a new renaissance of Jewish thought and learning…. I feel that it is incumbent on all non-Jews who have chosen to affiliate themselves with Jewish spouses and families to use their own cultural tools to enlarge the experience of the Jews in a positive way.

6. The Jewish community’s efforts to increase the involvement of interfaith families should abide by Dr. Phil’s maxim, “every interaction either contributes to or contaminates a relationship.” Interfaith families respond positively to welcoming interactions. Interfaith families respond particularly to rabbis who express gratitude to non-Jewish partners, as when Joanne Hartman said: “The rabbi said that non-Jews raising their children Jewish are making the ultimate generous gift to the world. My non-Jewish husband listened and lovingly said he understood.” Interfaith families respond to rabbis who acknowledge the “Jewishness” of non-Jewish partners’ lives, as when Laura Padersky said: Our Rabbi said something that proved to be a defining moment in my spiritual journey. “You may not have converted, but you do realize that you are living as a Jew, don’t you?” Imagine that, being told by a Rabbi that you act like a Jew!

Many writers were grateful to rabbis who officiated and co-officiated at their weddings. Several were grateful to rabbis who officiated on condition that the couple agree to raise their children as Jews, because, as Kathy Miller said, “the commitment we made to the rabbi was a real one that occurred after mutual discussion and individual soul-searching.”

People want to be welcomed and they want to be accepted as they are. Our writers responded well when they were encouraged to visit and join a synagogue; when the synagogue had many interfaith family members; when synagogue leaders were intermarried; when the worship services and prayerbooks were “user-friendly” with transliterations; when non-Jews are considered members; when non-Jews are allowed to participate in their family’s life-cycle services (Mark Young: “By the time my son became a Bar Mitzvah, I was the first gentile that the old rabbi had ever allowed on the bimah. May his memory be for a blessing.”).

The fact that some branches of Judaism do not recognize the children of Jewish fathers as Jews is a major obstacle to the involvement of interfaith families in Jewish life. This was expressed particularly clearly in two of the prize-winning essays by children of intermarried parents, Nick Zaller (“perhaps the most significant problem children from interfaith families have, particularly us patrilineal Jews, is acceptance from others if or when we decide on a particular religion. I have been told over and over again that I am not a real Jew”) and Johanna Karasik (“I’m struggling a lot with my Jewish identity. There’s no question that I feel Jewish, but halacha says that I am not a Jew”), and also in the First Prize-winning essay in the Raising Jewish Children category, by Gary Goldhammer (“So what does it matter that her mother isn’t a Jew? Don’t I matter, too? Aren’t my genes relevant?”).

7. Many interfaith families respond positively when they know that other interfaith families are involved, and to outreach programs aimed at them. Angela Meyer: “I discovered a dozen other mommies struggling with the same kinds of issues.” Mark Young: “We did visit the temple, and I was very relieved to meet the McVeighs, the O’Flahertys and the Gianninotos.” Laura Kaufman: “I needed a support system. We met other couples like us and joined a havurah made up of interfaith couples.” Participating in a program enabled Leah Singer “to meet other couples, make friends with people who are facing the same issues we face, and feel comfortable branching out into other communities of Judaism in a synagogue.”

Some writers told quite extraordinary stories of the impact of outreach programs on their families. Several wrote about Stepping Stones programs (of parallel parent and young children education, for unaffiliated interfaith families); one young man, Alex Coven, wrote that his parents had been ambivalent about choosing a religion for him, but then they happened to go to such a program, and they ended up joining a synagogue and having his Bar Mitzvah service on Masada. Some writers–both Jews and non-Jews–noted that they needed “how-to” adult education programs because they didn’t “have the tools to make a Jewish life together,” as Leah Singer said. Others were helped by programs designed to help couples communicate about religious differences.

8. Interfaith families connect with Jewish life at varied times and in random ways. The variety of possible connections emphasizes the importance of always standing ready to capitalize on an opportunity to welcome that may arise. People make decisions about Jewish life at varied times: before weddings, when children are born or start school or reach Bar/Bat Mitzvah age, when they go to college, and later. Our writers got involved in random ways: they read articles and books (one non-Jew found her husband’s childhood book about Jewish holidays and customs and starting learning from it); writers saw advertisements for outreach programs in Jewish newspapers or parenting magazines, in emails forwarded by friends or in temple bulletins; they went to a synagogue ostensibly to buy something and ended up talking to someone who invited them in; they were put in touch with someone intermarried who welcomed them (Sue Repko: “I guess that’s what I was hoping would fall from the sky all those years–someone to say, ‘You’re welcome. You can be one of us.'”). Several young adults, children of intermarried parents, wrote about how important it was in their journeys to be welcomed at their college’s Hillel. One young mother experienced a welcoming Jewish community for the first time in her daughter’s Jewish pre-school.

At bottom, we need to have a real change in attitudes. Traditionally, kol yisrael areivim zeh la’zeh, every Jew is responsible for every other Jew. To strengthen the Jewish community by increasing the participation of interfaith families, we need to add that every Jew should also be responsible to be aware of and sensitive to, and to take advantage of, every opportunity to invite interfaith families into Jewish life. We should adopt that new approach, if we truly hear what non-Jews connected with Jewish life, like Teresa McMahon, are saying:

Judaism to me is not a race in danger of elimination, it is a set of ideas that should be shared. A wonderful belief that human beings can make the world a better, more just place. I believe this and I believe that my marriage upholds this set of ideas. We wish more people would be willing to put a bit more faith into interfaith marriages.

Or, in the words of FD Fields:

It may be the poor reception which intermarried couples receive, rather than intermarriage itself, which creates a barrier to be overcome before couples can even consider raising their children Jewish. Perhaps a more constructive approach toward couples, who happen to be intermarried, would increase the percentage who want to choose Judaism for their children.