Ignorant of Intermarriage? Ignoring Intermarriage?

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I loved Rebecca Ennen’s piece in the Forward, How Can Jewish Leaders Be So Ignorant About Intermarriage?  It’s refreshing to see a 35-year old child of intermarried parents, who works in a Jewish organization and is raising a Jewish child, forcefully explain how Jewish leaders talk about interfaith families “in ways that are frankly ignorant” and call to “hear more from intermarried people and from Jews proud of our mixed backgrounds.” Ennen says the messages from Jewish engagement programs often “are clear and damaging: intermarried families are second-rate, and it’s best to conceal your non-Jewish heritage. What if, instead, we based our ‘welcoming’ programs on the insights of people in and from interfaith families? What if Jews like me were elevated to leadership not despite our families but because of them?” It’s a perspective Jewish leaders would be wise to consider.

I also loved I’ll Take the Wheel, Thanks by Olufemi Sowemimo who talks about falling away from the religion of his upbringing and looking forward to making new traditions with his fiancé, Becky Herring, associate director of InterfaithFamily/Atlanta.

Passover and Easter 2018

There were many stories about interfaith families and the overlap of Passover and Easter this year. Samira Mehta, who has written a new book, Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States, wrote an excellent summary of the issues. Other articles with personal examples include Families celebrating both Passover and Easter this weekend say inclusion is key; Interfaith couples blend Passover and Easter traditions; How To Celebrate Easter As An Interfaith Family; and Communication key to interfaith couples celebrating holidays.

I have an issue with articles in the Jewish media about diversity and inclusion that do not mention interfaith families and partners from different faith traditions specifically. One mild example is an excellent piece by Brad Hirschfield, co-president of Clal. In an essay titled “How To Embrace Diversity at Your Seder,” he asks what we can’t have a Passover seder without, and suggests that “we cannot have a seder without genuinely different types of people at the table.” I would have liked to see interfaith couples and partners from different faith traditions explicitly mentioned, but the principle spelled out in the piece clearly applies.

A worse example is 5 Reasons That Passover Is The Festival Of Inclusion. Don’t get me wrong – I’m all in favor of including people with disabilities in Jewish life and communities, and this is an excellent article to support that kind of inclusion. But it often feels like the inclusion agenda has been hijacked by that cause. Just consider the topic headings in the article: recognition of diversity amongst us; making space for outsiders; we were slaves; differences must be accommodated; and ensuring full participation by all. “If we want to act as a family or a Jewish community, we must practice inclusion all year round.” “Every Jew must have an equal and equally participatory place at the table – independent of any difference that may be perceived.” Couldn’t we say “every Jewishly engaged person” should have an equal and equally participatory place at the table?

More Conservative News

The Conservative movement isn’t ignoring intermarriage, far from it. A great update by Ben Sales for JTA, Conservative Judaism’s leadership turns over. Will intermarriage policy be next?  reports that not only are the heads of the United Synagogue and the Rabbinical Assembly stepping down from their positions, but for the first time in years there will be a contested election for vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, with a rabbi considered relatively liberal on intermarriage issues being challenged by one more conservative. (Ari Feldman at the Forward broke the story on the election challenge.) And Rabbi Philip Graubart raises another thoughtful perspective when he questions whether the central concept of covenantal loyalty is removed from “the reality of how American Judaism is lived today.” “Covenant implies a collection of people acting together. But what happens when the great majority aren’t behaving the way we want them to behave? Can there be a covenant without a congregation?”

Intermarriage and Jewish Philanthropy

Jack Wertheimer, who has been very critical of intermarriage, wrote a report on American Jewish philanthropy for the Avi Chai Foundation and a summary for JTA, ‘Engaging’ millennials is all the rage. But is it the best use of Jewish philanthropy? The report is sprinkled with comments expressing concern about intermarriage, including “Given the high rates of intermarriage and assimilation as the generations pass, some of the foundations most committed to contributing to Jewish life turn their backs on Jewish needs.” and “the disinclination of younger Jews to support the large Jewish organizations or in many cases see merit in funding any Jewish causes engenders concern about the future of Jewish giving; so too do high rates of intermarriage, which often lead to alienation from Jewish life.” On the other hand, it mentions funders who prefer to support engagement, including:

Meanwhile, a whole industry had cropped up in response to the massive upsurge of intermarriage. Hoping to draw intermarried families into Jewish life, funders have invested in a range of new programs specially designed to address their perceived needs. Among the new initiatives are free trips to Israel for recently married intermarried couples sponsored by Honeymoon Israel and free Friday evening meals to teach such couples and singles how to welcome the Sabbath (sponsored by OneTable). Others are designed to help intermarried families meet with one another to discuss the challenges they face.

In an important comment on the report, Sandy Cardin, president of the Schusterman Foundation, suggests he’d like to see more discussion of the impact of intermarriage:

[O]ne trend I had hoped Jack would focus on is how big givers are addressing the demographic changes taking place in American Jewish life, especially outside the Orthodox communities. Relatively little appears in his closing recommendations about the extent to which young Jewish adults are marrying and partnering with members of other faith communities (or of no faith community at all). I would be very interested to read his views on both sides of the equation: how does Jack think these demographic shifts will affect large givers in the Jewish community and how does he think major gifts by Jewish philanthropists will affect this fundamental change in American Jewish life?

My Take on the Jewish Man’s Rebellion

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There’s been a media storm over the March 29 Washington Post essay, “I am tired of being a Jewish man’s rebellion,” in which Carey Purcell, a self-described “WASP,” suggests two Jewish men dated her as a “last act of defiance against cultural or familial expectations before finding someone who warranted their parents’ approval.” Roundly criticized for outdated stereotypes bordering on the anti-Semitic (as well, I would add, as anti-WASP), Purcell posted an apology on her website.

I didn’t like Purcell’s essay because I’ve never liked it when people explain why relationships succeed or fail because of abstract considerations. One of the best comments I saw was by Danielle Tcholakian in the Forward: “Compatibility is a weird sort of witchcraft, some sort of strange ephemeral thing that somehow makes you less annoyed by one person’s annoying traits than you are by most other humans.”

Without getting into all of the details of Purcell’s story which have been amply and repeatedly recited, the worst comment I saw was by Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt in the Forward. She criticizes Purcell’s complaint about the boyfriend breaking up with her by defending “a community’s – and religion’s – desperate attempts to stay afloat over centuries of Diaspora living.” It’s offensive to suggest that interfaith relationships threaten the Jewish community and Judaism’s “staying afloat.”

As Susan Katz Miller was quoted in a Chicago Tribune article as saying: “There is significant statistical evidence for thriving, successful interfaith families in America, and that should be the story, not an unfortunate, somewhat neurotic personal experience.”

The most important response was My Fellow Non-Jewish Women: Stop Blaming The Jews For Your Failed Relationships. It’s too bad the writer felt the need to be anonymous.  She tells how she had a Jewish boyfriend who broke up with her because she was not Jewish. He told her she would never be “accepted by the community;” his parents pressured him and threatened to cut him off financially and were so ashamed that she was kept a secret from their family, and she was told this would continue even if she converted.

Unlike Purcell, however, she doesn’t blame some abstract considerations or generalized phenomenon about Jewish men; she blames her boyfriend’s “immaturity, the unhealthy behaviors he employed and his emotionally manipulative family.” But better yet, she is currently dating a Jewish man who is mature, respectful, communicative and kind:

On Sunday, when he kindly joined me for Easter service, I saw the other couples worshipping together and felt no different. When we attend his extended family’s belated Passover Seder this weekend, we will celebrate the holiday just as so many other couples have the past few days. We will recommit ourselves to our shared values of aiding the oppressed and giving respect to those who paved the way for us.

The attitudes demonstrated by the anonymous writer and her Jewish boyfriend and his family  are the kind of attitudes that will do more than keep the Jewish community and Judaism “afloat” – they’ll enable it to thrive into the future.

Another Community Study

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Last month I blogged about what new community studies in Washington DC and San Francisco had to say about interfaith families. The Cohen Center at Brandeis, which did the Washington DC study, has released a new study of Pittsburgh.

An article in the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle reports the study’s findings that one-third of all children in Jewish households are in intermarried families, that 33% of children of intermarried families are being raised exclusively Jewish, and that “few intermarried families in the Pittsburgh community ‘feel very much a part of the local Jewish community.’” The study found that 11% of children of intermarried families are being raised Jewish and something else, and the Chronicle article notes that “for intermarried families who are raising their children Jewish in some way, ‘nearly as many are sending their children to Jewish preschool as are inmarried families.’” The study’s principal author, Matthew Boxer, said that “Reaching out to intermarried families may provide a good opportunity for growth…and Pittsburgh should see ‘what else can be done to make them feel welcome.’”

The study was also the subject of a front-page story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which reports that “Intermarriage remains a concern. Of local Jews who are married, engaged or living together, 29 percent are in an interreligious couple. Among young adults, the figure is 40 percent, and that’s among those who are coupled up.” The article reports that Len Saxe, head of the Cohen Center, said that children raised in interreligious marriages in recent years are more likely to grow up claiming a Jewish identity than in the past, when mixed couples felt marginalized. “The Jewish community, particularly the liberal part, said, ‘We’re going to welcome particularly the children.’”

The recent studies, as well as past studies in New York (2011), Boston (2015), and the Pew Report (2013), have a pretty wide variation in what they report about how the children of interfaith families are being raised. That’s a subject I’ll return to soon.

Intermarriage Round-up

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My Google alerts for “interfaith” and “intermarriage” picked up eight interesting items in the last month.

Rabbi Kerry Olitzky has written what sounds like a great new Haggadah That’s Full of Welcome. Published by Behrman House just in time for Passover, the haggadah is for families “who want to be as welcoming as they can be,” especially “for those on the periphery, for those who have been historically disenfranchised, for those who have been excluded” from the Jewish experience.” Customs from other traditions are mentioned because “people sitting around the table may have experiences within their own traditions with water” and “It’s a way to bring them closer to the Jewish experience.”

Rabbi Jillian Cameron, director of InterfaithFamily/Boston, wrote a great piece, “It’s Not My Face That Makes Me Jewish:”

Over the years I have at times marveled at the fact that I stayed connected to Judaism, after years of being told I wasn’t Jewish, because I have a mother who isn’t or from being questioned based on my appearance. Perhaps it was my stubbornness, my teachers and friends who helped boost my Jewish confidence or simply the fact that I wasn’t about to let these comments diminish my passion for Judaism or derail my dream of being a rabbi. But I know many who have faced these same questions and comments who are now wholly disconnected from Judaism, plagued with feelings of rejection or frustration. Those who weren’t as lucky as I have been. We are the poorer for this loss.

[I]t’s really time to open our minds to what the Jewish community actually looks like right now, in all its glorious diversity—and celebrate the infinite faces of Judaism.

Ryan Lavarnaway, a Major League Baseball player who played for Team Israel in the 2017 World Baseball Classic, has intermarried parents (his mother is Jewish, his father Catholic) and didn’t have a bar mitzvah or attend synagogue as a child, but had a Jewish wedding with a Jewish woman and joined a synagogue, and feels more connected to his Jewish identity and the Jewish community after traveling in Israel with Team Israel.

Christine Wolkin, a Honeymoon Israel trip participant, says HMI’s goal is “to make non-traditional Jewish families feel welcome in the Jewish community and to inspire them to incorporate Jewish values into their lives.” She says “My husband and I still have many questions about how we are going to raise our family, but after this experience we feel strongly that no matter what our decision, we are now a part of a supportive community that shares the same concerns.”

Curious about the Catholic view of intermarriage? An article in a Catholic publication defines a “mixed” marriage is between a Catholic and a non-Catholic Christian, while an “interfaith” marriage is between a Catholic and a “non-Christian.” The Catholic party wishing to enter into either has to obtain special permission from his or her bishop, which is “usually granted on the condition that the Catholic party will not be pressured into abandoning the Catholic faith, and that he or she will remain free to fulfill the duties of a Catholic parent, which includes raising the children in the faith. For the Catholic party to receive this permission, the non-Catholic party must agree to these terms.”

The Indian-American and Jewish-American experiences with intermarriage appear to be similar. According to an article in India New England News, twenty years ago, only 15% of Indian-American marriages were interracial or interfaith; ten years ago, it was 40%; today, it is almost 80%. A party planner attributes this to most Indian-Americans of wedding age growing up in the US and meeting people in high school or college; she refers to “the death of arranged marriages.” She also says the success rate of interracial marriages is very high.

I’m a big fan of the Forward and its editor-in-chief, Jane Eisner, except for her disapproving views on intermarriage, with which I’ve found myself always disagreeing. But in her March 12, 2018 Jane Looking Forward column, in revealing that she has a rare genetic bleeding disorder that is more common in Ashkenazi Jews than other populations, Eisner wonders whether the passing down of genetic diseases will change “with the high rates of intermarriage among the non-Orthodox?” and then seems to identify a positive consequence: “Shouldn’t we move beyond tribalism to embrace a more varied concept of the Jewish people, to include those of different races and ethnic origins?”

In Brazil, a Jewish woman married a woman from a different faith tradition; they were married under a chuppah, circled each other, and broke glasses. A cantor who is not employed by a synagogue officiated; he said,

It was not a Jewish marriage because one of the brides is not Jewish, it was a spiritual marriage with a Jewish symbology…. It is very important to welcome the union of two people who love each other, regardless of faith, gender or anything else. I feel very happy and honored to be able to bless a union where love, which should have no boundaries or limits, is sovereign…. I follow my perception of what I consider to be the needs of Judaism these days…. The Jewish bride is very tied to the traditions and asked me to reproduce the symbolism of a Jewish marriage because of the importance it had for her.

Finally, an interesting article in eJewishPhilanthropy about the Jewish Millennial Engagement Project in Washington DC run by a group of Conservative rabbis in partnership with Conservative organizations and the DC Federation explains disruptive innovation practices. I’d be interested to know how the project works with interfaith couples, who aren’t mentioned in the article.

Remembering My Father

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My father, Lewis Case, died in February, one day after his 101st birthday. He lived a very long, very full and very good life. He was a model of devotion to my mother – they were married for almost 72 years when she died four years ago. He was a very supportive father to my brother and me, and to our wives. Nothing made him happier than being with or hearing about his four grandchildren and their spouses and children.

My father was the child of immigrants – his mother and father came from eastern Europe as teenagers, and his mother, my grandmother, read and wrote in Yiddish, not English. My father was a model of the American Dream – he went to veterinary school, served in the Army Veterinary Corps in China and India during World War II, and became a successful professional, the president of the Connecticut Veterinary Medical Association.

My father was a model of what immigrants can do for our country. Jews of my generation remember their grandparents and have some connection to what being immigrants means; my children and people in their generation are so Americanized they don’t have that experience.

At my father’s high school in Hartford, there were many Italians, Poles, and Irish, but all of my father’s friends were Jews. The idea of marrying someone not Jewish was probably inconceivable to him or my mother; between 1940 and 1960, only 6% of Jews intermarried.

Because veterinarians in those days didn’t compete with each other and there was already a veterinarian in West Hartford where most of the Jews were moving, we lived in Wethersfield, where there were very few Jews. While my parents continued to socialize almost exclusively with their Jewish friends, and while I went to Hebrew school in West Hartford, hardly any of the friends I saw every day in school were Jewish.

It’s a well-known phenomenon that successive generations of immigrants tend to branch out from their own ethnic group, and that happened in my family – much to the chagrin of my father. He was extremely disappointed that I would chose to love someone of a different faith, and Wendy and I had a tortured six-year courtship because our relationship was interfaith.

But my father was also a model of how a parent can chose both to love his child and to see his tradition maintained. When Wendy and I decided to marry, my father and mother decided they were not going to lose me, and he did not intrude or ever say “you should” about anything related to religion. Instead, in what I would call an early instance of a radically inclusive attitude, he chose to love Wendy as his own daughter. His welcoming embrace enabled Wendy and I to create a Jewish family, and our children in turn to do the same. And the last thing Wendy said to him was that he would always be in her heart, just like her own parents are.

I am extraordinarily fortunate to have had my father in my life. May his memory always be for a blessing.

Important New Community Studies

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The Washington DC and San Francisco Federations have announced important community studies that include a great deal of important information about interfaith families’ Jewish engagement. The complete DC study is available; a PowerPoint presentation and highlights of the San Francisco study are available.

The DC study has a very helpful summary about who is considered Jewish for purposes of the study:

Recent Jewish population studies, such as Pew Research Center’s 2013 A Portrait of Jewish Americans, classify respondents according to their responses to a series of screening questions: What is your religion? Do you consider yourself to be Jewish aside from religion? Were either of your parents Jewish? Were you raised Jewish? On the basis of the answers to these questions, Jews have been categorized as “Jews by religion” (JBR), if they respond to a question about religion by stating that they are solely Jewish or “Jews of no religion” (JNR), if they state that they have no religion, but they consider themselves Jewish in another way. Although Jews by religion as a group are more engaged with Judaism than are Jews of no religion, many JBRs and JNRs look similar when examining Jewish behaviors and attitudes.

The San Francisco study appears to use the same definitions. The DC study does add an interesting variant: it includes in the Jewish population adults who indicate that they are Jewish and another religion, a category it refers to as Jews of multiple religions (JMR). Of 175,900 Jewish adults in the DC area, 19,400, or 9%, identify as Jews of multiple religions. The report also notes that 10% of the 51,500 Jewish children living in Jewish households are being raised Jewish and something else.

The amount of intermarriage continues to extremely high. In Washington DC, 53% of married or partnered couples are intermarried (47% of couples are in-married, including 6% with partners who converted to Judaism). Younger married or partnered Jews are increasingly intermarried (or inter-partnered; hereafter I’ll just say “intermarried”); the percentage of married Jews who are intermarried is 61% of those who are 18 to 29, 50% of those who are 30-39, 48% of those who are 40-49, 43% of those who are 50-65, and 36% of those 65 and older. Intermarriage is even greater among LGBTQ Jews – 67% (62% of married or partnered Jews of color are intermarried).

The San Francisco study uses a new term, “inter-group,” to refer to intermarried and inter-partnered couples. In San Francisco, 54% of married or partnered respondents have a spouse or partner who is not Jewish (compared to DC’s 53%), and as in DC, younger married or partnered respondents are increasingly intermarried: 66% of those who are 18 to 34, 59% of those who are 35-49, 52% of those who are 50-64, and 42% of those who are 65 and older.

The DC study reports that almost half (48%) of children in Jewish households are being raised by intermarried parents. In a promising finding, the report says that since 2003, the percentage of children being raised exclusively Jewish by intermarried parents has increased from 45% to 61% (19% Jewish by religion and 42% culturally Jewish. Another 14% of children with intermarried parents are being raised Jewish and another religion, which the report includes as “raised Jewish in some way,” so that 75% of children with intermarried parents are raised Jewish in some way. Only 1% of children with intermarried parents are being raised in a different religion entirely. The report also notes that there are 2,200 non-Jewish children living in Jewish households whose parents have not yet decided on their religion.

The San Francisco data that is available to date does not have percentage breakdowns of how interfaith couples are raising their children religiously. The slides say that only 26% of “inter-group” couples are raising their children “fully” Jewish. The slides include a bar graph; it looks to me like 26% of respondents said Jewish, about 34% said partly Jewish, about 22% said not Jewish, about 15% said haven’t decided, and about 5% said other. It will be interesting to see the actual figures when they are released. At this point I’m at a loss to understand how, with similar amounts of intermarriage in the two communities, the ways that interfaith couples in the two communities are raising their children religiously vary so significantly.

In the DC study, on various measures of Jewish engagement, including participation in formal and informal Jewish education, synagogue membership, holiday participation, and connection to Israel, the intermarried score lower than the inmarried. For example: only 14% of children of intermarried parents attend part-time religious school, compared to 43% of children of inmarried parents; only 11% attend Jewish summer camp, compared to 23% of children of inmarried parents; 14% of intermarried households are synagogue members compared to 48% of inmarried households. The San Francisco study slides note that “In-group couples are much more active in Jewish life than inter-group couples.” There are bar graphs showing the different engagement measures, with no percentages available yet.

Demographic studies have always compared interfaith and inmarried couples on how children are raised religiously and on various measures of Jewish engagement. To me the data should serve as an incentive to increase efforts to engage interfaith couples. The San Francisco study makes an interesting point in that regard: 9% of “inter-group” couples are very interested and 48% are somewhat interested, in increasing their connection to being Jewish.

I believe that inclusive attitudes are key to those efforts being successful. The two studies offer interesting and quite different information about how welcome people in interfaith relationships feel in the Jewish community. The DC study notes that among those in interfaith relationships, 50% find the community to be somewhat (19%) or very (31%) welcoming (it did not ask the question of inmarried couples); the San Francisco study says that 75% of “inter-group” couples feel somewhat (37%) or very (38%) welcome at Jewish activities, not much different from “in-group” couples (31% somewhat and 51% very).

I don’t know why feelings of being welcome would differ so much between the two communities. The questions weren’t all that different: The DC survey asked: “Overall, in your opinion, how welcoming is the Metropolitan DC Jewish community to interfaith families?” Possible answers were not at all, a little, somewhat, very much, or no opinion.  The San Francisco study asked, “How welcome or unwelcome do you feel attending events and activities sponsored by Jewish congregations, groups and other organizations?” Possible answers were very welcome, somewhat welcome, somewhat unwelcome, very unwelcome, it depends/varies, don’t know/have mixed feelings.

It is interesting that the DC study found that LGBTQ individuals find the community more welcoming to them, than interfaith couples do: 64% of LGBTQ individuals find the community to be somewhat (15%) or very (49%) welcoming to GLB individuals. Intermarried LGBTQ individuals are in between: 63% say the community is somewhat (26%) or very (37%) welcoming to GLB individuals.

It’s also interesting that the DC study notes that 33% of intermarried respondents said they felt somewhat or very much like an outsider at religious services, compared to 22% of inmarried respondents.

The DC study mentions and includes some open-ended comments, something that I think enhances the value of the information very much. The study notes that “68 respondents in interfaith relationships reported ways that the community made them feel unwelcome” and includes three comments from people in interfaith relationships, including “I could use programs that address people, like me, who feel like outsiders in the Jewish community,” “I just want to be comfortable bringing my interfaith partner to events without him feeling pressured,” and,

As someone from an interfaith household, it’s hard to engage with the community if I have to convince my spouse, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll feel comfortable and welcome.’ She often feels like the Jewish community is insular and skeptical of non-Jews, and that makes it hard for me to find ways to engage in the community as well.

In other related news: the Forward has a very important article, based in part on the San Francisco community study, about young Jews becoming ambivalent about or unsupportive of Israel. I was very pleased to see that intermarriage is not blamed. Steven M. Cohen is quoted as saying that the reasons young Jews are moving towards a more neutral position about Israel are that they are defining their identity in less ethnic terms (with Israel falling “in the ethnic compartment”), and Israeli policies are alienating to political liberals.

Also, perhaps in connection with Valentine’s Day, the Pew Research Center issued an updated 8 Facts about Love and Marriage in America. Among other points: 88% say love is a very important reason to marry, while only 30% say having their relationship recognized in a religious ceremony is an important reason; 17% of newlyweds in 2015 were married to someone of different race or ethnicity, an increase from 3% in 1967; 39% of those who married since 2010 have a spouse from a different religious group, up from 19% of those who married before 1960.

Variations on Inclusion

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I loved Rabbi Deborah Waxman’s explanation of why the Reconstructionist movement  rebranded itself as “Reconstructing Judaism,” including her statement that “A critical path forward is shifting from a focus on ‘being’ Jewish – important but insufficient for providing substance and structure – to a focus on ‘doing’ Jewish.” That shift in focus is a fundamental basis of a radically inclusive approach to interfaith families, and it’s not surprising that Rabbi Waxman also says, “Let’s make sure our children can tell their non-Jewish friends, family members and life partners how Jewish organizations opened pathways to engagement.”

There’s been more ferment in the Conservative movement about intermarriage. In Jews Should Have Taught Our Children How To Intermarry, Philip Graubart, a Conservative rabbi who is now the “Chief Jewish Officer” at a day school in San Diego, relates that thirty years ago his father, also a Conservative rabbi, took the position that “we need to imbue young Jews with enough self-confidence and pride that even if (or, really when) they intermarry, they’ll insist on raising their kids as Jews.” Graubart says his father was correct:

None of the dating schemes or the refusals to officiate, or pushing away the non-Jewish spouses during bar-bat mitzvah ceremonies, or the sometimes complex conditions some rabbis put on intermarried couples — take these classes, perform these rituals, structure the ceremony in these ways, stand here during this ceremony, but not here; say this, but not this — made a dent in what we now recognize was inevitable. In a free and prosperous country, Jews are going to meet and marry non-Jews in large numbers, no matter we do.

But Graubart says his father did not go far enough:

Rather than refusing to officiate at intermarriages, we should have insisted that we were exactly who these couples needed to sanctify their union, without conditions. At least then, Jewish spirituality would have had a voice and role in the most important day in the lives of a generation of young Jews (and many non-Jews). Instead of rejecting their most important and intimate decision, we could have helped them celebrate, and kept them close. But we pushed them away.

Graubart says the issue is larger than intermarriage – it is what to think about and how to live with those who are not Jewish. The attitudes that have “colored all our thinking about intermarriage” are that they “threaten us physically. Or they engage in non-Jewish practices which tempt us. Or, more subtly, they threaten our distinctive identity. They come too close, sometimes into the very walls of our synagogue, or on the bimah.” Graubart says things have changed, “non-Jews” (his term) are a crucial part of our Jewish community, and

[O]f course, many of the non-Jews now married to Jews take the lead in creating Jewish moments for their kids. Imagine what they would have done if, instead of rejecting them on the most important day of their lives, we embraced them. It’s probably time to start.

In the meantime, Josh Nathan-Kazis reported for the Forward that a little more than a year ago, a young Conservative rabbi discovered that the Conservative movement never officially adopted its ban on blessing intermarriages, that the movement’s response was to convene a secret commission, and that the Rabbinical Assembly (RA) (the association of Conservative rabbis) recently adopted the commission’s recommendation with “new language for the rules that reaffirm most of the ban on blessing intermarriages.” The RA has also had a rule that Conservative rabbis could not attend interfaith weddings; the commission apparently reported that the RA had not enforced that rule and suggested “the beginning of a process that could allow rabbis to attend them without sanction.”

The article notes that while some “insiders” knew that the rule against attendance was not enforced, other rabbis complied with the rule at great personal expense, including not attending weddings of family members; Nathan-Kazis had a follow-up article titled Saddened Rabbis Learn They Could Have Gone to Loved Ones’ Interfaith Weddings.

Nathan-Kazis writes that some rabbis see the commission’s report, by opening up the standards and practices for discussion, “as a first step toward acceptance of intermarriage by the Conservative leadership.” Separately, Rabbi Graubart offers his take on the issue:

[I]s the debate over intermarriage really about rules?… Aren’t there other values at play — family, romance, intimacy, respect, kindness, tolerance, pluralism, freedom? Of course these questions lead me to similar inquiries about Conservative Judaism. Can a great religious movement really be reduced to a set of behaviors, or even a range of behaviors within a prescribed path? Isn’t there more to Conservative Judaism — more to Judaism — than Halacha?

I try not to say “non-Jew” any more, and would respectfully suggest to Rabbi Waxman and Rabbi Graubert that they consider not doing so either. I saw an interesting piece relating to another controversial term, “half-Jewish,” recently. In There’s No Such Thing As ‘Half-Jewish.’ It’s Simply ‘Jewish.’Alyssa Pinsker relates how as a child of a Ukrainian Greek Catholic mother and a Jewish father, and after practicing Judaism for eleven years, “somehow I am always considered ‘half’.”

The position of the half-Jew is different from any other bicultural or biracial adult: One side is rejected by traditionalists, and the other by anti-Semites. Ask most Israelis, Conservative Jews and any Orthodox Jew, and they will quickly tell you that I am not Jewish. On the other hand, during a teaching stint in Switzerland, I lost my job due because I was practicing Judaism openly and talking about it; and with my Jewish background, I could never work in Saudi Arabia. This puts me -– and all other so-called “half Jews” — in a painful twilight zone, neither here nor there.

Pinsker is considering undergoing an Orthodox conversion “so that my children don’t have to go through what I went through.” In the meantime, she says, she’s “made my choice about who I am – despite the hardships, and regardless of whether or not I go through conversion down the road….I am just another Jew. Period.”

In other news, you might want to see:

  • A nice mention in the Forward of Hebrew College’s graduate certificate in Interfaith Families Jewish Engagement led by Keren McGinity.
  • A great report on One Table that notes that 15% of hosts come from interfaith families.
  • A nice article on Base Hillel that notes that 13% of participants came from “non-Jewish” homes.
  • Yet another example of the Israeli attitude that intermarriage is the same as assimilation – with the wrinkle that Arab Members of the Knesset don’t want their children to marry Jews and be “assimilated.”

Revisiting the December Holidays

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As always at the end of the year there were a lot of stories about interfaith families and the December holidays. The topic has been covered so much that it’s hard to find much new. But Rabbi Matt Gewirtz’ Why Santa Brought The Rabbi’s Daughter a Gift was extraordinary. When his youngest daughter, who says she wants to be a rabbi, asked if Santa would visit her, and his older children called her a baby and said Santa isn’t real, he told her not to stop “believing what your heart tells you.” He leaves her a present with a note from “Santa” saying he “knew she was Jewish but she got a present because she believed in him.” Though concerned he was spiritually confusing his child, he decides that “Her relationship with the mythical was age-appropriate, helped her delve deeper into her sense of wonder,…[I]t was somehow about a connection to that which will ultimately make her feel safe and connected to the possibility of the unknown, to the potential for her to feel sure in the world of the mysterious.” I thought this was just the kind of wise and confident approach that we need more rabbis to take towards interfaith couples who celebrate Christmas.

I also loved Converts Are Constantly Asked If We Miss Christmas. It’s Complicated. The elements the author recalls with fondness are now attached to Shabbat and Hanukkah – “I continued to light candles, have gatherings with friends and family, sing special songs and give presents during the darkest days of December.” The author loved three classic Christmas films, It’s a Wonderful Life, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Muppet Christmas Carol, but watching them again with “now-Jewish sensibilities” realizes that there is no Christian doctrine in any of them, and further that “those three stories are more about Yom Kippur than they are about Christmas,” given their sinful characters who face the truth about themselves and make commitments to living a different life. The author concludes, “No, I don’t miss Christmas, but I’ve repurposed a part of it to suit my Jewish life. Let me tell you about my favorite Yom Kippur movies…”

I liked two other personal stories about interfaith families whose Christmas celebrations don’t impair their Jewishness: in Holidays with the McDowells, a young man whose Jewish mother loves Christmas (with no Jesus) puts almost 100 Santas on display, while his Catholic father “in many ways has somehow out-Jewed his Jewish wife;” in The Hanukkah Tradition From My Christian Mother-in-Law, a Jewish woman gets a dreidel every year from her Christian mother-in-law.

I didn’t like How The O.C.’s Chrismukkah Became a Real Life Holiday. I’ve written several times that I don’t think that Chrismukkah, to the extent it means mushing two holidays together to make a new one, is a good idea. (Sorry to be a scrooge but I don’t think things like the “Santa Dreidel” are a good idea either.) (Or that the term “Christmasukah” is a welcome addition to the discussion, as in Christmasukah: Conservative synagogue members discuss their approach to interfaith challenges.) The author says that Chrismukkah “brilliantly combined each holiday’s best attributes,” is “an embrace of the reality of a hybrid identity,” and “the perfect outlet to navigate the tension of assimilation.” He says the three people raised in interfaith families he spoke with discussed the isolation and confusion they experienced during Christmas. But the family of one of the three treated the holidays as equals and didn’t fuse the two together.

There is still a way to go before Jews accept the idea that interfaith families can experience Christmas traditions without religious doctrine and can celebrate Christmas without undermining their children’s identity as wholly or partly Jewish. Maybe that’s why Rabbi Gewirtz’ story is so powerful, without even coming from an interfaith family. He reports that his daughter who for the time being still believes in Santa wants to be a rabbi when she grows up.

The Latest on Birthright Israel and Intermarriage

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The latest evaluation of Birthright Israel, Beyond 10 Days: Parents, Gender, Marriage and the Long-Term Impact of Birthright Israel, has important information and implications for intermarriage policy. The headline, as reported by Len Saxe, the leader of the Cohen Center team that did the evaluation, in a piece for the Forward, is that “Birthright’s alumni, compared to similar young Jews who did not participate in the program, are more highly connected to Israel, more likely to have a Jewish spouse and raise Jewish children, and more likely to be engaged in Jewish life.”

The study makes many interesting observations:

  • For much of the twentieth century, women were more likely to inmarry than men; today, among married Jewish adults under age 40, 20% of Jewish women have a Jewish spouse compared to 41% of Jewish men (p. 4).
  • Spousal conversion is relatively rare, less than 5% of Jewish women’s partners convert, and 16% of Jewish men’s partners (p. 13)

There are also extensive discussions on differences between men and women in terms of behaviors and impacts of Birthright.

I am most interested in the study’s findings on how children of interfaith couples are raised. The study reports that among intermarried Jewish men, 38% of Birthright participants are raising their first child Jewish, compared to 17% of non-participants; among intermarried Jewish women, participants and non-participants are “equally likely” to be 51% are raising their first child Jewish (51% of participants compared to 56% of non-participants, which the study says is not a statistically significant difference). To me, the influence Birthright apparently has on influencing participants to raise their children Jewish is its more important impact, even if limited to men as opposed to women.

The report notes that “those who are not raising their oldest child Jewish are most likely to be undecided or not raising their child in any particular religion” (58% of intermarried Jewish men participants and 44% of intermarried Jewish women participants) and that “For both men and women with non-Jewish spouses, the likelihood of raising their oldest child in another religion is less than 10%.” (p. 15)

It is a fine thing if more Birthright participants than non-participants marry other Jews, but if you invert the study’s information on rates of inmarriage, it is clear that there is extensive intermarriage among participants. That is especially true among participants who themselves have one Jewish parent. Thus:

  • 38% of all participants who are married are intermarried, compared to 56% of non-participants (because 62% of participants and 46% of non-participants are likely to have a Jewish spouse) (p. 12)
  • of men and women with two Jewish parents, 30% of participants who are married are intermarried (because 70% are likely to have a Jewish spouse), compared to 45% of non-participants (p. 14); for men, 24% are intermarried, for women, 37% (p. 13)
  • of men and women with one Jewish parents, 67% of participants who are married are intermarried (because 33% are likely to have a Jewish spouse), compared to 80% of non-participants (p. 14)

These high levels of intermarriage will continue as more and more young adults with one Jewish parent participate in Birthright: the study notes that applicants with one Jewish parent have grown from less than 20% almost two decades ago to nearly 35% in 2017, and those applicants are still under-represented, given that half of Jewish millennials have one Jewish parent (p. 4).

This evaluation amply supports the continuing importance of making Birthright widely available, including especially to young adults with one Jewish parent. But I believe it supports the need for programmatic interventions aimed at interfaith families with young children and at new interfaith couples to support their Jewish engagement.

One of the most important conclusions of this and past Birthright evaluations is that interventions work: childhood experiences influence adult Jewish engagement, and “educational interventions have the capacity to continue shaping Jewish identity through multiple stages of development including the college and young adult years.” (p. 26) There is no reason that would not be the case for interventions aimed at interfaith couples before they have children and after they do.

The study aptly notes that strategies for engaging young adults with one Jewish parent or two Jewish parents “likely need to be tailored to their unique backgrounds” (p. 26), which I believe supports the need for programming that is targeted to young adults with one Jewish parent as well as to interfaith couples and families. Saxe notes in his Forward piece that developing Jewish identity requires experiences as well as knowledge and the central role of having those experiences as part of a Jewish group; that fully applies to designing programming for new interfaith couples and for interfaith families that builds knowledge and brings them together for Jewish experiences.

Finally, to me there is huge potential in the 58% of intermarried Jewish men participants and 44% of intermarried Jewish women participants who are raising their first child as “None, Undecided” – to say nothing of the 72% of men and 35% of women non-participants who are doing the same.

Inclusion as a New Year Begins

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Charlene Seidle, an important funder, in Five 2018 Jewish Philanthropy Trends To Watch, refers to “positive opportunities to meet our constituents where they are, in innovative ways that resonate with their needs and interests.” She continues:

Judaism is our competitive advantage, and 2018 is the year to use Jewish wisdom to its full and vibrant extent. This will not happen by drawing lines in the sand, but rather by being radically welcoming and giving people of all interests and backgrounds the chance to produce, consume, revive for themselves, speak up, speak out and “pray with their feet.” If we don’t, the existential crisis will not be their rejection of all that’s righteous, but rather the dire loss of talent that the Jewish community will suffer through our rejection of those who don’t look and feel exactly like “we” do (whoever “we” is these days).

I love the reference to “radical welcoming” and agree about the dire loss of talent that rejection generates. I love that Seidle refers to Jews of Color as an example, noting they represent 20% of the Jewish community and that “if we were fully inclusive, Jewish convenings like the GA, URJ Biennial, Jewish Funders Network and others would include scores of non-white Jews. What an opportunity to form new friendships and benefit from the diverse experiences which contribute to innovation and reinvention in lasting ways.”

But I can’t help but note that if we were fully inclusive of interfaith families and partners from different faith traditions, who represent 50% of the Jewish community and even more of the liberal Jewish community, that would really “make 2018 the year of bold Jewish philanthropic vision and action.”

When the Forward asked twenty rabbis Where Do You See the Jewish Community in 50 Years,  two responses related to that need for inclusion: Reform Rabbi Denise Eger, former head of the CCAR, said “There are more Jews leaving the formal attachments to the Jewish community because the structures of the community are not in touch with where the Jewish people are really at,” and Reconstructionist Rabbi Nina Mandel said “My hope is that in 50 years, the global Jewish communities will be embracing the diversity of practice, region, ethnicity and peoplehood.”

The top story in the New York Jewish Week’s Stories to Watch in 2018 is “Rabbis Officiating at Intermarriages:” “As intermarriage increases in this country, the willingness of rabbis to officiate at interfaith marriages is becoming a topic of growing interest, especially in the Conservative movement… 2018 could prove to be a pivotal year in the debate.” The Jewish Week suggests that processes and decisions by Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and congregation B’nai Jeshurun perhaps provide “a blueprint for others wishing to find some way to support interfaith unions.” There was an interesting story in the Wisconsin Jewish newspaper, Local synagogues work to welcome interfaith families, about increasing welcome to interfaith families, including rabbis who have started to officiate for interfaith couples, as well as anecdotal data on apparently increasing instances of conversion. This will clearly be an important continuing story in the new year.

In “’Interfaith’ term rings hollow for some Jews” Holly Lebowitz Rossi, reporting on a panel at the URJ Biennial for the Religion News Service, writes that Jewish communities are “more supportive and inclusive than in previous generations” but the “language of this inclusion effort matters” to interfaith families. Rossi quotes InterfaithFamily’s Jodi Bromberg recommending that Jewish communities stop using the term “non-Jew.” She also quotes a rabbi who says the term “interfaith” isn’t accurate and prefers “families where individuals come from different faith backgrounds.” But I agree with Susan Katz Miller, also quoted in the article, that the term “interfaith” “works for families that have chosen to practice only Judaism, as well as those that maintain both parents’ traditions.” The article has one other very interesting comment by a lay person at the biennial, who distinguished welcoming and inclusive: “Welcoming makes you feel like you’re a guest, … Inclusion is, ‘you belong here.’”

Let’s hope that 2018 does become a year of inclusion and bold philanthropic vision and action toward that end.