November 2024 News from the Center

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In our unsettled world, my wife and I were blessed to spend time over Thanksgiving with our wonderful family – our children and their spouses, and especially our four grandchildren, each of them a unique universe of potential, sources of calm and joy. I hope you had a good holiday.

Nobody Wants This and Intermarried Rabbis

The buzz about “Nobody Wants This” has quieted. My What “Nobody Wants This” gets wrong about interfaith relationships today was featured in The Forward’s November 8 newsletter. Matt Goldberg’s “‘Nobody Wants This’ Is About Beating the Jews” criticizes the series as being “indifferent about Judaism as a religion” and for suggesting that Judaism “isn’t a big deal.”

On the other hand, in The Times, a major UK newspaper, Jessica Diner, the global beauty director of Vogue, says:

If there is one reason why I am grateful to Nobody Wants This, it is that, at a time when it feels scary to be a Jew, one of the most watched shows on the planet is a story of Jewish love, portrayed by a Jewish actor, written by a Jewish team …. If a Jewish series can give the wider population the warm and fuzzies and deliver a universal message to be open about love while the world feels like it’s on fire, then that, as a Jew, feels incredibly special.

Another UK piece, “How realistic is Nobody Wants This?” asks whether intermarrying rabbis stretches credibility. It notes that the Assembly of Reform Rabbis and Cantors and the Conference of Liberal Rabbis and Cantors in the UK do not bar rabbis with spouses who are not Jewish. Further, Britain’s Progressive seminary, the Leo Baeck College in London, changed its rules more than a decade ago to allow the admission of rabbinic students with partners who are not Jewish.

The rabbi who co-chairs the Reform Assembly, who is 41, says that for her generation of rabbis, having a partner who is not Jewish is “not an issue;” being “strongly committed to the principle of inclusion within the Progressive movement… [i]t would be quite hypocritical to say that rabbis should have a different standard.”

Conservative Movement, Arnold Eisen, Hartman Institute, “Sabbath Queen”

There’s a lot to report about the Conservative movement’s approach to interfaith marriage this month.

The presentation by Rabbi Aaron Brusso mentioned in our October newsletter is definitely worth watching. Rabbi Brusso was the chair of Rabbinical Assembly’s Standards Working Group, which issued a report earlier this year that recommended significant changes that would empower Conservative rabbis to more fully embrace interfaith couples, but maintaining the ban on rabbinic officiation at weddings of interfaith couples.

Rabbi Brusso explains that Conservative rabbis shouldn’t be in the position of disapproving interfaith marriage. Instead, they should embrace interfaith couples pastorally and encourage them to learn about Jewish practices and take responsibility for deciding how they will engage. He explains to couples how the various elements of a halachic Jewish wedding do not fit when one partner is not Jewish; he also explains that the Torah blessings are a particularly Jewish faith statement. I understood him to suggest that after these discussions, the partners from different faith backgrounds are persuaded that it’s not appropriate for them to have a rabbi officiate at their wedding, or for them to say the Torah blessings.

I also led a webinar for 18Doors’ Rukin Fellows. The current cohort, for the first time, has a significant number of Conservative rabbis. Some of them appeared to be very challenged by my “equality theory” – that in order to feel belonging, and therefore engage Jewishly, partners from different faith backgrounds need to be considered and treated as equal to their Jewish partners. I understood one rabbi to say that they were stewards of a two thousand year tradition that couldn’t easily change because of current demographic reality.

Eisen. Coincidentally, Andy Silow-Carrol interviewed Arnold Eisen, who served as chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, about Eisen’s new book, Seeking the Hiding God. In the interview, Eisen says,

Yes, the number of people who say “I’m a Conservative Jew” is much less than it used to be. I think that is primarily because Conservative rabbis will not perform intermarriages, and if you can’t have a Conservative rabbi [officiate] your wedding and you’re intermarried or the child of an intermarriage, you’re not going to say, “I’m a Conservative Jew.”

 

Hartman Institute. In a very interesting Shalom Hartman Institute podcast, “Spheres of Belonging,” Yehuda Kurtzer says:

At Hartman we’ve been doing some work on the idea of “Jewish adjacents,” the people connected to Jews and Jewish community and who are themselves not Jewish, and we’ve been asking: what are their responsibilities to our norms when they seek to participate in Jewish life, and what are our ethical obligations to them as players in Jewish life?
How do they add to the richness of our community and how do we make space for their involvement without compromising our commitment to a unified identity?

Conservative Rabbi Ari Kaiman, reiterating the view that it is inappropriate for a partner from a different faith background to say the Torah blessings, says:

Not only Jews find meaningful living through Judaism, and there are many people in our congregation who are finding meaning and community. It was an anxiety to think, well, what does that mean for our halakhic practice? But Judaism itself, halakha, articulates boundaries and porousness. There’s nothing that’s forbidden about a non-Jew learning Torah. There’s nothing forbidden about a non Jew sitting in a prayer service. There’s something that would be inappropriate about a non Jew saying at the Torah, asher bachar banu mikol ha’amim, who chose us from all other peoples. It’s incoherent.

And so the, but I also don’t have a lot of non-Jews saying, Hey, that’s the thing I want to do. Or if they were to say that, I would say, that’s really interesting. Let’s explore that more because maybe you want to be Jewish. But what we strive for is welcoming people for who they are and not having expectations of them becoming like us or like Jewish any more than they want to be.

Kurtzer then notes the need

to acknowledge the seriousness of a commitment to halakha and other forms of normative thinking that require of us to take boundaries seriously, and at the same time an effort to enable a productive porousness that keeps more people in than it leaks them out. This is one of the greater missions of rabbinic work: the curation and definition of peoplehood through listening to the needs both of individuals and the greater Jewish people.

“Sabbath Queen.” At the most inclusive end of the spectrum, “Sabbath Queen,” a new film about Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, is getting a lot of attention. Lau-Lavie, founder of LabShul, was ordained at JTS, but left the Conservative movement to officiate at weddings of interfaith couples. A review of the film says he advocates for “the need to leave tribalism without leaving Judaism.” It quotes Lau-Lavie as saying “It is necessary to move from the old paradigm of either/or to ‘yes and’… When you welcome someone fully, that person becomes part of the community. We must blur the old boundaries because it is practical and realistic.” He continues:

You love who you are now, in community with, or in a neighborhood with, or in relationship with, beyond the tribal boundaries that we grew up with. It’s not instead of who and where we are. It’s in addition to that. Either you stay behind your walls, or you meet people where they’re at, welcome them in, and keep Judaism thriving and expansive and inclusive. Keep it love-driven, not fear-based. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But there is no other recipe for survival.

Gary Rosenblatt explains that Lau-Lavie had hoped to change the Conservative movement’s policy on officiation “from within,” but after a “year of intense study of Jewish texts and in conversation with rabbis and congregants, he found a path he believed would enable him to officiate,” developing “a new form of wedding ceremony, incorporating certain Jewish rituals, preceded and followed by a commitment by the couple to study and engage in Jewish life.”

Rosenblatt writes about a scene in the film from a LabShul board meeting when, after Lau-Lavie said he planned to join the Rabbinical Assembly, a LabShul member said “’My family needs you,’ reminding him that he had created a community based on inclusivity.”

In “Welcoming the ‘Sabbath Queen’” Peter Fox, noting that Lau-Lavie left the movement because he chose to officiate at the wedding of a Jewish-Buddhist gay couples, put it more bluntly: ““It’s funny, because the gayness isn’t controversial. It’s the interfaithness … such a mindfuck, right?”

Interfaith families and antisemitism

18Doors’ board chair, Laurie Beijen, and chief program officer, Adam Pollack, write that the increase in antisemitism has affected interfaith families in different ways than their Jewish-Jewish counterparts. Some partners from different faith backgrounds lack foundational knowledge about antisemitism; couples face communication challenges, with one partner feeling upset and unsupported and the other confused and unaware. The organization partnered with ADL to offer guides for interfaith families on how to identify, address and talk about antisemitism, and how to be an ally as a partner who is not Jewish, as well as spaces for couples to discuss their experiences. They conclude,

Despite the challenges unique to interfaith couples regarding antisemitism, there are also immense opportunities. Having family from different backgrounds allows for increased awareness, influence on opinions and the formation of a coalition of allies, ultimately leading to greater advocacy and safety for Jews and their loved ones.

Jack Wertheimer’s Latest

Jack Wertheimer addresses the impact of October 7 and resurgent antisemitism on American Jews in “What American Jews Gave After October 7: An Accounting.” I don’t think he is aware of how negatively his comments about interfaith relationships come across. He says, “Jews in online discussion groups and other social media have described breakups with intimate partners who disagreed with them about the war; some have decided to swear off dating non-Jews as a result.” And “There even is evidence of a substantial increase in the numbers of non-Jews, many in relationships with Jews, who have been motivated by the resurgence of anti-Semitism to throw in their lot with Jews by converting to Judaism.” Noting that Employee Resource Groups are “attracting younger Jews between the ages of 35 and 45, many of whom are intermarried,” he adds, “Perhaps for the first time in their adult lives, they wish to connect with other Jews in some kind of collective effort.”

Wertheimer says, “The question keeping professionals in the field up at night is how much of Jewish communal life can be sustained if the donor base continues to shrink.” Expressing negative attitudes about interfaith marriage is not likely to increase the donor base.

The December Holidays Are Coming

Hey Alma’s advice columnist tackles Will I Confuse My Jewish Kid If We Celebrate Christmas. We definitely agree that in the family posing the question, celebrating Christmas wouldn’t confuse the child’s Jewish identity at all. But we weren’t sure about the unsolicited advice that encouraged the parents to share more of their own interfaith identities and backgrounds.

I’m disappointed that the folks at Kveller and Hey Alma are talking about Chrismukkah. I’ve defended interfaith families from criticism because they celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah for over twenty years, while also saying that “Chrismukkah Is a Bad Idea.” Celebrating each distinct holiday doesn’t mean mushing them together – even if they fall at the same time.

Celebrities

Martha Stewart on what things were like in 1961: “I went home and told my dad [about the engagement], and my dad slapped me. And he slapped me hard on my face and said, ‘No, you’re not marrying him. He’s a Jew.’ I remember getting that slap.”

The Forward’s Benyamin Cohen asks, “Is Seth Meyers Jewish? His wife, kids and jokes are.” Cohen reports that “Over the years, he’s become ‘Jewish enough’ for his in-laws.” He believes “that’s the only religion that that happens in. Which is why it’s great that it’s the only religion that ends with -ish.” I say it doesn’t matter whether he’s formally Jewish or not.

In Other News

  • Interfaith Work and Interfaith Families: A Toolkit is a new resource created by Susan Katz Miller and Dalia El Ariny, for interfaith families and multiple religious practicioners, organizations that work with them, and scholars who conduct research about them.
  • Our friend Marion Usher was the scholar in residence at Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation. You can watch her initial presentation here.
  • News from Israel: ynet reports that “The Reform movement converted 303 people in Israel last year, a record number compared to previous years, which is about 17% of the aggregate converts in Israel during this period.”
  • The Jewish News Service chose to highlight, from new research presented by the UJA-Federation of New York, that “Sephardic and Mizrachi New Yorkers … have lower intermarriage rates … than the overall New York Jewish population.”
  • Finally, a really wonderful story: “How My Southern Interfaith Family Pulled Together the Perfect Bat Mitzvah.”

September 2024 News from the Center

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As the new year approaches, I can’t help thinking how it’s been an awful year in Israel and Gaza and now Lebanon, and scary in our domestic politics. I sympathize with all the rabbis who want to give sermons that are hopeful. I’m trying to be hopeful, and if it’s any help, the news this month about interfaith family inclusion has been quite positive.

Very Welcome News: New 18Doors Program to Increase Belonging

18Doors and the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston announced the launch of B’Yachad, a program aimed at helping Jewish organizations increase feelings of belonging among interfaith couples and families. Four synagogues, a day school and the federation are participating.  B’Yachad programs are set to follow in Atlanta and Chicago. Rabbi Scott Hausman-Weiss, an 18Doors Board member, said “a community-wide discussion and energy on this subject is desperately needed to develop best practices toward strengthening these families and, in so doing, our Jewish community.”

What Doug Emhoff and the HUC Admissions Decision Say About Attitudes Towards Interfaith Marriage

Emily Tamkin wrote a great story for Ha’aretz, “For American Jews in Intermarriage Partnerships, Doug Emhoff Has Become an Inspiration.” She notes:

For many American Jews in interfaith partnerships, Emhoff’s embrace of his identity and his way of speaking about his partnership [including at the Democratic National Convention] … has meant representation for something they take both as a given and find questioned by others – especially other Jews.

18 Doors’ Adam Pollock agrees that prominent representation for interfaith families can be very validating to them. (Coincidentally, Jonathan Tobin, who is no friend of interfaith marriage, questioned whether Doug Emhoff is a Jewish role model, but was surprisingly not very critical of the fact that Emhoff intermarried.)

Tamkin quotes Rabbi Lex Rofeberg as saying that HUC’s decision to admit rabbinic students in interfaith relationships was “a bigger deal” than Emhoff’s convention speech, because it counters the way interfaith relationships are besieged or attacked in Jewish spaces. Andrew Rehfeld is then quoted as saying that the new policy is recognition of a shift in American Jewish life with many interfaith families deeply engaged. He makes the point, echoed by the USCJ’s Keren McGinity, that partners from different faith backgrounds can result in deeper commitments from their Jewish partners.

Separately, Rabbis Robyn Frisch and Miriam Wajnberg of 18Doors wrote a nice explanation of how the HUC decision affects five different groups – not just prospective applicants or current students, but also congregants, those who grew up in an interfaith family, really everyone in the Jewish community.

They mention one issue which I think is still a sticking point:

And if you’re not Jewish, but your partner is, then you’ll also hopefully come to see that while there may be limits to your ritual participation in given communities, your relationship is not “less than.” The Jewish community values your partner, you and your relationship – without trying to change you. As a couple, you’re not just “welcome” in Jewish spaces; you also “belong” in Jewish spaces.

There certainly are communities where there are limits to ritual participation by those who are not Jewish. I think that makes it very difficult for interfaith couples and partners from different faith backgrounds to not feel “less than” or that they “belong.” Allowing full ritual participation to partners from different faith backgrounds doesn’t mean changing them – it doesn’t make them Jewish; instead, it prioritizes and maximizes not Jewish identity, but Jewish engagement.

More Good News: Bravo Jewish Future Promise

Hadara Ishak, president of the Jewish Future Promise, wrote an important post on the Times of Israel blog, with the sub-title “Building a Bigger Tent for the Jewish Community.” The Jewish Future Promise, founded by my friend Mike Leven, is a wonderful organization that asks for a moral commitment that at least 50% of charitable contributions made upon passing will be allocated to Jewish causes and/or the State of Israel.

So I was incredibly pleased to see the president of such a mainstream organization with such an eminent Advisory Board say:

[E]mbracing a broader definition of Jewish identity and fostering interfaith dialogue, we can stand united and build a stronger, more resilient Jewish future. The inclusion of interfaith families and their diverse experiences will only enhance our collective strength, enabling us to speak with a singular, powerful voice in support of Israel and Jewish values worldwide.

Another very welcome sign of positive change in attitudes.

Is “Nobody Wants This” Net Positive? Not Sure Yet

The just released Netflix series, “Nobody Wants This,” about a “hot” rabbi played by Adam Brody, dating a woman who’s not Jewish played by Kristen Bell, is getting a lot of attention. Benyamin Cohen wrote a nice story for the Forward that featured two intermarried rabbis, Lex Rofeberg and Denise Handlarski. Mira Fox wrote a more critical review, which I can’t respond to fully because I haven’t seem the entire series yet. She suggests that the rabbi in choosing love for a woman not Jewish is giving up his “entire identity and value system” – if that’s the show’s message, I’m not going to like it.

18Doors’ Miriam Wajnberg offers “A Rabbi’s Review of the First Three Episodes” and it’s the best I’ve seen so far, listing the delightful moments and the cringe-worthy ones. Another interesting review concludes “delightful despite flaws.”

JTA’s story by Shira Li Bartov, “How a real-life rabbi coached Netflix’s ‘Nobody Wants This’ about making interfaith relationships realistic,” points out that the show comes at a time when Jewish institutions are increasingly accepting intermarried rabbis, pointing to the HUC decision among others. She adds that the stereotypes of Jewish women in the show overbearingly objecting to the “shiksa” (a word I hate) runs counter to that trend of acceptance.

Kveller has a story about whether the word “shiksa” is offensive. Hey Alma has a story that fact-checks the accuracy of “the Judaism” in all ten episodes of the show. The show’s creator, Erin Foster, is the subject of a long piece, “Erin Foster brings her conversion story to the forefront in ‘Nobody Wants This’.”

Also in the News

  • An awful piece in the Cleveland Jewish News by someone who’s been described as an “Israeli ultranationalist” who tells parents not to send Jewish children to Ivy League schools because they’ll intermarry, risking the future of Jewish identity in America. I hate the way anti-interfaith marriage views seep into a mainstream Jewish publication — another example why ongoing advocacy for more positive attitudes about interfaith marriage is needed.
  • On the other hand, times certainly are changing. This obscure mention caught my eye in a piece describing the history of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle: “during the turbulence of the late 1960s … [t]here was also a big debate about whether interfaith marriage announcements should be printed in a Jewish publication.”
  • And I was pleased to see, in a September 16 email solicitation for a contribution from the Conservative movement, that Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal included, as one of five examples of what gifts supported, that the movement “developed new interfaith bylaws and resources to help congregations create a true sense of belonging for all.”

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Best wishes for a better, hopeful, and healthy new year.

August 2024 News from the Center

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Attitudes, Advocacy, and Change

I had coffee this month with a very experienced foundation professional, very supportive of interfaith family engagement, who I understood to say that advocacy for inclusion was no longer necessary or important. They felt that young people are already inclusive, and they only rarely hear conversion promoted.

When I founded InterfaithFamily (now 18Doors) as a non-profit back in 2001, one main goal was to counter the then-prevalent Jewish intellectual leadership’s persistent vocal negativity about interfaith marriage. It’s true that that has largely disappeared.

It’s also not the first time I’ve heard the need for advocacy questioned. In the first decade of the 2000s the president of one of the largest Jewish foundations told me they wouldn’t fund interfaith family engagement because the issue would go away by itself – again, young people were inclusive, and institutions that weren’t welcoming would wither. In the second decade Len Saxe of the Cohen Center declared that we had largely succeeded in welcoming interfaith families (I said that was premature).

With that background, the biggest news this month was the release by Jewish Silicon Valley of The 2024 Santa Clara County Jewish Community Study conducted by Rosov Consulting. The J’s report highlights that “people in interfaith relationships or with mixed-heritage backgrounds are often deterred because they do not feel ‘Jewish enough’ within Jewish spheres.”

The study found that only just over half of interfaith respondents reported they feel comfortable in most Jewish organizational spaces in the county, and only about half said that Jewish communities in Santa Clara County are welcoming to them. The study concludes that “building a culture of welcoming to diverse identity groups is both a major challenge and an opportunity for the Santa Clara County Jewish community.”

I believe that these findings affirm the ongoing need for the Center’s advocacy work. It is striking that even in the San Francisco Bay Area, regarded as one of the most liberal and intermarried communities in the country, significant numbers of interfaith respondents don’t feel comfortable or welcomed in Jewish spaces and communities.

We are still dealing with expressions of very negative attitudes about interfaith marriage. The most prominent interfaith couple today is of course Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff. Most comment has been positive, including this nice story about how the relationship inspires her Black Jewish interfaith family, and an essay in The Christian Century about how Harris’s interfaith identity could help her win the election and how her open engagement with the religious traditions in her family “models a healthy way to build coalitions for social justice.”

But in another article about how Harris inspired Emhoff’s Jewish engagement, I was shocked to read this screed from Josh Hammer, senior editor-at-large at Newsweek: “Every Jewish man marrying a non-Jewish woman gives Hitler a victory from the grave. Emhoff is no different.”

Not shocking, because it comes from the right-wing Israeli news publication Arutz Sheva, but still deplorable, was this: “A sad finale to a sad presidency. The world inheriting the intermarried Kamala Harris is the sad ending to Joe Biden’s career.”

It’s important that statements like these not go unchallenged.

Attitudes and policies are changing, as evidenced most recently by the HUC decision to admit students in interfaith relationships, which was the subject of a nice NPR segment by Deena Prichep featuring Samira Mehta, Lex Rofeberg and Andrew Rehfeld. I’d like to believe that advocacy from many corners contributed to that long overdue decision.

I don’t agree that we should just sit around and wait patiently for change to happen. The HUC decision was also the subject this month of a Judaism Unbound podcast which questioned whether HUC, and Hebrew College, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, should all do teshuvah for the pain caused by their previous restrictive policies. They pointed out that the policies didn’t just harm the people who were barred from applying to their schools; by implicitly declaring interfaith relationships to be sub-optimal, the policies harmed all interfaith couples. That went on for way too long.

Lessons from Other Contexts

This month there were three interesting pieces that were not about interfaith family inclusion but with thinking that could be applicable to it and promote positive change.

First, the Forward published a powerful, both inspiring and sad, essay about a gay Orthodox rabbi, Shua Brick, who holds a leadership position in a Modern Orthodox community – that’s the inspiring part – apparently so long as he does not date and is celibate – that’s the sad part, to me.

It caught my eye when, after saying that same-sex marriage is incompatible with halacha, Rabbi Brick says that the “follow up” is that “if you love them you’re going to do their wedding, and if you won’t do their wedding, you don’t love them.” This reminded me of Noah Feldman saying in his book that some Orthodox rabbis are officiating at weddings of same-sex couples and wanting to adapt halacha in recognition of the importance of romantic love.

Second, Rabba Yaffa Epstein, senior scholar and educator in residence at The Jewish Education Project, wrote “Instead of red lines, let’s draw 12 paths.” Concerned about divisions and polarization among Jewish people, she says “I understand that red lines will be drawn, and clear boundaries are necessary for a people to understand itself and its values,” but that “the Jewish people have never done well when we adopt an us vs. them attitude.” She describes a powerful image of the twelve tribes walking separately through the Red Sea “being able to see one another, to experience it together, while still maintaining their individuality.”

Rabba Epstein does not explicitly say what kind of boundaries she is talking about, but it must be about Zionism and attitudes towards Israel. Yet the language seemed to me to be very applicable to boundaries around interfaith couples and partners from different faith backgrounds. Like this: “It is the time to move forward, together — united, but not uniform. Unity allows us to tap into our roots as a family, work together and become stronger as a people through our diverse perspectives. We do not need to walk the same path, nor do we need to demonize one another’s paths.” And this: “[S]o much focus, so much energy and so much of the discourse revolves around identifying the ways in which we differ, feeding distrust and highlighting reasons to discount one another. What if we began instead with the reasons why it is imperative for us to find common ground and the windows to see into each other’s worlds? Establishing red lines can come second (or, if we do this work right, they might not even be needed).”

Third, a report in eJewishPhilanthropy about a new program that involves JCCs combatting antisemitism notes that “there are 172 JCCs serving over 1.5 million people every week, a third of whom are not Jewish. The Jews who are members are often not connected to other Jewish organizations or temples.” JCCs have “an incredible opportunity to humanize … Judaism … to a group of individuals who may not interact with the Jewish community in any other way.” It’s not an exact parallel, but I’ve always felt that JCCs have not sufficiently taken advantage of their being very well-positioned to encourage Jewish engagement by interfaith families whose only connection is through JCCs.

Also in the News

  • Hiddush, an Israeli organization that promotes freedom of religion, run by Rabbi Uri Regev, released a survey that half of Israeli Jews would prefer to marry in Israel in non-Orthodox wedding ceremonies. Currently, interfaith couples, same-sex couples, and people who don’t qualify as Jewish by the standards of the Orthodox Rabbinate, cannot legally marry in Israel.
  • I loved the story in the J. that Mark Zuckerberg sings the mi shebeirach – not a traditional bedtime song or prayer – to his daughters. The J. reported that his wife practiced Buddhism, but an item on the People magazine website says she converted to Judaism.
  • In an unexpected TV episode discussion this month, covered in the Forward and Hey Alma, contestant Jeremy Simon tells Bachelorette Jen that it’s important for him that his future children have Jewish identity; Jen says she’s open to it, and has celebrated Shabbat with Jewish friends, but wants children to know her Buddhist traditions; Jeremy says he’s open to that. Unfortunately, Jeremy didn’t make the final three.
  • Kveller had a nice story, “What It Means To Be Jewish-Adjacent.” I’ve never loved the term “Jewish adjacent,” and agree with this author that “all labels have associated downsides and of course won’t feel right for everyone.” But I also can’t disagree that the term “currently meets [her] where [she’s] at.”
  • An interfaith relationship was featured in a rom-com musical, “Sabbath Girl,” in New York City this month.
  • A somewhat unusual essay by a UK demographer notes that the “amidst the sense of crisis about intermarriage in the 1990s, no organisation thought to commission research on Jewish love, sexuality and sexual attraction… Jews are sexual beings and … ‘love’ is an unruly emotion… [T]hose of us who count Jews [are reminded] that behind every demographic statistic, the erotic lurks and will not be tamed.” I understand this as recognition that liberal Jews are motivated by romantic love – hardly a surprise? – and my take away is that of course we need to be inclusive of the couples that result.

July 2024 News from the Center

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Instead of a quiet summer, and in the midst of the consuming news of presidential politics and from Israel, there’s been quite a lot about Jewish inclusion of interfaith families in the media this month.

It’s happening against a backdrop of a more general attention to growing “interfaithness” in America. First there was JD Vance described as a convert to Catholicism with a Hindu wife. Then, closer to home, there was discussion of Kamala Harris as a “Baptist married to a Jewish man, … influenced by the religious traditions of her mother’s native India.”

Doug Emhoff, the Second Gentleman, was previously intermarried, and apparently was not Jewishly engaged (he became very much engaged later on); the Forward reports that his children were not raised with and do not identify as Jews.

But then there’s the new Prime Minister of the UK Keir Starmer and his Jewish wife, who the Forward reports regularly mark Shabbat, are raising their kids as Jews, and belong to a liberal synagogue. News like this always raises the question, what can be done to encourage more families like the Starmers?

The HUC Decision, and the Need to Adapt Fundamental Attitudes

Last month JTA published my op-ed, The Reform movement’s decision to admit intermarried rabbis is good. Truly welcoming them would be great. I said the decision was “momentous” and congratulated HUC’s leadership for finally getting to that result. But I said that the messaging surrounding the announcement did not express the fully inclusive attitude towards interfaith marriage that would encourage more interfaith families to engage Jewishly, in turn enabling liberal Judaism to thrive in the future. Instead, it reiterated that “Jewish endogamy is a value,” and added language requiring that students in interfaith relationships commit to “exclusively Jewish practice.” 

I am apparently the unnamed “HUC critic” in Dr. Steven Windmueller’s essay, Hebrew Union College: Facing the Future, which cites my op-ed twice. Dr. Windmueller has been affiliated with HUC for a long time, including as dean of the Los Angeles campus. He seems to be positive about the decision, explaining it as a balancing “the preservation and integrity of Jewish practice” with being “mindful of shifting cultural and social trends.”

But again, his message is not fully inclusive – he says the shifting demographic reality is not “unconditionally embraced” and repeats the “endogamy is a value” statement. He defends the “exclusively Jewish practice” requirement as HUC simply remaining “fully committed to the proposition of its clergy demonstrating serious personal Jewish engagement” – but why would anyone seek to become a rabbi if they were not seriously personally Jewishly engaged? And why was it necessary to add the requirement only when students in interfaith relationships were to be admitted? For more discussion of the Windmueller piece, see the Center’s Facebook post.

In The anguished dilemma of a Reform rabbi, Rabbi Mark Cohn, ordained by HUC nearly thirty years ago, lamented the HUC decision as part of a trend toward “preeminent individualism” and “disengagement from the Jewish people.” Rabbi Cohn then engaged in a revealing podcast discussion with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver.

I found it very curious that Rabbi Cohn officiates at weddings of interfaith couples, defends patrilineal descent, and emphasizes the lived reality of Reform rabbis responding to the needs of their congregants – but disagrees with the decision to admit students in interfaith relationships.

Noting that intermarried rabbis would interface with other Jewish communities and with non-Jewish communities, Rabbi Cohn asks (I’m quoting to the best of my ability) “how serious will I be taken by others if I’m not living a serious Jewish life, a deeply committed and engaged Jewish life.” It seems clear from this that Rabbi Cohn believes that being intermarried is inconsistent with living a serious, deeply committed and engaged Jewish life. Indeed, he turns the “role model” argument around, and suggests that in intermarried rabbi could not be a role model for inmarried couples; that only makes sense if being inmarried is part of what should be modeled. For more discussion of the podcast, see the Center’s Facebook post.

What’s common to what Dr. Windmueller and Rabbi Cohn say is holding on to a preference for inmarriage. Endogamy is a Jewish value; living a serious, committed, engaged Jewish life is inconsistent with being intermarried. These are fundamental attitudes that I believe need to change if we are going to see more interfaith families Jewishly engaged – like Keir Starmer’s family.

At just the right time, Rabbi Micah Streiffer, leader of Laasok and one of the few rabbis in Canada who will officiate at weddings of interfaith couples, makes an important contribution towards changing attitudes. He describes his own shift in thinking in “Embracing Interfaith Wedding Couples: Building the Jewish Future.”

Traditionally, rabbis see officiating weddings as contributing to the Jewish future and sought to ensure that the wedding “really, authentically, is the beginning of a Jewish home.” Traditionally, the criteria to measure whether couples take Judaism seriously has been that both partners are (or are becoming) Jewish.

But Rabbi Streiffer points out that rabbis routinely perform weddings for two Jews who are not really engaged in Judaism because in those cases they see the wedding as an opportunity for engagement. He argues that’s how rabbis should treat weddings of interfaith couples:  in turning them away, “we miss the chance to engage them, and they miss the chance to engage in Judaism.”

Rabbi Streiffer cites the famous story of Shammai turning away the person who seeks to convert while learning the entire Torah standing on one foot, but Hillel converting him saying the “golden rule” is the entire Torah and inviting him to study. Hillel answered the inquiry “not with a litmus test but with an invitation. Hillel seems to understand that the very fact that this non-Jewish man has stepped into his study is, in itself, an act of Jewish engagement. And further, he seems to understand that inviting him for a process of learning is an opportunity to deepen that engagement.”

To Rabbi Streiffer, an interfaith couple asking a rabbi to officiate is in itself an act of Jewish engagement; if they welcome and invite them in, they have an opportunity to build a Jewish future. What underlies this kind of thinking, that emphasizes invitation and engagement opportunity, is a fundamental approach that what is important is not whether people are Jewish – a litmus test for inclusion – but rather, what people do Jewishly.

I can’t agree more that “we, as a Jewish community, need to shift away from litmus tests and toward creating engagement opportunities.” And that “rabbis need to figure out authentic ways that we can say ‘yes’ – that we can stand on the bima, in the classroom, and even under the chuppah with individuals who care about Jewish life, including when they are not Jewish themselves.” For more discussion of Rabbi Streiffer’s piece, see the Center’s Facebook post.

Finally, at an even more progressive end of the spectrum, we have Episode 439 of the Judaism Unbound podcast, in which Rabbi Lex Rofeberg and Dan Libenson have a fascinating discussion with their guest Rabbi Ari Saks. Saks, ordained as a Conservative rabbi by JTS, works with interfaith couples who are “doing both,” including through his podcast Interfaithing.

Rabbi Saks has a halachic perspective, yet says that interfaith marriages are “Jewishly great,” as Rofeberg puts it. Saks says that his role at a wedding of two Jews is to “enact a halachic wedding” that requires both partners are Jews; but his role at weddings of interfaith couples is to “represent the Jewish side.” Because of that, he says he can do things he wouldn’t do in a halachic wedding – like co-officiate, with representation from the other faith background, or officiate on Shabbat.

It is fascinating, and I think rare, that Rabbi Saks is not bothered by having the name of Jesus said under the chuppah at weddings he conducts. He sees that as a statement not of theology, but about one partner’s relationship with Jesus, with Saks standing behind the couple.

Most fascinating is the suggestion that halacha can adapt to a more favorable view of interfaith marriage. (This is reminiscent of what Noah Feldman suggests in his book To Be a Jew Today). Saks suggests that the interfaith weddings he conducts, which he says are “questionable to some” – and that’s putting it very mildly – might in the future be viewed more generally as appropriate, or even normative. He refers to Blu Greenberg’s famous comment that “where there is a rabbinic will, there is a halachic way;” he refers to a Talmudic view that it takes one with real understanding to come up with a lenient position. The reason the Torah prohibits intermarriage with some tribes was that it would lead Jews astray to idolatry. The fact that today many interfaith couples want to embrace Judaism, not to take Jews away from it, could justify a different rule. For more on Rabbi Saks, see the Center’s Facebook post.

What’s Happening in the Institutional World

From the traditional world, a Chabad international gathering of young professionals includes a session on intermarriage led by Rabbi Eliezer Shemtov, author of “Rabbi, why can’t I marry her,” who said “It is our responsibility to adequately educate our community members on the importance of marrying Jewish and the dangers of intermarriage.”

From the liberal world, the Reform movement has launched “a new venture within the URJ focused on making it possible for individuals from a wide range of backgrounds (Jews of Color, LGBTQ+ identifying Jews, Jews with disabilities, people from interfaith backgrounds, including but not limited to single people, people with kids and people choosing to remain childfree, and others from a variety of often underrepresented backgrounds) to engage with Judaism in ways that are meaningful to them.” It’s not clear whether this effort, led by assistant vice president Sarah Norton, will focus on people in interfaith relationships.

I often note when institutions don’t say anything about interfaith families in situations where I think they should. This month, in the Conservative world, an otherwise very interesting essay, “Conservative Judaism must slay its zombies,” doesn’t say anything about the movement’s approach to interfaith families. An article about JCC’s innovating for changing times doesn’t say anything about any focus on engaging interfaith families. The board chair of Global Jewry’s essay “Toward a United Jewish People” doesn’t say anything about interfaith families being included in that unity.

Also in the news:

  • A nice piece, “This Is the Jewish People,” about all of the people from different faith backgrounds participating in a progressive synagogue, with Linda Rich concluding, “A few short decades back, many thought that intermarriage would destroy the Jewish people. We lacked the confidence to imagine that our way of life would appeal to others, that more would opt in, and that fewer would opt out.”
  • Another nice piece by Robert Jones, who argues that the period of time between Juneteenth and the Fourth of July could, like the ten days of repentance, be a period for critical improvement; this caught my eye: “Among the many gifts of being in an interfaith marriage is the ongoing invitation to experience and learn from a tradition that is not your own. As I’ve participated in the Jewish High Holidays over the last 20 years, I’ve been moved by the power of the moral space that opens in the ten days [of repentance].”
  • A reality show about an Orthodox Jewish man engaged to a Catholic woman who may be converting?
  • A Kveller article by an intermarried woman raising her daughter with Jewish humor.

June 2024 News from the Center

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Momentous Decision

Hebrew Union College decided – finally! – to revoke its policy not to admit students who are in interfaith relationships. This is long-awaited – overdue, really – good news. Something I’ve been advocating for, for fifteen years.

A policy that says that rabbis can’t be in interfaith relationships can only be based on the view that interfaith marriage is bad and partners from different faith backgrounds are undesirable. There’s really no other explanation. So revoking such a policy is an important step.

Unfortunately, in explaining the decision, HUC missed the opportunity to say, we’re revoking those views, we don’t care what the religious identity or background of the partners of Jews is, we only hope that everyone will engage Jewishly. Instead, they said that in-marriage was a value and that they were adding standards for their students that they have exclusively Jewish homes and children.

They probably had to do that in order to get enough approval of the policy change, but it’s still unfortunate, and illustrates that there’s more work to be done.

I spell all of this out in my JTA op-ed, “The Reform movement’s decision to admit intermarried rabbis is good. Truly welcoming them would be great.” (also in the Times of Israel blogs)

Here is the decision, the JTA article about it, a great op-ed by Samira Mehta, a great blog post by Susan Katz Miller, and another piece by a Bay Area rabbi. I’ve only seen one criticism so far, that doesn’t really explain the reasons. If you’re interested in more, there’s an entire section of the Center’s website devoted to the seminary admissions issue, with a reading list (PDF) of statements on the question, and a history (PDF) of the discussion to date.

Momentous News from 18Doors

On June 18, 18Doors announced that Jodi Bromberg was stepping down as CEO, and a national search to fill her position was underway. As the founder of what used to be known as InterfaithFamily, I care a great deal about the ongoing health and growth the organization. I hired Jodi to be my successor and I have always thought she did a great job of maintaining the organization and keeping it going. I didn’t agree with every change, but the website and officiation referral service are tremendously improved, the Rukin Rabbinic Fellowship is a jewel, and she built a strong and engaged board.

I wish Jodi happiness and fulfillment in her next steps, continuing success for the organization, fulfillment for Laurie Beijen as she becomes the new board chair, and good luck to Alicia Oberman as she heads the search committee.

Also in the News

There was a second annual Re-charging Reform conference this month, where most of the discussion understandably was reportedly about Israel and antisemitism.. Other than a session at which Jodi Bromberg spoke, I’m not aware of engaging interfaith families being a topic of discussion.

The URJ website had a nice article about the 150th anniversary of Temple Emanuel in Denver. I visited more than once, long ago when Rabbi Steve Foster was there; it’s a flagship Reform congregation. When asked about future projects, the current senior rabbi, Joe Black, said “We’re looking at how to be more affirming to Jews of Color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and Jews living with disabilities.” They did have a program on May 15 in which Adam Pollack, 18Doors’ chief program officer of 18Doors, participated; but I thought Rabbi Black’s not mentioning interfaith families in response to the question was telling.

Also worth reading:

February 2024 News from the Center

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October 7, Antisemitism, and Interfaith Families

Writing in eJP  about “Communal transformations in our time of crisis,” Rabbis Ben Spratt and Joshua Stanton aptly summarize the current moment: “The growing notion of a wisdom tradition with universal appeal is largely being eclipsed, at least for the moment, by the visceral call to peoplehood as a group under threat by an increasingly hostile society.”

We’ve expressed before the hope that “peoplehood” will be understood to include partners from different faith backgrounds, as well as their families. Our group under threat needs to be as broad as possible, with as many allies as possible.

The ADL and 18Doors announced a new partnership to support interfaith families in countering rising antisemitism. Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO, described “an increasing need for resources … for those in interfaith families…. Our partnership with 18Doors will bring inclusive tools and guidance to more people in interfaith relationships, addressing the challenge of antisemitism family by family.”

This article in the New York Times, “Navigating Israel’s War When One Spouse Is Jewish, and One Is Not,” based on interviews of numerous interfaith couples, feels honest and accurate. We appreciated the sub-title, “For some couples, figuring out how to talk about the war in Gaza is a hurdle in the relationship, but ultimately one that has brought them closer.”

“The War Made My Husband, A Jew By Choice, Even More Jewish,” is an important albeit troubling personal story. The author writes about “gaps between my convert husband and my born-Jewish background.” She says his conversion is a joy to her and a boon to their relationships, but they “diverge in knowledge, in attachment, and in attitude.” She says to him,

“It’s in my blood and bones, and I know I come from this, that I am made by this history, forged by these words and these concepts and this people. I don’t think you can feel the same way. You’re not of it in the same way. It’s not of you. You can love it and hold it and participate in it, and you do, but it’s not the stuff of you. It didn’t make you in the same way.”

She refers to the prohibition on reminding converts of their former status, but then says there is a

“running undercurrent that if you’re not born Jewish, you can’t possibly become so, can’t possibly understand. You’re a wannabe, a hanger-on, an interloper. I had always bucked this sometimes-not-so-quiet attitude, and now here I was subjecting my own beloved husband to the same blood-based scrutiny. Suspicion and clannism run deep among the humans. Jews, in this instance, are no exception (however we may try to be, or think that we are).”

Then, after her husband responds to October 7 with “solidarity and support,” goes to services with her, wears an anti-antisemitism button, ties blue ribbon around their trees, and listens to Jewish podcasts, she is

“no longer worried about our different experiences growing up; I know that when disaster befalls our people, he will be right in the thick of it with me, fully identifying, fully supportive. The proof is in his actions and attitudes every day of this war; he is more completely a Jew than I ever dreamed of.”

It certainly rings true that people who grew up with Judaism will have differences in knowledge, attitudes and attachments about and towards it. But responding with suspicion and tribalism to converts, let alone partners from different faith backgrounds, who are actively “doing Jewish” – regarding them as interlopers – weakens the overall Jewish community. This story genuinely surfaces the deep-seated tribalism many Jews feel; we need to be aware of it, and to resist it.

Conservative Movement

Last month we commented on the Conservative movement’s new report on efforts to engage interfaith families, without lifting the ban on its rabbis officiating at weddings of interfaith couples. Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, head of the movement, then wrote a heartfelt explanation, “Why the Conservative Movement Is Changing Our Approach to Interfaith Marriage.”

Rabbi Blumenthal did not fully explain why the movement is maintaining the ban, but it appears to be the view that a rabbi-officiated interfaith wedding ceremony would not have “Jewish integrity” for either the rabbi or the couple. Telling that to an interfaith couple looking for a rabbi to officiate can only push them away from Jewish engagement.

(The only other mention we saw of the Conservative movement’s new efforts to engage was this JNS report.)

Orthodox Triumphalism

“Judaism Is Not a State of Mind” is an awful piece. Last month’s newsletter highlighted Jennifer Cox’s “I Chose for My Family to Be Jewish. Even After October 7, I Would Choose It Again;” she is a mother who is not Jewish but who feels strongly that her children and her family are Jewish. Now comes an Orthodox rabbi, Rav Hayim Leiter, who tells Cox her children aren’t Jewish, because Judaism is “transmitted through the maternal line.” He says, “I don’t point this out to be cruel or insensitive,” but that’s exactly what it is, because it’s false as to much of the Jewish world outside Rav Leiter’s Orthodox lane, and counter-productive to anyone who wants to see the number of Jewishly-engaged people expand. For many people outside of his lane, and contrary to his title, Judaism is largely a state of mind – and there’s more than one way to be Jewish. It’s too bad he can’t respect that and see the benefit to the Jewish people overall for Jennifer Cox’s family to be and to be considered Jewish.

Hebrew College Admissions Policy

When Rabbi Art Green opposed the Hebrew College Rabbinic School’s change of policy that allowed admission to students in interfaith relationships as “giving in to assimilation,” the Times of Israel published my response, What’s More Important, Being Jewish or Doing Jewish. There’s been a lot of recent commentary about Rabbi Green’s sanctioning for sexual misconduct that we did not think was relevant for the Center to mention – until this blog post where Rabbi Dr. Alon Goshen-Gottstein suggests that the sanctioning can’t be separated from Hebrew College’s change in policy. He refers to a tragedy that “a generation of rabbis [is] being trained by this particular form of ‘Judaism’” and expresses concern for “congregations who will encounter a gay, intermarried rabbi as the authentic representative of Judaism, with no sense of commandment, obligation, and submission to tradition.” To repeat: there is more than one way to be Jewish.

British Jews

The UK Institute of Jewish Policy Research issued a new report that shows the rate of interfaith marriage has increased from 17% in the 1990s, to 24% of those who married between 2000 and 2009, to 34% of those who married between 2010 and 2022. More women (21%) than men (14%) are intermarried; more secular/cultural (48%) and Reform (20%) are intermarried. On traditional measures (belonging to a synagogue, having half or more Jewish friends lighting Chanukah candles), the intermarried are more “weakly connected.” Curiously, the report does not include data on how children of interfaith families are being raised religiously.

We appreciated the lack of negative commentary about the increasing rate of interfaith marriage. The author of the report, Dr. Jonathan Boyd, doesn’t comment on it one way or the other. The initial coverage in the UK Jewish press is titled “Steep Rise in Jews Marrying Out as the Number of Zionists Drop Says New Survey,” but only reports the intermarriage data and doesn’t otherwise comment.

Moreover, there was a very strong statement by a Progressive Rabbi, Josh Levy, whose response to the one-in-three rate is “Leap of Faith: it is our sacred task to welcome mixed-faith families” where he says “Jewish identity doesn’t cease to be important to a Jew who falls in love with and marries a non-Jew. Rather, it is the quality of our welcome that matters most.”

Also worth noting:

  • Steven Windmueller’s “Ten Trends That Are Reshaping American Judaism” is another example of ignoring interfaith marriage. He mentions “non-binary Jews, Jews of color, and ‘unchurched’ individuals” as new constituencies, heightened awareness of diversity and inclusion, and generational differences regarding identity and affiliation, all contributing to “redefining American Judaism” – with nothing said about interfaith families.
  • Last month we mentioned the controversy around the Israel Education Ministry pulling funding from a program because Lucy Aharish, an Israeli Arab married to an Israeli Jew (Fauda star, Tsahi Halevi) participated as the program host. Now in a long interview with Bari Weiss, Aharish talks about raising their child as Muslim and Jewish, and discusses the backlash she and her husband received when they married.
  • This article in Catholic Review says that Catholics are supposed to marry only other Catholics, in Catholic ceremonies, but there are dispensations available. This article says “Hinduism has no rules against marrying outside the faith. But couples say it has its bumps.”

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The Center is proud to have signed up to be a distribution partner with Everyone Counts, an initiative aimed at freeing the hostages.

December 2023 News from the Center

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Most of the Jewish world’s attention is still focused – appropriately I would say – on what’s happening in Israel. But it feels right to start reporting and commenting on interfaith inclusion news again. Especially since December is always a big month for interfaith families.

December Holidays

The UK Institute for Jewish Policy Research issued a new study that found that 28% of Jews in the UK have a Christmas tree at least some years. For interfaith couples, it’s 45% every year, compared to 36% who light Hanukkah candles. I appreciated that the JPR referred to Christmas trees as a “cultural manifestation.”

Most important, the JPR, which is a pretty traditional organization, did not criticize or bemoan the presence of Christmas trees, but instead calmly concluded that the findings “capture both the tenacity of Jewishness today and the realities of Jewish life in the modern multicultural age… Maintaining a Jewish identity in a non-Jewish society has long been a challenge; the ways in which we adopt non-Jewish customs and practices says a great deal about who we are and how we manage those dynamics.” (The Jewish News article on the report had a catchy title – “Oy to the World” – and refers to “ChristmasTreeGate” – but ultimately quotes the same conclusion.)

I read a few stories in Jewish and secular media about how interfaith families were celebrating the December holidays, but didn’t really notice anything new. The Reform movement’s website had some nice and very accepting advice in Five Ways to Approach Family Conversations Around Hanukkah and Christmas.

There was one story I didn’t care for, “I packed away Christmas 35 years ago, but I still bring holiday joy to others.” Janet Silver Ghent grew up in a Jewish family that celebrated Christmas, then married and divorced a man who was not Jewish, then married a Jewish man who had been in an interfaith marriage; at that point she gave up Christmas because she “reclaimed [her] Jewish identity after decades of assimilation.” She told a step-daughter, who asked why they couldn’t have a little tree, “a little tree is like a little pregnant.”

Ghent’s story stood out to me for a tone that is critical of Jewish families that celebrate Christmas, something I did not see much of elsewhere this December. Assimilation means losing Jewish identity and practice; it seems that more and more people in the Jewish world understand that having a Christmas tree does not mean that an interfaith family has assimilated.

Attitudes about Interfaith Marriage

The Shalom Hartman Institute and its co-president Donniel Hartman, an Orthodox rabbi, are deservedly among the most highly-regarded Jewish educational institutions and leaders in the world. When someone of Rabbi Hartman’s stature speaks about engaging interfaith families positively, it’s amazing, a cause for celebration.

In his new book, Who Are The Jews – And Who Can We Become, Hartman refers to “non-assimilationist exogamy;” says “most North American Jews who marry non-Jews do not see selves as rejecting Jewishness;” says interfaith marriage “can no longer be a boundary that defines Jewishness – it is now the norm of Jewish life;” talks about expanding “the parameters of Jewish identity” and “the inclusion of intermarried Jews and their spouses who chose to join us;” and recommends, “rather than digging our heels into a self-defeating discourse of denial, we marshal our collective creativity to ensure a vital next chapter in the Jewish people’s story.” This was all music to my ears.

I was equally amazed when the institute’s US-based co-president, Yehuda Kurtzer, another top Jewish public intellectual, in an opinion about the reshaping of the American Zionist left after October 7, said,  “[T]he big tent should be inclusive of anyone seeking to belong. One fascinating outcome of this could mean that we stop the decadeslong obsession with intermarriage as the marker of Jewish peoplehood. After Oct. 7, identification with the Jewish people at a time of suffering is a much healthier, and maybe more accurate, indicator of belonging.”

Speaking of top intellectual leaders, I was very saddened by the death of Rabbi David Ellenson, the much beloved past president of Hebrew Union College. As explained in my remembrance, he had the most remarkable generosity of spirit of anyone I ever met. Although I publicly criticized his decision to maintain HUC’s policy not to admit rabbinic students in interfaith relationships, he became a supporter and a friend,  publicly endorsing InterfaithFamily’s work several times, speaking at the afternoon of learning when I retired from InterfaithFamily, and providing the cover endorsement for my book. He never said this to me, but I can only imagine that he felt our policy differences were disputes for the sake of heaven.

Research

The Cohen Center at Brandeis released the 2022 San Diego Jewish Community Study. In San Diego, 49% of married Jewish individuals are intermarried, and 67% of couples that include a Jewish person are intermarried; in intermarried households, 55% of children are considered by their parents to be Jewish, and another 20% are considered to be Jewish and another religion. During 2024 I hope to complete my analysis of the Cohen Center’s recent local community studies.

I am excited about the prospects of a new study, funded by the Crown Family, Harold Grinspoon and Jim Joseph foundations. The study by Rosov Consulting and led by Alex Pomson will explore “the interests, needs, hopes, and challenges of a wide diversity of Jewish families, including those with more than one religious or cultural tradition…” They will examine which elements of the parents’ heritages they wish to continue, which they have chosen not to, and why.

The first part of the study is a just-released review of research which clearly notes that welcoming Jewish attitudes and institutions make a difference. I appreciated the review’s statement that the last decade’s research “dispels the still-common tropes in communal discourse about the ‘dangers’ [interfaith families] pose to Jewish continuity.” I appreciated the recognition that structural factors, including institutional policies and ideologies, impact on couples’ decision. For interfaith families, that means experiencing pressure to convert, encountering attitudes and policies that privilege matrilineal descent, and hearing interfaith marriage characterized as a problem. I appreciated the review’s noting that for LGBTQ+ couples who are also interfaith, “many of the Christian partners were more favorably inclined toward Judaism because they viewed the Jewish community as more welcoming of LGBTQ+ people.”

I liked what the review said about terminology:

[W]e use the term “interfaith” to refer to all couples and their families in which one partner is Jewish (in some way) and the other is from a different religious, cultural or ethnic background, including those in which one partner has converted to Judaism, those in which each partner adheres to a different faith tradition, and those who do not consider themselves to be religious. All such families face similar challenges in negotiating which elements of the parents’ childhood heritage to perpetuate or discard.

Finally, coming full circle back to December, the review also notes the negative influence of Jews choosing to “code” Christmas traditions as “religious” and not “cultural,” and “therefore incompatible with a Jewish home, even though … arguably devoid of strictly religious meaning for many who engage in them.”

I find all of this very promising, and look forward to further reports as the study takes shape.

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At this difficult time, I hope your December holidays were as good as they could be, and I send sincere wishes for a good and better new year.

Remembering David Ellenson z”l

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I am one of the many people who was so fortunate to fall within the orbit of David Ellenson, a person of the most remarkable generosity of spirit.

I say this because my advocacy over the years pushed on two issues that were complicated for the head of Hebrew Union College – rabbinic officiation at weddings of interfaith couples, and admission of rabbinic students who were in interfaith relationships.

Despite my pushing, and I’m sure some differences of opinion, he became a supporter, and a friend.

We first met in June 2006 when InterfaithFamily (now 18Doors) was an exhibitor at a CCAR convention in San Diego and really scrapping for attention. I excitedly reported to a colleague afterwards that I had handed the president of Hebrew Union College an invitation to a reception and information session that we sponsored, and that he had come!

At some point, though, after Rabbi Ellenson was quoted in a publication as reiterating HUC’s policy not to admit rabbinic students who were in interfaith relationships, I wrote a letter to the editor criticizing that position. Rabbi Ellenson had argued that that rabbis should be role models; I said what a great role model it would be for interfaith families to see a rabbi who was intermarried.

In March 2008 I wrote an op-ed for the New York Jewish Week emphasizing the importance of interfaith couples being able to find rabbis to officiate at their weddings.  That April, I was invited to a reception at which CJP’s Barry Shrage and Rabbi Ellenson spoke. I wrote David a long email in advance, discussing two studies that had recently come out that showed the positive impact of rabbinic officiation on future Jewish engagement. At the session, Rabbi Ellenson spoke at some length about how he had been approached by four families that week asking him to speak to children who were intermarrying. He mentioned InterfaithFamily’s work several times. I followed up with some resources we were developing, which he said he would surely use.

In March 2010, I attended another CCAR convention as an exhibitor. This I will not forget – Rabbi Ellenson introduced me to his wife Rabbi Jacqueline Ellenson  by saying that I was “doing God’s work” – and she said she had used InterfaithFamily’s website and resources for a wedding in her own family.

In October 2015, InterfaithFamily hosted an afternoon of learning, and an evening reception honoring Barry Shrage, and me on my retiring as CEO. I was incredibly honored that Rabbi Ellenson spoke at the program. He sent me an outline of his remarks ahead of time – he said that our work had made a positive difference to interfaith couples received a welcoming attitude in contrast to the rejection of the past. And he outlined the remaining challenge – how to include interfaith couples and families while maintaining integrity of the Jewish community – how to maintain a Judaism of hospitality and authenticity.

In his outline Rabbi Ellenson referred to InterfaithFamily as an “Institute.” I thanked him for the promotion, saying we hadn’t been called that before; with his characteristic humor, he replied, “Institute? Organization? What’s in a name?”

I am sorry to say that my last contact with Rabbi Ellenson was five years ago. I asked if he would write an endorsement for my book, Radical Inclusion: Engaging Interfaith Families for a Thriving Jewish Future, and he agreed. Stuart Matlins had advised me that Rabbi Ellenson was probably the single most highly regarded leader who the desired audience of my book would look up to. So, at the top of the cover of the book, Rabbi Ellenson’s blurb appears: “Must reading for Jewish laypersons as well as Jewish communal and religious leaders. Vital for all who are concerned about the future of Jewish life in North America.”

Since the news of Rabbi Ellenson’s untimely death I’ve seen many well-deserved tributes from many corners of the Jewish world. We have lost a truly great leader. I send sincere sympathy to his wife and children and their families.

My Experience as an Intermarried Rabbi

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Guest Post by Rabbi Ed Stafman

At 30 years old, I married my wife – the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. I considered myself an atheist and secular Jew. Because religion was unimportant to me, it had little bearing on who I would marry. My family put no pressure on me about my intention to marry the woman who would become my wife.

At age 38, when our first child was turned five, I felt that she should have a Jewish education, despite the fact that I despised my own [Orthodox] Jewish childhood education. We lived in an overwhelmingly Christian city and with my wife’s family being so strongly connected to the church, my failure to give my daughter a Jewish education would likely have led to her becoming Christian by default, and that was unacceptable to me, although I didn’t understand why at the time. My wife was very gracious and supportive. So, we joined the local Reform synagogue and enrolled our daughter in the religious school there.

As time when on, we became more involved in the synagogue. I taught seventh grade religious school (I was able to read a week ahead of the kids!). The synagogue became a center of our social lives and a source of friends and community. I served on the Board for many years, eventually as President, attended URJ biennials, served on the URJ’s Social Action Commission, and the like. But Jewish spirituality was not a big part of the draw.

In my mid 40s, I serendipitously found myself at a Jewish Renewal spiritual retreat. I had found my spiritual home. For the next several years, I attended as many of these retreats as I could.  When I returned home, the first phone call I got was always from my wife’s mother, a [Christian] spiritual director, who wanted to know what happened and everything I learned.  As time went on, I began to meet rabbinic students and faculty of ALEPH’s Rabbinic program and became more and more drawn to Jewish learning and later, to perhaps ultimately becoming a rabbi.

When application time rolled around in 2000, Rabbi Marcia Prager, the Dean of the ALEPH Rabbinic Program, explained to me that the application process vis-à-vis intermarried students was holistic in its approach, and that while intermarriage was a factor, they look at the whole person, his/her circumstances, whether they would serve the Jewish community well as a rabbi, etc. She was very clear about one thing: it was highly unlikely that any congregation would hire an intermarried rabbi and she didn’t want me to harbor false hopes.  At the time, I wasn’t all that interested in becoming a congregational rabbi, so I was not bothered by this probable limitation.

I had considered other rabbinic programs at the time, but I was told by HUC, RRC, and Hebrew College that because I was intermarried, I could not be accepted, and I was not about to get divorced after 16 years of a good marriage or to be dishonest about it. While HUC and RRC did not explain their reasoning, Rabbi Art Green of Hebrew College Rabbinic School explained to me that their philosophy was out of concern for families that might be struggling with a child intermarrying and wanting them to work it out among themselves without the child being able to point to the rabbi and saying “the rabbi’s intermarried, why can’t I?”. I was persuaded by that argument at the time, but I suspect that, in the last 20 years, there are fewer and fewer families having those difficult conversations. Both of my children are in long term relationships, one with a Jew, one not. Should they decide to marry, I wouldn’t think of debating them about the religious status of their chosen partner.

In any event, I was accepted into the ALEPH program and spent the next eight years in it, part time at first. I was the third intermarried person in the program. (One had since been divorced and a couple more entered during my time, at least one of whom subsequently divorced). Throughout my time in the program, my commitment to living a Jewish life deepened significantly and it was not always easy being married to someone who did not share that driving force. However, my experience in that regard was not much different from colleagues who were married to secular Jews who did not want to be so Jewish! Along the way, there were several spouse support groups, mostly consisting of secular Jewish spouses, but my wife fit right in. None of the spouses thought they were marrying a rabbi all those years earlier and these second career decisions required adjustments and flexibility. Often overlooked by those thinking about intermarried rabbis is the impact on the marriage, where it is bound to pose challenges. Happily, we worked through the challenges, owing to my wife’s graciousness.  She joined me in many Jewish practices and events. I would later note that next to me, she knew the liturgy better than anyone else in the congregation. She attended services regularly, played the piano during services, and her Pesach brisket rivals any.  However, although she explored it, she determined that conversion wasn’t in the cards for her.

Along the rabbinic school path, I had a student pulpit, which changed my thinking about congregational work. In 2008, a few months before I was to be ordained, an ad came across the rabbi listserve, reading: “Outside Magazine Says Bozeman, MT is the #1 Place to Live in the U.S. and We’re Looking for a Rabbi. Any questions, call Josh at #######.” It looked like a great opportunity, but the caution of the Dean from eight years earlier was still ringing in my ears. I called Josh to inform him that I was considering applying, but that I wouldn’t waste everyone’s time if being intermarried was a dealbreaker. After consulting the search committee, he told me to go ahead and apply. I ended up being hired for a few months as a student rabbi while I awaited ordination, and then spent ten years serving that community, ultimately retiring and becoming rabbi emeritus two years ago. I later heard from search committee members that they thought that by calling Josh, I was trying to game the process and gain an advantage by letting them know ahead of time that I was intermarried so that they would look upon me more favorably, since they were 60+% intermarried!

During my tenure as rabbi, I’m not aware of any negative issue that ever arose because I was intermarried. I suspect there were a few whispers in the local Orthodox community, but they too were mostly intermarried families, so it wasn’t a major issue. Being intermarried had the advantage of giving me credibility with non-Jewish spouses when I told them how much they were welcome, and to talk about conversion in a way that they knew was non-judgmental.  It increased my credibility in the outside — and especially the interfaith — community, which in turn, lifted the congregation. In the progressive Jewish world where the role of Rebbetzin has all but been eliminated, people expect the rabbi’s wife to have her own identity.

At 66 years old and having lived this journey through rabbinic school and a ten year pulpit, with its trials, failures, and successes, I believe that Rabbi Marcia Prager was correct: the decision to admit an intermarried rabbinical student must be a holistic one. The ultimate question ought to be whether the applicant is somebody whose ordination will, on the whole, lift up, inspire, and advance the interests of the Jewish people, local Jewish communities, and individual Jews. Do we want to turn away those who would be good rabbis by those standards but who intermarried many years before and came to fall in love with Judaism later, simply because his/her spouse declines to convert? In this world of evolving Jewish life, there are many factors to consider and, in my opinion, no one factor should be wholly determinative. How long has the person been married? How strong is the marriage? What are the non-Jewish spouse’s thoughts, concerns, feelings, and what will his/her role in the rabbi’s professional life look like? Is the spouse actively practicing another religion, which could pose a more significant problem? What kind of work does the applicant want to do? If congregational work is the calling, does s/he want a small more rural congregation where most people are intermarried or a congregation in a large Jewish metro area that might have different expectations? How will the applicant and his/her spouse deal with the personal and communal challenges that arise? It’s important to consider that many of these same questions can be asked of an applicant married to a secular/uninvolved Jew, who will often face the same challenges. If we are going to tell spouses of interfaith families that they are welcome in our congregations, it seems hypocritical to say that intermarriage automatically disqualifies an otherwise committed rabbinic applicant.

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After some 25 years of law practice, Ed Stafman spent eight years in the ALEPH Rabbinic program. After ordination, he served as Rabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom in Bozeman, MT for ten years, where he is now Rabbi Emeritus. He is a past president of OHALAH, the Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal. He was elected to the Montana House of Representatives, District 62, in the November 2020 election.

Seminary Admissions: Modern-day Discrimination

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GUEST POST BY SUSAN RIZZO

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a dentist.  Why?  My dad’s best friend was a pediatric dentist.  He had a cool office with ceiling-mounted television screens above each chair and video arcade consoles in his waiting room.  I figured there couldn’t be a better job!  Here I am in my 40s, having long ago chosen education over dentistry, and now ready for a career change (preferably one that doesn’t involve my putting my hands in another’s mouth).  Since being nominated to participate in the Wexner Heritage Program last year, I am very interested in helping shape the Jewish future.

Life-long Reform Jew that I am, I started with the website of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), the movement’s main seminary, to learn what it takes to become ordained.  I learned there about the “extraordinary five-year journey” which promised to “expand my intellectual curiosity, nurture my search for spiritual meaning, and fulfill my aspirations to implement tikkun olam, the healing of the world.”  Apart from some issues of practicality (distance, expense, etc.), I am ready to be signed up for what sounded like the adventure and career of a lifetime!

The (non-exhaustive) list of program requirements for HUC-JIR seminary programs includes:  Bachelor’s degree.  Check!  GPA of 3.0 or higher.  Check!  Year of college-level Modern Hebrew.  Check!  Readiness for graduate school.  Check!  (I’m going to assume completion of two prior master’s degrees constitutes readiness.)  Commitment to and leadership experience within Reform Judaism and K’lal Yisrael (Jewish peoplehood).  Check and check!  Ability to think analytically and express oneself clearly in speech and writing.  (I’ll let you be the judge.)

Wow, I could be a rabbi or cantor!  Except, no.  “Current policy states that applicants who are married to or in committed relationships with non-Jews will not be considered for acceptance to this program.”  That’s right, my most amazing partner of nearly 18 years, with whom I have raised a Jewish family for more than a dozen, is not himself Jewish.  Apparently, that’s enough to disqualify me from applying to an HUC-JIR rabbinic or cantorial program. Not only does this seem counter to the values espoused by Reform Judaism, but per their website, HUC-JIR “does not discriminate on the basis of disability, race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, genetic information, marital status, sex, age, sexual orientation, veteran status or gender identity and expression” (all emphases added).

I decided to invite HUC-JIR to help me see how precluding my candidacy based on the religion/ancestry of my spouse does not violate their own equal opportunity and non-discrimination policies.  Emails to Cantorial, Admissions and finally the Equal Opportunity Coordinator resulted in my having a phone conversation with the Associate Director of Recruitment and Admissions, who suggested that a policy change might be on the horizon.  That was late 2018.  As recently as last month, no change had yet been implemented, so I reached out again – this time to the new HUC-JIR president.  He thanked me for my feedback, conceded that others have expressed similar concerns, and assured me of the school’s on-going commitment to religious pluralism.  He also pointed out that rabbis and cantors serve as exemplars to the Jewish community and, therefore, have to be held to high personal standards.

I do hold myself to high standards, both personally and professionally.  Does my having intermarried somehow mean I can’t be a model for the Jewish community?  I reject that premise, both because it offends and because it really does not seem grounded in the present reality.  Has anyone noticed how many self-identified Reform Jews intermarry?  A LOT!  Do we not think congregants deserve to be led by a reflection of themselves?  The implication seems to be that my having intermarried means my having not chosen a Jewish life, but clearly that’s not true.  Not only was I chosen by my temple’s clergy to participate in the Wexner Heritage Program; I am presently matriculated in the Spertus Institute Master of Arts in Jewish Professional Studies program; I serve on four committees at my temple, including one I chair; I sing in various temple choirs and am right now co-constructing our temple’s first summer lay-led service; our two children are enrolled in our temple’s religious school and will become b’nai mitzvah next year.  Yet somehow none of that “counts” because having intermarried makes me an unfit model?

Shockingly, HUC-JIR isn’t the only non-Orthodox seminary that won’t admit intermarried candidates.  One self-ascribed “pluralistic” seminary I recently talked to “reassured” me that my husband “would likely convert, knowing how important it was to me.”  That’s not the point – he shouldn’t have to!  My husband’s religion (it happens he only practices Judaism, even though he never converted) has zero bearing on whether I’d make a good rabbi or cantor. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College seems to know this; they decided to admit and ordain intermarried candidates in 2015.  It’s time the Reform movement, which I’ve called home since birth, caught up!

At the end of the day, discriminating against intermarried Jews violates Reform Judaism’s proclaimed emphasis on liberalism and evolution.  A half-century after the rabbinate opened to women, it’s time it opened to all Jews, regardless of race, sexuality, gender identity, or marital status.  It’s time that the Jews in the pews see ourselves reflected more fully on the bimah and that we stop being intermarriage “shamed.”

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Susan Rizzo is a life-long member of Reform synagogues, including most recently Temple Sinai in Rochester, New York, where her family have been active members since 2012.  Her husband is not Jewish but participates extensively in temple life.  Their two sons have recently begun training for their 2021 joint b’nai mitzvah.