July 2026 News, from 18Doors, Embark, the Conservative Movement, jHUB, and Israel

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18Doors

The biggest news this month: “18Doors Announces New Leadership; New Chapter Focused on Building Belonging for Multi-Heritage Families.” I am beyond pleased that 18Doors will continue, under the leadership of Adam Pollack as Executive Director and Fern Chertok as Board Chair, “refocusing on equipping clergy, professionals and lay leaders with the tools to build communities where multi-heritage individuals, couples and families actually belong, and building the network of partners and funders who can sustain that work long-term.” It’s also great to see new funding from the Leon and Toby Cooperman Family Foundation. I hope all associated with 18Doors have much success!

New Leadership at Embark and Congregation Sukkat Shalom

Mem Global has named Alyssa Craft as the new executive director of Embark, its cohort program that helps interfaith and mixed-heritage couples explore Jewish life together. “Guided by a local rabbi, and alongside a cohort of their peers, Embark couples learn how to bring Jewish learning and traditions into their lives in a way that feels relevant and accessible to them, without any prerequisites or expectations to convert.”

A former Houston Hillel professional and alumna of Moishe House, the child of an interfaith family and part of a mixed-heritage marriage herself, Craft wants “Embark to be a movement as much as a program. One that reaches mixed-heritage couples and families in every community, is embraced by rabbis and clergy across denominations and becomes a cornerstone of Jewish belonging nationwide. The stronger the sense of belonging we create for our partners and families, regardless of their religious affiliation, the stronger our Jewish future will be.”

Rabbi Sam Gordon, the founding rabbi of Congregation Sukkat Shalom in Wilmette, was a pioneer in embracing interfaith families. The Chicago Tribune ran a nice story about the new senior rabbi, Allison Tick Brill, at a congregation “busting at the seams.” Rabbi Brill notes that the  congregation’s president, who is Catholic, and its treasurer, who is Mormon, are “deeply committed to the project of the synagogue.” “It is unusual to have the highest leadership roles [in a congregation be] members of other faiths… we believe that the diversity of opinions and the richness that they bring from other traditions enhances our expression of Judaism and strengthens our tent.”

Conservative Movement

The Rabbinical Assembly has just issued a new teshuvah, “Guiding the Conservative/Masorti Rabbi in Supporting Families with Non-Jewish Loved Ones.” The co-editors of the teshuvah, Rabbis Pamela Barmash and Emily Barton, offer “As Conservative rabbis, we can’t perform interfaith weddings. But we can bless the Jewish families they create,” that explains how “they hope to balance tradition, inclusion and the realities of Jewish life today.”

The new teshuvah follows a December 2025 set of recommendations which we commented on previously. An emailing to Conservative synagogue leaders says,

This teshuvah gives Conservative/Masorti clergy new, sanctioned ways to mark meaningful moments in these families’ lives: a public mi shebeirakh before or after a wedding day, a hanukkat habayit ceremony to dedicate a couple’s home, and a welcome for non-Jewish parents on the bimah at their children’s b’nei mitzvah. It also affirms that a Jew observes full Jewish mourning practices for a non-Jewish parent, spouse, or child, and affirms that intermarried individuals can serve in most synagogue roles other than clergy.

But,

On the wedding day itself, clergy will continue to officiate a wedding ceremony only when both partners are Jewish, though this teshuvah focuses on the many meaningful ways clergy and communities can walk alongside a couple before and after that day.

Rabbis Barmash and Barton say that with the teshuvah, halacha “address[es] issues facing intermarried couples and families robustly” and “seeks to honor these couples and families and their commitment to Jewish life in our congregations and communities.”

As I’ve said many, many times in the past, anything the movement does to help interfaith couples and partners from different faith backgrounds to feel welcomed and included is positive, but respectfully, until halacha advances so as to allow Conservative rabbis to officiate for interfaith couples, those couples and partners won’t feel fully included, or feel belonging in Conservative settings.

At this writing I haven’t had a chance to study the teshuvah itself, and will plan to comment next month.

HUC

The Forward reported on an upswing in HUC and JTS rabbinical school enrollment, with both institutions reporting their largest classes in fifteen years. I was curious and inquired whether any part of the HUC increase could be traced to the change in policy which now allows students who are in interfaith relationships to be admitted; I was told that the school doesn’t ask the question, and thus doesn’t have that data.

The article notes that more than one third of Conservative congregations have closed since 2000, as have one in five Reform synagogues.

Cleveland’s jHUB

I continue to be impressed with Cleveland, where, “as intermarriage has risen,” with more Jewish children raised by interfaith parents, they are “Building Jewish identity through education, family engagement.” One synagogue educator says, “we are creating programs to welcome families that have non-Jewish parents;” “We try to take into account, for those parents who might not have the same background, those differences and we try to be inclusive. We find that families of interfaith children are very excited to learn and we want to make it as positive as we can for them.”  Marlyn Bloch Jaffe, the CEO at the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, says, “Strategically, it is important to offer multiple paths to engagement, because people connect differently,” including “jHUB for interfaith couples and families.”

Remembering Rabbi Kelman

Jweekly published my letter to the editor: “In addition to the many pioneering efforts of Rabbi Stuart Kelman mentioned in Sue Fishkoff’s lovely tribute (“Rabbi Stuart Kelman, Conservative pioneer, 84,” June 3) he was part of the Tiferet Project, a consortium of Conservative rabbis who spent two years studying issues of intermarriage, resulting in a groundbreaking book, “A Place in the Tent: Intermarriage and Conservative Judaism.” The group advocated in the book for making “a genuine place” “for intermarried households within the communal tent” because “by doing so, many Jews who feel there is no place for them or for their Jewish children will come to be a vital part of the Conservative synagogue community and, by extension, the larger Jewish community.”

Smoothing the Path

Smoothing the Path: Strategies for Integrating Newly-Connecting Jews is a fascinating report by Rabbi Julia Appel of Clal. Based on interviews of ten “Jewish seekers” and six Jewish professionals, it asks, when already motivated individuals reach out for a way into Jewish community in Toronto, how institutions could best help them integrate and build a sustainable Jewish life. (Rabbi Appel also wrote about the report for Times of Israel, “We Have the Seekers. Will We Keep Them?”)

The participants included four Jews by Choice, three patrilineal Jews, two matrilineal Jews, and one in the process of converting. Whether any were in interfaith relationships is not noted. Curiously, the only mention of interfaith families is in a recommendation about learning, which notes “a recent uptick in non-Jews wanting to learn more about Judaism as allies,” says the “same basic curriculum would apply to both new seekers and non-Jews with no plans for becoming Jewish,” and then adds, “Additionally, non-Jewish partners of Jews are an interested and invested audience to basic Judaism learning courses.”

But many of the observations about these seekers fit like a glove with respect to interfaith couples and partners from different faith backgrounds, especially this one in the Recommendations section of the report: “Belonging is not simply stated welcome, but actively recognizing people as legitimate members of the Jewish community, especially if they fall outside the commonly assumed Jewish life path.”

Here are other observations that resonated:

  • Low-barrier, nonjudgmental spaces and programs explicitly open to all, regardless of background, were critical starting points. “All interviewees mentioned at some point their fear of “doing it wrong” or their lack of ritual or Hebrew literacy, which discouraged their ongoing engagement.”
  • “When people meet a person and they feel like this person is not judging me and is welcoming me, it makes all the difference. The more personal, human to human contact, the better.”
  • Interviewees “named certain legitimators that made them feel they belonged at a given Jewish event, including being personally invited, knowing someone there, or receiving clear explanations of what to expect.”
  • “Interviewees had to actively determine whether a Jewish community would truly welcome them, rather than merely tolerate their presence.… Patrilineal Jews, Jews of Color, Jews by Choice, LGBTQ individuals, Soviet Jews, or who held other marginalized identities especially could not take their own inclusion for granted.”
  • “[I]nterviewees were not looking for affirmation only of their specific identity. They consistently described gravitating toward Jewish communities explicitly broadcasting acceptance and diversity as core values, which gave interviewees permission to be themselves.” “When spaces were intentionally inclusive of one marginalized group, interviewees across identities understood that those spaces might also include them.”
  • “Having a stated commitment to diversity and pluralism made interviewees feel they could even hold divergent views and still feel that they belonged. At the same time, many noted that feeling they aligned on core values with communal leadership, particularly rabbis, on major issues increased trust and comfort. And seeing other participants who were ‘like them,’ or people they wanted to get to know better, also played a significant role in sustaining engagement. Jewish field practitioners stressed the importance of clarity, noting that ‘people need to know what a space is and who it’s for so they can self-select.’” “Pluralism, clarity of values, and visible diversity allowed seekers to find places where they could bring their full selves, … Communal leadership might … encourage institutions to name both their boundaries and their welcome.”
  • “Interviewees described feeling like they weren’t part of the ‘in-crowd’ of Jewish life, whether because they did not attend Jewish overnight camp, did not grow up in Toronto, did not live in the ‘right’ neighborhood, or did not know the ‘right’ people—like they could never catch up or fully enter the social fabric of Jewish life. Several mentioned ‘Jewish geography’ as something they actually longed for and were trying to give to their children.”
  • “[G]atekeeping – turning people away who are deemed not sufficiently Jewish – [i]s a major problem.” “Finding a community where they met ritual requirements around Jewish status, and therefore could participate fully, was a challenge for those who were not born Jewish according to traditional Jewish law. The assumption of Ashkenazi identity and being born Jewish was frequently named as alienating, even by interviewees who had formally converted. Several patrilineal Jews and converts experienced the casual dismissal of their identity as illegitimate, one even in a Kiddush conversation, which left them feeling like they couldn’t be full members of the community.”
  • “[O]nboarding involves repair, because many adults who are returning to Judaism carry long memories of prior exclusion. Even communities that sincerely aspire to be inclusive can inadvertently cause new injury if past harms are not acknowledged or if insider norms go unexamined. Transparency about communal boundaries can reduce confusion, but it does not eliminate pain, particularly for those who have experienced repeated exclusion. Inclusion will sometimes generate discomfort—especially as assumptions are challenged and insider norms are named. Repair of prior harm cannot be rushed or outsourced.”

News and Opinion from/about Israel

Illustrating the diversity of opinion in Israel, Judah Ari Gross reported for eJewishPhilanthropy that the Jewish Agency for Israel, in “a rare public rebuke of the Israeli government,” criticized two coalition-backed bills that “could undermine Jewish pluralism and weaken the Jewish people.” “One would effectively criminalize egalitarian and women-led prayer at the Western Wall, and the other would reject non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism for the purpose of immigration to Israel.”

Far from the coalition’s position, Nava Anne Grant offers in Ha’arertz, “Patrilineal Jews Like Gwyneth Paltrow Deserve Better From the State of Israel.” Paltrow, a patrilineal Jew married to a Jewish man, had appeared in advertising for real estate in Israel and then criticized for doing so by critics of Israel. Grant writes, “absurdly, according to the outdated standards of Israel’s religious authorities, Jews with Paltrow’s background must often contend with outrageous question marks over their identity and place within the Jewish tribe.”

The ill-treatment of patrilineal Jews is a tragedy. Halakhically, we must make it as easy as possible for people with mixed heritage to formally join the Jewish community. They are some of the Jewish people’s most impassioned supporters. Why would we cast a doubt over their Jewish identity?

Frank interviewed Rabbi Adam Mintz, who runs Project Ruth, an organization “working to make Orthodox conversions more fair and welcoming.” While Jews with patrilineal heritage are not Jewish according to halakha, they have a status called zera Israel – they come from “a Jewish seed.” According to Grant, Rabbi Mintz said that the Jewish community has a history of rabbinical courts which have exercised more leniency toward them, yet the Israeli rabbinate refuses to follow that precedent.

In Other News

  • A story about the revival of the New Orleans Jewish community and Touro Synagogue, a nearly 200-year-old Reform congregation that is “defying institutional decline,” where interfaith families are part of the revival.
  • An interesting essay about “Jewish citizenship” by Joshua Ladon, a senior faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute, who lays out a” comprehensive yet flexible vision for meaningful Jewish participation rooted in shared responsibility while open to multiple pathways and commitments.” I wondered if a partner from a different faith background could be considered a “Jewish citizen” under this framework.
  • A cute story in jweekly about a grandson in an interfaith family who decided at age fifteen that he wanted a b mitzvah and wanted his grandmother to have one with him.
  • A beautiful article in the Salt Lake Tribune about the many conversions to Judaism that are happening there.
  • A long, unfortunate story about children apparently refused admission to a day school in Canada because the standards of their mother’s conversion were not acceptable to the school.

June 2026 News: Worth-watching CASJE panel; day school, federation and Reform silence; lessons from eminent rabbis; Milwaukee study

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I don’t need to tell you that there is an awful lot going on in the world that demands attention.

In the Jewish world, most of the attention understandably continues to focus on Israel/Iran/Palestine/Gaza and on antisemitism.

I can’t help but feel that in the Jewish world, almost no one wants to talk about engaging interfaith families. It may be lack of bandwidth – but I think there’s more to it. And it’s especially problematic at this time, when uncertainty about the ongoing status of 18Doors demands, in my opinion, a concerted effort to engage interfaith families.

This month there was one bright development, a panel discussion devoted to interfaith marriage offered by CASJE and co-sponsored by eJewishPhilanthropy.

But elsewhere – in the day school world, the federation world, and the Reform world – silence and missed opportunity.

CASJE Panel

Thank you to CASJE, the highly-regarded Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education, for sponsoring “Jewish–Interfaith Families and the Future of Jewish Life in the United States” with eJewishPhilanthropy on June 11. The last time there was a publicly advertised webinar on this subject was a long time ago.

The 200 people who registered for the program heard from Bruce Phillips and Ted Sasson on recent demographic shifts: Phillips said people with one Jewish parent will outnumber people with two Jewish parents by 2 to 1; Sasson said a high rate of interfaith marriage and a high retention rate (those who identify as Jews) result in a growing population. Keren McGinity spoke about the tenacity of gendered behavior and the need to integrate equal parenting into programming. Rabbi Shena Jaffe explained how Honeymoon Israel is having its deepest impact on partners from different faith backgrounds and those with one Jewish parent. Sophie Mortman described what 18Doors has learned about what drives interfaith family engagement. I encourage you to watch the complete program here, and to see the slides here.

Mortman said that 18Doors hoped to pivot to building a field of professionals, offering training and support, and helping to connect across organizations. In my closing remarks about next steps, which you can view separately here, I encouraged support for that effort, and renewed my call for a concerted effort to engage interfaith families.

But other than the CASJE program, as Bruce Philips said, interfaith marriage seems to have “dropped off the communal radar.”

The Day School World

Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools issued a report, which JTA headlined as “Jewish day school enrollment is rising across denominations.” The increased enrollment was measured in community and Reform day schools, among others. I’m all in favor of day schools for those who chose them. But unless I missed it, the report said nothing at all about interfaith families sending their children to day schools – whether that accounted for any of the increase, or whether efforts have been made to increase representation from that population.

The Federation World

Shortly after the Prizmah study came out, eJP reported “Israeli government, JFNA partner on $66.7 million plan to boost Jewish day schools.” Gary Torgow, Jewish Federations of North America board chair, told eJP, “In recent years, formal Jewish education has become a growing focus for JFNA…. Jewish identity and Jewish education are key to the future of the Jewish people and combating antisemitism.” Torgow said October 7 and antisemitism “awakened something in the Jewish community” about the importance of Jewish education.

But my review of national and local Jewish community studies found that only 22% of interfaith families (compared to 51% of inmarried families) provide any K-12 Jewish education for their children. JFNA hasn’t said anything about any effort to increase that participation.

Around the same time, JFNA released “2026 LGBTQ+ Jewish Engagement Report.” eJP headlined this study as “JFNA survey finds LGBTQ+ Jews want more than just a Pride Shabbat dinner.” It’s a very interesting report, with findings about what LGBTQ+ Jews are looking for and respond to that are applicable to interfaith families as well.

But the report is silent about interfaith identities and relationships. The Executive Summary begins by referring to the post October 7 surge in Jewish engagement among “historically marginalized Jews, including LGBTQ+ Jews, Jews of Color, Jews with disabilities, and financially vulnerable Jews.” When JFNA preliminarily reported on surge data among historically marginalized groups, at the May 2025 Jewish Belonging Summit, it included data on interfaith families. Now they’ve stopped talking about it, not even mentioning it in this report.

The survey instrument shows that JFNA asked about racial and ethnic identity, and the report does talk about issues that LGBTQ+ Jews who are also Jews of color face. But the survey didn’t even ask respondents if they were in interfaith relationships. Bruce Phillips’ analysis of the 2020 Pew data shows that 77% of gay or lesbian Jews, compared to 43% of straight Jews, are in interfaith relationships. Doesn’t that huge intersectionality merit study and comment?

The Reform World

In April I wrote about an eJP essay by a URJ leader that referred to the “multiplicity of diverse Jewish identities” but did not mention diverse faith backgrounds. I said, “The leaders of the Reform movement seem to think that interfaith family inclusion is at the center of its work because it was pioneered by the movement, and that they have been successful at it, so they don’t need to talk about or prioritize doing anything about it.” That was also the case at the May 2026 Re-CHARGING Reform conference, where interfaith family engagement was not on the agenda, as I previously reported.

Now the URJ is holding a biennial in December. In February I submitted a proposal for a program session to be called, “Interfaith Marriage – Where Do We Stand?” with potential speakers including someone from 18Doors, myself, and someone on the URJ staff. This month I was told that my proposed session would not be included. I did not get a specific answer to my follow-up question, “is one of the 65 sessions going to be about interfaith family inclusion? Even in part?” I was told, “Interfaith families are the norm in Reform communities and inclusion of interfaith families is both a topic worthy of its own time and also part of every other conversation. It is fair to say that many sessions will be relevant.”

I am very glad that many interfaith families find welcoming and inclusive Reform congregations. I personally benefited from the movement making that happen, as have so many others. But I can’t agree that the movement doesn’t need to talk about or prioritize doing more about it. As I said in April, “only 13% of interfaith families belong to synagogues. I wouldn’t be satisfied with that level of success.” I agree that “inclusion of interfaith families is … a topic worthy of its own time,” but that discussion apparently will not happen.

* * * * *

All of this leaves me feeling like interfaith family engagement is being erased from the communal discussion, like it doesn’t matter. Over twenty-five years ago when I started InterfaithFamily, I spent a great deal of time debating with Jewish leaders who condemned interfaith marriage. Their policy response was to seek to discourage or reduce interfaith marriage, and not support any programming aimed to engage interfaith families. As a result, over those years, the concerted effort that I believe was necessary did not happen.

Today, thankfully, almost no one outside of the Orthodox world is condemning interfaith marriage. But there’s so much silence about it. And the result of the silence is the same as the result of the condemnation: engaging interfaith families is not prioritized.

In fairness, parts of the community are promising. 18Doors’ Adam Pollack just posted on LinkedIn about a study it is doing with one camp, and other camp partnerships that involve training and helping camps build communities of belonging for mixed-heritage families. But so much more needs to be done.

Learning from Rabbi Matalon, and Rabbi Dreskin

Andy Silow-Carroll had a very interesting interview with Rabbi Rolando Matalon as he retired from Manhattan’s B’nai Jeshurun, “one of the most influential synagogues in American Jewish life.” The congregation decided in 2017 that its clergy could officiate at interfaith weddings despite doing so being forbidden by the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, which Rabbi Matalon left in 2018.

Rabbi Matalon’s explanation why he decided to officiate is well worth reading. He then describes his conditions:

If a couple commits to building a Jewish home, raising Jewish children, converting children when necessary through mikveh [ritual immersion] at an early age, and participating in Jewish community, then we would officiate. We would not perform a kiddushin, traditional ceremony, exactly as it had been done, but a modified ceremony. The couple also had to commit to a serious process of learning and engagement with the rabbi over nine months to a year, and at some point explicitly affirm their commitment to a Jewish home and Jewish child-rearing.

Rabbi Matalon is pleased with the decision because it “broadcast that BJ is a welcoming community that wants to engage people rather than push them away. At the same time, we didn’t eliminate standards or expectations altogether. We said: If you’re interested, come and let’s engage seriously.” I have to wonder if this could not be a solution for the Conservative movement as it continues to struggle with this issue.

Coincidentally, I only recently saw this October 2024 piece in which Rabbi Billy Dreskin, a senior Reform rabbi, explains why he changed a position in 2022. Previously, he would not officiate for a Jew and a person who practiced another religion and intended to in their home. Now he will; his explanation is well worth reading. He concludes, “I love Judaism. And I want it to continue to exist. The world needs it to continue to exist. But in this time of schism and toxic dissent, I love love even more so. And while I will always celebrate when two Jews marry, I won’t ever again stand in the way of two human beings promising to love and care for each other forever. In fact, I will respond to their request for officiation with a wholehearted and grateful, ‘Yes!’”

Milwaukee Jewish Community Study

A reminder that interfaith marriage isn’t going away: the Milwaukee Jewish Federation released its 2024-2025 community study, conducted by the Cohen Center at Brandeis. Consistent with our analysis of 26 other local community studies conducted since 2013, people in interfaith relationships feel less of a sense of belonging to the Jewish people or their local Jewish community than inmarried people.

  • 42% of intermarrieds (compared to 74% of inmarrieds) feel very much a sense of belonging to the Jewish people (p 61); the respective averages of 26 other communities are 25% and 47%.
  • 13% of intermarrieds (compared to 35% of inmarrieds) feel very much a sense of belonging to the Jewish community where they live (p 61); the respective averages of 26 other communities are 6% and 26%.
  • 17% of intermarrieds (compared to 35% of inmarrieds) feel very emotionally attached to Israel (a traditional measure of belonging) (p 94); the respective averages of 26 other communities are 20% and 40%.

With respect to Jewish behaviors, 22% of intermarrieds, compared to 49% of inmarrieds, were current members of Jewish congregations (p 47). The study does not report the percentage of intermarrieds compared to inmarrieds who provide Jewish education for their children.

People who participated in programs or were interested in participating were asked about barriers to participation; interestingly, 17% of inmarrieds listed feeling unwelcome as a barrier, higher than the 7% of intermarrieds who did the same (p 70).

The open-ended comments in the study include (p 145):

Synagogues, while being inclusive, still maintain policies related to marrying couples who include both a Jewish and non-Jewish member that are hurtful and tend to push those couples away. This limits synagogue membership and alienates these folks from the greater Jewish community. – male, 75

When I got married, many years ago, my non-Jewish husband was not welcomed into my family’s synagogue. Things have changed, but I think if he had been, we might have raised my children more in the Jewish faith than his[Christian] church. – female, 56

The study conclusions and recommendations include (p 151): “Evidence from both the quantitative findings shared throughout this report and the qualitative findings shared in Chapter 12 revealed that many intermarried individuals and their families feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in Milwaukee Jewish organizations.”

With respect to research, I missed the Cohen Center’s study of Northeast Florida, and the Cohen Center has recently announced that a synthesis of data from all of their 30 local community studies is now available in their Benchmark Report; I’ll comment on these in a future newsletter.

May 2026 News from the Center: June 11 CASJE/eJP panel, Re-CHARGING Reform, Hartman on Belonging

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CASJE/eJP Panel June 11

I’m pleased to be making remarks at a panel discussion on “Jewish–Interfaith Families and the Future of Jewish Life in the United States” hosted by CASJE and eJP, on Zoom on June 11, 12 to 1:30 pm ET. The panel follows publication of CASJE’s research digest on children of intermarriage and includes Keren McGinity, Ted Sasson, Bruce Phillips, Rabbi Shena Jaffee and Sophie Mortman. To register and for more information, visit https://www.casje.org/jewish-interfaith-families-panel.

Re-CHARGING Reform, Particularism and Universalism

The Re-CHARGING Reform Judaism conference happened again on May 27-28. The program schedule indicates that engaging interfaith families was not on the agenda – another missed opportunity.

A write-up in eJP about Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch’s keynote, which primarily addressed the Reform movement and Zionism, describes him as favoring Jewish particularism over universalism. The context wasn’t about interfaith families – but talk about particularism always makes me a little nervous. That’s because some see interfaith marriage as decreasing love for the Jewish people – rather than as potentially expanding it.

Hirsch’s talk elicited a strong response from Andrew Rehfeld, president of HUC, and that elicited a response from Jonathan Tobin. I was pleased that none of them blamed interfaith marriage for anything, in particular Tobin, who is no friend of interfaith marriage. I was more pleased that he was critical of “some within the Orthodox movement” who are “triumphalist” and indifferent about the liberal denominations, and who “write off the importance of the mass of non-Orthodox Jews as essentially irrelevant,” and of the “many in Israel” who “mimic this disdain.” I completely agree with Tobin that it would be a “catastrophe” if most of those who are affiliated with liberal denominations or who are unaffiliated were “lost to the Jewish collective.”

The Hartman Institute and Belonging

The biggest development this month was the Shalom Hartman Institute’s release of an important white paper, “Building Communities of Belonging: Jewish Identity, Conversion, Intermarriage and Adjacency,” written by Hartman fellow Christine Hayes.

Hartman is a preeminent Jewish leadership educational institution. So it’s noteworthy that it makes a series of positive statements about interfaith families and about interfaith family inclusion:

  • “While intermarriage has increased steadily over the past half-decade, its effect on personal Jewish identity, on the creation of Jewish families, and on organized Jewish life has not followed demographers’ predictions.” Intermarried Jews are raising Jewish children, and partners from different faith backgrounds often play a significant or sometime lead role in creating Jewish households. (pp. 21-22)
  • “[E]volving realities of Jewish identity, Jewish status, and communal belonging” prompt “many local Jewish communities and organizations to question whether they are actually as welcoming and inclusive as they want to be and to turn a critical eye toward their policies and practices around” intermarriage (and conversion and Jewish adjacency). (p. 2, 4) Some of those policies and practices “were not designed for their community or organization as it is currently constituted,” that is, with active involvement of people in interfaith relationships. (p. 22) Further, some policies and practices can “hinder belonging” (p. 2); some communities and organizations may be motivated by “a desire to grow … by developing policies and practices that extend Jewish status, or membership in good standing, to a larger number of interested individuals.” (p. 15)

The strength of the paper is its review of historical approaches to Jewish identity, status and standing. “While most community leaders are familiar with the general halakhah on these topics, they are often unaware of the way halakhah has played out in different historical circumstances over the centuries.” (p. 4) It reviews Jewish status based on patrilineal, double, and matrilineal descent (pp. 16-17), as well as Jewish status based on “the incorporation of foreigners” into the community or by religious conversion. (pp. 17-18) I learned a lot. For example, it’s confusing that  the term ger in the Torah refers to “stranger” or “resident alien,” but in later texts refers to converts; the paper explains very clearly how that linguistic change happened, and its serious implications.

The paper’s questions for discussion include, “How does an awareness of multiple approaches to intermarriage affect your community’s attitudes, aspirations, and options around intermarriage?” (p. 23) That is the key usefulness of the paper, and I recommend it highly. It certainly could be helpful, for communities and organizations that want to be welcoming and inclusive to interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds, to understand the historical approaches to intermarriage that are so clearly spelled out in the paper, that resulted in their current policies and practices, and that could be returned to, or turned away from, as new approaches are considered.

While the consideration of historical approaches is important, I believe that Jewish leaders and Jewish communities and organizations who want to be welcoming and inclusive also need to consider the attitudes they express about interfaith marriage and partners from different faith backgrounds, either in their statements or through their policies, and how those attitudes and policies can enhance or discourage feelings of belonging.

The paper does suggest good discussion questions that would surface those attitudes and what influences them: “does your community or organization view intermarriage as a problem or an opportunity?” “How has the presence (or absence) of intermarried people affected your community?” But the term “tribalism” does not appear in the paper. Social science data that some partners from different faith backgrounds feel “other,” like “outsiders” or “less desirable alternatives,” is not mentioned.

In the section devoted to people who are Jewish adjacent “without marital ties to the community,” the paper refers to “the fear that Jewish adjacency will dilute or negatively impact the character of Jewish communities persists.” (p. 29) The same fear persists with respect to the impact of interfaith marriage. That is a fundamental attitude that needs to be addressed. Some would say that in the more liberal denominations in the Jewish community, fundamental attitudes are the last remaining obstacle to inclusion, with the acceptance of interfaith marriage only a reluctant concession to social reality, instead of the affirmatively positive that is needed.

The paper expressly does not recommend any particular policies or practices, and recognizes “the legitimacy of multiple pathways and practices grounded in Jewish tradition.” (p. 2) As a result, it does not directly address the constraints that current understandings of halakhah with respect to matrilineal descent and rabbinic officiation at weddings of interfaith couples impose on Conservative-affiliated communities and organization who might want to change their policies and practices to be more inclusive. (Questions of status under halakhah loom large in a discussion of the white paper on the Canadian Jewish News’ “Not in Heaven” podcast.)

All in all, though, it’s very positive that the Hartman Institute wants to support communities and organizations that want to be welcoming and inclusive of interfaith families, and the white paper is a very helpful resource toward that end.

Israel

There’s not-good news from Israel on issues related to inclusion of interfaith families. Proposed legislation is pending that would change the Law of Return so as to allow citizenship only to converts according to Orthodox standards (criticized in the article by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch) and to give control to Orthodox authorities over religious practices at the Western Wall. An influential Israeli writer and speaker also said that Jews who do not immigrate to Israel are “traitors” (criticized by Rabbi Josh Weinberg).

Canada

The Canadian Jewish News’ North Star podcast discussed “Canadian Jews trending toward more newcomers, intermarriage and aging.” Panelists said that of all households with marriages and at least one Jewish person, half are in-marriages and half are intermarriages; that there are “an increasing number of Jewish children who are living in mixed households;” that the federation “could have events for mixed families;” and that “day schools can think about how they want to cater to those families.”

In other news:

  • In “Reading a Pakistani author’s 30-year-old novel helped me understand my parents’ views on intermarriage,” a young Jewish woman who reads a novel about a Zoroastrian community in Pakistan. Unlike liberal Jewish communities, the Zoroastrian community excommunicates those who intermarry, which calls into question the usefulness of drawing any lessons about interfaith marriage from them.
  • An interesting article about a ledger kept by a Polish mohel from 1883 to 1920 recording circumcisions including of children of intermarried mothers who were not Jewish.
  • Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi offers “Great TV: ‘Boston Blue’ & Its Shabbat Tradition,” reviewing a show about an interfaith, interracial family.
  • I’m not on Instagram, but a friend told me that influencer Amy Albertson, @theamyalbertson, posted “Here’s to all the non-Jewish moms raising Jewish kids. Thank you for opening your lives to a huge legacy, history and culture.”

April 2026 News: Will 18Doors Crisis Be Opportunity for Funders To Do the Right Thing?

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A Personal Note

In this newsletter I recap the month’s developments and news related to inclusion of interfaith families in Jewish life.

A lot happened this month, starting with something personal – with a big interfaith family inclusion angle – my granddaughter’s bat mitzvah this month at Mishkan Chicago.

I’m still glowing from the overwhelming joy I felt. My granddaughter is a beautiful person, inside and out. She did a wonderful job that made her loving family very proud.

Tazria Metzora may be the most dreaded b mitzvah Torah portion. It’s about how people with skin afflictions (translated as leprosy) are treated, and the text is pretty gross. My granddaughter declined my offers to help her with her d’var Torah. She decided to speak about how we treat people who are different or other.

You’ll understand how I was so deeply moved when she said, “often people who aren’t Jewish and who are raising kids within the Jewish community feel othered or judged. My mom has supported me in my Jewish upbringing to get me here today. So we need to appreciate everyone in the community and make room for all of us.”

I was also deeply grateful to my daughter-in-law’s supportive family – her Quaker mother, who I overheard proudly presenting my granddaughter with a book about Jewish women, and her sisters, who opened and closed the Ark, and a nephew who was able to attend.

Rabbis Lizzi Heydemann and Steven Philp are models of inclusivity. My son mentioned the Quaker faith when speaking to my granddaughter. I think many rabbis would have cringed at even the mention of a different faith. But R’Lizzi a few minutes later ran towards it, commenting that we were about to say a prayer, the Amidah, which involved an opportunity for silence like what is common in Quaker services.

On the personal, individual level, there is so much reason for hope: interfaith families that find living Jewishly compelling; families from different faith backgrounds who are supportive; rabbis who “get it.”

On the organizational, institutional level this month, not so much reason for hope, sadly.

18Doors and the Funding Community

On April 7 JTA broke the story, “National support group for interfaith Jewish families guts staff amid funding crisis,” that was reprinted widely in the Forward, Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, and Jweekly. 18Doors, the organization I founded as InterfaithFamily, laid off more than two-thirds of its staff due to a funding shortfall.

I have no formal connection to the organization. My understanding is that there are discussions about finding homes in other organizations for some of 18Doors’ programs, and about possibly continuing as a smaller organization focused on field building; at this writing, the future is not clear.

On April 10 eJP published my op-ed, “From crisis to opportunity: Now is the time for a serious effort to engage interfaith families.” I said the news was personally devastating, and a loss to the thousands of interfaith families the organization serves and the many Jewish leaders who benefit from its resources and training.

(Coincidentally, at my granddaughter’s bat mitzvah, Rabbi Heydemann told the congregation that InterfaithFamily had helped to change the climate around interfaith families finding rabbis to officiate at their weddings, and Rabbi Philp told me that his participation in 18Doors’ Rukin Fellowship that trains rabbis to be inclusive was very helpful to him.)

I also wrote that the news was an indictment of the funding community which has never adequately funded efforts to engage interfaith families Jewishly.

I’m proud of the work InterfaithFamily and then 18Doors did over the years. We moved the needle towards more interfaith families being more Jewishly engaged to a degree – but not far enough.

As JTA reported, while the rate of interfaith marriage has increased since 2001, most children from these marriages are being raised Jewish, with participation in synagogues and Jewish institutions common. Two seminaries now admit students in interfaith relationships, and the Conservative movement seeks to be more inclusive. For the most part, Jewish leaders, at least in America, are not railing against interfaith marriage.

But far fewer interfaith than inmarried couples are synagogue members, or provide their children with Jewish education. My recent review of a dozen years of national and local Jewish community studies shows that interfaith families feel much less of a sense of belonging to the Jewish people or their local Jewish communities, and some number of interfaith couples still feel like “outsiders” and “other.” Helping interfaith couples and the partners from different faith backgrounds to feel that sense of belonging, essential to their Jewish engagement, remains the challenge of our time.

At least five federations in their recent community studies have stated that it is essential to engage interfaith families [which] requires a strong investment…. So far, that investment has not been forthcoming. Today, only one community, Cleveland, has a robust local program, jHub, that explicitly serves interfaith families with a broad array of services. Every sizeable community should have a similar program, and they should be networked together with a central national organization that also provides resources and training to professionals and lay leaders who want to be inclusive.

I hope that 18Doors can be or play an important role in the kind of national network that is needed — and that the funding community will take the opportunity presented by 18Doors’ crisis to finally fund a serious effort to engage interfaith families. It’s nearly 20 years overdue, but it’s not too late.

Just today, the Cleveland Jewish News has a story about diversity that in part highlights jHub. It quotes a local Jewish professional and says, “the growth of interfaith families and their participation in Jewish life shows the continued celebration of diversity in the community. That said, challenges come along with that, such as being more welcoming to interfaith families in synagogues or religious spaces…. [That’s a challenge that the legacy organizations and the community have to think about.”

Missed Opportunity 1: The Reform movement

Rabbi Esther Lederman, the new head of the URJ’s new Jewish Life & Leadership department, wrote a very nice essay for eJP, “‘I Will Be What I Will Be’: A Futuring Stance.” At one point she says, “The multiplicity of diverse Jewish identities, from racial and ethnic backgrounds to sexual orientation, gender identities, economic backgrounds and neurodiversity, is astounding and beautiful. It is a future that will be richer for encompassing the lived experiences of a greater number of individuals of diverse backgrounds and unique perspectives.”

This was a missed opportunity, perhaps inadvertent, to mention diverse faith backgrounds – which actually is by far the largest diversity in the American Jewish community, and the Reform community in particular. The leaders of the Reform movement seem to think that interfaith family inclusion is at the center of its work because it was pioneered by the movement, and that they have been successful at it, so they don’t need to talk about or prioritize doing anything about it.

But only 13% of interfaith families belong to synagogues. I wouldn’t be satisfied with that level of success.

MIssed Opportunity 2: PJ Library

Lara Knuettel, chief philanthropy officer of PJ Library, wrote a very nice essay for eJP, “It’s On All of Us To Share the Stories of the Jewish People.” She describes a recent PJ Library event where “children could choose books with characters who reflected a full range of Jewish identities and histories” including books in or including Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino, and showing Shabbat celebrated in different ways, but with no mention of children in interfaith families.

I agree 100% with what Kneuttel says:

[T]he stories we tell shape how our children see themselves, who they become, and how they engage with the world. The stories we elevate signal who belongs, whose voices matter, and how children come to understand both their own identities and those of others…. [S]upporting the stories children have access to is one way to ensure that Jewish life, in all its variety, continues to be celebrated, shared and passed on from generation to generation.

That’s why I wish she had explicitly mentioned children in interfaith families as among those whose stories PJ Library wants to support. Don’t get me wrong: PJ Library is a great organization, and has made efforts to offer books highlighting interfaith families. But my recent review of local Jewish community studies showed that only 28% of eligible interfaith families received PJ Library books compared to 50% of inmarried families. To change that, they need to talk about and market to interfaith families explicitly, like they have for ethnic and gender diversities.

Missed Opportunity 3: Israel

Zvika Klein, the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, wrote there about how Israel should “speak to people who stand close to the Jewish story, sometimes very close, but do not fit neatly into one box.”

Klein says there are almost nine million people who are eligible to move to Israel under the Law of Return (presumably because they have a Jewish grandparent) plus “millions” who “seek some form of connection to the Jewish people and the Jewish state.” He says “Israel needs future citizens, loyal friends, serious allies, informed advocates, students, and fellow travelers” and should “open the door wider” with routes and methods to build attachment with these people: “A country that was built to gather exiles should be better at recognizing the people standing near the edge of the camp, waiting to see whether anyone inside is ready to speak to them.”

Yet another missed opportunity: nothing said about the partners from different faith backgrounds married to Jews. Is it unreasonable to expect “one of the world’s top journalists specializing in Jewish Diaspora affairs,” as the Post describes Klein, to say something explicit about that very large group?

Inclusion Is Hard Work

People will engage in a group if they feel that they belong. Being helped to feel belonging is hard – it means being received for who you are, not who the group wants you to become. In Clal’s Wisdom Daily, Reverend Jill Harman explained:

There are spaces that open their doors and make me feel received, and then there are spaces that open their doors but already have a shape in mind for who I should become once I step inside. That difference isn’t always obvious at first. Sometimes a place feels warm and generous and full of good people, and sometimes it really is all of those things. And still, over time, something in me begins to notice that the welcome is leaning somewhere. It has a direction to it, a quiet belief that closeness will eventually soften you into someone easier to claim.

That’s where the ache begins: Even when that pressure is gentle, it changes the feeling of the room. Something in me stops being able to rest, because I’m no longer sure whether the kindness is meant for who I am or for who someone hopes I’ll become. That makes it very hard to stay.

I loved that Conservative Rabbi Ben Herman, coincidentally a current 18Doors Rukin Fellow, made a similar point in “Why We Changed the Rules So Non-Jews Can Be Members of Our Synagogue.” Rabbi Herman describes the distinction between being diverse and being inclusive (citing Verna Myers, who coincidentally I used to work with long ago when I was a lawyer): “‘Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.’ Being invited is wonderful, but without agency in the congregation’s decision-making processes, one is not truly included.”

The article relates that, with Rabbi Herman’s support, 75% of the congregation were in favor of adopting changed by-laws under which “Non-Jews in interfaith relationships are now considered full members of the congregation, and patrilineal Jews may serve on the Board of Trustees.” That’s progress.

But 25% against even being considered members – that’s still a lot of opposition. It clearly signals that many in the congregation are hoping that partners from different faith backgrounds will become something else.

Traditional Attitudes in Canada

The same attitude seems prevalent in Canada. The Canadian Jewish News asks “how important is marrying within the faith to singles today?” and reports on new research based on interviews of fifty-one single Canadian Jews about attitudes towards marriage partners. The singles interviewed, and their parents as described by them, all still seem to be coming from a place where what matters in a partner is their being Jewish – not that what matters is a couple and their family engaging in Jewish life regardless of the religious identity of the partner. There’s an assumption that intermarrying will be disappointing to the parents and problematic to the individual.

Along with those traditional attitudes, there is less interfaith marriage in Canada than in the US, but it is steadily increasing. Fern Chertok and Matthew Brookner from the Cohen Center did a study, cited in this research, that showed increasing acceptance of interfaith marriage, but “many of the couples that were interviewed indicate that they feel not fully accepted by the community,” particularly couples with mothers who were not Jewish. Several couples also reported pressure for conversion. One interviewee said, “in some congregations, it feels like if you’re not Jewish, you can come but you can’t really be part of things.”

The Canadian Jewish News also summarizes a new study of intermarriage in Canada, which says, “Our research suggests that, if the Jewish community can recruit more Jewish children to Jewish day schools and summer camps and attract more Jewish immigrants to Canada, the increasing rate of Jewish intermarriage may slow.” The researchers clearly seem to be coming from a perspective that interfaith marriage is undesirable, something to be discouraged if not prevented. They even suggest that increasing antisemitism may slow the intermarriage rate. Increasing antisemitism can’t be a good thing.

In Other News

  • Noah Wyle, star of The Pitt, talks with the British Jewish press about his Jewish background
  • It’s now clear that Season 3 of “Nobody Wants This” will be about conversion – with Sarah Silverman playing the rabbi who leads Joanne’s conversion class.

*****

A sad note: Jim Ball, one of the original board members of InterfaithFamily, died this month. I met Jim nearly forty years ago when we were both involved in the Reform movement’s northeast region outreach committee. A convert himself, he understood the importance of interfaith family inclusion and was always a kind, interesting and helpful board member. Sincere condolences to his wife Anita Diamant and daughter Emilia Diamant.

March 2026 News: How Interested Are Jewish Leaders in Engaging Interfaith Families? Some Talk, and Research Support, But Little Action

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I was busy this month with three presentations on what’s necessary for interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds to feel belonging in Jewish settings: with Cohort 5 of the 18Doors Rukin Fellows on March 10, with students and faculty at a lunch & learn at the Hebrew College Rabbinical School on March 17, and at an Academy for Jewish Religion/CA colloquium of students and alumni on March 30.

But I can’t say, based on this small sample, that Jewish leaders are becoming more interested in engaging interfaith families.

Talk

There is some discussion going on. There was an interesting commentary in the British Jewish press on the US Conservative movement’s recent report on intermarriage, which we’ve discussed at length in previous newsletters. I learned that the European branch of the movement, the International Rabbinical Assembly, is “studying the impact of intermarriage on our communities and assessing whether our traditional responses are achieving their goals or whether different approaches are necessary.”

At the Jewish Funders Network’s conference this month, according to eJP, “the theme of new voices in the philanthropic world was a topic,” and Jonah Platt talked about the opportunity to “start to create new institutions, or reprioritize our current ones in the way that they’re operating, and bring in all these other people who have not been engaged and want to be and don’t necessarily know how or what to do, but want to do it.” But if there was specific talk about engaging interfaith families, it wasn’t reported.

In early March there was an “unconference” in Miami to talk about the renewal of American Jewry. eJP reported that “Many issues already firmly in the Jewish communal zeitgeist came up repeatedly during panels,” including “the importance of better welcoming interfaith families.” An attendee confirmed to me that there appeared to be much interest in interfaith families. But shouldn’t representatives from organizations that work with and advocate for inclusion of interfaith families be included in gatherings of this type if the goal is real progress?

Research

I was pleased to see that the March 25 issue of the CASJE (Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education) Research Digest featured studies about interfaith families and their children, and that it mentioned our paper, What Recent Studies Reveal About Interfaith Family Inclusion.

The digest points to “a clear trajectory: in the years ahead, a growing share of Jews in the US will have only one Jewish parent;” that “more children of intermarried couples are identifying as Jewish because Jewish institutions became significantly more welcoming and inclusive toward intermarried families starting in the 1980s and 1990s;” and that “participation in Jewish educational opportunities can play a critical role in supporting children of intermarriage growing into adults who identify as Jewish and participate actively in Jewish life.”

These kinds of research results should support more programmatic efforts to be inclusive of interfaith families and to engage their children in Jewish educational activities. Whether they will – not clear.

Inaction/Action

Data in the appendix of a new study by the Cohen Center of 2025 Birthright Israel trips shows that the percentage of trip applicants who indicated that their parents were intermarried (those who did not say “all parents Jewish”) ranged between 33% and 37% between 2017 and 2020, reached a high of 41% in 2021, then declined to 32% in 2022, 29% in 2023, 24% in 2024, and a low of 19% in 2025. Given the trajectory of more Jews having one Jewish parent, it’s clear that Birthright needs to attract more applicants from that category, not fewer.

The study notes that the impact of trip participation appears to be greater among political liberals and on those who come from less engaged Jewish backgrounds, and states that attracting liberal Jews and those with less exposure to Jewish education is key to Birthright’s continued success. But it doesn’t say anything similar, that attracting children from interfaith families is key to Birthright’s continued success.

One concrete positive development this month was “Creating Belonging for Multiheritage Families,” an article by Michelle Barton and 18Doors’ Miriam Wajnberg in the journal of Prizmah, the network of Jewish day schools. The article relates the process by which the Shlenker School in Houston, with help from 18Doors, addressed the question parents raising children in interfaith families can ask: whether their family fully belongs.

“As family structures and Jewish journeys diversify, schools are called to examine whether their policies, cultures, language and rituals truly foster belonging or simply allow participation without full inclusion. Belonging is not synonymous with enrollment or participation. It reflects whether families feel seen, valued and confident that their full identities fit within the life of the school.”

The authors describe three obstacles that interfaith families face to belonging in Jewish communities and day schools: (1) an insider/outsider element; (2) a stigma against those who marry someone from another background; (3) “The belief in matrilineal descent creates barriers for multiheritage families to fully feel a sense of belonging in Jewish communities and schools.” “Even when a child from a multiheritage family may be fully accepted in one denomination or setting, that acceptance may not extend to all Jewish settings, resulting in ‘othering.’”

It is very heartening to see day schools focusing on interfaith family belonging. Almost twenty years ago, in 2007, for the tenth anniversary of the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (which became part of Prizmah in 2016), I wrote “Interfaith Families and the Future of Jewish Day Schools.” I said:

“Schools can make themselves more accessible to these [intermarried] parents by making explicit statements of welcome, couching their specifically Jewish values in universal terms, and providing extra explanatory information on Jewish holidays, rituals and culture.” “Day schools could become laboratories that attempt to resolve the thorny issues of recognition. Every participant in a Jewish day school community could be considered – in some way – part of the Jewish community and people.”

It’s almost twenty years since I said, “Imagine how radically different the future of Jewish day schools would be if even ten percent of this growing population [of interfaith families] chose Jewish day schools.” We’re not even close to that yet – the recent Boston 2025 study found that 1% of children of interfaith families attended day schools compared to 23% of children of inmarried families. Efforts to foster belonging could lead to more enrollment. The many funders who support day schools might consider directing some of their funding to those efforts.

In other news 

I think Mira Fox was too dismissive of something in “Is Goy a Slur, an Antisemitic Dogwhistle or a Word for Non-Jews?” She says “goy” “simply means ‘non-Jew,’ or foreign nation which isn’t inherently insulting; Jews are far from the only group to have a term for outsider – think gringo in Spanish or farang in Thai. This can, of course, be exclusionary. There is certainly the sense that outsiders cannot understand or participate in certain activities of an in-group – an idea that is not limited to Jews. And sometimes that is used to discriminate or insult.”

I say that for people in interfaith relationships, any use of “goy” by Jews not just can be exclusionary, it is exclusionary and makes the partners from different faith backgrounds feel like outsiders. Even if the word has innocent meanings, I think any use of it by Jews is a bad idea.

Also noted:

February 2026 News: the 2025 Boston Study; A Message for Funders; How We Talk About Conversion; A Message for Rabbis; Honeymoon Israel Fosters Belonging

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Boston 2025 CJP Survey

CJP released the 2025 Greater Boston Jewish Community Study on February 12. As readers of this newsletter know, I am most interested in what research reveals about interfaith families’ feelings of belonging in Jewish communities (see What Recent Studies Reveal About Interfaith Family Inclusion). That’s because for liberal Judaism to thrive, more interfaith families need to be more Jewishly engaged, and for people to engage, they need to feel belonging.

Most of the data relevant to interfaith families’ feelings of belonging is not reported in the thirteen individual reports that make up the Boston study. My understanding is that CJP is planning to make available a tool that will enable anyone to make inquiries about the data. So we need to be patient.

You can find what I have to say about the study in  Review and Analysis of the Interfaith Marriage Data in the 2025 Greater Boston Jewish Community Study. I will update the review when more data is available. In the meantime, some highlights:

  • The Boston Jewish community is heavily and increasingly intermarried – 50% of married/partnered Jewish adults are in interfaith relationships; of marriages since 2020, 58% were interfaith.
  • 69% of children in interfaith families are being raised Jewish in some way (the breakdown of Jewish only, Jewish and something else, etc. is not currently reported). Fewer children of interfaith families have Jewish education – 16% are in part-time K-8 programs compared to 61% of children of inmarried families.
  • CJP states that “interfaith households… are an integral part of the Greater Boston Jewish Community.” As mentioned above, data on how interfaith families feel about their connection to the Jewish community is not currently available, although it is for LGBTQIA+ Jews, Jews of color, Jews with disabilities, Russian-speaking Jews, Israeli Jews, and Jews of Sephardic or Mizrahi heritage.
  • There are indications in what’s been reported that interfaith families are less connected to the local Jewish community, which would be consistent with national and other local studies. The study says that “While most Jews in interfaith homes say they feel welcome, they are significantly less likely to participate in Jewish communal life.” The report says that those who feel connected and part of the local Jewish community are more Jewishly engaged. But only 22% of those who feel part of the local Jewish community are intermarried; 78% are inmarried.
  • There were follow-up interviews and focus groups with community members that gave “more insight on their feelings of inclusion and belonging.” But “most” of these community members “are avid synagogue participants who generally feel welcome in the spaces they choose to be in.” Apparently the insights do not reflect input from less engaged community members.

There is a lot of good news in the study. It’s great that a high percentage of children of interfaith families are being raised Jewish, but it’s worrisome that relatively few are getting Jewish education. It’s great that interfaith families generally feel welcome, but it’s worrisome that that doesn’t translate into feelings of connection that foster engagement. I hope a major part of CJP’s implementation efforts following the study will focus on fostering interfaith families’ feelings of belonging and providing Jewish education for their children. We look forward to what further data shows when it becomes available. 

A Message for Funders

The Jewish Funders Network International Conference is coming up. I’m not aware that interfaith family inclusion will be a topic of discussion. But there was a great essay by Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi about how Jewish disability inclusion efforts grew that suggests what funders have the power to do. I’m replacing “disabilities” with “interfaith” in the following quote to illustrate what I hope they will do:

[A] small group of Jewish philanthropists and foundations began asking a simple but transformative question: What would it take for people [in interfaith relationships] to be fully included in Jewish life? A group of people active in Jewish philanthropy who had found that their families were not welcome in Jewish life due to [interfaith family inclusion] issues connected through the Jewish Funders Network. Together, they helped bring [interfaith family] inclusion into the philanthropic spotlight, and other philanthropists joined as allies.

Coincidentally, an essay about the JCC movement’s approach to disability inclusion expressed the importance of a comprehensive approach that is relevant to all inclusion efforts: “What we’ve learned is simple: inclusion is possible when shared, systematized and woven into the fabric of an entire movement. … With centralized leadership and shared language, frameworks and responsibility, we all can expand inclusion efforts and empower each other to join in this vitally important work.”

How We Talk About Conversion

Mijal Bitton wrote a beautiful essay about conversion. As I read it, though, I couldn’t help but think that it implied that partners from different faith backgrounds who do not convert remain outsiders. That is not an inclusive message that encourages interfaith families to be Jewishly engaged. How can we talk about conversion without doing that?

Bitton says that after the mikveh, “Someone who stood at the edge now stands inside;” that those “who bind their fate to the Jewish people by choice, are not meant to remain at the edges. They are meant to be received as insiders, with standing and responsibility.” She refers to the “rabbinic claim that converts are said to have been present at Sinai” and says that “to have stood at Sinai, whether by birth or by choice, is … to accept responsibility for a covenant that is still being made.”

But there are other textual claims that it was a mixed multitude that stood at Sinai, including the strangers in the camp, who can be understood to have accepted responsibility for a covenant to be Jewishly engaged.

This kind of messaging by Jewish leaders about the standing of partners from different faith backgrounds matters. I was struck by a comment in a very different context, a New York Times opinion piece about the conflict in Minneapolis, that expressed the importance of recognition by others:

“[W]ho we are is not just the idea we have of ourselves. It is also how others see us. The German philosopher Hegel elucidated this truth: The essence of our identity is not something we make on our own – it requires the recognition of others to be real. How we are perceived by others doesn’t just reflect who we are. It constitutes it.”

A Message for Rabbis

The CCAR convention is coming up. I’m not aware that interfaith family inclusion will be a topic of discussion. I urge Reform rabbis to read this very beautiful “Prayer for a Community of Belonging” by Rabbi Fred Greene. It sends the kind of inclusive message of recognition that we need to send. Do the partners from different faith backgrounds in your congregations feel noticed, named, known, needed and nurtured?

Honeymoon Israel Fosters Belonging

“‘It’s Complicated’ to Connected: Honeymoon Israel and Jewish Belonging Post 10/7” is a beautiful article by Honeymoon Israel staffer Emma Dunn. It describes how Honeymoon Israel fosters a sense of belonging among partners from different faith backgrounds. Dunn relates how Avraham Infeld speaks to trip participants about Jewish peoplehood as a shared sense of responsibility that “Jews by birth, Jews by choice, and partners who had come to Jewish life through love and relationship” (my emphasis) can develop. Infeld asks, “If you are choosing to build your life connected to the Jewish people, how will you show up for one another now and into the future?”

Dunn writes that “Honeymoon Israel offers a space where Jewish and mixed-heritage couples can explore their place in the Jewish people with honesty and care…. [C]ouples experience a broad and generous welcome into Jewish peoplehood. When they return home, they carry that sense of belonging with them and continue building Jewish life together.”

Left Out

There were several instances this month where the issue of engaging interfaith families could have been mentioned but wasn’t. Moment Magazine listed fifty Jewish innovators over the past fifty years; there was just one explicit reference to engaging interfaith families, a mention of Paul and Rachel Cowan’s 1989 book, Mixed Blessings. The Sapir journal published a conversation between Joshua Foer and William Foster on “What Makes a Moonshot?” and Charles Bronfman and Jeffrey Solomon offered “We Backed Birthright Israel. Now It’s Time for More Big Ideas for a Post-Oct. 7 World;” efforts to engage interfaith families weren’t mentioned as potential moonshots or big ideas.

Should the Jewish Press Survey Whether Intermarriage Is a Threat to Jewish Continuity?

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle polled its readers, asking “Is intermarriage a threat to Jewish continuity?” 52% said yes, 48% said no. Asking that question and publicizing that result sends a message to interfaith couples that their marriage is viewed negatively by many Jews, discouraging couples who might be potentially Jewishly involved.

The paper published some of the comments it received. Some were positive about interfaith marriages resulting in children being raised as Jews; some were negative – “Of course it’s a threat. You can pretend it’s not and do a bunch of interfaith stuff but it’s not authentic Jewish identity.” My favorite: “Intermarriage will continue regardless of the opinions of rabbis or families. Either the Jewish community finds a way to embrace these marriages or lose members of the community. One thing is certain, we lose if we don’t welcome them.”

In Other News

  • In the outright hostile to interfaith marriage department, an article on the Aish website says that the greatest threat facing the Jewish people isn’t antisemitism, it’s interfaith marriage (or the assimilation that is the result of interfaith marriage), and an ultra-Orthodox authority in Israel told followers not to go to the very wonderful ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv because, he says, it promotes interfaith marriage.
  • Israeli political parties are advancing legislation that would extend control over the entire Western Wall to the Orthodox rabbinate, which would result in Reform and Conservative Jews not being able to have prayer services there, and even criminalizing their egalitarian prayer at the Wall. (Forward, Times of Israel, JTA)
  • Jack and Quinn Hughes, whose parents are an interfaith couple, are featured in a JTA story as Jewish Team USA hockey stars; the very sad news about Savannah Guthrie’s mother generated a story about her interfaith marriage.
  • I happily stumbled on the website of Mosaic Law Congregation, a Conservative synagogue in Sacramento, that has a vibrating banner on its home page that reads “We Welcome Interfaith Families.”

January 2026 News: What’s Changed In Twenty-five Years; Important New Research; Making Jewish Camp Accessible; More Conservative News

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How Times Have Changed

On January 11 I spoke at Congregation B’nai B’rith in Santa Barbara CA for the second time – the first was in December 2005. I took the opportunity to reflect on what’s changed about interfaith family inclusion over the past twenty years – and what work remains to be done. You can see the presentation on this video; the powerpoint slides are visible, and I’d be glad to share them.

One thing that’s changed is the fading away of the explicit hostility to interfaith marriage that was prevalent among Jewish leaders in 2005. In 2001, Sylvia Barack Fishman had done a study which concluded that interfaith families who say they are raising their children as Jews “incorporate Christian holiday festivities” into their lives such that Jewish identity is not transmitted to their children, even though they say that these festivities have no religious significance to them. I described this back then as “simply ridiculous,” based on surveys and an essay contest conducted by InterfaithFamily (now 18Doors).

After Fishman turned the study into a 2004 book, Double or Nothing?: Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage, I expressed fear that Jewish leaders would say that the “latest research” showed that “interfaith couples who were trying to raise their children as Jews shouldn’t bother because they won’t succeed,” and that “the Jewish community shouldn’t waste resources on outreach to mixed-married families, since the vast majority are not ‘really’ raising their children as Jews.”

I expressed hope that responsible Jewish leaders would insist on more conclusive social science research “before writing off the new families of the half of all young Jews who are intermarrying, thereby alienating their Jewish parents and relatives as well.”

I’m feeling vindicated all these years later. The Cohen Center at Brandeis just announced a new study which I think provides that more conclusive social science research. It notes:

Other work [citing Fishman’s 2004 book] has suggested that Jewish families who celebrate Christian holidays, or use Christian holiday decorations such as Christmas trees, struggle to instill Jewish identity in their children – even if these families do not treat these holiday activities as religious.

However, the results presented here suggest that at least some of the families who celebrate Christmas expose their children to more Jewish experiences than other families that had no Christian experiences at all…. [E]xposure to some non-Jewish religious-cultural experiences during childhood does not necessarily preclude high levels of involvement in Jewish life. (page 22)

The study (you can read a more detailed review here) even finds that children who celebrated Christmas and Easter (presumably in interfaith families) but were otherwise Jewishly involved “were more likely to have had a bar or bat mitzvah, to have attended Jewish supplementary school, and to have attended Jewish camp” than children who celebrated Hanukkah and Passover and had no other Jewish or Christian experiences (presumably these are inmarried families). (page 21)

Think of it – research confirms that some interfaith families are more Jewishly engaged than some inmarried families! Twenty years ago, we used to say that interfaith marriage didn’t determine the Jewish engagement of a family, the family’s choices did; we used to say that the Jewish partners in interfaith families couldn’t take their Jewish engagement for granted, they had to work harder at it. The new study seems to confirm that we were right.

Coincidentally, with all this looking back, in early January JTA published an article about the long-ago (1926) interfaith marriage of songwriter Irving Berlin that described issues around interfaith marriage as long-standing and continuing.

Even back then there were enlightened views. The editor of a Jewish newspaper actually said, “Mazel tov, Mr. and Mrs. Berlin!” Irving Berlin said, “It never struck me that I would be sacrificing a parcel of my Jewishness by marrying Ellin, and I suppose Ellin felt the same way about her religion. I am proud of my Jewishness, but you will never convince me that intermarriage is anti-anything.”

Jewish Camp

“For multifaith families, Jewish camp doesn’t have to feel awkward anymore” is a very promising report about the Foundation for Jewish Camp partnering with 18Doors to increase participation of children from interfaith families in overnight camp.

Noting that only about 22% of overnight campers come from interfaith families, 18Doors’ Adam Pollack says “That gap [with the high rate of interfaith marriage] tells us camps are not yet representative of the Jewish population today. We’re trying to find ways to make Jewish overnight camp accessible and appealing to families who already consider themselves part of the Jewish community but may not feel certain that camp is for them…. We know how transformative camp can be. We want all Jewish kids – including those from multi-heritage families – to have access to that experience.”

Conservative News

The main point of my Santa Barbara talk was that we still need to adapt attitudes and policies so as to help interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds feel that they belong in Jewish communities. The tension between including interfaith families and maintaining traditional understandings of Judaism as a boundaried system just for Jews continues to manifest in the ongoing turmoil in the Conservative movement.

As reported last month, the movement’s Joint Working Group issued a report with a goal to “engage intermarried couples more fully” but retaining the movement’s ban on their rabbis officiating at weddings of interfaith couples.

The report says that the Working Group “commissioned thirteen informal position papers from historians, social scientists, and rabbis.” I was invited to make a submission to the Working Group, and with their permission it is now public, on our new resource that chronicles related developments in the movement since 2014.

There was a lot of discussion about the report this month. 18Doors’ Adam Pollack offered a very interesting and positive response. I hope he’s right that “By ‘acknowledging and healing hurt,’ the movement has set a new course toward belonging” for interfaith couples. I hope 18Doors can help the movement in implementing the report’s recommendations. But I also hope the movement will address and change its position on officiation as I believe it must to truly be a place of belonging for interfaith families.

Conservative Rabbi Ari Yehuda Saks explained why, despite the movement easing its stance on interfaith marriage, he is quitting the Rabbinical Assembly:

I could not in good conscience remain a member while being prohibited from co-officiating intermarriages — ceremonies that I, from deep study and pastoral experience, have come to believe are not only possible within the halakhic, or Jewish legal, tradition, but are also vital for the future of American Judaism.

On the other end of the spectrum, Conservative Rabbi Amy Walk defended the movement’s approach. While pleased that the movement apologized for its past rejections of interfaith families, she says criticism of not allowing Conservative rabbis to officiate is short-sighted, binary, sloppy thinking.

Rabbi Walk said these critics “abandon ideas about commandment and covenant.” But the movement adapted halacha to allow women to be rabbis, and to allow wedding officiation for gay and lesbian couples – was that abandonment of commandment? And if the rationale for not officiating is Judaism’s traditional view that interfaith marriage is wrong, doesn’t maintaining the ban on officiating undermine the report’s efforts not to disapprove of and reject interfaith couples?

Even further out on the spectrum, Conservative Rabbi Daniel Gordis in a substack post says he was “stunned” at the Conservative movement’s apology; he “would argue that the policy against intermarriage has been a central pillar of maintaining Judaism’s tribal nature.” Gordis recognizes that defending the tribal dimension of Jewish life “has becoming increasingly difficult in a world in which young people, Jews definitely among them, find tribal sentiments either foreign, or outright objectionable.”

Gordis’ attitude is a prime example of what still needs to change. Thinking of Judaism as a tribe of Jews, instead of as a community of Jewishly-engaged people, is a huge obstacle to engaging interfaith families.

And finally, from the Orthodox perspective, Rabbi Emanuel Feldman says that by “’welcoming people as they are,’ the Conservative movement is declaring that they accept intermarriage.”

Also in the News

  • On January 27 the Jewish Grandparents Network hosted a virtual Grandparents Learning Fest that included a session led by Rabbi Samuel Klein, the director of Jewish engagement at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, titled “Doing Jewish, Feeling Jewish, Being Jewish: Grandparents as Guides in Mixed-Heritage and Multifaith Families.” The session was to “share practical insights and provide inspiration for grandparents to nurture Jewish identity in diverse families.”
  • “Talking to Children About Jewish Identity in an Interfaith Family” is a new offering on the Reform Judaism website.
  • A lovely story in The Free Press, “I’m Christian. My Wife Is Jewish. Our Marriage Is an Act of Faith,” by a Catholic editor who says his marriage to a Jewish woman brought him closer to God. I loved this part:

One day when our children were small, I was playing with them in our living room. Our 3-year-old son was keen to put things in their proper categories. Attempting a slightly more advanced version of the ‘square pegs in square holes’ game, he observed, ‘I’m Jewish and Rachel is Jewish and Mommy is Jewish.’ His brow furrowed, and he looked at me with a compassion that still causes my heart to ache. ‘Don’t worry, Daddy; Toby is an Episcopalian.’ Toby was our dog at the time.

* * * * *

Congregation B’nai B’rith in Santa Barbara is a warm and thriving synagogue with a very popular monthly Sunday morning breakfast and speaker series. The audience of about 120 was very engaged, with questions during and after the presentation. Rabbi Daniel Brenner told me they had great feedback, with one person inspired to restart their interfaith family conversation series. I’m very interested in speaking elsewhere.

One last point about the Cohen Center’s new study shows that interventions can increase feelings of belonging: it found that for those who were Jewishly involved but celebrated Christmas and Easter, the percent that reported feeling “very much” part of a worldwide Jewish community after participating in a Birthright Israel trip increased from 27% to 37%. (page 19)

Finally, thank you to all who made a year-end contribution to the Center. Support is always welcomed, at www.cfrij.com/donate.

December 2025 News: Antisemitism and Interfaith Marriage; Conservative News; Views from Buchdahl, Sanderson and Kurtzer; December Holidays; Missed Opportunities; Pew Data

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Addressing Antisemitism – a Personal Note, and the Importance of Inclusion

As usual in December, there’s a lot to report on about interfaith family inclusion. This year, it’s important to start with how that relates to antisemitism.

The month began with a report that Senator Cory Booker had married a Jewish woman. At the time, I commented on the Center’s Facebook page that I was glad to read that Booker’s friend Rabbi Matthew Gewirtz of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills, New Jersey participated at the wedding, with Booker’s pastor.

Then there was a report that Booker lit Hanukkah candles for the first time at home – on the same day as the horrible antisemitic attack in Australia. He said, “My parents sort of told my brother and I about the ancient evil of antisemitism and the urgency to fight against it. But now that I’m married to a Jewish woman and we’ll – God willing, b’ezrat Hashem, have Jewish children, it’s taken on an even deeper, more personal sense of urgency.”

I’ve often felt that one positive by-product of interfaith marriage is that it can result in more allies of the Jewish people, and of Israel. I don’t just mean the partner from a different faith background – I mean all of their relatives, too. People who are not Jewish and might have no reason to think one way or another about Jews now, after their loved one is in an interfaith relationship, have a reason to be positive and supportive.

In that vein, I was very touched and moved this week when my son-in-law’s mother emailed me to say, “I have been struggling to find the words to let you know our abhorrence of the Australia attack. It is frightening what is happening, not just here but in the world, with the appearance of antisemitism.” My first thought was that it would not be irrational for her to regret that our mutual beloved grandsons are at risk of hate and even violence because they are Jewish. But that wasn’t her response. Her response was, “I can only have hope and do what I can.”

Our advocacy is motivated by the belief that we will have more people Jewishly engaged or supportive of their relatives’ Jewish engagement, the more we help make interfaith families, especially the partners from different faith backgrounds, feel a sense of belonging in Jewish communities. Addressing rising antisemitism is one reason why that advocacy is so important – something that Pulitzer Prize winning author David Shribman pointed out in “Welcoming the Intermarried: A Challenge and An Opportunity.”

Shribman writes that addressing the findings in our paper, What Recent Studies Reveal About Interfaith Family Inclusion, that “those in interfaith relationships don’t feel nearly as strong a connection to the Jewish people, or to their local Jewish communities, as those in relationships of two Jews” is “vital to the survival of Judaism in the United States, and to the preservation of Jewish values, especially at a time of rising antisemitism and divisions within the Jewish community over Israel and its response to” October 7.

Conservative News

It is fair to say that the Conservative movement is still struggling with how much of a sense of belonging it will foster among interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds. There is a lot that is positive in the movement’s just-released Joint Intermarriage Working Group Report. But the question of wedding officiation overshadows the progress.

The authors of the report “deeply apologize” for their historical stance disapproving of interfaith marriage. They “celebrate the meaningful contributions of Jewish-adjacent partners and spouses, and the children of such unions, in the work of creating and sustaining Conservative/Masorti Jewish households.” They want to “welcome, bless, and affirm intermarrying couples” (albeit only those “who are committed to solely Jewish practice.” They “recognize the delicate balance between ensuring that non-Jewish partners are aware of the option to convert while avoiding undue pressure.” They want to “ensure an appropriate path to formal affirmation for those who already identify as part of the Jewish people.” The “primary goal” of the process of finding a life partner is not endogamy, but “to empower the individual to articulate for themselves the kind of Jewish life they seek to lead. If they seek a partner, their goal would be to find a partner aligned with that vision of Jewish life.”

Much of this is quite remarkable coming from the movement. I hope all of their next efforts help them reach their goal to “engage intermarried couples more fully.”

But the elephant in the room remains whether and how Conservative rabbis will be allowed to participate in weddings of interfaith couples. Articles in eJP and JTA focus on the division in the movement over that issue.

It seems clear from the report that some members of the working group want the movement to allow more participation. The report itself talks about a “halakhah that recognizes that boundaries shift depending on circumstances and are not always a reason to say ‘no’; halakhah can also provide an opportunity to be inclusive and say ‘yes.’” They talk about having “ritual options to welcome, bless, and affirm couples with one Jewish partner and one partner who, while not formally Jewish, is firmly committed to co-creating an exclusively Jewish household. This includes opportunities to bless the couple, independent of the traditionally prescribed Jewish wedding ceremony, in the synagogue or elsewhere, before, on the day of, and after the wedding date.”

Ultimately, it’s going to be up to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, who the report asks to provide further clarification because “the standard of religious practice [which bans wedding participation] was created in part as a statement of disapproval of certain relationships and that we are shifting away from messages of disapproval.” The report asks the CJLS to “clarify whether other paradigms of marriage besides kiddushin that the CJLS has already developed and approved [presumably referring to gay and lesbian unions] might apply in the case of the union of a Jew with someone who is of another background.” In striking evidence of the split in the movement on this issue, the report notes that “Working group members asked that it be reported that there was not unanimity on this issue.”

Keren McGinity is quoted in the JTA article saying that fears of a “mass defection” if the movement were to allow its rabbis to officiate “have long been overstated.” She aptly pointed out that “avoiding change … also carries risks, pointing to the 2020 Pew study showing that fewer than half of Jews raised Conservative still identify with the movement. That is hugely concerning.”

Indeed it should be.

Three Thought Leaders with Important Statements

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl is on a tour this month speaking about her wonderful book, The Heart of a Stranger, which I have read and hope to write about in more detail later. I was struck by this comment in an interview in San Francisco:

“You can be a part of a family by just being born into it … and you can also become family through what’s called a covenantal relationship,” such as between spouses, Buchdahl said. “We don’t share any blood, but we made a covenantal promise, and that made us into a family. Every one of us who wants to be a part of the Jewish community [is] in a covenantal relationship with our people and with God. What if we were to imagine that everyone who wants to be a part of that covenant is 100% fully Jewish?”

This sounds an awful lot like what the Center has consistently advocated for: that everyone from a different faith background who wants to be part of the Jewish community should be thought of as and treated equally with their Jewish partner.

Jay Sanderson, president of American Jewish University, explicitly refers to the importance of including interfaith families in “The Jewish Future Is Calling.” AJU’s goal is “to reimagine and rebuild the foundation of Jewish life in North America.”

Sanderson says AJU “transformed Jewish learning when it launched the first intensive class for interfaith couples and individuals exploring conversion, helping countless people build Jewish homes and families.” They are now expanding to create “more welcoming pathways for anyone Jewish, Jew-ish and Jew-curious and nurturing the earliest steps of every Jewish journey.” They are offering in-person classes in multiple cities, to connect “interfaith couples and individuals learning about Judaism to each other so they can build peer groups that continue beyond the class.”

Sanderson says AJU is “building a Jewish future where Jews, no matter where they live or how they self-define, can find a place inside a reimagined Jewish community, one where every voice has value and everyone is contributing to the Jewish future.” This all sounds very promising, if a bit generalized; it’s not clear whether the voices of partners from different faith backgrounds would have equal voice and be allowed to contribute equally.

Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, wrote a brilliant essay, mostly about divisions between the Left and the Right over Israel: Our Fragile Tents: Community, Consent, and Care. One response to the 1990 National Jewish Population Study (with its finding of a high rate of interfaith marriage) was to “cultivate attachment through radically open approaches to welcoming people in.” This “found expression in the shift of liberal Jewish leaders who first tried to fight against intermarriage, then accepted it as inevitable, then welcomed interfaith families, and eventually worked to break down the barrier between Jews and the “Jewish-adjacent” among their stakeholders.”

“Opening the flaps of the Big Tent promised new possibilities for the Jewish community to expand and for all the moral gains that come with greater inclusion.”

Kurtzer laments that since October 7, “the primary emphasis of Jewish leaders has moved from widening the Big Tent to narrowing it, and from building Jewish community to trying to protect it.” “The kind of fear that has taken root in the Jewish community – of danger on the outside, of threats already on the inside – destroys any desire or incentive to think expansively about our networks of belonging.”

To reverse this trend, Kurtzer says “[W]e must be clearer about when and how we set boundaries in Jewish communities, so that our safety instincts do not harm our efforts to be welcoming more than they need to.” He says it is fair for institutions to cease partnering with other institutions over major values disagreements, but “it is a terrible side effect when individuals who affiliate with the rejected institution … are treated by members of the first institution as heretics.” Although he’s talking about divisions over Israel here, this made me think of how Orthodox leaders tend to be so disparaging of liberal Jews. They could maintain boundaries where halachic status matters (like marriage), while uniting with liberal Jews on other causes common to the larger Jewish community. Kurtzer doesn’t address this specifically; it would be interesting if he did.

Kurtzer makes an interesting observation about what belonging means, talking about being

“uplifted by an experience of communal singing and prayer, one that makes you feel connected to everyone in the room, or [experiencing] the warm hug of strangers caring for your needs in your own home while you are sitting shiva…. We have core anthropological, psychological, spiritual, and even biological needs for community in ways that are hard to define – though most of us can tell when a community ‘feels right’ and when it is time to move to a different one.”

It would be interesting to know what Kurtzer thinks is needed to cultivate those kinds of feelings of belonging in partners from different faith backgrounds.

December Holidays

Jessica Grose’s “What My Children Taught Me About Interfaith Tradition” is a very beautiful essay in her NY Times newsletter. She describes realizing that her family had “integrated” their interfaith household – she’s Jewish, she doesn’t identify her husband’s faith background, but it included Christmas: “On Sunday night, my family decorated our Christmas tree … Earlier in the day, my older daughter was practicing her Torah portion, and my younger daughter was working on a school slide show about the menorah we use every year …”

Looking back, she had wanted her children “to know what it meant to be Jewish, but … wanted to impart that in a way that didn’t feel oppressive or a rejection of my husband’s faith.” She hadn’t expected, as her children matured, that what she describes as “blending faiths” would become easier: “Our older daughter chose to start attending Hebrew school when she was 10, and has become part of a Jewish community that is welcoming to interfaith families. Her sister is eager to follow in her footsteps.” They also enjoy Christmas holiday rituals and traditions.

It’s interesting that she describes this as “blending faiths” – they clearly are very Jewishly engaged as a family. But she concludes with a key observation – that her daughters “don’t have to abandon any part of themselves for our family to feel whole.”

In a similar vein, in a nice article in the Boston Globe, Meredith Goldstein says, “There is no Christmas tree in the world that can erase who I am and the fact that I was raised by Ashkenazi Jews who studied music in New York City.” I liked this: “I believe that when people of different backgrounds get together and share a home, all of these traditions can and should coexist so everyone feels seen.”

Our friend Rabbi Melinda Mersack of Cleveland’s jHUB is featured in “Observing different holidays can be done, rabbis say,” emphasizing the importance of couples communicating what’s important to them about their holiday celebrations. Rabbi Matt Cohen is also featured, and I love what he says:

“In interfaith families, it’s important everyone feels equally a part of our community. We reach people through education, by teaching someone who is not Jewish, who is taking part in celebrating a holiday they haven’t celebrated in their upbringing, that they are just as much a part of our community.”

In other December holiday news:

Missed Opportunities

Two essays responding to the ATRA study on the rabbinate alluded to, but could have said more about, interfaith relationships. In “We have an opportunity to revamp liberal rabbinic education and Jewish lay leadership,” Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu notes that many contemporary Jews and their families “have non-Jewish members,” without saying more about the implications for rabbinic education. In “Rabbinical training doesn’t have a pipeline problem – we have a preparation problem, Rabbi Jesse Paikin says that “Genuine pluralism demands more porous boundaries than many legacy institutions prefer,” again without saying more about what those boundaries might be with respect to interfaith families.

Similarly, in an eJP interview about a new study by about disability inclusion, Matan’s terrific executive director Meredith Polsky says, “Disability spans every aspect of Jewish community life,” giving two examples: “If you work with individuals who identify as LGBTQ, there’s going to be people with disabilities. If you work with Jews who are multiracial, there’s going to be people with disabilities.” It’s unfortunate she didn’t include interfaith families among these other historically disadvantaged groups.

Pew Data

Some interesting new data from Pew considers why people keep their religion or leave. Jews are pretty high up (76%) in keeping their childhood faith (ranked third, after Hindus (82%) and Muslims (77%), but before those with no religion (73%), Protestants (70%), Catholics (57%), Latter-Day Saints (54%) and Buddhists (45%).

What struck me was how important a sense of community was as a reason why lifelong Jews remain are Jewish compared to other groups: Among U.S. adults who were raised Jewish and still identify as Jewish by religion, 57% cite liking the sense of community (compared to 38% of Catholics and 46% of Protestants).

Among those Jews, 60% say liking the traditions is an extremely or very important reason they are Jewish (compared to 46% of Catholics and 33% of Protestants); about half of Jews (53%) say they are Jewish because it’s their family religion (compared to 44% of Catholics and 30% of  Protestants).

In Other News

  • I thought it was extreme and unnecessary for Zohran Mamdani’s aide to have to resign because she made antisemitic posts on social media when she was 19 – given that now she’s married to a Jew and raising their children as Jews! This seemed like a pretty good case for  redemption to me.
  • Rabbi Barbara Aiello offers “The Challenges of Jewish Christian Grandparenting.”
  • A large synagogue’s executive director explains how he says “shalom y’all” to be inclusive.

Please Support the Center

We found spiritual support for our advocacy in an unusual place this month: the new bishop of the Church of Norway, whose focus is inclusion, not conversion; her calling has been to “swing open the doors … as wide as possible.”

We rarely ask for another kind of support – financial – but in the spirit of the season, with year-end rapidly approaching, we would be grateful for it. If you find our newsletter useful, if you value advocacy for inclusion of interfaith families – please make a contribution, in any amount, at www.cfrij.com/donate. Thank you!

November 2025 News: Laura Lauder and Embark; Rabbis and Interfaith Marriage in ATRA Study; Nobody Wants This; Chosenness

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Laura Lauder and Embark

eJP ran an important interview of philanthropist Laura Lauder about the Embark program she launched and supports, now as part of Mem Global. The goal of Embark is “to have [non-Jewish partners] feel comfortable in their identity as a parent of Jewish children and as a member of a Jewish household. …[W]e are here to provide you with an educational experience with a cohort of other people in your same shoes, to enable you to decide for yourself, and whatever you decide, what we hope is that the decision is to make a warm, loving Jewish home and raise your children Jewish.”

The questions by eJP’s Jay Deitcher seem hostile to Lauder’s positions. He asks, “Do you ever fear that changing expectations of children related to interfaith relationships and intermarriage is a mistake? That the community’s leniency has gone too far….” He suggests that Embark does not strengthen Jewish community when he asks, “[S]tudies show that Jews who marry other Jews have stronger engagement with Judaism. Why not focus your effort on pushing for a stricter Judaism, or pushing for day schools or focusing your finances on strengthening the Jewish community?” Even the title given to the interview – “Still preferring Jewish marriages, Laura Lauder pledges $500K annually to boost interfaith couples” – is slanted; Lauder never says that she prefers “Jewish marriages.” The title also begs the question, with a 72% rate of interfaith marriage among non-Orthodox Jews, what is a Jewish marriage today?

Lauder’s position is laudable: “It’s not a conversion program…. [M]y sense is that we have to be inclusive and embrace these families who are interfaith and who want to raise their kids Jewish, so we want to provide a vehicle to enable them to do that.”

The Embark program includes a unit on Israel, about which Lauder says: “[W]e hope that these young people will keep their views on the issue on the Gaza war out of their decision as to how much they want to incorporate Judaism in their lives. I’m hoping that this particular Israeli government doesn’t dissuade them from wanting to have more Judaism in their lives.”

Rabbis and Interfaith Marriage

ATRA released a fascinating study conducted by Rosov Consulting about the rabbinate. Many of the study’s observations relate to interfaith families.

  • Congregations apparently want to be inclusive of interfaith families. In searching for rabbis, “inclusivity is a key characteristic of desired candidates. This inclusivity appears to be aimed at interfaith families … and those who are not halakhically Jewish but still seek to participate in community life. The postings include phrases [that reflect] a need for openness and acceptance. The candidate is characterized as a bridge between tradition and modernity, which requires a personality that is open and adaptable. This focus is clearest in positions aimed at fostering community with younger demographics (e.g., college students), but it is also present in many congregations seeking to remain relevant in a rapidly evolving society.”
  • More rabbis and future rabbis have interfaith backgrounds or relationships; among current rabbinical students, 20% were not raised Jewish or not raised exclusively Jewish. This creates issues for them.
  • Some students were “deterred by concerns, whether true now or not, that some aspect of their identity would disqualify them from being able to attend rabbinical school. Perceptions of how inclusive various rabbinical schools are for … students in interfaith marriages … shaped decisions about where to attend.”
  • “For some interviewees, coming from interfaith or non-Jewish backgrounds created feelings of exclusion and added hurdles in the admissions process. They described concerns that their backgrounds might be scrutinized more heavily, requiring them to prove their Jewish authenticity or justify their place in rabbinical training in ways that peers from more traditional backgrounds did not face.” One comment: “I have one non-Jewish parent, and that is a problem with a lot of people in the Jewish community, especially because it’s my mother. So, there’s plenty in the community who look at that and go, ‘you’re not really Jewish.'”

Nobody Wants This

Rabbi Lisa Rubin, who runs the very successful Center for Exploring Judaism program based at Central Synagogue, had an interesting take on the show, “Conversion isn’t a solo act. So why is the rabbi in ‘Nobody Wants This’ acting alone?” Rubin sees interfaith marriage as “an extraordinary opportunity for growth. Interfaith relationships, approached thoughtfully, can be pathways into Judaism rather than exits from it.” Her main point is that Rabbi Noah shouldn’t have tried to mentor Joanne himself, but rather should have connected her to a program – like the Center for Exploring Judaism – which she describes beautifully. She sees the show’s title as ironic, because “Jews should want this… [W]e should want our communities to see interfaith love not as a threat, but as a chance to expand the circle.”

For more on the Nobody Wants This front, it looks like there will be a season three, but the speculation is that Joanne will convert. I won’t get the show I was hoping to see, about a happily married, Jewishly-engaged, interfaith couple.

Chosenness

The Reconstructionist journal Evolve published an interesting essay by Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie about chosenness. At his congregation, Lab/Shul:

“[W]e have replaced the blessing at the Torah with asher bakhartanu im kol ha’amim – ‘Who has chosen us, along with all other peoples, to live this life with love.’ That is because I estimate that a good half of my community is not necessarily Jewish according to Jewish law. They are Jewish, they are Jewish-adjacent, they are people who have chosen to live with Jewish people. Some are Jewish patrilineally. Others, matrilineally. Still others, Jews by choice. We are human, and being Jewish is part of who we are.”

In Other News

  • An article from Religion News Service about how Vice President Vance hopes his Hindu wife converts to Christianity quotes our friend Susan Katz Miller, who aptly says, “To respect your partner and everything they bring to the marriage – every part of their identity – is integral to the kind of honesty that you need to have in a marriage.” And, “pressuring one’s spouse to convert or even hoping they would convert is not a good basis for a successful marriage.”
  • The Jewish Education Project’s otherwise excellent “What Will Jewish Education Look Like in 2050” does not mention any emphasis on reaching or including interfaith families.
  • I was not able to attend the JFNA’s General Assembly. I heard that there was discussion of engaging interfaith families, but have not seen anything published or public on that issue. An essay before the GA talked about “unveiling innovative platforms and programs that foster an inclusive culture and provide opportunities for deeper Jewish learning and involvement for those who may have been disconnected” before October 7. In an interview after the GA, JFNA’s CEO Eric Fingerhut said “There are great opportunities to increase the number of people engaged in Jewish life and education.” It remains to be seen how much priority will be given to engaging interfaith families.

October 2025 News: Lessons from Research on Interfaith Families’ Belonging; What Season Two of Nobody Wants This Gets Right

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Today’s eJewishPhilanthropy Op-ed: What Research Reveals About Interfaith Families’ Feelings of Belonging

For the first time ever, we held this email newsletter beyond the end of the month, so that we could tell you that today, eJewishPhilanthropy published our op-ed, Making Interfaith Families a Valued Part of Jewish Communities.

We’ve been working for many months on a project to gather and review all of the data on interfaith families’ feelings of belonging in a dozen years’ worth of research: two national Pew reports, twenty-six local community studies by the Cohen Center at Brandeis, one quantitative and three qualitative Cohen Center studies of interfaith families, a recent qualitative study led by Tobin Belzer and a recent local community study by Rosov Consulting.

Today’s op-ed summarizes the Center’s detailed paper, What Recent Studies Reveal About Interfaith Family Inclusion. The paper’s conclusions:

  • people in interfaith relationships do not feel very connected to or part of the Jewish people or their local Jewish community, and significantly less so than inmarrieds do;
  • interfaith families, and partners from different faith backgrounds, want to feel like part of Jewish communities, but instead persistently feel othered and excluded;
  • not having many Jewish friends or knowing many people in the Jewish community may contribute to not feeling belonging, and could be countered by extending personal invitations;
  • policies that restrict participation contribute to not feeling belonging, and policies around diversity and inclusion being made explicit are a welcoming factor; and
  • clear communication that interfaith families are a valued part of the Jewish community is needed to help move interfaith families from othering to belonging.

This was a major effort for the Center and we are grateful to eJewishPhilanthropy for publishing the op-ed and to Rachel Kohn for her careful and helpful editing.

We hope the information contained in the paper will be helpful to everyone who is working to foster more Jewish engagement among interfaith families. We’re very interested in discussing the paper and in your feedback; please contact us at info@cfrij.com

Season Two of Nobody Wants This

There seemed to be a lot of buzz about the show before it was released, but not so much afterwards. My take, in the Times of Israel blogs: What Season Two of Nobody Wants This Gets Right About Interfaith Relationships.

Season two’s messaging is much improved. Most of the negativity about interfaith marriage from the first season is gone. The story throughline, about whether Joanne will convert, illustrates how pressure to do so is counter-productive. It hints at what inclusive attitudes and communities would be like, including that partners from different faith backgrounds should be accepted exactly as they are.

By focusing on conversion, the show misses the opportunity to depict a relationship and community where an interfaith couple, and especially the partner from a different faith background, can find a sense of belonging. Perhaps that will come in season three?

Some articles on the show worth reading:

In other news:

  • I was delighted to see that Sheila Katz will be the Chief Jewish Life Officer at JFNA overseeing a portfolio that seeks to engage Jews of all backgrounds including “initiatives supporting multifaith and mixed-heritage families.”
  • A nice story from the Forward’s Bintel Brief about interfaith families and Jewish cemeteries; there’s not much new in the article, but it highlights the halachic/non-halachic divide on this issue.
  • 18Doors launched its largest B’Yachad cohort yet in Atlanta.
  • A nice story in The Conversation by Samira Mehta on interfaith weddings weaving traditions together.
  • Another negative story about Israel’s Interior Ministry making life difficult for converts.
  • Finally, speaking of pressure to convert – and I try to keep politics out of this newsletter – Vice President Vance seems to have applied some public pressure, then tried to walk it back hoping that his Hindu wife would become Catholic.