My Interview with Steve and Cokie Roberts

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I had a very interesting interview with Cokie and Steve Roberts last week. We talked about their new book, Our Haggadah, which I’ve blogged about before, and which our Board member Rabbi Rim Meirowitz  reviewed very positively.

I asked the Robertses what their goals were in terms of what they hoped interfaith couples would do with Our Haggadah. Cokie Roberts, a serious Catholic, said her goal was to make it as easy as possible to participate in and host a seder. She said Passover is a joyous festival, but people are intimidated about preparing for it, setting the table, and conducting the service. As I’ve said before, I applaud Cokie Roberts for being so supportive of interfaith couples engaging in Jewish practices like the Passover seder.

I asked whether they thought that interfaith couples would still be having seders twenty or thirty years from now, and both were quite certain that they would. Steve pointed out that seders have been conducted for thousands of years, and Cokie said the seder is joyous, addresses universal themes, is home based (avoiding the barriers that synagogues sometimes present), and personally customizable.

But my question posed the issue that I really wanted to explore – the interplay between Jewish identity and Jewish practices. Because if interfaith couples don’t identity their families, or their children, as Jewish, then in another generation, will the children of those families, themselves married, perhaps intermarried – will they still be interested in conducting or participating in the Passover seder?

Cokie’s answer was that what children will do in terms of Jewish practices is always a question – and aptly added that it is a question about children of two Jewish parents, too. They told me that their family has more Jewish content than the families of Jewish relatives of Steve who are in-married. Cokie said that given the reality of intermarriage, a good solution is to celebrate Jewish traditions as “a major part of the family.”

But that raised the identity/practice question again. Steve said his goal in writing the book was to provide guidance, models and encouragement to the many young interfaith couples that he encounters among his students. The model the Robertses themselves offer is to embrace both religious traditions. They said that choosing one religion, “ceding” to the other, wouldn’t work for them, because each was so deeply tied to their tradition.

So my identity/practice question is still pending. The Robertses said they don’t talk about their own children’s identity or practice, I assume out of respect for their privacy. It sounds like the Roberts’ seders are so wonderful that their children would want to continue to have them for their families. But I’m left to wonder what will happen down the road if the children of interfaith families aren’t raised as and don’t identify as Jews.

I respect the Roberts’ approach and their integrity. They are very serious about religion. Steve said he felt that couples getting married who decide to “just get a judge” because they have difficulty finding clergy “in most cases do a disservice to themselves.” He asks those couples to consider that they come from traditions and can find a way to reflect them – and not pretend they are neutral characters.  He clearly feels that religious traditions can enrich young couples’ lives.

The Robertses are not directive when interfaith couples ask their advice, either. There say there is no necessarily right way for anyone and they don’t push their model on anyone. They readily acknowledge that choosing one religion for a family and children is one way that interfaith couples can go. That is what InterfaithFamily.com has always recommended, although we hasten to add that children should learn about the other religious tradition represented in their family, and participate in it to the extent parents want them to.

We talked about other subjects and we clearly had common ground in many areas, especially the need for the Jewish community to be more welcoming to interfaith couples. Both Cokie and Steve are incredibly smart and articulate – they are great spokespersons for their approach to interfaith family life. Which leaves me, in the end, still wishing that Cokie and Steve Roberts were in IFF’s camp.

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

Limmud Chicago 2011

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I led a session on “changing attitudes towards intermarriage” today at Limmud Chicago. It was fun!

An interesting mix of people came – several who identified themselves as Orthodox, several young adults, several who looked like grandparents, and in between. We did a “take the temperature of the room” exercise where I asked people if they agreed, disagreed, or weren’t sure about, the following statements (thanks to Benjamin Maron for piloting this approach at TribeFest):
* if a rabbi and a priest or minister co-officiate, it’s not a Jewish wedding
* if you intermarry, your family will be a Jewish family only if your partner converts
* you can only raise Jewish children if both parents are Jewish
* if you have a Christmas tree in your house, your children won’t be Jewish.

The more traditional folks present expressed concerns on several fronts – a wedding between a Jew and someone not Jewish under Jewish law is not a Jewish wedding, why does a rabbi have to officiate, why couldn’t a judge officiate; what is the future going to be when there are so many people who identify as Jews who aren’t halachically Jewish; people won’t be recognized as Jews in Israel; etc. The very nice thing about the discussion is that it was civil and respectful on all sides. I don’t think anything was resolved, but I did offer my idea that everyone in the Jewish community could recognize self-identifying but non-halachic Jews as Jews for all purposes except those where halachic status matter.

I saw a lot of heads nodding when I talked about Jewish partners in interfaith relationships who say they get more Jewishly active because of the relationship, and partners who are not Jewish who get very Jewishly involved. People I talked with after the session appeared to be thirsting for ways to positively respond to and engage interfaith couples.

I haven’t been to a Limmud before and to be honest when I arrived it looked like a  mostly traditional set of attendees that made me wonder if anyone would come to my session and how it would be received. But it looked like perhaps 10% of the registration did come and it was a very lively discussion. It was great to be there, and I want to especially thank Debbie Burton, who has written many articles for InterfaithFamily.com, and has commented frequently on our discussion boards, for inviting me.

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

A New URJ President and the Reform Commitment to Engaging Interfaith Families

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We want to congratulate Rabbi Rick Jacobs on being chosen as the next president of the Union for Reform Judaism.

When the retirement of the current president, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, was announced, I wrote about my mixed feelings. While I applauded many of Rabbi Yoffie’s initiatives, the Reform movement’s record on engaging interfaith families during his leadership was disappointing due to reductions in staff dedicated to helping Reform synagogues attract and welcome interfaith couples and families.

I’ve read everything I can find about Rabbi Jacobs since the announcement this afternoon and haven’t seen any mention of his involvement with the Reform movement’s past outreach efforts or his personal practices with respect to people in interfaith relationships. At this point I can only hope that Rabbi Jacobs will be receptive to my respectful suggestion when Rabbi Yoffie’s retirement was announced: that the number of intermarried couples that would be in a Jewish framework would be far, far greater if the Reform movement gave engaging them the priority it deserves.

We certainly wish him well as he prepares to take on this very significant responsibility.

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

Cokie and Steve Roberts, Revisited

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I have to confess: I expected not to like Our Haggadah, the new book by Cokie and Steve Roberts.

But I did. I like it.

I’m doing a lot of confessing about the Robertses. Last week I confessed to envying all of the publicity they are able to garner for their book, and some regret because they are known for observing both of their religions in their home, exposing their children (now grown) to both religions, and not to raising children to identify with one religion or the other. As I said then, we don’t say the Roberts’ approach is wrong, or bad, it’s just not the approach that we recommend to interfaith couples.

Having now read the book, I was wrong to suggest that for the Robertses, the seder is not exclusive to Judaism. It is clear from Cokie Roberts’ introduction that she completely respects the seder as a Jewish ritual. She explicitly says she is not trying in way to “Christianize” the seder. In fact, it’s clear that the Robertses started conducting their seders at her insistence, which happens with many other interfaith couples and is something we want to applaud. Including partners who are not Jewish, and others, in experiencing the seder is of course something that InterfaithFamily.com also applauds.

I also want to credit Steve Roberts for saying that “many young Jews are marrying outside their faith, but at the same time, they are eager to preserve and nourish their ties to Judaism. Cokie and I have long argued that organized Jewry needs to embrace these couples, not reject them, and that is clearly beginning to happen.”

We’re happy to see that the Robertses mention a wonderful article written for us by Rabbi Rayzel Raphael, about adding an artichoke to the seder plate, as well as a wonderful article by Jim Keen about his experience as a non-Jewish father asked to lead a seder.

We still have differences in our approach to interfaith family life, but I don’t have any reservations about recommending Our Haggadah to interfaith couples. I share in the Roberts’ concluding hope that their Haggadah will inspire interfaith couples to celebrate their own “great heritage.”

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

I Wish Cokie and Steve Roberts Were In Our Camp

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Cokie Roberts, who I love as an ABC News commentator, and her husband Steve Roberts, have published a new “interfaith Haggadah”–Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families.

I have to confess to very mixed feelings about this. I don’t like feeling envy, but I do.

I’m envious because as celebrities, Cokie and Steve Roberts command a lot of attention. Their book is getting pretty extraordinary publicity for a Haggadah – have you ever seen another new Haggadah featured on MSNBC or ABC News? Or the subject of a book tour, with stops in Washington DC, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and I’m sure pretty much all over?

Now Steve Roberts is Jewish, Cokie Roberts is Catholic, and they’ve been married for 45 years. Their approach to interfaith family life, as best I understand it, is to observe both of their religions in their home, to expose children (their children are now grown) to both religions, and not to raise children to identify with one religion or the other.

We don’t pass judgment here at InterfaithFamily.com. We don’t say the Roberts’ approach is wrong, or bad. But it’s not the approach that we recommend to interfaith couples, and I’m

In our camp, we think engaging in Jewish life is a wonderful source of meaning and value that is available not just to Jews but to their partners too, and we do what we can to invite interfaith couples to try it in hopes they will like it. We don’t say the religious traditions of the partner who is not Jewish should be hidden or forgotten. But in the surveys we’ve done for the last seven years, interfaith couples raising their children as Jews do participate in Christmas and Easter celebrations, but not in the religious aspects of the holidays. That’s the approach we recommend.

It’s wonderful that Cokie Roberts participates very fully in her family’s seder and appears to have been the driving force in starting the tradition in the first place. But according to ABC News, the Roberts’ Passover traditions “have evolved into a unique multi-cultural celebration that is exclusive to no faiths.” I think that’s sad. The Passover seder is exclusive to one faith — to Judaism.

What our camp needs is an interfaith couple with celebrity on the level of Cokie and Steve Roberts, to write a book about how an interfaith couple experiences Passover as a fundamentally Jewish, not multi-faith, holiday, as the story of the redemption of the Jewish people that is meaningful to both Jews and their partners. And then go on TV and a national book tour. Any takers?

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

More Who Is a Jew

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A month ago I blogged about the “who is a Jew” question that arose from the tragic attack on Gabrielle Giffords. My main point was this:

It behooves everyone in the Jewish community, Orthodox included, to regard Gabrielle Giffords as a Jew for all purposes except where halachic status matters. Many would say that the entire community benefits from having a staunch supporter of Israel in the US Congress, for example. When halachic status is important, it can be dealt with. A Jew to whom halachic status is important in a marriage partner, for example, can choose not to marry someone who does not measure up to his or her halachic standards, or the non-halachic Jew can convert according to those same standards. It would be a major advance if the idea took hold that the Jewish community consists of Jews who are halachic and who are not halachic and that issues of halachic status could be dealt with when they arise.

The Forward issue dated today has two related articles of interest. My former colleague Rabbi Sue Fendrick, in Beyond ‘Yes or No’ Jewishness, seems to agree with me. She makes the interesting point that the State of Israel recognizes the advantages of distinguishing “Jewish for what purpose?” – the state’s eligibility rules for immigration and for ritual status are different. I loved her statement,

… we gain nothing by ignoring or failing to name the ways that an individual’s Jewishness “counts” – whether they live a Jewish life and identify as a Jew, come from a Jewish family or are “half-Jewish,” or are simply identified by other Jews as being “one of us.” … Simple yes/no definitions of Jewishness are inadequate to the task of naming reality. We need to make room for descriptions that tell us about Jewishness as it is, not obscure its realities and complexities.

Rabbi Andy Bachman, in Patrilineal Promise and Pitfalls, suggests that children raised as Jews who are not considered Jews outside of the Reform movement because their mothers are not Jewish should be taken to the mikveh for conversion by Reform rabbis by the age of Bar of Bat Mitzvah. The problem with that approach is that the Jews who don’t consider those children Jewish, wouldn’t recognize such a conversion if it were under Reform auspices. If Reform conversions were so recognized, I would be in favor of this kind of process, or even of incorporating conversion into a bris or baby naming ceremony. Sadly this is not in the cards.

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

Divorce, Interfaith Style

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In the past year we’ve had several posts on this blog about the sensationalized Reyes divorce case where the father took the child to church against a court order etc.

Karen Kushner provides a much more sane approach to the whole subject of divorce in interfaith families in a recent interview with Virginia Gilbert, the “Divorce and Parenting Examiner” for Examiner.com/Los Angeles. Some of her points:
• Don’t embrace religion as a way of expressing anger at an ex.
• Children of divorce need stability–and that includes maintaining religious practices and traditions observed when the family was intact.
• Exes can find empathy for each other by separating values and traditions from religious rites.
• A child who is secure in one religious identity should not be barred from participating in celebrations of another parent’s different faith tradition.

There’s lots more in the article, including advice from our friends Arlene Chernow, a URJ outreach specialist, and her husband Eli Chernow, a retired California judge.

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

More About the Reform/Progressive World

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In my post last week about the World Union of Progressive Judaism convention, we highlighted Rabbi Larry Kushner’s presentation and mentioned that our own Karen Kushner spoke at a panel. We’re glad now to make available Karen’s remarks, Accepting the Gift of Interfaith Marriage. Karen is also featured in Dan Pine’s jweekly article, Conference Panel Defines Interfaith for Modern Era.

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

Remembering Michael Rukin

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I am sorry to report that Michael Rukin died on February 18. He was only 70. Michael was an important leader for many organizations including Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston (CJP), Hillel and the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society. I’m sure much deservedly will be said about him in the days to come. I just want to share my own lasting impression of him.

Back in 2006, CJP released its 2005 demographic study of the Boston Jewish community. A key finding was that 60% of interfaith families in Greater Boston were raising their children as Jews, compared to a national average of 33%. I took the position, including in an op-ed with the URJ’s Kathy Kahn in the Forward, that the 60% rate was a result of CJP’s allocating 1% of its annual spending towards engaging interfaith families in Jewish life.

We have a bulletin board in our office and put a copy of the op-ed on it under a sign that read, “Look what 1% can do!” Michael was at our office around that time and when he saw that sign, he attached a large yellow post-it note on which he wrote, “THINK ABOUT WHAT 10% WOULD DO!” with his initials and the date.

That note, which is still on our bulletin board, sums up for me Michael’s passionate advocacy for our cause. He was a rare bold thinker who understood the importance of vastly increased attention to efforts to engage interfaith families Jewishly. For that and many other reasons, he will be sorely missed.

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

Intermarriage Around the Reform/Progressive World

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Our friend, and terrific journalist, Sue Fishkoff had a JTA story about the annual convention of the World Union of Progressive Judaism that missed what I think was a more important part of the convention.

The World Union of Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) is the association of Reform movements from all over the world. (Outside of the US, Reform Judaism is often called Progressive Judaism, hence the name of the association.) The WUPJ rarely holds its annual meeting in the US, but it did last week in San Francisco.

Sue’s story focuses on how Progressive Jews outside of the US have not adopted the American Reform Jewish movement’s doctrine of patrilineal descent which considers as Jewish the child of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother who is raised as a Jew. Sue attended a panel discussion on that subject, and reports that other than in the Liberal movement in England and in the former Soviet Union (and one congregation each in Ireland and Holland), no other Diaspora community recognizes patrilineal descent.

I wish Sue had been able to cover the panel discussion at which IFF’s Chief Education Officer, Karen Kushner, and our Advisory Board member, Rosanne Levitt, spoke about the importance of programming to welcome interfaith couples and families. And I wish she had been able to cover the evening session at which Rabbi Lawrence Kushner spoke, because what he had to say presents a compelling case in favor of patrilineal descent and other measures to welcome and include interfaith couples and families in Jewish communities – and not just in the US.

Yes, full disclosure, Rabbi Kushner is Karen Kushner’s husband – but according to the website of the Union for Reform Judaism itself, he is considered “one of the top leaders of  American Reform Jewry” along with Rabbis Eric Yoffie (head of the US Reform movement), David Ellenson (head of Hebrew Union College, the Reform seminary), and David Saperstein (head of the URJ’s Religious Action Center).

Rabbi Kushner was kind enough to share his remarks, What it Means to Me to Be a Reform Jew, with IFF’s readers. Some of my favorite quotes:

It turns out that “assimilate” has two definitions. The more common, of course, means to dissolve into the local culture. It’s in that sense that our enemies accuse us of being assimilationist. But the reason we’re still here is because the word can also mean, not to disappear, but to deliberately take in something from the outside and make it one’s own. For example: The music business has assimilated hip-hop. And we Reform Jews have assimilated some very beautiful but non-Jewish liberal Western ideas: The equality of women; the normalization of gay people; social justice for everyone, not only Jews. But we didn’t swallow these ideas whole. We received them, we shaped them, we grounded them, we assimilated them. We made them Jewish, we made them mitzvot. That’s what we Reform Jews do; it’s who we are; it may even be why God wants us around.

We have been so terrified a Jew might fall in love with a non-Jew, we forgot that, every year, tens, hundreds of thousands of non-Jews also fall in love with, marry, and have children with Jews. They may not yet be willing or able to become Jews, but they have, with their very lives, thrown in their lot with us. Like it or not, they are members of our extended family. And they deserve an honored place at the table—and maybe even to be counted in the minyans Reform Jews claim they don’t count.

The presence at the table of these potentially new members of our family reminds us that we have something precious. They help us reexamine, deepen, and cherish our own piety. Jews who have chosen Judaism through conversion or, yes, through marrying a Jew and trying to make a Jewish home, free us from ethnocentrism and smugness. These people are not the enemy; they’re a gift.

[It is] the 21st Century and intermarriage is here to stay. The only question before us now is whether or not we will acknowledge social and religious reality and see what, yes, Heaven, wants of us now.

We at IFF are glad that the Kushners and Rosanne Levitt put a positive response to intermarriage on the WUPJ agenda, and we hope the delegates from around the world took in their message and will bring it back to their communities.

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