Another Problematic Article About Intermarriage

|

The other day I blogged about an article about intermarriage that got a lot of recent attention. Three Jewish women’s non-Jewish husbands didn’t participate in raising their children Jewish. I said it was a sad story, but not typical.

Another article about intermarriage, this one in the Huffington Post, also elicited a lot of comment recently: Interfaith Families: Can You Be Jewish and Christian at the Same Time, by Kate Fridkis. I won’t say this one is sad, but again, it’s not typical, and it’s problematic.

The article starts off with the provocative question, “Can someone identify as a Jew and a Christian simultaneously?” and says that people involved with The Interfaith Community are doing just that by educating children of interfaith marriages in both Jewish and Christian traditions.

I know and respect Sheila Gordon, the founder of The Interfaith Community, as a serious and well-intentioned person. Sheila persuaded me years ago to list the IFC on InterfaithFamily.com’s Network, even though the Network is primarily meant to connect interfaith families with welcoming Jewish organizations, by contending that the Jewish identity of the Jewish partners was strengthened by their involvement with IFC.

After that InterfaithFamily.com still didn’t want to have much to do with IFC, although our thinking has evolved. We now would be happy to present, to people who gravitate to the IFC’s approach, the Jewish perspective and the model of interfaith families choosing  Jewish identity for their children while learning about and respecting the other religious tradition in the family.

I’m sure that there are some number of interfaith couples for whom the IFC’s approach resonates. At IFF we would not presume to pass judgment on them or suggest they were making a mistake. But educating children in both traditions is not the approach we recommend.

Fridkis writes that “a growing number of people are unwilling to give up their religious tradition just because their partner has a different one.” I question whether she has any data to back up that statement. She may be right that there is a trend in that direction – but I hope she isn’t.

I also question what “giving up a religious tradition” means in this context.  When IFF does holiday surveys, for example, we consistently find that high percentages of couples who are raising their children as Jews participate in Christmas and Easter celebrations, but not as religious holidays involving affirmation of the divinity of Jesus. Have the parents who are not Jewish in those families “given up their religious traditions”? Other than the theological beliefs – no.

I don’t like the imagined conversation Fridkis  scripts in her article. She suggests that most interfaith couples are not observant “so maybe they can just flip a coin” and has the partner who is not Jewish describe Easter as “the most bored I’ve been in my life” and the partner who is Jewish saying “I eat bagels and lox ALL the time, though.” This depiction remains demeaning of interfaith couples even after Fridkis says “OK, so maybe people don’t really talk like that.” I hate to come off as humorless, but it isn’t funny.

The serious point Fridkis makes is the argument that educating children in both traditions allows for “more in-depth future exploration” and leaves them “better prepared to make their own choices.” Here is the brief counter to that: I once heard a young adult woman express the great sadness she felt when her parents left her to pick a religious identity and community – she felt like she was choosing between, not her mother and her father, but between her two grandmothers. And there are numerous personal narratives and “expert” opinions on InterfaithFamily.com to the effect that being grounded in one religious identity and feeling part of one religious community is important for children and young adults.

What motivates the Board and staff of InterfaithFamily.com is the firm belief that engaging in Jewish life can be a source of profound meaning and value for interfaith couples and their children. It’s a shame that Jewish leaders and institutions have neither presented Jewish life in compelling ways nor genuinely welcomed interfaith couples to engage in it. If that were to happen more of the folks who are attracted to the idea of “doing both” might decide that the identity of their family and their children is Jewish while one parent’s is not, and that the non-theological traditions of that parent can still be part of the family’s life.

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

A Sad Story, But Not Typical

|

A recent article in Tablet Magazine has elicited a lot of comment: Private Practice: A group of intermarried Jewish women gather for Shabbat but pack away their identities, by Elizabeth Cohen.

Cohen’s article is very sad. Three Jewish women meet for Shabbat dinner with their young children. Their non-Jewish husbands don’t participate. Turns out that each keeps her Judaica hidden away in a drawer, a box, a cabinet. Turns out they don’t discuss or mention Jewish topics with their significant others. The “cancellation [of Judaism] through silence and storage.” A grim picture.

But wait – all of their children are “enrolled in the same Jewish day school. Their Hebrew is impeccable. Their understanding of Torah … is profound for grade-schoolers. And it was they who led our Shabbat, singing prayers aloud, blessings as second nature as those their grandparents uttered.”

For me, this article doesn’t hang together. Sending children to Jewish day school is an expensive and serious commitment to Jewish life. Some of the comments on the article also question whether there are other issues in the relationships or the personalities of the author and her friends.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned at InterfaithFamily.com, it’s that every family is different, but there are patterns. I’m sure there are families where the partners who are not Jewish don’t participate in the Jewish life of their partner and children. From my point of view that is an unfortunate situation. But I wouldn’t want this article to be taken for more than it is, as representative of intermarriage in general. Some of the comments  on the article would do just that – one suggests that the article be required reading in every Hillel. As Cohen herself recognizes, “It isn’t always like this, of course. There are plenty of mixed marriages where the spouse gets involved, shares the traditions, looks on with something like admiration, maybe even converts.”

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

Memo to Elena Kagan: Not All Jews Spend Christmas at Chinese Restaurants

|

The blogosphere is lit up with Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s response to a question at her confirmation hearing. The Washington Post reported that a senator asked, “’Christmas Day bomber. Where were you at on Christmas Day?’ Kagan … seemed confused by his query and started answering him seriously. But Graham cut her off and said, ‘No. I just asked where you were at on Christmas.’ Kagan’s response – ‘Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant’ — was brilliant in its humor, timing and the self-effacing manner in which it was delivered.”

Most of the commentary is about Kagan’s sense of humor, like that from JTA, the Jewish Week, and the Christian Science Monitor. Over at Jewcy, Jason Diamond said “a serious burst of pride shot through my being when a person who is possibly (hopefully) going to sit in the highest judicial seat in the land, made mention of one of my favorite Jewish traditions.”

I also hope that Elena Kagan is confirmed. I’m proud that she’s Jewish. I’m even proud of her association with one of my alma maters – yes, I have a degree from Harvard Law School, something I don’t ever emphasize in my current position.

But Supreme Court justices shouldn’t make factual errors, and she ought to know, and the commentators ought to know, that we are way past the time when “all Jews” are at Chinese restaurants” at Christmas. In fact, we all ought to realize that we are either at the time, or close to the time, when half of young adults who identify as Jews will have grown up participating in Christmas celebrations with their interfaith families. The Jewish partners and children in interfaith families aren’t going to Chinese restaurants for Christmas – they’re having Christmas dinner with their relatives who aren’t Jewish.

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

Ending the Year with Another Celebrity Intermarriage

|

News broke today that actress Natalie Portman, just nominated for a Golden Globes Best Actress award for her starring role in Black Swan, is pregnant and engaged to Benjamin Millipied. We found out in a blog post from our friend Rabbi Jason Miller, who asks, Is Benjamin Millipied Jewish? I haven’t seen a definitive answer to that question; if Rabbi Jason is correct that Mr. Millipied is not Jewish, then this could be the next celebrity intermarriage to get a lot of attention.

It’s an interesting way to end a year that saw perhaps the most popular interest in any intermarriage ever, that of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky, and intimations that another intermarriage that will attract tremendous public interest may be coming, for Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.

For me the importance of these weddings and relationships is that if the couple makes Jewish choices, that may influence many of the non-celebrity, regular folks couples to think about doing that themselves. So I was glad to read an ABC News report on an earlier interview where Portman said “A priority for me is definitely that I’d like to raise my kids Jewish.” I’ve been a fan of Israeli-born Portman for a long time, and recall other interviews where she has discussed her Jewish involvement. Whether it turns out this is or isn’t an intermarriage, we’ll send her and her fiancé an early Mazel Tov!

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

Reflections On Rabbbi Eric Yoffie Retirement

|

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Reform movement (Union for Reform Judaism), announced on June 10 that he would retire in two years. You can find the text of his prepared remarks on eJewish Philanthropy and articles with more analysis by Josh Nathan-Kazis in The Forward and by Jonathan Sarna also in The Forward.

I have to confess to having very mixed feelings about Rabbi Yoffie. He exercised leadership on many matters that I personally applaud greatly. I personally agree with positions he has taken on Israel, on domestic social policy and justice issues, on interfaith dialogue, on efforts to re-invigorate Reform Jewish worship services, on emphasizing text study, and more.

My problem relates to what I care about most both professionally and personally — engaging interfaith families in Jewish life. I find it somewhat telling that in his prepared remarks — which admittedly are not his final comments, those will come at and after the next URJ biennial in 2011 — that in discussing some of the future challenges facing the Reform movement, and some of the specific work that needs to be done in the next two years — there is no mention of engaging interfaith families.

The Reform movement’s record on outreach to interfaith families under Rabbi Yoffie’s leadership is disappointing. Prior to 2003, the movement had an outreach department with some headquarters staff and a half-time regional outreach director in each of its fourteen regions; all of these people were outstanding dedicated professionals who did amazing work helping congregations welcome interfaith families and attract them to Jewish life. In 2003, the movement eliminated most of the positions, reportedly because of financial pressures. InterfaithFamily.com initiated a campaign that helped to preserve some of the positions.

Then in 2009, the URJ did away with its regions and the remaining regional outreach positions, to be replaced by four outreach specialists who, as talented and dedicated as they are, are stretched awfully thin to serve all 900 Reform congregations. The Reform movement’s outreach department and initiative, once truly a jewel among the movement’s many programs, is in a sadly reduced state.

To be fair, we publicized excerpts from Rabbi Yoffie’s 2005 biennial speech — and those speeches are where the movement’s most important efforts are announced — highlighting two parallel initiatives, which the URJ still supports,  to welcome non-Jewish spouses on the one hand, and to respectfully encourage conversion on the other. But program materials are one thing; staff whose job it is to promote and help with use of the materials is much more significant. I believe that the outreach department was a very “sellable” program – that funding could have been attracted for it – and that the movement’s leadership under Rabbi Yoffie’s direction did not give it the priority it deserved.

The URJ’s leadership may think that the Reform movement doesn’t need to do any thing more to attract interfaith couples and families. In the New York Jewish Week, Gary Rosenblatt reported that Rabbi Yoffie said that “his movement is the largest Jewish denomination because it has an “open door, inclusive” policy. ‘We are the place for the intermarried, gay or lesbian, and disabled to explore Judaism.’” I would argue that the Reform movement and Reform synagogues could do a great deal more to attract and welcome people in interfaith relationships – and that if they did, they would see membership increases that would help to alleviate the financial pressures that apparently continue to plague the movement and its synagogues.

Josh Nathan-Kazis reported on his interview with Rabbi Yoffie the following

As for the growing impact of intermarriage among American Jews, Yoffie said that his movement is handling the challenge well. He said that the movement has “not an ounce of regret” for its 1983 decision to consider the children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers to be Jewish, which represented a break with Jewish tradition.

Regarding studies that have found a lack of affiliation on the part of many children of intermarried couples, Yoffie said, “We’d like to point out that what that means is at a time when there’s an enormous amount of intermarriage, we’re getting a third of these people into synagogues… Imagine if we didn’t have the [patrilineal descent] decision and how many of them would be in any Jewish framework. I suggest it would be far lower.”

I’m glad to see Rabbi Yoffie re-affirm the patrilineal descent decision — and want to respectfully suggest 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.

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

Edgar Bronfman In the News

|

edgarbronfmanEdgar M. Bronfman, one of InterfaithFamily.com’s most important supporters, has been in the Jewish press again recently: j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California re-printed an article about him from the Canadian Jewish News.

Mr. Bronfman, who is approaching 80, occasionally speaks publicly about his book, Hope, Not Fear. We published an excerpt from the book and blogged about it back in 2008 when it first came out.

The recent j. article includes many pithy, to-the-point observations by Mr. Bronfman:

I’m not advocating intermarriage. What I’m saying is that intermarriage is here. It’s here to stay. Let’s make it work for us, rather than against us.

Being Jewish is a choice today, not a condition … The problem is not that Jews are falling in love with non-Jews, it’s that Jews are not falling in love with Judaism.”
Jewish law [should be changed] to recognize paternal, as well as maternal, lineage…. Patrilineage was the norm among Jews until the 12th century and the time of Maimonides. We don’t have to worry about keeping the bloodlines pure nowadays. We have DNA.

bronfmanbookcoverIn 2008, at the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities (now the Jewish Federations of North America) both Mr. Bronfman and his son Adam spoke out in favor of inclusivity. In a blog post at the time, I reported that Mr. Bronfman said in his speech that the Jewish community needed to stop regarding intermarriage as the “enemy” while Adam urged the Jewish leaders in attendance to consider the potential for positive Jewish involvement by interfaith families.

Long before his book, Mr. Bronfman was a leading advocate for including interfaith families in Jewish life. In 2004 we reprinted an article about him from the Jerusalem Post, and the article title says it all: Bronfman: Children of Intermarriage Are Also Jews. We ran Sue Fishkoff’s fascinating interview of Adam Bronfman in 2007.

I hope both of the Bronfmans will continue to lead the effort to welcome interfaith families to Jewish life.

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

A Jewish Leader Who “Gets It”

|

I hardly need to say that intermarriage is not a popular topic. I am often frustrated when Jewish leaders do not agree with me that engaging interfaith families in Jewish life is an issue of such overriding importance for the liberal Jewish community that it should be talked about openly and even aggressively.

Shortly before Passover this year, I had one of those frustrating meetings. When I arrived home later that day, I found in my mail the Passover message to donors to the Boston federation, Combined Jewish Philanthropies from Barry Shrage, CJP’s president.

The contrast in attitudes was striking.

In a two-page letter to people who are certainly key constituents of his federation, Barry Shrage explicitly brought the issue of engaging interfaith families directly into the spotlight. Here is how what he said appeared in the digital edition of Sh’ma:

How will this year’s seder be different from all others? Who will sit at our seder? What questions will they ask and what stories will we tell? As we gather our families and friends around the table, many of us will be sitting with children raised in interfaith households and young adults who have returned from Taglit-Birthright Israel trips to Israel. Those children and grandchildren may be asking surprisingly spiritual questions. (A recent study found that the next generation of Jews is actually more spiritual than the last and that the children of intermarriage are the most spiritual of all.)

Hopefully in the future, statements from Jewish leaders, that recognize the reality and presence of people from interfaith relationships in the Jewish community, and say something positive about that reality, will become increasingly more common.

By the way, Barry’s answer to his question is extraordinary too, and well worth remembering:

  • In a time that lacks vision and prophecy and that yearns for meaning, our stories are carrying an ancient faith in an ancient God so that our children and grandchildren will have spiritual options to fill their lives with light and joy.
    • In a time of greed and selfishness, our stories are part of an old – a very old – tradition of caring for strangers – love of the poor and oppressed – and responsibility for widows and orphans, the elderly and handicapped.
    • In a time of forgetfulness, our stories are part of a living chain of learning and literature in the world, inheritors of an ancient and hauntingly beautiful culture.
    • In a time of anomie and loneliness, our stories are imbued with a thirst, and we maintain a commitment to creating community and providing a sense of belonging.
    • In a time of rootlessness and alienation our stories are connected to a religious civilization with a 3500-year-old history and an infinite future and the ultimate responsibility for the betterment of humankind in the name of the God whose story is at the heart of our existence.

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

Rabbi David Gruber and Julie Wiener

|

We were pleased to see our friend Julie Wiener devote her new column in the New York Jewish Week to highlighting our friend Rabbi David Gruber.

Aside from his fascinating, perhaps unique personal journey – an Orthodox trained and ordained rabbi who now officiates and co-officiates at weddings for interfaith couples – I know Rabbi Gruber is an extraordinary kind person based on my own discussions with him. I’m glad that his experience with InterfaithFamily.com’s Jewish Clergy survey
and talking with Rabbi Lev Baesh, the director of our Resource Center for Jewish Clergy, helped him develop his own practice.

You can find out more about Rabbi Gruber from his profile on our Network. And you can find out about his conversation with former President George W. Bush in an article he wrote for us just two weeks ago: Hail to the Chiefs: How I Officiated at a Wedding in the Presence of Two Presidents, and what it’s like to officiate a wedding on MTV in Lights, Camera, Mazel Tov–How I Officiated a Wedding on MTV.

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

Something Positive About Intermarriage, For a Change

|

Intermarriage has been trashed a lot in the past few weeks and we’ve been doing a lot of de-bunking: first of the idea that intermarriage is the cause of young American Jews’ distancing from Israel, second that interfaith marriages are more likely to fail. I thought it would be nice to end the week with a positive story.

Last weekend I was trying to make a dent in my reading pile and I found All the Obama 20-Somethings in the April 26 Sunday New York Times Magazine. One of the young people mentioned is Eric Lesser, 25, David Axelrod’s special assistant. I’m reading along about how Eric lives in a group house with some other people who work in the White House, and it occurs to me that his name is familiar.

Sure enough, back in 2005, when he was a student at Harvard, Eric wrote for us about his experiences on a Birthright Israel trip: Integrating My Identity in Israel. Then in 2006 he wrote one of the very best articles we’ve ever published – and the title conveys it all – How My Italian-American Catholic Mother Strengthened My Jewish Identity.

I continued reading the Times Magazine article, and was moved and heartened by this:

Eric Lesser looked out over the containers of Thai carryout, the bottles of wine and the Shabbat candles. “Should we do Shalom Aleichem?” he asked, and the whole table began singing a warbled but hearty version of the song that welcomes Shabbat. In Lesser’s group house of Obama staff assistants, Friday-night Shabbat dinners have become something of a ritual, a chance to relax and spend a few hours with friends, reflecting on the week.… At the end of every Friday dinner, the tradition is that everyone goes around the table and says something from the past week for which they’re grateful.

I wish the folks out there who are trashing intermarriage would stop and consider this example of a young product of intermarriage leading Shabbat dinners for his housemates. There are hundreds and thousands of similar examples of positive Jewish engagement by interfaith families and the young adults who grew up in them; this may just be the first one we know about with a White House connection. I can’t help but think that there would be a lot more, if intermarriage were viewed as an opportunity and not something to be demeaned.

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

Are Interfaith Marriages Really Failing Fast?

|

I wish Naomi Schaefer Riley had consulted with us, or at least looked at the resources available on InterfaithFamily.com, before the Washington Post published her story, Interfaith marriages are rising fast, but they’re failing fast too.

My main complaint about the article is that it cites no compelling evidence whatsoever to support the thesis of the title that interfaith marriages are failing fast. It is a common perception, to be sure, that interfaith marriages fail at rates higher than same faith marriages, but I have never been able to find reliable evidence to that effect. In addition to citing a 1993 paper (but not any data in it comparing inter- and intra-faith divorce rates), Riley says that “According to calculations based on the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001, people who had been in mixed-religion marriages were three times more likely to be divorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages.” Who made the calculations? Are they published some place – and available to be scrutinized?

It seems that Riley’s article was prompted by the notorious Reyes case in Chicago. We’ve blogged about that extreme case several times. It’s not fair to generalize to all interfaith marriages, however, from a case where the husband converts to Judaism, the couples splits up, and the husband then takes their child to church trailed by TV cameras.

Last August we published a report on a study by Janice Aron, Interfaith Marriage Satisfaction Study Yields Answers and More Questions. Her conclusion:

The study found absolutely no difference in marital satisfaction between people who were married to partners of the same faith, and people married to partners of a different faith.

This is an interesting finding because it seems to herald a new trend in the psychological research in this area. There is a body of research supporting the idea that homogamous marriages tend to be happier than heterogamous ones, but some recent research like mine finds no difference. Perhaps this is the trend of the future. I am hoping it means Americans are becoming less suspicious about, and more accepting of, other religious views. Perhaps the more heterogamous our society becomes, the more we are forced to re-examine our assumptions about others.

It is commonly reported that the overall divorce rate in the United States is 50%. Young people are doubtless aware of that, but thankfully they continue to marry. As a practical matter, which Riley recognizes, young people in love are probably not going to be dissuaded from pursuing their interfaith relationships by calculations of a higher risk of divorce. I think it is unfortunate, though, to have yet another negative pall cast over intermarriage.

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