“Keeping the Faith”

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Yesterday’s Boston Sunday Globe magazine “Coupling” column by Alison Lobron provides an illuminating perspective on how young adult Jews think about interdating and intermarriage.

Alison describes herself as a “not-very-active Jew” who had no Bat Mitzvah, no Hebrew lessons, and no family tradition of Jewish holidays. After a two-year relationship with a “not-very-active Protestant” on which religion had little impact broke up, friends suggested Alison enter Boston’s lively Jewish social scene.

She relates how the first time she went to services at a synagogue known as a young-adult mixing spot, she felt that she “barely counted as Jewish,” “spent most of the evening searching the prayer book for a nonexistent English translation,” felt lonely when two people assumed she was an out-of-town, non-Jewish guest of someone, and felt that she didn’t have much in common with “people with whom I was supposed to share a culture.”

Alison writes that in dating, people “must figure out how much we care about” ethnic, religious and family affiliations, and concludes that just as she wouldn’t limit her friendship circle to Jews, she wouldn’t limit her dating pool, either. However, “a funny thing happened during my adventures in Jewish dating… I did become attracted to aspects of Judaism itself, like the ritual of Friday night dinners with family as a peaceful door to the weekend… I do see [cultural identity] as a part of myself that will need to be reconciled and sorted out with any future Prince Charming. Still,… that prince can come from any number of tribes.”

Those of us who are interested in encouraging Jewish choices among young adults who are interdating or likely to interdate can draw many lessons about effective programmatic responses from Alison’s short account:
* Jewish cultural identity has a strong attraction even among Jews with little Jewish upbringing
* Jews–let alone non-Jews–feel unwelcomed when prayer books don’t have English translations and when people make thoughtless comments about whether they are or aren’t Jewish
* Shabbat ritual can be a very attractive aspect of Judaism

The organized Jewish community should capitalize on the opportunity presented by young adult Jews like Alison Lobron, who are not willing to restrict their dating to Jews and expect that their intended one can come from “any number of tribes,” but see their Jewish identity as something that to reconcile and sort out with that partner.

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

Two Friends

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We had a pretty big week at InterfaithFamily.com last week. As we’ve already mentioned, it’s our fifth anniversary as an independent organization, and the 200th issue of our Web Magazine, and we had great coverage in the New York Jewish Week and the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. We launched our new User Survey and have already had a big response (you can win an iPod if you take it!), and we revamped our Discussion Boards so that registration isn’t required, and they’re already busier. I was in Los Angeles Monday through Wednesday, speaking at a conference for RAVSAK (the association of Jewish community day schools) and having a series of meetings that are going to result in significant new funding for us. And we had a meeting of InterfaithFamily.com’s Board of Directors on Thursday, with a presentation by Harvard sociologist Chris Winship, the co-chair of CJP’s community survey committee, on the results of the 2005 Boston Jewish Community Survey.

But something happened Friday night that topped it all.

On Friday night I went to services at a local Reform synagogue. The husband of someone very involved with IFF went to the mikvah at Mayyim Hayyim on Friday and completed his formal conversion to Judaism; his conversion was recognized at the service, and he spoke about his journey.

This wonderful, accomplished man met his wife in college. She made it clear that having a Jewish family was very important to her, and he was willing to go along. He didn’t know what it would all mean at the start, and he was supportive, but on the periphery. Then they came to Boston, and his wife started getting involved in the Jewish community here. He said that he experienced an incredible welcome from CJP, the Boston federation, being invited to participate in programs and just warmly included by CJP’s leaders. And he said he felt invited and welcomed by what he found on InterfaithFamily.com. He got more involved himself, studied, and — sixteen years after his wedding — he decided to “make it official.”

To think that the work we do at InterfaithFamily.com had even a small part in this man’s journey was deeply moving to me. It made the impact of a welcoming approach to interfaith couples very concrete and inspired me to move ahead to the next five years.

*****

In other news, there is a story in the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle about our friend Sherry Israel, who spoke at Beth Shalom, a local Conservative synagogue. Sherry is a highly regarded social scientest (and my teacher at the Hornstein Program at Brandeis). Among other quotes:

On day schools admitting the children of non-Jewish mothers: “Here’s a family that wants to give a child a Jewish upbringing, and that includes a deep Jewish education. We should say no? Let’s find a way to say yes.”

On permitting non-Jewish family members to participate in life-cycle events, including taking part in the symbolic passing of the Toard during a Bar or Bat Mitzvah: “People who study these matters say the bimah isn’t sacred space… There is no prohibition against non-Jews touching a Torah. Take the situation of the non-Jewish mother who has done all this work raising the child. Hasn’t that mother been helping pass the tradition?”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

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

“Jewish parent + Christian parent = Jewish kids”

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Amy Klein has a terrific article in the current edition of the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles that features InterfaithFamily.com and some of our writers. The title, “Jewish parent + Christian parent = Jewish kids,” expresses our organization’s mission better than we’ve been able to do ourselves! Along with Julie Wiener’s (New York) Jewish Week article we mentioned in our last entry, yesterday was a big press celebration of InterfaithFamily.com’s fifth anniversary and 200th Web Magazine issue.

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

The Critics Respond to the Boston Survey

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Steven M. Cohen, one of the leading critics of outreach, has an op-ed on the results of the recent demographic study of Boston’s Jewish community in the current issue of the Forward, co-signed by demographers Jack Ukeles and Ron Miller.

Cohen et al first question whether the 60% figure for interfaith families raising their children as Jews reported in the 2005 Greater Boston Jewish Community Study is accurate, based on the way that the question was asked. They acknowledge that the Boston survey was conducted by “distinguished social scientists” who are “first-rate researchers.” We have to leave the technical aspects of the survey’s accuracy to the its authors, Leonard Saxe and his colleagues, but we are confident they are fully prepared to defend their methodology.

Cohen et al next challenge the survey author’s assertion that the 60% rate is “exceptional,” citing studies of six other cities, including Cleveland, St. Louis, Miami, Baltimore, Bergen County, N.J., and Hartford, as finding rates of between 59% and 66% of interfaith families raising their children as Jews.

It is a statistical fact that if more than 50% of interfaith families raise their children as Jews, then the Jewish community will increase in size, not decrease. The Boston survey authors emphasized that contrary to the general presumption that intermarriage decreases the size of the Jewish community, in Boston it appeared to be increasing its size.

If studies of single cities–and, by the way, most Jews live in urban areas–are showing that more than a majority of interfaith families are raising their children as Jews, that is great news. It knocks out one of the major underpinnings of the opponents of intermarriage and outreach, that intermarriage decreases the size of the community. Sadly, Cohen et al don’t make that point in their essay.

Cohen et al next acknowledge that while not “exceptional,” the Boston rate is “unusually high,” “indeed in the high range.” But they say that this can not be attributed “primarily to targeting intermarried families.” Instead, they contend that Boston’s Jewish community is “special” with impressive institutions and “exciting opportunities for engagement” including in Jewish education of all sorts. They conclude that the Boston survey “makes no instrumental case for outreach.”

We are extraordinarily disappointed that Cohen et al are unwilling to include Boston’s targeting of intermarried families as even partially responsible for the 60% figure. It is a simple, undeniable fact that Boston relative to every other city in the country has the most coordinated, extensive and well-funded programs of outreach to interfaith families, and that the Boston federation, CJP, has made outreach to the intermarried a priority more than any other local federation, to the extent of saying so on every invitation to every CJP event. We believe that is what makes Boston special–or certainly at least part of what makes Boston special.

Cohen et al note that the most recent survey of New York city found that only 30% of interfaith families there were raising their children as Jews. Certainly New York city is “special” with impressive institutions and opportunities for education and other engagement. What New York city lacks is any coordinated, extensive and well-funded programs of outreach.

What really matters in all of this is the response of Jewish leaders who are in a position to make funding decisions–the lay and professional leadership of the federations, and the principals and staff of Jewish family foundations. I was frustrated recently when a leading federation executive, when I urged him to try to reach a 60% level of interfaith families raising their children as Jews in his community, said, “if only we knew what to do.” I was frustrated recently when the executive director of a major foundation said “we like to fund programs that work” with the unmistakeable implication that he did not belive that outreach programs do. I was frustrated on two separate occasions recently when staff of a major federation and a major foundation said they wanted to do research before funding any outreach programming.

Research is fine. Every study of the impact of outreach programs has shown that a significant increase in Jewish engagement after participation in the programs. We are confident additional evaluations of outreach programs would show the same result, and welcome them. But in the meantime, while waiting for more research, the Boston survey results should be regarded as compelling evidence justifying an investment in the same kind of outreach programs that CJP has funded. We say to Jewish funders: what are you waiting for?

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

Michael Richards, Yossi Beilin and Who’s Jewish?

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There’s been an interesting confluence of events over the past several weeks that raise the question, “Who’s Jewish?”

First there was the media firestorm about comedian Michael Richards, the beloved Kramer from the TV show Seinfeld, having made racist comments at an LA comedy club. Other than being horrified as I assume most others were, I didn’t pay much attention to that news blitz, until reports started coming out that Richards’ publicist was saying that Richards considered himself to be Jewish. As reported in the Houston Chronicle, for example, Richards, though not born of Jewish parents and not having converted to Judaism, “believes in the tenets of Judaism and considers himself Jewish.” Other than a first reaction questioning whether it would be a good thing if Richards were Jewish, I didn’t pay much attention to that issue either, until a bloggers’ blitz started up arguing that Richards could not be Jewish if his parents weren’t and he hadn’t converted.

That reminded me that at InterfaithFamily.com we hear many comments, usually from non-Jewish parents who are raising their children as Jews, along the lines of “I feel a little bit Jewish” or “I feel more and more Jewish as time goes by” or “I’m sort-of Jewish, aren’t I?” Rabbi Kerry Olitzky wrote a wonderful article for our Web Magazine, Doing the Conversion “Two-Step”, also included in our book, explaining how many people experience a “conversion of the heart” long before they formally convert, if indeed they ever do.

It doesn’t serve the Jewish community’s interests, in my opinion, to jump to a conclusion that a person can’t be Jewish if his parents weren’t and he or she hasn’t converted. In fact I wrote an essay, Redefine Jewish Peoplehood, for the Spring 2000 issue of Reform Judaism Magazine, arguing that “we should adopt a policy of ‘total inclusion’ of the intermarried by broadening the definition of Jewish peoplehood to include both Jews and their non-Jewish partners.”

That brings me to Yossi Beilin. Years ago we reprinted his Thoughts on Secular Conversion: An Important Alternative to Religious Conversion. A few days ago, Ha’aretz reported that Beilin, a member of Israel’s Knesset, has introduced a bill to recognize as Jewish those in Israel with a Jewish father (traditionally, only children of a Jewish mother are recognized as Jews) and to establish a process of secular conversion. As reported in Ha’aretz, someone would be considered Jewish who “has joined the Jewish people in a non-religious process and has linked his or her fate with the Jewish people, and is not a member of another religion.” Beilin is quoted as saying, “If people see themselves as Jewish… why should the state define them as not Jewish.” The article continues,

Beilin’s idea of secular conversion, which he first raised in 1999, involves joining the Jewish people by means of activities in the Jewish community and maintaining a Jewish lifestyle. Committees would be established to determine what demands would be made of those who wished to join the Jewish people, Beilin proposes, “such as elementary knowledge of Hebrew and checking there are no extraneous interests.”

Beilin said the central consideration in accepting people to Judaism by means of secular conversion would be a family tie to Jews.

So while I can’t comment on the sincerity of Michael Richards’ feelings, maybe his publicist’s argument isn’t so far-fetched. Maybe he should be considered Jewish, after all.

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

You Think Interfaith Issues Are Only for the Living?

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Yesterday I attended a fascinating meeting of the Interfaith Collaborative–the group of professionals who conduct outreach to interfaith couples and families in the Greater Boston area and meet on a regular basis. This session, the first of its kind for the group, involved presentations by representatives of two Jewish cemeteries. If you thought that interfaith family issues end when life ends… think again.

We’ve covered death and mourning issues involving interfaith families pretty extensively in the past; there’s an entire section of our Archive devoted to the subject. But these presentations got into very nitty-gritty issues of who can be buried where.

The first presentation came from a representative of a Jewish cemetery established in the 1950’s, before there was much intermarriage. At some point they recognized demographic trends and decided to create a “section” in which interfaith couples could be buried together.

I’m not an expert on Jewish law, but my understanding is that in a traditional Jewish cemetery, only Jews can be buried. The ground in a Jewish cemetery is “consecrated.” I hate to say this, because it can be so off-putting to interfaith couples, but my understanding is that burying someone not Jewish makes the ground no longer consecrated.

I try to always be respectful to adherents to traditional Jewish law. There are many people who were buried in Jewish cemeteries with the understanding that they would be forever in a Jewish, i.e. consecrated, cemetery. Burying someone not Jewish there would violate that understanding, which wouldn’t be right.

Another aspect of Jewish law that deals with this issue, though, is that a divider that separates different sections of a cemetery–kind of like a mechitzah in a traditional synagogue that separates men and women–allows a cemetery to remain Jewish and consecrated, while also allowing interfaith couples to be buried together in their own section.

So the first presenter explained that his cemetery had added one section for interfaith couples, then another, and are now on their third. That’s all good. But he then said something about what happens when a couple wants to buy cemetery lots not only for itself, but for its children, which is not uncommon. If a two-Jews couple wants to buy lots for its children, they are allowed to do so. But the representative said that his cemetery followed traditional Jewish law about who is a Jew–namely, the child of a Jewish mother. So, if an interfaith couple wanted to buy, say, four lots, if the mother wasn’t Jewish, they would only allow the couple to buy two lots, because they wouldn’t regard the children as Jewish, and they don’t allow non-intermarried, non-Jewish people to be buried in their cemetery.

Oy! What if the children were raised as Jews and in the eyes of the Reform movement considered Jewish? In this cemetery, many synagogues, including Reform ones, have their own sections, and in those sections, their own rules apply. But in the “interfaith” sections, it would be an issue.

The second presenter was from a cemetery that was established in the 1990’s with interfaith couples and families specifically in mind. They have sections of their cemetery that are denoted Conservative, Reform, and “open.” In the Conservative and Reform sections, they follow the respective rules for who is a Jew. In the open section, they’ll bury interfaith couples–and sell lots to interfaith couples who want to buy them for their children. I’ve been to that cemetery–in fact, I own “property” there–and the different sections look the same; if you don’t know which section is which, you can’t tell by just looking.

These issues are only going to increase as there are more and more interfaith couples who are ageing. One of the things we’re going to do with InterfaithFamily.com’s Connections In Your Area system is start to list Jewish cemeteries where interfaith couples can be buried together, and Jewish funeral homes that will work with interfaith couples. Stay tuned for that.

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

Intermarriage Does Not Equal Assimilation

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Binyamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel’s Likkud party, was reported in an article in the Jerusalem Post to have said that there is no future for Jewish life outside of Israel because of “assimilation and intermarriage.” Netanyahu clarifies that he didn’t say that; what he says he said was that there is no future for Jewish life in the Diaspora without the state of Israel. But he still says “we have lost countless Jews in the Diaspora to assimilation and intermarriage.”

It is a terrible mistake for Jewish leaders like Netanyahu to equate assimilation and intermarriage, for reasons which I tried to explain–succinctly–in this letter to the editor of the Jerusalem Post:

Binyamin Netanyahu is wrong to equate assimilation and intermarriage. It is correct to say that many Jews have been lost in the Diaspora because of assimilation, which means giving up participation and engagement in Jewish life. But many intermarried families in North America are not assimilated–they are actively participating and enaging in Jewish life, and enriching the Jewish community.

It is very important that Jewish leaders not demean intermarriage. In San Francisco’s latest demographic study, more interfaith families were found to raise their children as Jews than nationally; the author of the study concluded that it was because of welcoming outreach attitudes and programs. I expect that the results of Boston’s demographic study, coming soon, will show the same. But intermarried families will not willingly enter the Jewish community if they hear intermarriage disparaged as a negative loss by leaders like Netanyahu.

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

Why Jewish Life?

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My Yom Kippur experience was especially meaningful this year–I hope yours was too. It’s a wonderful opportunity to reflect on and evaluate my life, and consider what I can do better. I feel I have an entire clean slate of a New Year to fill, and the prospect is very exciting.

I think my main motivation in founding InterfaithFamily.com, Inc. was my belief, based on my own experience and that of many friends, that participating in Jewish life can be a great source of meaning and fulfillment, not just for Jews, but in particular for interfaith couples. The Yom Kippur opportunity to reflect and evaluate is one example of that. Coincidentally or not, a wonderful article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is another great example.
So the Torah is a Parenting Guide by Emily Bazelon tells the story of Wendy Mogel, a child psychologist who wrote a book, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children. As the book’s title indicates, Mogel finds relevance in ancient Jewish texts to the most current of issues, in her case, raising children in our modern world. The book has become something of a best-seller–and not just to Jewish parents.

For many years I was privileged to take an early morning Talmud class taught by a wonderful Orthodox rabbi, Reuven Cohn. I was repeatedly struck then by the relevance of Jewish texts to modern issues. When I went back to school as part of my career change, I wrote a paper for Robert Reich’s class on social policy that applied lessons from the Talmud tractate on Pe’ah (about leaving the corners of the fields for the poor to harvest) to current welfare policy.

I have often felt that the Jewish community does not do nearly a good enough job in “marketing” the appealing aspects of Jewish life, again, not just to Jewish couples, but in particular to interfaith couples. Doing a better job of that continues to be one of InterfaithFamily.com’s most important goals, as this bright New Year begins.

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

Interdating

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Susan Jacobs has an article on interdating in today’s issue of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. She treats the issue sensitively, although the general impression left by the article, that it is possible for parents to effectively discourage their children from interdating (and intermarrying), is not realistic, in my view.

I’ve explained my own views on this subject in How to Talk to Your Kids about Interfaith Dating: For Those Married to Jews or in Interfaith Marriages.

Because the Pittsburgh article did not express my views fully, I wrote the following letter to the editor:

Susan Jacobs treated the issue of parents talking to their children about interdating with great sensitivity (“Parents face challenges in urging kids to date Jewish,” September 27). I would like to clarify several points on which she quotes me.

InterfaithFamily.com was formed to encourage interfaith couples to raise their children as Jews. We are a resource for couples who have already made that decision, and we also try to reach and attract those who are “on the fence,” or would otherwise “do both” or give their children no religion.

The way that parents talk about interdating is very important. Contratry to the implication in the article, I would never say to a young adult, “you will have a greater chance of finding meaning and fulfillment if you marry Jewish.” I recommend that parents say the following to their children: “We find participating in Jewish life to be a source of meaning and fulfillment in our lives. We hope you will want to have a Jewish life yourself for that reason. You will have a much greater chance of having a Jewish life if you marry someone who is Jewish. Just as a matter of statistics, only a third of interfaith couples raise their children as Jews.”

More important, parents can encourage their children to date other Jews without demeaning intermarriage. It is unnecessary, and counter-productive, for parents to say “you should only date Jews, because you should only marry a Jew, because intermarriage is wrong and bad.” Counter-productive, because the reality is that half of the children are likely to intermarry despite what their parents say, and if that half absorbs a message from the Jewish community that their marriage is wrong and bad, they are unlikely to want to enage in Jewish life.

In my opinion, the critically important goal, given the reality of intermarriage, is to maximize the number of interfaith couples who raise their children as Jews. I try to assess any issue — how to talk about interdating, conversion, rabbinic officiation — by that standard. Ms. Jacobs quotes me as saying that it’s possible but not easy to raise Jewish children in an interfaith household. It’s much more than just possible — it happens very successfully, in many, many instances, and the Jewish community needs to do what it can to have it occur more often.

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

Conversion Again

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As the Jewish New Year starts, the issue of promoting conversion is prominent once again. As we noted in last Friday’s post, Rachel Zoll, an excellent AP religion writer, wrote a problematic article about Jews encouraging conversion.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last two days writing letters to the editor of every newspaper that I think published Rachel’s article. It’s an eclectic list, ranging from major papers in major media markets like the Washington Times, the Miami Herald, the New York Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times, to much smaller cities, like Jackson Hole WY, Lincoln NE, Daytona Beach, El Paso, Portsmouth NH, and many in between.

Why bother? Because I’m very concerned about the reactions interfaith couples will have to the story.

Late last year, when the secular press publicized new efforts by the Reform and Conservative movements to encourage conversion, we heard about several couples that were very upset to think they would be pressured to convert. In one instance, the non-Jewish spouse was approached at work by her non-Jewish boss, who said to her, “I hear the the synagogues want people like you to convert.” The instances we heard about involved couples that had thoughtfully and carefully worked out that they would raise their future children as Jews. Anticipating pressure to convert was a setback to their plans. What are they going to think when they see another article — right before Rosh Hashanah, to boot — with a title like “Jews embrace conversion”?

So my letters to the editor are part of InterfaithFamily.com’s advocacy efforts to move the Jewish community to be more welcoming to interfaith families. I know that letters to the editor aren’t nearly as effective as the original articles, but they are the least we can do to try to get a message to those interfaith couples we’re concerned about that there are significant parts of the Jewish community that are much more interested in welcoming them as they are, and much less interested in pushing conversion.

I don’t know yet whether the letters have been published, except this one, which appeared in the Washington Times:

Rachel Zoll’s article (“Jews encourage conversion,” September 23) overstates Jewish leaders’ advocacy for conversion. At the same time that Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the Reform movement, said that Reform synagogues should not shy away for inviting non-Jewish spouses to convert, he launched an initiative to express gratitude for non-Jewish parents who raise their children as Jews, calling them “heroes of Jewish life.”

Encouraging more interfaith couples to raise their children as Jews is critically important to ensuring Jewish continuity. Rabbi Yoffie’s balanced approach recognizes that that that will happen far more often if the non-Jewish partner is genuinely welcomed and accepted, than if conversion is promoted too aggressively.

Zoll cites a “major” new study by the American Jewish Committee finding that “advocating for conversion works.” But that study, which included interviews of only 37 converts, cited research that focused on young interfaith couples – the most important demographic – and found that they “would be ‘turned off to Judaism’ if they were approached about conversion by clergy or even family friends.”

Conversion to Judaism is a wonderful personal choice. But the Jewish community will shoot itself in the foot if it takes anything other than an unpressured approach toward conversion.

I need to say one other thing about conversion. A few months ago I was at a conference and ran into an excellent reporter for the New York Jewish Week. She greeted me with, “Why are you so against conversion?” She was referring to our most recent essay on the subject, Enough is Enough. I asked her, “didn’t you see in that article where we said that conversion was a wonderful personal choice?” She said “yes, but … why are you so against conversion?”

The issue of how the Jewish community should approach conversion of non-Jewish spouses and partners is a very nuanced one. Unfortunately it is very hard to convey a nuanced message in sound bites. We have always, consistently said, and say again: we are not against conversion. Conversion is a wonderful personal choice. We are delighted is any of the resources provided by InterfaithFamily.com help anyone along the path to conversion. But our number 1 goal is to maximize the number of children who are raised as Jews in interfaith families. We are convinced that that will happen more if interfaith couples and families are welcomed as they are, than if conversion is promoted too aggressively.

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