Enough Is Enough

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April 2007 (with Micah Sachs)

One of the most uplifting parts of the Passover seder is when we sing “Dayenu.”

Each verse speaks to a different gift that God gave the Jewish people, followed by the celebratory chorus “Dayenu”–“it would have been enough.” If God had only allowed us to leave Egypt, goes the first verse, it would have been enough. If God had only given us Shabbat, goes another verse, it would have been enough. If God had only given us Torah, goes the last verse, it would have been enough.

Recently, interfaith couples have been getting a message from the Jewish community that raising Jewish children–by participating in Passover seders and other Jewish activities–is not enough. Instead, they’re hearing that only the conversion of the non-Jewish partner to Judaism will do. Now, following a new study on conversion sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, some Jewish leaders are suggesting that even conversion isn’t enough.

In a JTA article on the study, Steven Bayme, the AJC’s director of contemporary Jewish life, says, “We should not see conversion as the end of the story? what we’re really aiming for is converts who enrich the Jewish community through Jewish activism.”

Which begs the question: when is enough enough?

Conversion of non-Jewish spouses of Jews has stepped to the forefront of the organized Jewish community’s agenda in the past year. Each of the three major Jewish movements–Reform, Conservative and Orthodox–has looked at its approach to conversion. Each has in some way modified its stance. Both the Conservative and Orthodox movements have become slightly more welcoming to non-Jewish partners interested in conversion. That is a good thing.

But Reform synagogues are home to the greatest number of interfaith families, so the Reform movement’s stance is most relevant.

In November, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of the movement, gave a remarkable sermon on non-Jewish spouses and conversion at the movement’s biennial convention. First, he called non-Jewish partners who commit to raise their children Jewish “heroes” and said they deserve celebration and gratitude. Second, he called for Reform temples to do more than just celebrate and thank non-Jewish spouses; he said they should “ask, but? not pressure; encourage, but? not insist” that non-Jewish spouses convert to Judaism.

Taken on its own, Rabbi Yoffie’s idea of the “soft sell” on conversion is a worthy approach. Unfortunately, in the Reform movement’s own publicity about the speech, and especially in the major media’s coverage, the notion of gratitude was almost completely lost. A New York Times article from February 12 was titled “Reform Jews Hope to Unmix Mixed Marriages” and focused exclusively on the call for conversion. We’ve heard of more than one story from non-Jewish partners in interfaith couples who had carefully negotiated a decision to create a Jewish home and now fear being pressured to convert.

To make matters worse, the American Jewish Committee just released a study by Sylvia Barack Fishman called “Choosing Jewish: Conversations About Conversion.” Fishman interviewed 94 people in interfaith or conversionary relationships; only 37 of her subjects were formal converts to Judaism. Instead of seeing converts as “a monolithic group,” Fishman places them on a spectrum of Jewish involvement, from Activist Converts to Accommodating Converts to Ambivalent Converts.

Whatever value this kind of categorization has as sociology, it could be the basis of disastrous policy. Any person who has decided to become Jewish has made a decision to change an essential part of his or her identity. Fishman’s categories, and Bayme’s comments on them, send the message that making that decision is not enough. Converts must not merely be accommodating–and God forbid they be ambivalent–they should be activist (and even better yet, according to Fishman’s loaded typology, they should be Activist “Stars.”) It’s hard enough for converts to change a key part of their heritage–now we must denigrate them for not achieving a standard that few born Jews ever achieve?

In her study Fishman repeatedly calls for rabbis and spouses in interfaith relationships to advocate for conversion. She cites a handful of converts who say they would have appreciated being asked to convert earlier. But when Fishman looks at research on young interfaith couples, she finds they have entirely different attitudes: these younger couples have “strong anti-pressure feelings,” “see pressure to convert as a negative,” and “would be ‘turned off to Judaism’ if they were approached about conversion by clergy or even family friends.”

Let’s be clear: we at InterfaithFamily.com fully support anyone who chooses conversion. We wish them and their families “Mazel tov!” We are delighted if our resources help anyone make this wonderful personal decision. But conversion is not our goal, nor should it be the goal of Jewish outreach. Non-Jewish partners who are participating in Jewish life, and more importantly, raising their children as Jews, should be accepted as they are, not as if they are somehow “damaged goods” because they didn’t happen to have Jewish parents or have decided not to convert. As Reform rabbis and leaders begin to gently encourage conversion, it is essential they continue to offer statements of gratitude and acceptance to non-Jewish spouses who are raising their children as Jews. To those interfaith families raising their children Jewish, we emphatically say “Dayenu”–“it is enough.”

As for Bayme and Fishman and other significant voices in the Jewish community whose antipathy to intermarriage is unmistakable, we have only this to say: Enough is enough.

Don’t Write Off the Intermarried: A Case for Community Outreach

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February 12, 2007 (with Micah Sachs)
With a response from Steven M. Cohen

Charles Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities begins with the famous opening line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Sociologist Steven Cohen’s new study on intermarriage has a similar title, but a different spirit.

Ignoring positive recent evidence from Boston and elsewhere that more intermarried families are raising their children as Jews, Cohen’s “A Tale of Two Jewries: The Inconvenient Truth for American Jews,” sees only the worst of times when it comes to intermarriage.

It is uninformative to compare the Jewish behaviors and attitudes of inmarried couples with all intermarried couples, as Cohen does. Sadly, one-third of intermarried couples are raising their children in another religion. It necessarily follows that intermarried couples, taken as an undifferentiated whole, are less Jewishly engaged than their inmarried counterparts.

Cohen sets up a straw identity chasm between inmarried and all intermarried families, and then knocks down intermarriage as “the greatest single threat to Jewish continuity”–the sound-bite headline for which his paper will be remembered.

What is productive is to compare the Jewish behaviors and attitudes of inmarried couples with those of intermarried couples who are raising their children as Jews. When sociologists Benjamin Phillips and Fern Chertok made that comparison in a 2004 paper titled “Jewish Identity Among the Adult Children of Intermarriage: Event Horizon or Navigable Horizon?” they found greatly reduced gaps.

A child’s Jewish identity is determined not simply by the fact that the parents are intermarried but largely by the environment the family creates, and in particular by their decision to raise the children as Jews. Phillips and Chertok conclude that “Tarring all intermarriages with the same brush” makes the loss of Jewish identity “a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

The logical conclusion for policymakers to draw from an analysis that focuses on “two Jewries” is to write off the intermarried and support only increasing the Jewish engagement of the inmarried. In contrast, the logical conclusion to draw from an analysis showing that intermarried families raising their children as Jews are closer to inmarried families in their Jewish engagement is to support encouraging more interfaith families to raise their children as Jews.

Cohen concludes in “A Tale of Two Jewries” that Jewish education experiences “work.” In that respect he undoubtedly is correct, but measuring their success by the degree to which they reduce intermarriage is a serious mistake. Cohen acknowledges that Jewish education experiences “exert salutary effects even in the event of intermarriage. … [They serve] to further chances of Jewish continuity [including] by increasing the likelihood that the mixed married couple will raise its children exclusively in Judaism.” It would be far wiser to publicize the success of Jewish education experiences on that basis.

The reason is that recruitment–how to promote the use of Jewish education–is the “true challenge,” as Cohen says. But Jewish education can’t be “sold” to the intermarried on the basis that the experiences will reduce the chances that their child will intermarry. “Send your children to our day school/camp/etc. and they won’t succumb to intermarriage, the greatest single threat to Jewish continuity” is not a message that resonates with parents who did intermarry and who are raising their children as Jews. Promoting those experiences on the basis that they increase the chances that the children will make the same Jewish choices as those parents did–that is a message that is credible, open and inviting.

Half of the children who identify as Jews today have one Jewish parent. Transformative Jewish education experiences–day schools, camps, youth movements and Hillel, Israel travel and study, and intensive adult education–could have twice the impact, for little extra investment, if they attracted interfaith families and their children.

The timing of Cohen’s paper is particularly unfortunate because after the recent finding that 60 percent of Boston’s interfaith families are raising their children as Jews, policymakers and funders have a very clear road map to follow to seek comparable results everywhere:

  • Fund the Reform movement’s outreach staff and programming, as the Boston federation does, and foundations do in San Francisco. Every Union for Reform Judaism regional office could have a substantial outreach effort like those cities.
  • Back the efforts of Rabbi Charles Simon’s Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs and its pioneering kiruv work in the Conservative movement.
  • Spur the JCC world to explicitly communicate the message that the JCCs welcome everyone in the Jewish community including interfaith families, and to have at least a part-time professional devoted to offering outreach programs in the JCCs.
  • Support independent outreach organizations.
  • Fund more evaluations of the impact of outreach programs–every one of the few done to date shows increased Jewish engagement after participation.

The Jewish community has an opportunity to make this the best of times concerning intermarriage, not the worst. Seeing intermarried families as a separate, inferior portion of our population, as Cohen does, leads to a dead end; intermarried families, like anyone else, will not affiliate with a group that demeans them and offers little programming to welcome them.

The key to Boston’s successful targeting of interfaith families is not the actual outreach programs; those flowed from a communal choice to adopt a welcoming and inclusive attitude toward interfaith families and to respond to intermarriage positively.

Which shall we be: two Jewries or one?

Steven M. Cohen’s response: Stop Looking at Intermarriage Through Rose-Colored Glasses

Not many years ago, it was taken as axiomatic that intermarriage constitutes a significant threat to Jewish continuity. For individual families, we understood that more often than not, the children of the intermarried would be raised as non-Jews. And since intermarrying Jews have fewer children, and because most of their children won’t identify as Jews, intermarriage implied fewer Jews in the next generation.

The community responded admirably, albeit inadequately, to this challenge. For many good reasons, it expanded funding for day schools and trips to Israel. Synagogues and JCCs became more welcoming and accepting of intermarried families. It supported a variety of “Jewish outreach” efforts aimed at bringing families closer to Jews and Judaism by teaching Jewish practices and values. In contrast, “interfaith outreach” seeks to make all mixed-married couples feel more accepted, even when they choose to celebrate Christian and Jewish holidays in the same household.

Social scientists, myself included, have charted–and implicitly celebrated–the growing and exhilarating diversity of Jewish identities, communities and innovation. Since the early days of American Jewish sociology and its founder, Marshall Sklare, of blessed memory, we have documented the rises, falls and rises of Jewish identity over the life course. Jewish identities today are more varied, fluid and mobile than ever.

But with this said, we need to recognize that as a group, intermarried Jews are far less active in Jewish life–however one measures it–than inmarried Jews. The large gaps cover number of Jewish friends, raising one’s kids as Jews, belonging to synagogues and JCCs, living with Jewish neighbors, attending worship services, celebrating Jewish holidays, giving one’s children a Jewish education, caring about Israel, giving to Jewish causes and their own assessment of the importance of being Jewish.

When we ask intermarried Jews, “how important is being Jewish to you?” as a group they score far lower than inmarried Jews.

Some news from the field has been encouraging. But for every report of an apparent success, we have an overall pattern of, let’s call it “less than success.” Sure the Baltimore Jewish population study reports that 62 percent of children in intermarried homes are being raised as Jews, but the rate in San Diego is 21 percent and apparently less than 40 percent nationwide. Just 15 percent to 20 percent of intermarried couples are synagogue members, as compared with 60 percent of inmarried couples.

While Jewish religious engagement is steady or rising, Jewish connections and “collective identity” trends are clearly declining. While the inmarried are leading more intensive Jewish lives, the intermarried as a group remain much less engaged.

Every time we hear of an intermarried child who maintains an active Jewish life, we must remember that the more Jewishly engaged–people reading this column, for example–raise children with the best chances of maintaining Jewish continuity, even when they out-marry. Thus, some Jewishly engaged parents assume that the wonderful experiences of their Jewishly committed intermarried children must be a sign that we’re “winning the battle.” In reality, most intermarried Jews come from weak Jewish educational backgrounds, often with only one Jewish parent.

Some outreach advocates say intermarriage is a fact, feeding the fatalistic view that there’s nothing that can be done to influence the rate. Yet there’s much that is being done to affect the rate.

Some sociologists claim we can find evidence of high rates of Jewish commitment among the intermarried as a group, if only we measured properly. But on no measures do the intermarried outscore the inmarried.

Some speculate that because Jewish identities are fluid, or because the intermarried have become so numerous, the intermarried as a group may well move toward significant Jewish engagement.

Yet no study shows the gap narrowing. Jewish identities are changing–but the basic import of intermarriage is not. San Francisco, for example, reports that from 1986 to 2004 observance patterns by the inmarried climbed, while those for the intermarried fell, further widening the gap between inmarried and intermarried.

The Steinhardt Foundation/Jewish Life Network published my study, “A Tale of Two Jewries: The Inconvenient Truth for American Jews,” to refute the wishful thinking and false optimism that has grown up around the intermarriage question.

For anybody who’s been reading and writing the scientific analyses over the last few years, there’s nothing new here. It simply reminds us that intermarriage continues to grow in number; that most intermarried couples raise non-Jewish children; and that the children of the intermarried overwhelmingly marry non-Jews.

However, Jewish education–e.g., day schools, youth groups, Jewish camps, Israel trips–lowers intermarriage. So does Jewish association, such as experienced by living in areas with Jewish neighbors, attending universities with large Jewish student bodies, and participating in Jewish cultural events, spiritual communities and social justice activities.

I also highlight the growing conviction that we have to do better at promoting conversion, making conversion the ultimate objective of outreach efforts.

“A Tale of Two Jewries” is an advocacy piece. It was not written for the intermarried, nor as a guide for how to engage with the intermarried. Neither was it written in the cautionary style favored by the academy. It is meant to communicate. It is meant for the Jewish policymaking community–the philanthropists, those who advise them, the federations and other agencies that are making critical funding decisions.

It says intermarriage poses a grave threat to the numbers of communally identifying Jews. But it also says that you can make a difference.

You can invest in Jewish education. You can support growing efforts by Jewish young people in social justice, culture and spiritual communities. You can launch experiments to convert more non-Jews to Judaism, such as by paying for community rabbis dedicated to helping prospective converts embark upon Jewish journeys. You can do all this and more.

Or you can watch the Jewish population start to contract as my generation of baby boomers begins leaving this world for the next, to be replaced–or not–by a numerically much smaller cohort of Jewish descendants. The choice is yours.

“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.