July 13, 2006

The planned theme of the Renaissance Pillar programming at the GA is “Jewish journeys.” Improving programs at the steps along life’s paths that can reinforce Jewish identity and continuity — Jewish camping, day schools, Israel trips, etc. — will be emphasized. No matter how much we strengthen and improve these very worthwhile initiatives, however, we realistically must anticipate continuing significant rates of intermarriage. Will the Jewish journeys of interfaith families be recognized at the GA? How will the leadership of the community respond to them?

The Jewish Journeys Of Interfaith Families

InterfaithFamily.com — a biweekly Internet magazine — highlights these journeys. Built around a common theme that faces interfaith families, writers who are themselves intermarried describe their own experiences. Rabbis or outreach professionals also provide an “expert” perspective on the issue at hand. Readers are invited to discuss these articles in a “virtual” community with comments and questions posted on bulletin boards. Thousands of readers are reading these articles and discussions every month.

Here is some of what we find about interfaith families today:

They are relieved and grateful to find a place where others similarly situated share their experiences. For example, we often meet, “virtually,” intermarried parents struggling to make their non-Jewish relatives comfortable at Jewish lifecycle ceremonies, and intermarried parents raising their children as Jews who also want to honor their non-Jewish relatives at holiday times. One reader wrote, “It gave me inspiration to know I’m not the only one trying to do this.” Another said, “Just seeing that issues are addressed makes people feel welcomed, that the non-Jewish spouse can participate with the Jewish spouse in his or her faith.”

They are looking for welcoming information — about rituals and lifecycle ceremonies, about conversion, about welcoming rabbis and synagogues. “It’s so hard to find positive interfaith articles/books/information out there.”

They want their children, and themselves, to feel included. “If Judaism is to survive, the children of interfaith marriages must be embraced in the synagogues. If they aren’t, they surely will be in a church.” “I want to participate in the synagogue with my children, and for them to see that I am comfortable and accepted there. How could they really feel wholly Jewish unless the community I’ve chosen for them accepts me, and therefore them?”

They too often experience hostility and rejection from among the Jewish community. “It’s hard to love a Jew and feel such anger and resentment as a result of it.” “I am considering raising my children Jewish . . . [but] I am afraid of how people will treat them because of my religion. This fear is based on my treatment by some Jews . . .”

These comments plainly demonstrate that many interfaith families have a very strong interest in living Jewishly. Many of the non-Jewish partners in interfaith relationships are enthusiastic contributors who want to help create a Jewish home. It is not uncommon to find unconverted non-Jews who are actively involved in their synagogues, even in leadership positions, and raising their children exclusively as Jews, even sending them to Jewish day schools. The non-Jewish partners in these interfaith families enrich the Jewish community.

The Community’s Response

Recently, a Mr. “R.S.” posted this message on InterfaithFamily.com:

“I am a Jew despite being the child of a non-Jewish mother. I formally converted under Conservative auspices shortly before my Bar Mitzvah. I married a non-Jew in a wedding officiated by a justice-of-the-peace since the available rabbi declined, but our wedding had elements of Jewish tradition. My wife and I are raising our children as Jews and have joined a Reform shul. While this may seem hopelessly watered down, assimilated, and invalid in the eyes of some, the fact is that accommodation rather than rejection of intermarriage has led to at least two more generations of my family identifying as Jews, respecting Torah, lighting Shabbat candles, observing our festivals, and having feeling when saying the ‘Sh’ma.'” (emphasis added)

One would think that the community would want to encourage intermarried parents to live Jewishly in this way. Unfortunately, the posting elicited the following hateful response: “As for performing mitzvos with ‘feeling’: You and your family are still not Jewish, so it doesn’t matter if you think you are. Stop lying to yourself and the rest of the Jewish world.” Although extreme, this attitude is not much different from that of the head of a major Jewish foundation, who told me that outreach to the intermarried was not a high priority because “everyone in our family is married to Jews,” or another who said “faithless Jews, why should we care about them.”

The degree to which the Jewish community’s professional and lay leadership is willing to be truly inclusive of interfaith families is still an unanswered question. Few if any federations have followed the Boston CJP’s pioneering funding of outreach programs. Outreach is not a major priority of Jewish foundations. The Conservative movement bars intermarrieds from positions of leadership and the children of non-Jewish mothers from its camps. Even the Reform movement is promoting conversion and the restriction of ritual practices by non-Jews.

InterfaithFamily.com believes:

• that the vitality of the Jewish community in North America in the 21st century depends in significant part on engaging interfaith families, given the common occurrence of intermarriage.
• that the community should do whatever it can to encourage the intermarried to have Jewish families and children.
• that strategies of welcoming and encouragement are effective, while strategies of prevention are alienating and counter-productive.
• that intermarriage should be re-framed as an opportunity for the community to encourage more people to participate in living Jewishly.

Admittedly, too few interfaith families engage in Jewish life. Our readers’ comments suggest some reasons: not knowing that any part of the Jewish community welcomes their involvement; a perceived lack of knowledge about Judaism; rejecting experiences from the Jewish community and family members. If the community wanted to reach out to and encourage interfaith families to become involved with Judaism and Jewish life, there are clear paths to pursue.

Accessible, non-judgmental education about Judaism and Jewish traditions should be made available to interfaith families. The Internet is an ideal introductory medium for reaching and providing these families with engaging information available at their convenience and an initial experience of “virtual” community in a non-threatening environment.

Internet-based communication — “virtual” community building — is only a first step, and must lead to face-to-face participation in local communities if interfaith families are to engage meaningfully in Jewish life. That critical path would be facilitated if every local Jewish community made an organized effort to develop a comprehensive program of outreach (as was done in Seattle in 1997), and if Jewish clergy, communal professionals and lay leaders were trained in how to address sensitively the needs of the interfaith families who take steps into their local communities.

Ultimately, however, these families will become involved in the community depends on whether the community chooses to welcome them. This requires a positive attitude toward inclusion of interfaith families among both individual Jews and the professional and lay leadership of national organizations, including the religious movements, federations, JCC’s, family service agencies, and others. Will the community make the necessary adaptive attitudinal changes required for a genuinely proactive, positive response to intermarriage?

July 2006

This article first appeared in Aufbau, the German-Jewish newspaper, and was reprinted with permission.

“Mixed-marriage households can raise their children as Jews, and the Jewish community should be more open towards them,” says Edmund Case, publisher of InterfaithFamily.com, an online magazine on interfaith issues. Case deals with intermarriage on a daily basis, not only in his job, but also personally: His is an interfaith family, but a Jewish household. Before he started in this job in 1999, Case had worked as a senior partner in a large Boston law firm. In 1997, he left to attend Brandeis University where he got his masters degree in Jewish communal service.

Together with Ronnie Friedland, Case co-edited The Guide to Jewish Interfaith Family Life: An Interfaithfamily.com Handbook (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2001). The articles, written by members of interfaith families, as well as by educators or clergy, discuss issues like dating, weddings, relationships with in-laws and extended family members, raising children, and how to handle holidays and life-cycle events. Aufbau spoke with Edmund Case about the mission of InterfaithFamily.com, Jewish choices and his personal experiences.

Aufbau: Intermarriage is a social reality. According to the newest survey by Egon Mayer et. al., 33 percent of Jews in the U.S. are married to non-Jews. On the other hand, intermarriage is severely criticized by American Jews, especially the official voices of the community. They feel that the only way to preserve Jewish religion and culture is marriage within the faith, or at least conversion. Do you agree with that?

Edmund Case: No, I disagree completely. The mission of InterfaithFamily.com is to promote Jewish life and identity among interfaith families and their children. I think that it is very possible, and that many–although not enough–interfaith families do choose Judaism as the religion of their family and the religion of their children. I think that the North American Jewish community ought to do everything it can to encourage interfaith families to make Jewish choices.

I think that conversion is a wonderful thing, but it is a very personal choice. We don’t feel that conversion is required in order for children to be raised as Jews or for a family to have Judaism as their family’s religious identity. It is a difficult message to convey: We encourage conversion, but, at the same time, we want interfaith families to know that they are welcomed just as they are. I don’t think that we ought to have guards at the gates saying: If you have not converted you cannot come in.

Also, we are all for marriage within the faith. I have two marriage-age children, myself, and I would very much like it, if they married people who are Jewish. But my reason for that is because I hope that they will want to have a Jewish life for themselves, and the chances of having a Jewish life and a Jewish family life are much increased if two Jews marry. What really motivates me and my work is that the percentage of intermarried families who are raising their children as Jews is only about 28 to 30 percent. It is a substantial number, but it is not high enough. My goal is to have more people go that way. I am all for marrying in the faith but I think that can be promoted and encouraged in a way that does not, at the same time, make intermarried people feel badly about themselves or unwelcome.

And that is my criticism of some of the leaders in the Jewish community. They are promoting marriage between two Jewish partners and conversion in a manner which really puts off many interfaith families and discourages them from getting involved.

Aufbau: Which concept of interfaith families do you focus on in your work: On those families in which both faiths are practiced or those families that choose one family religion?

Case: The mission of InterfaithFamily.com is to encourage Jewish choices while respecting the traditions of both members of the family. Some of our readers say: This is not really interfaith, this is really very pro-Jewish. But we don’t hide that at all. We do not, in any way, recommend raising the children in two religions. If people inquire about that, I will say that there are other organizations and other web-sites where they can go, such as Dovetail (which encourages the maintenance of both faiths). We don’t condemn it, it is just not our mission. There is a whole range of behavior in interfaith families. I have one family–very close friends–where the mother is Catholic and goes to Mass every Sunday. And her teenage children are very committed Jews. The family often comes to services with the mother, and she is very involved in our synagogue. But when you ask her what her religion is, there is no question. She would say: I am a practicing Catholic, but my family is Jewish.

My own family is at the other end of the spectrum. If you asked my wife what she is, she would say that she lives “Jewishly,” but that she is not Jewish. She has never formally converted to Judaism, but she basically practices Judaism and does not practice any other religion. For example, she is the co-chairperson of the social action committee of my synagogue. She was raised Episcopalian. And then there is a whole range of behavior in between.

Aufbau: Life-cycle events like baby naming, brit milahs and bat or bat mitzvahs not only touch the core family but also the extended family. How is this handled?

Case: Again, there is a whole range of ways that families deal with this. We have online discussions on our web-site, and we have had many correspondents who describe their own experiences in which extended family members do participate in Jewish life-cycle events and are very happy about it. There are some very heartwarming stories. One couple was getting married and wasn’t sure whether the Jewish grandmother would come to the wedding. But, eventually, she came and danced with her new grandson-in-law, saying: “You are my grandson now.” We have had stories of non-Jewish parents coming to a brit (ceremony) or to a baby-naming and being very supportive of it. On the other hand, we printed a contribution by a grandparent who was unhappy when her grandchild was baptized. She felt that the Christian grandparents were not very sensitive to them. That was a very sad story.

Clearly there are challenges with the extended families. A lot of it depends on personal factors, and a lot of it has to do with education and communication–the way that adult children talk to their parents about what they are doing with their grandchildren.

Aufbau: Every year, many interfaith families also face the so called “December dilemma”: Can an interfaith family celebrate Christmas or have a Christmas tree in their house?

Case: We don’t say there are rules that are appropriate for every family. One of our articles was by a young woman who was not Jewish. During her engagement, she insisted to her Jewish fiancé that she would have to have a Christmas tree. And he insisted that they would not have a Christmas tree. Eventually he said to her: “You know, our relationship is more important than a Christmas tree. If you want to have one, we will have one.” Once he had indicated that the relationship was more important, she lost interest in having a Christmas tree.

We have seen that early on in an interfaith marriage there is often a lot of negotiation. And a lot of people will start off having a tree and end up not having a tree. And a lot of people will start off having some Christmas celebration in their home, and–especially if they decide that they will raise the children as Jews–will become uncomfortable with it eventually and cease to do it.

The question really is: What does participating in a Christmas celebration mean? There was a recent study (sponsored by the American Jewish Committee), which I criticized severely. It stated that intermarried families incorporated substantial Christian elements in their homes, and that this was an ominous development for Jewish identity. It turned out that “the substantial Christian elements” were, in many cases, nothing more than going to a Christmas dinner at the home of non-Jewish relatives. My point was that for many intermarried families, participating in a Christmas or Easter celebration has no religious significance to them. They are only participating in a family time, a social time, and they are not affirming any kind of religious doctrine.

My own example is the following: I go to my in-laws at Christmas and they have a Christmas tree. We exchange gifts at Christmas, and I do not feel like a traitor at all. Early on, when I was first married, I felt very uncomfortable with it. I do not feel uncomfortable with it now. My children–one is 23, one is 19–feel that there is no religious significance to Christmas whatsoever. They do not feel it makes them Christian, they just feel that it is a nice time to be with their grandparents who are not Jewish.

March 2006

In February 2006 the New Jersey Jewish News began a yearlong community dialogue called “The Next Big Think.” Editor Andrew Silow-Carroll wrote that the movements and causes that inspired Jews in the past–Zionism, absorption of Jewish immigrants in America and Israel, the fight against anti-Semitism, the redemption of Jewish captives the world over–had succeeded, and that the big social issues–the role of women and gays in religion, response to the intermarried, Who is a Jew?–had been largely resolved, were nearing resolution or had failed to galvanize large numbers of Jews. He invited Jewish thinkers to identify the “The Next Big Thing” in Jewish life: what issues will define the Jewish agenda and what we will need to address to grow and flourish in this “post-historical era.”

InterfaithFamily.com President Edmund Case wrote an article in inaugural February 9, 2006, issue of “The Next Big Think,” titled “The Next Big Thing is Now: Outreach to the Intermarried.” After the essay appeared, Steven M. Cohen requested that Case retract his statement about Cohen’s views on outreach to the intermarried. Case’s letter was published in the March 30, 2006, issue:

Steven M. Cohen has asked me to retract my attribution of certain views to him. I wrote:

Too many Jewish leaders, like Steven Bayme, Steven M. Cohen, and Jack Wertheimer, … don’t care if aggressively promoting conversion distresses and pushes away non-Jewish partners who are raising Jewish children–not to mention their Jewish partners and in-laws. These Jewish leaders sanctimoniously preach that such families can’t be called “Jewish,” that their homes can’t be called “holy.” Their take-away message: Unconverted non-Jews raising their children as Jews shouldn’t be included in the Jewish community–such people and their Jewish behaviors just aren’t good enough.

In an email to me dated March 14, 2006, Professor Cohen stated that he does not say, and has never said, that intermarried families raising Jewish children cannot be called “Jewish” or that their homes cannot be called “holy.” He stated that I had cast him “as, in effect, a bigot.” He also stated that he is “very proud of my long association with my friends and colleagues, Steven Bayme and Jack Wertheimer,” and he assured me that he had never heard them “express the sorts of views that you attribute to them and to me.”

The basis for the statements in question is “Revisiting and Promoting Conversion” (New York Jewish Week, January 13) by Drs. Bayme and Wertheimer. Decrying the “intemperate responses” to the new efforts to encourage conversion announced by the Reform and Conservative movements, they said: “Others go further, urging that the very term ‘interfaith family’ be changed to ‘Jewish family’ when gentile spouses agree to raise their children as Jews.” I understood that to mean that in their view, interfaith families raising their children as Jews should not or cannot properly be called “Jewish families.” Drs. Bayme and Wertheimer conclude their essay by stating that for intermarried families, “conversion offers the best hope to create ‘wholly’ Jewish homes as well as ‘holy’ Jewish homes.” I understood that to mean that in their view, in-married and conversionary families have “holy” homes, but intermarried families do not.

Although Professor Cohen’s friends and colleagues explicitly or implicitly said that intermarried families who raise their children as Jews cannot call themselves “Jewish families” and do not have “holy” homes, I acknowledged to Professor Cohen that I could not point to any evidence that he himself had made those statements. He requested that I write a letter to the New Jersey Jewish News retracting my attribution to him of those views, and I hereby do so.

As I told Professor Cohen privately, however, I believe that what I said was not unfair to him, given how allied to his friends and colleagues he stands on issues relating to intermarriage. Moreover, I invited Professor Cohen, a most formidable writer and debater, to himself write a letter to the editor of the New Jersey Jewish News, distancing himself from the views of his friends and colleagues; he chose not to do so.

What is important in this discussion is the message that interfaith families get from the Jewish community. In a recent paper, “Engaging the Next Generation of American Jews,” Professor Cohen suggests that the community has been very welcoming to the intermarried for fifteen years. But it is the polar opposite of welcoming when eminent Jewish leaders suggest to intermarried couples raising Jewish children that their families are not “Jewish,” nor their homes “holy.”

In his first email to me, Professor Cohen said that my position and actions are “counter to the best interests of the Jewish People and its future.” I do not presume to speak for the Jewish People, but I suggest that instead of insisting that I be more careful with attribution, Professor Cohen’s considerable talents would be far better spent persuading his friends and colleagues to be more careful not to express views that he himself characterizes as “bigoted.”

Steven M. Cohen’s response: Letter to the Editor of New Jersey Jewish News, Responding to Edmund Case:

To the editor,

For the record, and contrary to assertions made in a recent column by Mr. Case, I have never said, nor have I ever held the view, that intermarried families are not Jewish families. Nor have I ever said, nor have I ever held the view, that intermarried families are not holy.

My views on intermarriage can be summed up as follows:

I am deeply concerned that only 12% of the grandchildren of intermarried families identify as Jews. I am pained and worried that only about a third of intermarried families are raising their children as Jews. I am also anguished that intermarried families exhibit very low rates of affiliation with synagogues, or ritual practice at home, or patterns of involvement in organized Jewry. I wish that intermarried families were more active in Jewish life, and that they would all decide to raise their children and grandchildren as committed Jews.

Moreover, as a matter of principle, I believe that Jews should marry Jews, and that Judaism teaches that Jews should marry Jews. A Jew is anyone born or raised Jewish, or who converts to Judaism. The marriage of a Jew to a Jew-by-choice is an in-marriage and NOT an intermarriage.

We have a rich and wonderful culture, religion, community, people, and set of values–all of which we can introduce to the non-Jews who have become part of our families by way of marriage. While we should continue to teach that Jews should marry Jews, we should also encourage non-Jews who marry Jews to convert to Judaism. In the event that conversion does not take place, we should welcome into our families and communities the children of Jews and non-Jews, and advocate that they be raised unambiguously in one faith tradition–Judaism.

To be clear, we must welcome intermarried couples and their children into our families, our friendship circles, our synagogues and our community, as I have in my own family and my own life, and we should do all we can to welcome and encourage conversion.

December 2005

Ron Gompertz, founder of Chrismukkah.com, responds to Ed Case

“Nobody’s ever tried the peace thing. We are selling it like soap.” – John Lennon, 1969

Last year, Edmund Case wrote an editorial in InterfaithFamily.com headlined “Chrismukkah is a Bad Idea.” In his commentary, Case wrote, “The concept of a holiday that combines Hanukkah and Christmas is meant to be light-hearted. But below the humorous surface are serious issues of integrity and respect.”

I am the founder of Chrismukkah.com, the guy behind the bad idea. In most respects, I agree with Mr. Case. Indeed, just below the surface of Chrismukkah are some serious and troubling issues. However, for these very reasons, I believe that Chrismukkah is a good idea.

Clearly, Christmas and Hanukkah are totally different holidays. Even a Hebrew school dropout like me knows that Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus while Hanukkah commemorates the Maccabees’ triumphant victory against religious oppression. Other than calendar proximity, the two holidays have little “meaning” in common.

However, some, including Mr. Case, seem to have misinterpreted the true meaning of Chrismukkah. Chrismukkah is not intended to replace either Hanukkah or Christmas. Chrismukkah does not aim to diminish or make light of the religious significance of either holiday. It does not try to syncretize Christianity and Judaism. Truth be told, Chrismukkah is not even a holiday… not literally. It’s more a metaphor.

Like so many other start-ups, Chrismukkah.com began on our kitchen table. Two years ago, as newlyweds with a six-month old in the crib, my wife and I sent out hand-made “Happy Chrismukkah” greetings to friends and family. We were inspired by a satiric holiday portrayed in a trendy TV show and we wanted to make light of our new interfaith family. After getting positive reviews from recipients, we decided it might be fun to turn our faux holiday cards into a real-life product. The line between parody and reality blurred.

As a fledgling business, we hoped our cards and gift items would appeal to others in our same multi-faith boat. We wanted to solve an annual dilemma: what non-boring holiday greetings could one send to interfaith families or mixed-faith individuals? Only after we started receiving national media attention, some flattering, some critical, did we realize how subversive the Chrismukkah concept really was. Chrismukkah discussions appeared on countless blog sites and chat rooms. Some wrote to say just the name itself was offensive. When right-wing conservative pundits began issuing press releases denouncing Chrismukkah, we knew we had hit a nerve. We were fully aware that strictly theologically speaking, Chrismukkah was nonsense. But, with the frightening rise of religious fundamentalism in America and around the world, the notion of different religions celebrating in harmony seemed to be noble and idealistic.

One thing was clear. Were it not for the millions of families who already celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah under the same roof, Chrismukkah would not exist. For those of us who do, Chrismukkah is a befitting name to describe the hectic, sometimes stressful, often contradictory, yet generally wonderful time of year when we do our best to balance our mish-mash of traditions and obligations.

Rather than calling Chrismukkah a holiday, we began to think of it as a state of mind and a mirthful mythology in which we intermarried couples could conspire. Like an exhausted Santa Claus and Hanukkah Harry sitting down together to share a meal of latkes and eggnog after a long night’s schlep, Chrismukkah exists in our collective wishful thinking.

So how does one celebrate Chrismukkah? Any way you choose! There are no rules. There is no dogma. It’s completely customizable to the particular needs of each celebrant. Take your favorite secular parts from Christmas and Hanukkah… the food, the lights, the snowmen, the songs… then mush them all together, being careful to leave the religious parts alone. Go ahead, spin the dreidel under the mistletoe without gelt… ummm, guilt.

In my own family, we celebrate Chrismukkah with a dollop of curiosity and a sprinkle of self-deprecating humor. We found that by celebrating our new one-size-fits-all “holiday,” the playing field was leveled. Chrismukkah added a bit of levity to our own December dilemma. You see, in most ways we’re fairly typical, but in other ways we’re not.

Michelle’s father is a career pastor with the progressive denomination United Church of Christ. He marched on Washington with Martin Luther King in the early 60s and to this day remains a social activist. Michelle’s sister was born in Korea and adopted at the age of three. She and her husband, who is from India, have three children. Michelle’s brother and his half-Japanese wife have two kids. Michelle has traveled extensively around the world, spending much time in the emerging countries of Asia. Perhaps as a result, she leans towards the teachings of the Dalai Lama and Buddhism. Family gatherings are always interesting. My mother grew up in Germany during the 1930s. My grandmother’s parents, the Cohens, fled to Israel (then still Palestine) after Hitler came to power. My grandmother decided to stay in Germany with her husband, a Lutheran who was confident the Nazis were all talk and the trouble would blow over. A few years later, my mother was expelled from school because she was a “mischling”–a Jewish mutt. She lived through horrors I cannot imagine, but because her father was not Jewish, she was not sent to a concentration camp. After the war, my mother came to America.

Violence from religious fanaticism book-ended my father’s life. He grew up in a prominent Jewish family in the north of Germany. By 1938, things had become very difficult. In November, the Hitler Yugen destroyed their home and business on KristallNacht. They managed to get out just in time, losing everything except their lives. Eventually finding their way to America, my grandfather became a leader in the New York German-Jewish community. He co-founded the synagogue where I was later Bar Mitzvahed. For my father though, the traumas of his boyhood in Germany always haunted him.

Sixty-three years after KristallNacht, burning debris from the collapsing World Trade Centers rained down on my father’s building, shattering windows and setting it afire. He was stranded and missing for two days in his smoke-filled thirty-first floor apartment. He died two years later, never having recovered from the shock. He was a grandfather for less than a year. These milestone events were very much on my mind when we launched Chrismukkah.

Throughout my life, I have known the burdens and responsibilities I carry as a Jew. I am proud of my heritage. I am aware of community concerns about our zero population growth, the high incidence of intermarriage and what this could mean for Jewish continuity. Yet, when I met and fell in love with Michelle, her family’s religion was not an issue for me, nor mine to her.

Despite the role Chrismukkah has played in our lives, Michelle continues to celebrate Christmas and I Hanukkah just as we had before we married. I light the menorah and she the tree.

Like most interfaith couples, we enjoy sharing our rituals. After Thanksgiving, we go as a family to the Christmas tree farm to select the perfect conifer. Michelle loves sifting through her box of vintage heirloom ornaments, now together with our daughter, whom we have decided to raise as a Jew. Together we decorate the tree.

Over the years, Michelle has learned to pronounce “Baruch ata Adonai” with reasonable credibility. We look forward to the annual Hanukkah party at Temple Beth Shalom, spending time with fellow members, many of whom are also intermarried. Then we fly to Indiana to spend Christmas week with Michelle’s parents and siblings. I go with them to Christmas Eve candlelight service, always feeling a little awkward and self-conscious, yet enjoying the music and dare I say… feeling just a wee bit joyous.

Chrismukkah is not for everyone. If you’re married to someone of the same faith, it serves no purpose. Yet for people who fell in love with someone even though they were a little bit different from themselves, Chrismukkah might be just the thing. Chrismukkah celebrates free-thinking, non-conformity, open-mindedness, and the embracing of diversity. It’s a way to break down barriers that separate us. It’s a small act of defiance, a protest in a world where religious intolerance and killing continue to dominate the headlines. Most importantly, Chrismukkah celebrates what we have in common rather than what makes us different.

Yes, maybe it’s old-fashioned and naïve to think such thoughts, but then, I don’t think we’re alone.

Merry Mazel Tov to all and to all a good night!

“Imagine there’s no countries,
It isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you’ll join us,
And the world will live as one.” *

* Lyrics by John Lennon

Ed Case’s response: I Still Say ‘Chrismukkah’ is a Bad Idea

In December 2004 I wrote “Chrismukkah” is a Bad Idea for InterfaithFamily.com. This year, we invited Ron Gompertz, founder of Chrismukkah.com, to explain what “Chrismukkah” means to him and what he’s trying to accomplish with his business.

I’m sure Mr. Gompertz has good intentions. I’m glad that he continues to celebrate Hanukkah while his wife celebrates Christmas as before, that they share their rituals, and that they are raising their daughter as a Jew. But I don’t think he’s clear on what “Chrismukkah” is, or on what it adds to their lives.

At one point, Mr. Gompertz says “Chrismukkah” is a “time of year,” at another, “not a holiday.” I have less trouble with “Chrismukkah” as a season than as a holiday–but that’s exactly what the problem is, because at other points Mr. Gompertz does describe it as “our new one-size-fits-all ‘holiday’.” He adds: “Take your favorite secular parts from Christmas and Hanukkah… the food, the lights, the snowmen, the songs… then mush them all together,…” Once he ritualizes “Chrismukkah” in that way, giving it particular customs and family meanings, he has created another, competing holiday, whether he intended to or not.

I still think that “Chrismukkah” is a bad idea, for the same two reasons as last year. First, Hanukkah and Christmas are different holidays, each with a history and distinct traditions. Combining them eliminates the integrity of each.

Second, and more important, for interfaith families raising their children as Jews, it’s important to honor and respect the ethnic, cultural and religious traditions of both parents. But “Chrismukkah,” because it mushes distinct traditions together, can only confuse children being raised with one religious identity in an interfaith family.

In our second annual December Dilemma Survey, 57% of the respondents had heard of “Chrismukkah.” Seventy-eight percent said they thought it was a bad idea, for the same two reasons–losing the meaning of each holiday, and confusing children–and a third–that it combines the holidays for commercial reasons. Respondents used the following terms: “taints,” “undermines,” “waters down,” “lowers,” “cheapens,” “dilutes,” “trivializes,” and “offensive.” Here are some verbatim comments from the survey respondents:

The holidays are distinct in their meaning and history. To blend them dishonors both. We try to honor both traditions in our family, while raising our children Jewish. To blend the two makes it impossible to truly understand and appreciate what the holidays mean. It further secularizes the holidays because after eviscerating their meaning, commercialization is all that is left.

The fact that we are in interfaith relationships does not mean that we have an interfaith religion. Our religions are still two separate, individual traditions that should be honored as such. Celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah is one thing, but pretending they are the same holiday is another.

Religious diversity isn’t about blending traditions; it’s about recognizing and honoring different traditions in their own unique ways.

You can’t blend them like we combined Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays into Presidents’ Day. It insults both traditions.

Combining holidays commercializes even more and makes it just a trendy shopping gimmick.

It confuses children. I think they need to be given one clear and consistent message about which holiday is which, and why each is important in its own right. Mixing the two diminishes the meaning for both.

Who wants fruit salad when either the apples or the oranges are perfectly delicious by themselves?

So, I’m sorry, Mr. Gompertz, but I’m not persuaded. I still say “Chrismukkah” is a bad idea.

January 2005

I was intermarried for thirty years, until my wife converted to Judaism in October 2004. Both of our children, now twenty-six and twenty-two, have strong Jewish identities, but from the way we marked their births, it might not have looked like that would be the likely result.

When Emily was born, my wife and I had agreed that she would be Jewish, but I don’t think it even occurred to me to give her a Hebrew name. At that time, I don’t think that naming ceremonies were at all common for girls, but even if they were, it didn’t occur to me to have one for her. I vividly remember calling my parents to tell of the arrival of their first grandchild–they were thrilled, and immediately came to see her in the hospital. I knew it was a Jewish tradition to name a child after a deceased relative, and we hadn’t done that, and I thought that my parents were disappointed when I told them that her middle name was going to be her mother’s (very English-sounding) maiden name. But they, very wisely I think, didn’t push the subject of giving her a Hebrew name. Although they very much wanted her to be Jewish, they must have been aware, consciously or not, that it wasn’t a good time to push.

At some point that I can’t remember exactly, I think when she was three or four, Emily did get a Hebrew name. We were at a fair of some sort at the Children’s Museum in Boston, and one of the activities was getting your name written in calligraphied Hebrew letters. Emily said her English name, and the attendant looked in a book and found that that name meant “industrious,” and looked in another book and found that the Hebrew name that means “industrious” is “Tirzah,” so that became her Hebrew name.

When my son was born, I remember thinking that his Hebrew name would be the same as his English name, Adam. This time my wife and I had decided to use a middle name that started with the same letter as the name of my father’s mother, so we at least followed that tradition. But although I knew that it was traditional for a boy to have a brit, a ceremonial circumcision, it didn’t occur to me do so for Adam, and my parents didn’t raise the issue. He was circumcised by an Arabic-looking doctor while I watched from behind a thick glass window. I remember feeling vaguely uncomfortable, and saying a silent prayer that this would be a sign that he was a Jew.

By the time Emily started school, my wife and I knew that we wanted her to have a Jewish education, and she started a Sunday program, first at a local university, and then at our Reform synagogue. Nothing in particular happened at that time, or caused any major change in my or my wife’s thinking, as far as I can recall. We had always agreed that Emily would be Jewish, and getting to school age presented a clear point at which we would put that decision into effect. Fortunately, we didn’t have any disagreement on the issue; my wife thought it was important for our children to have a religion and didn’t propose any religion other than Judaism.

By the time Emily was about ten, and Adam was six, we had become active in our Reform synagogue. The kids had started religious school, and the question had come up whether they had Hebrew names. We were also looking ahead to Emily’s Bat Mitzvah, for which she would need a Hebrew name. We decided that we should formalize our impromptu choices of “Tirzah” and “Adam,” so our rabbi came to our house and we had a private naming ceremony, complete with an official certificate.

I’m glad my children eventually got Hebrew names, but looking back, I don’t think I would have done anything differently. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me now, it must not have seemed right to me to want such a ceremony when they were born. It may have to do with the dynamics of my relationship with my wife and her family–maybe I felt that pushing the children’s religious identity from the moment of birth might be counter-productive, leading to negative feelings from them. Maybe I unconsciously felt that we needed to learn to trust each other as parents together for a while before addressing the religious identity issue. My feeling that a naming ceremony isn’t essential to making a person a Jew, and doesn’t have the significance of a baptism, probably played a role as well.

In any event, I don’t feel that my children missed out on anything essential by not having a naming ceremony when they were born–which after all is more for the family and friends than it is for the baby. In fact, for us, I think it was better that the official naming came much later, when the kids could be aware of what was happening, and they were already clearly on the road of their Jewish education. I do think that naming ceremonies are very nice, and if intermarried parents can agree to have one, they’re a great way to mark the start of a Jewish life. But my own experience shows that for some intermarried families, having a naming ceremony isn’t that important, and not having one does not indicate that the children will not be raised as Jews. There are many different pathways that can lead to that result.

December 2004

Sorry to be a “grinch” or a “scrooge,” but “Chrismukkah” is a bad idea.

First depicted last December on the hit Fox TV show “The O.C.,” picked up by entrepreneurs selling “Chrismukkah” greeting cards, and featured again on “The O.C.” last week, “Chrismukkah” has been all the rage this December, with media coverage in USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, NPR and TV morning talk shows.

The concept of a holiday that combines Hanukkah and Christmas is meant to be light-hearted. But below the humorous surface are serious issues of integrity and respect.

Hanukkah and Christmas are different holidays. Ironically, Hanukkah commemorates the Jewish people’s fight to maintain its religious traditions in the face of an oppressive majority. Christmas, of course, remembers the birth of Jesus.

Over time, holidays take on additional and different meanings. Gift giving became part of Hanukkah celebrations in this country largely in competition with Christmas. For some, Christmas is more important as a family-centered celebration of values than for any religious significance. But each holiday has a long history and distinct traditions. Combining them undermines and obliterates the integrity of each.

Jews in the United States enjoy the great good fortune of living in a majority culture that, instead of oppressing religious and ethnic minorities, values multi-culturalism. But multi-culturalism by definition means respecting and celebrating distinct traditions–not blending them together.

“Chrismukkah” will never displace Christmas as a national holiday. From a Christian perspective, “Chrismukkah” may not appear to be problematic.

But for those who care about maintaining Jewish traditions, it is. And for Jewish-Christian interfaith couples and families, it’s even more of an issue.

There are only 5.2 million Jews in the United States today. Almost half of Jews who marry today are marrying people who are not Jewish. Of intermarried couples, only 33% say they are raising their children as Jews, and for those who care about maintaining Jewish traditions, it’s extremely important to support those couples and increase their number.

Most interfaith couples who decide to raise their children in one religion realize that they cannot do so without honoring and respecting the ethnic and religious traditions of both parents. In the recent December Dilemma Survey by InterfaithFamily.com, where 80% of the respondents were raising their children as Jews, 80% participated in both Hanukkah and Christmas celebrations, and 53% had a Christmas tree in their home. These couples resolve potential conflicts by treating Hanukkah, but not Christmas, as a religious holiday–75% of the survey respondents reported that their Christmas celebrations were more secular than religious.

Many survey respondents reported that their children’s Jewish identity was not weakened by their participation in Christmas celebrations, but in fact was strengthened. One said, “we have tried to teach our son respect for others’ holidays and traditions, while maintaining our own Jewish traditions, not as superior to anyone else’s, but rather our own, and therefore special to us.”

In contrast, “Chrismukkah,” as the antithesis of maintaining special traditions, could only confuse children being raised with one religious identity in an interfaith family.

Most importantly, more than two-thirds of the survey respondents said they kept their celebrations separate, instead of blending them. For interfaith couples raising their children with one religious identity, honoring and respecting the distinctive nature of the holidays is the way to go–not mushing them into one.