I’m afraid that the Jewish world is about to blow it again with interfaith couples and families, as happened just two months ago with negative reactions to the wedding of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky. This time, it’s about Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook. Apparently the soon-to-be-released movie, The Social Network, written by Aaron
Conversion for Children at Mayyim Hayyim
Our friends at Mayyim Hayyim have produced a wonderful video of the conversion of an infant. The film was made by a terrific film maker, Jennifer Kaplan. We’ve added it to our Conversion Resource Page; you can watch the video on our site. Please check out my comments on the video on Mayyim Hayyim’s new
I Want To Be Your Jewish Community Hero — But It Is Not Personal
Love and Religion: An Online Discussion Group for Couples
It’s no secret that, on top of all of the usual issues that come up in relationships, interfaith couples have the extra joy/challenge of navigating additional conversations about identity, heritage, culture, religion, and more. We have many sections of articles dealing with these very topics. These discussions can feel, at times, overwhelming; some couples choose
Question: Can Jews Encourage In-Marriage AND Welcome Interfaith Families
A proposal I made for a workshop at the annual convention of the Jewish Federations of North America has been accepted. In November, I will be speaking before an audience of important Jewish leaders on this question: Can We Encourage In-Marriage and Welcome Interfaith Families? The session will involve presentations by me and my ideological
A New Year of Creative Ferment
Summer ended this weekend and I was thinking it would be nice to ease into the Jewish New Year, spend some time quietly introspecting on the past year and what’s to come. Instead all signs are for a year of creative ferment in attitudes in the intermarriage world, started perhaps by my August op-ed in
Turf Wars
I have long felt that JCC’s are a prime location for welcoming interfaith families and engaging them in Jewish life. Unfortunately, with some exceptions, most notably the Pathways program at the Atlanta JCC, most JCC’s do not offer programming aimed specifically for people in interfaith relationships. I was reminded of all of this by a
Jewish Behaviors
When Micah Sachs was InterfaithFamily.com’s managing editor and blogger extraordinaire, he would every once in a while post a “Link Sink” with interesting but not necessarily thematically related links. I’ve been away some and not blogging regularly, so I thought I might revive that practice. But it didn’t turn out that way. Anita Diamant, a
InterfaithFamily Welcomes Karen Kushner!
The Board and staff of InterfaithFamily.com are thrilled that Karen Kushner has joined us as Chief Education Officer. We are establishing a presence on the West Coast, with Karen in San Francisco, and want to extend a big and warm welcome to her and tell you about our exciting plans. This development has been a
There Is Still Work To Be Done on Welcoming Interfaith Families
I’ve blogged previously on a recent report in the Forward that Steven M. Cohen had found, in a study for the Foundation for Jewish Camp, that most interfaith couples feel like that have an open invitation to be part of Jewish life, that outreach “has been misguided by focusing simply on being welcoming” and that