July 2026 News, from 18Doors, Embark, the Conservative Movement, jHUB, and Israel

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18Doors

The biggest news this month: “18Doors Announces New Leadership; New Chapter Focused on Building Belonging for Multi-Heritage Families.” I am beyond pleased that 18Doors will continue, under the leadership of Adam Pollack as Executive Director and Fern Chertok as Board Chair, “refocusing on equipping clergy, professionals and lay leaders with the tools to build communities where multi-heritage individuals, couples and families actually belong, and building the network of partners and funders who can sustain that work long-term.” It’s also great to see new funding from the Leon and Toby Cooperman Family Foundation. I hope all associated with 18Doors have much success!

New Leadership at Embark and Congregation Sukkat Shalom

Mem Global has named Alyssa Craft as the new executive director of Embark, its cohort program that helps interfaith and mixed-heritage couples explore Jewish life together. “Guided by a local rabbi, and alongside a cohort of their peers, Embark couples learn how to bring Jewish learning and traditions into their lives in a way that feels relevant and accessible to them, without any prerequisites or expectations to convert.”

A former Houston Hillel professional and alumna of Moishe House, the child of an interfaith family and part of a mixed-heritage marriage herself, Craft wants “Embark to be a movement as much as a program. One that reaches mixed-heritage couples and families in every community, is embraced by rabbis and clergy across denominations and becomes a cornerstone of Jewish belonging nationwide. The stronger the sense of belonging we create for our partners and families, regardless of their religious affiliation, the stronger our Jewish future will be.”

Rabbi Sam Gordon, the founding rabbi of Congregation Sukkat Shalom in Wilmette, was a pioneer in embracing interfaith families. The Chicago Tribune ran a nice story about the new senior rabbi, Allison Tick Brill, at a congregation “busting at the seams.” Rabbi Brill notes that the  congregation’s president, who is Catholic, and its treasurer, who is Mormon, are “deeply committed to the project of the synagogue.” “It is unusual to have the highest leadership roles [in a congregation be] members of other faiths… we believe that the diversity of opinions and the richness that they bring from other traditions enhances our expression of Judaism and strengthens our tent.”

Conservative Movement

The Rabbinical Assembly has just issued a new teshuvah, “Guiding the Conservative/Masorti Rabbi in Supporting Families with Non-Jewish Loved Ones.” The co-editors of the teshuvah, Rabbis Pamela Barmash and Emily Barton, offer “As Conservative rabbis, we can’t perform interfaith weddings. But we can bless the Jewish families they create,” that explains how “they hope to balance tradition, inclusion and the realities of Jewish life today.”

The new teshuvah follows a December 2025 set of recommendations which we commented on previously. An emailing to Conservative synagogue leaders says,

This teshuvah gives Conservative/Masorti clergy new, sanctioned ways to mark meaningful moments in these families’ lives: a public mi shebeirakh before or after a wedding day, a hanukkat habayit ceremony to dedicate a couple’s home, and a welcome for non-Jewish parents on the bimah at their children’s b’nei mitzvah. It also affirms that a Jew observes full Jewish mourning practices for a non-Jewish parent, spouse, or child, and affirms that intermarried individuals can serve in most synagogue roles other than clergy.

But,

On the wedding day itself, clergy will continue to officiate a wedding ceremony only when both partners are Jewish, though this teshuvah focuses on the many meaningful ways clergy and communities can walk alongside a couple before and after that day.

Rabbis Barmash and Barton say that with the teshuvah, halacha “address[es] issues facing intermarried couples and families robustly” and “seeks to honor these couples and families and their commitment to Jewish life in our congregations and communities.”

As I’ve said many, many times in the past, anything the movement does to help interfaith couples and partners from different faith backgrounds to feel welcomed and included is positive, but respectfully, until halacha advances so as to allow Conservative rabbis to officiate for interfaith couples, those couples and partners won’t feel fully included, or feel belonging in Conservative settings.

At this writing I haven’t had a chance to study the teshuvah itself, and will plan to comment next month.

HUC

The Forward reported on an upswing in HUC and JTS rabbinical school enrollment, with both institutions reporting their largest classes in fifteen years. I was curious and inquired whether any part of the HUC increase could be traced to the change in policy which now allows students who are in interfaith relationships to be admitted; I was told that the school doesn’t ask the question, and thus doesn’t have that data.

The article notes that more than one third of Conservative congregations have closed since 2000, as have one in five Reform synagogues.

Cleveland’s jHUB

I continue to be impressed with Cleveland, where, “as intermarriage has risen,” with more Jewish children raised by interfaith parents, they are “Building Jewish identity through education, family engagement.” One synagogue educator says, “we are creating programs to welcome families that have non-Jewish parents;” “We try to take into account, for those parents who might not have the same background, those differences and we try to be inclusive. We find that families of interfaith children are very excited to learn and we want to make it as positive as we can for them.”  Marlyn Bloch Jaffe, the CEO at the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, says, “Strategically, it is important to offer multiple paths to engagement, because people connect differently,” including “jHUB for interfaith couples and families.”

Remembering Rabbi Kelman

Jweekly published my letter to the editor: “In addition to the many pioneering efforts of Rabbi Stuart Kelman mentioned in Sue Fishkoff’s lovely tribute (“Rabbi Stuart Kelman, Conservative pioneer, 84,” June 3) he was part of the Tiferet Project, a consortium of Conservative rabbis who spent two years studying issues of intermarriage, resulting in a groundbreaking book, “A Place in the Tent: Intermarriage and Conservative Judaism.” The group advocated in the book for making “a genuine place” “for intermarried households within the communal tent” because “by doing so, many Jews who feel there is no place for them or for their Jewish children will come to be a vital part of the Conservative synagogue community and, by extension, the larger Jewish community.”

Smoothing the Path

Smoothing the Path: Strategies for Integrating Newly-Connecting Jews is a fascinating report by Rabbi Julia Appel of Clal. Based on interviews of ten “Jewish seekers” and six Jewish professionals, it asks, when already motivated individuals reach out for a way into Jewish community in Toronto, how institutions could best help them integrate and build a sustainable Jewish life. (Rabbi Appel also wrote about the report for Times of Israel, “We Have the Seekers. Will We Keep Them?”)

The participants included four Jews by Choice, three patrilineal Jews, two matrilineal Jews, and one in the process of converting. Whether any were in interfaith relationships is not noted. Curiously, the only mention of interfaith families is in a recommendation about learning, which notes “a recent uptick in non-Jews wanting to learn more about Judaism as allies,” says the “same basic curriculum would apply to both new seekers and non-Jews with no plans for becoming Jewish,” and then adds, “Additionally, non-Jewish partners of Jews are an interested and invested audience to basic Judaism learning courses.”

But many of the observations about these seekers fit like a glove with respect to interfaith couples and partners from different faith backgrounds, especially this one in the Recommendations section of the report: “Belonging is not simply stated welcome, but actively recognizing people as legitimate members of the Jewish community, especially if they fall outside the commonly assumed Jewish life path.”

Here are other observations that resonated:

  • Low-barrier, nonjudgmental spaces and programs explicitly open to all, regardless of background, were critical starting points. “All interviewees mentioned at some point their fear of “doing it wrong” or their lack of ritual or Hebrew literacy, which discouraged their ongoing engagement.”
  • “When people meet a person and they feel like this person is not judging me and is welcoming me, it makes all the difference. The more personal, human to human contact, the better.”
  • Interviewees “named certain legitimators that made them feel they belonged at a given Jewish event, including being personally invited, knowing someone there, or receiving clear explanations of what to expect.”
  • “Interviewees had to actively determine whether a Jewish community would truly welcome them, rather than merely tolerate their presence.… Patrilineal Jews, Jews of Color, Jews by Choice, LGBTQ individuals, Soviet Jews, or who held other marginalized identities especially could not take their own inclusion for granted.”
  • “[I]nterviewees were not looking for affirmation only of their specific identity. They consistently described gravitating toward Jewish communities explicitly broadcasting acceptance and diversity as core values, which gave interviewees permission to be themselves.” “When spaces were intentionally inclusive of one marginalized group, interviewees across identities understood that those spaces might also include them.”
  • “Having a stated commitment to diversity and pluralism made interviewees feel they could even hold divergent views and still feel that they belonged. At the same time, many noted that feeling they aligned on core values with communal leadership, particularly rabbis, on major issues increased trust and comfort. And seeing other participants who were ‘like them,’ or people they wanted to get to know better, also played a significant role in sustaining engagement. Jewish field practitioners stressed the importance of clarity, noting that ‘people need to know what a space is and who it’s for so they can self-select.’” “Pluralism, clarity of values, and visible diversity allowed seekers to find places where they could bring their full selves, … Communal leadership might … encourage institutions to name both their boundaries and their welcome.”
  • “Interviewees described feeling like they weren’t part of the ‘in-crowd’ of Jewish life, whether because they did not attend Jewish overnight camp, did not grow up in Toronto, did not live in the ‘right’ neighborhood, or did not know the ‘right’ people—like they could never catch up or fully enter the social fabric of Jewish life. Several mentioned ‘Jewish geography’ as something they actually longed for and were trying to give to their children.”
  • “[G]atekeeping – turning people away who are deemed not sufficiently Jewish – [i]s a major problem.” “Finding a community where they met ritual requirements around Jewish status, and therefore could participate fully, was a challenge for those who were not born Jewish according to traditional Jewish law. The assumption of Ashkenazi identity and being born Jewish was frequently named as alienating, even by interviewees who had formally converted. Several patrilineal Jews and converts experienced the casual dismissal of their identity as illegitimate, one even in a Kiddush conversation, which left them feeling like they couldn’t be full members of the community.”
  • “[O]nboarding involves repair, because many adults who are returning to Judaism carry long memories of prior exclusion. Even communities that sincerely aspire to be inclusive can inadvertently cause new injury if past harms are not acknowledged or if insider norms go unexamined. Transparency about communal boundaries can reduce confusion, but it does not eliminate pain, particularly for those who have experienced repeated exclusion. Inclusion will sometimes generate discomfort—especially as assumptions are challenged and insider norms are named. Repair of prior harm cannot be rushed or outsourced.”

News and Opinion from/about Israel

Illustrating the diversity of opinion in Israel, Judah Ari Gross reported for eJewishPhilanthropy that the Jewish Agency for Israel, in “a rare public rebuke of the Israeli government,” criticized two coalition-backed bills that “could undermine Jewish pluralism and weaken the Jewish people.” “One would effectively criminalize egalitarian and women-led prayer at the Western Wall, and the other would reject non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism for the purpose of immigration to Israel.”

Far from the coalition’s position, Nava Anne Grant offers in Ha’arertz, “Patrilineal Jews Like Gwyneth Paltrow Deserve Better From the State of Israel.” Paltrow, a patrilineal Jew married to a Jewish man, had appeared in advertising for real estate in Israel and then criticized for doing so by critics of Israel. Grant writes, “absurdly, according to the outdated standards of Israel’s religious authorities, Jews with Paltrow’s background must often contend with outrageous question marks over their identity and place within the Jewish tribe.”

The ill-treatment of patrilineal Jews is a tragedy. Halakhically, we must make it as easy as possible for people with mixed heritage to formally join the Jewish community. They are some of the Jewish people’s most impassioned supporters. Why would we cast a doubt over their Jewish identity?

Frank interviewed Rabbi Adam Mintz, who runs Project Ruth, an organization “working to make Orthodox conversions more fair and welcoming.” While Jews with patrilineal heritage are not Jewish according to halakha, they have a status called zera Israel – they come from “a Jewish seed.” According to Grant, Rabbi Mintz said that the Jewish community has a history of rabbinical courts which have exercised more leniency toward them, yet the Israeli rabbinate refuses to follow that precedent.

In Other News

  • A story about the revival of the New Orleans Jewish community and Touro Synagogue, a nearly 200-year-old Reform congregation that is “defying institutional decline,” where interfaith families are part of the revival.
  • An interesting essay about “Jewish citizenship” by Joshua Ladon, a senior faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute, who lays out a” comprehensive yet flexible vision for meaningful Jewish participation rooted in shared responsibility while open to multiple pathways and commitments.” I wondered if a partner from a different faith background could be considered a “Jewish citizen” under this framework.
  • A cute story in jweekly about a grandson in an interfaith family who decided at age fifteen that he wanted a b mitzvah and wanted his grandmother to have one with him.
  • A beautiful article in the Salt Lake Tribune about the many conversions to Judaism that are happening there.
  • A long, unfortunate story about children apparently refused admission to a day school in Canada because the standards of their mother’s conversion were not acceptable to the school.

April 2026 News: Will 18Doors Crisis Be Opportunity for Funders To Do the Right Thing?

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A Personal Note

In this newsletter I recap the month’s developments and news related to inclusion of interfaith families in Jewish life.

A lot happened this month, starting with something personal – with a big interfaith family inclusion angle – my granddaughter’s bat mitzvah this month at Mishkan Chicago.

I’m still glowing from the overwhelming joy I felt. My granddaughter is a beautiful person, inside and out. She did a wonderful job that made her loving family very proud.

Tazria Metzora may be the most dreaded b mitzvah Torah portion. It’s about how people with skin afflictions (translated as leprosy) are treated, and the text is pretty gross. My granddaughter declined my offers to help her with her d’var Torah. She decided to speak about how we treat people who are different or other.

You’ll understand how I was so deeply moved when she said, “often people who aren’t Jewish and who are raising kids within the Jewish community feel othered or judged. My mom has supported me in my Jewish upbringing to get me here today. So we need to appreciate everyone in the community and make room for all of us.”

I was also deeply grateful to my daughter-in-law’s supportive family – her Quaker mother, who I overheard proudly presenting my granddaughter with a book about Jewish women, and her sisters, who opened and closed the Ark, and a nephew who was able to attend.

Rabbis Lizzi Heydemann and Steven Philp are models of inclusivity. My son mentioned the Quaker faith when speaking to my granddaughter. I think many rabbis would have cringed at even the mention of a different faith. But R’Lizzi a few minutes later ran towards it, commenting that we were about to say a prayer, the Amidah, which involved an opportunity for silence like what is common in Quaker services.

On the personal, individual level, there is so much reason for hope: interfaith families that find living Jewishly compelling; families from different faith backgrounds who are supportive; rabbis who “get it.”

On the organizational, institutional level this month, not so much reason for hope, sadly.

18Doors and the Funding Community

On April 7 JTA broke the story, “National support group for interfaith Jewish families guts staff amid funding crisis,” that was reprinted widely in the Forward, Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, and Jweekly. 18Doors, the organization I founded as InterfaithFamily, laid off more than two-thirds of its staff due to a funding shortfall.

I have no formal connection to the organization. My understanding is that there are discussions about finding homes in other organizations for some of 18Doors’ programs, and about possibly continuing as a smaller organization focused on field building; at this writing, the future is not clear.

On April 10 eJP published my op-ed, “From crisis to opportunity: Now is the time for a serious effort to engage interfaith families.” I said the news was personally devastating, and a loss to the thousands of interfaith families the organization serves and the many Jewish leaders who benefit from its resources and training.

(Coincidentally, at my granddaughter’s bat mitzvah, Rabbi Heydemann told the congregation that InterfaithFamily had helped to change the climate around interfaith families finding rabbis to officiate at their weddings, and Rabbi Philp told me that his participation in 18Doors’ Rukin Fellowship that trains rabbis to be inclusive was very helpful to him.)

I also wrote that the news was an indictment of the funding community which has never adequately funded efforts to engage interfaith families Jewishly.

I’m proud of the work InterfaithFamily and then 18Doors did over the years. We moved the needle towards more interfaith families being more Jewishly engaged to a degree – but not far enough.

As JTA reported, while the rate of interfaith marriage has increased since 2001, most children from these marriages are being raised Jewish, with participation in synagogues and Jewish institutions common. Two seminaries now admit students in interfaith relationships, and the Conservative movement seeks to be more inclusive. For the most part, Jewish leaders, at least in America, are not railing against interfaith marriage.

But far fewer interfaith than inmarried couples are synagogue members, or provide their children with Jewish education. My recent review of a dozen years of national and local Jewish community studies shows that interfaith families feel much less of a sense of belonging to the Jewish people or their local Jewish communities, and some number of interfaith couples still feel like “outsiders” and “other.” Helping interfaith couples and the partners from different faith backgrounds to feel that sense of belonging, essential to their Jewish engagement, remains the challenge of our time.

At least five federations in their recent community studies have stated that it is essential to engage interfaith families [which] requires a strong investment…. So far, that investment has not been forthcoming. Today, only one community, Cleveland, has a robust local program, jHub, that explicitly serves interfaith families with a broad array of services. Every sizeable community should have a similar program, and they should be networked together with a central national organization that also provides resources and training to professionals and lay leaders who want to be inclusive.

I hope that 18Doors can be or play an important role in the kind of national network that is needed — and that the funding community will take the opportunity presented by 18Doors’ crisis to finally fund a serious effort to engage interfaith families. It’s nearly 20 years overdue, but it’s not too late.

Just today, the Cleveland Jewish News has a story about diversity that in part highlights jHub. It quotes a local Jewish professional and says, “the growth of interfaith families and their participation in Jewish life shows the continued celebration of diversity in the community. That said, challenges come along with that, such as being more welcoming to interfaith families in synagogues or religious spaces…. [That’s a challenge that the legacy organizations and the community have to think about.”

Missed Opportunity 1: The Reform movement

Rabbi Esther Lederman, the new head of the URJ’s new Jewish Life & Leadership department, wrote a very nice essay for eJP, “‘I Will Be What I Will Be’: A Futuring Stance.” At one point she says, “The multiplicity of diverse Jewish identities, from racial and ethnic backgrounds to sexual orientation, gender identities, economic backgrounds and neurodiversity, is astounding and beautiful. It is a future that will be richer for encompassing the lived experiences of a greater number of individuals of diverse backgrounds and unique perspectives.”

This was a missed opportunity, perhaps inadvertent, to mention diverse faith backgrounds – which actually is by far the largest diversity in the American Jewish community, and the Reform community in particular. The leaders of the Reform movement seem to think that interfaith family inclusion is at the center of its work because it was pioneered by the movement, and that they have been successful at it, so they don’t need to talk about or prioritize doing anything about it.

But only 13% of interfaith families belong to synagogues. I wouldn’t be satisfied with that level of success.

MIssed Opportunity 2: PJ Library

Lara Knuettel, chief philanthropy officer of PJ Library, wrote a very nice essay for eJP, “It’s On All of Us To Share the Stories of the Jewish People.” She describes a recent PJ Library event where “children could choose books with characters who reflected a full range of Jewish identities and histories” including books in or including Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino, and showing Shabbat celebrated in different ways, but with no mention of children in interfaith families.

I agree 100% with what Kneuttel says:

[T]he stories we tell shape how our children see themselves, who they become, and how they engage with the world. The stories we elevate signal who belongs, whose voices matter, and how children come to understand both their own identities and those of others…. [S]upporting the stories children have access to is one way to ensure that Jewish life, in all its variety, continues to be celebrated, shared and passed on from generation to generation.

That’s why I wish she had explicitly mentioned children in interfaith families as among those whose stories PJ Library wants to support. Don’t get me wrong: PJ Library is a great organization, and has made efforts to offer books highlighting interfaith families. But my recent review of local Jewish community studies showed that only 28% of eligible interfaith families received PJ Library books compared to 50% of inmarried families. To change that, they need to talk about and market to interfaith families explicitly, like they have for ethnic and gender diversities.

Missed Opportunity 3: Israel

Zvika Klein, the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, wrote there about how Israel should “speak to people who stand close to the Jewish story, sometimes very close, but do not fit neatly into one box.”

Klein says there are almost nine million people who are eligible to move to Israel under the Law of Return (presumably because they have a Jewish grandparent) plus “millions” who “seek some form of connection to the Jewish people and the Jewish state.” He says “Israel needs future citizens, loyal friends, serious allies, informed advocates, students, and fellow travelers” and should “open the door wider” with routes and methods to build attachment with these people: “A country that was built to gather exiles should be better at recognizing the people standing near the edge of the camp, waiting to see whether anyone inside is ready to speak to them.”

Yet another missed opportunity: nothing said about the partners from different faith backgrounds married to Jews. Is it unreasonable to expect “one of the world’s top journalists specializing in Jewish Diaspora affairs,” as the Post describes Klein, to say something explicit about that very large group?

Inclusion Is Hard Work

People will engage in a group if they feel that they belong. Being helped to feel belonging is hard – it means being received for who you are, not who the group wants you to become. In Clal’s Wisdom Daily, Reverend Jill Harman explained:

There are spaces that open their doors and make me feel received, and then there are spaces that open their doors but already have a shape in mind for who I should become once I step inside. That difference isn’t always obvious at first. Sometimes a place feels warm and generous and full of good people, and sometimes it really is all of those things. And still, over time, something in me begins to notice that the welcome is leaning somewhere. It has a direction to it, a quiet belief that closeness will eventually soften you into someone easier to claim.

That’s where the ache begins: Even when that pressure is gentle, it changes the feeling of the room. Something in me stops being able to rest, because I’m no longer sure whether the kindness is meant for who I am or for who someone hopes I’ll become. That makes it very hard to stay.

I loved that Conservative Rabbi Ben Herman, coincidentally a current 18Doors Rukin Fellow, made a similar point in “Why We Changed the Rules So Non-Jews Can Be Members of Our Synagogue.” Rabbi Herman describes the distinction between being diverse and being inclusive (citing Verna Myers, who coincidentally I used to work with long ago when I was a lawyer): “‘Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.’ Being invited is wonderful, but without agency in the congregation’s decision-making processes, one is not truly included.”

The article relates that, with Rabbi Herman’s support, 75% of the congregation were in favor of adopting changed by-laws under which “Non-Jews in interfaith relationships are now considered full members of the congregation, and patrilineal Jews may serve on the Board of Trustees.” That’s progress.

But 25% against even being considered members – that’s still a lot of opposition. It clearly signals that many in the congregation are hoping that partners from different faith backgrounds will become something else.

Traditional Attitudes in Canada

The same attitude seems prevalent in Canada. The Canadian Jewish News asks “how important is marrying within the faith to singles today?” and reports on new research based on interviews of fifty-one single Canadian Jews about attitudes towards marriage partners. The singles interviewed, and their parents as described by them, all still seem to be coming from a place where what matters in a partner is their being Jewish – not that what matters is a couple and their family engaging in Jewish life regardless of the religious identity of the partner. There’s an assumption that intermarrying will be disappointing to the parents and problematic to the individual.

Along with those traditional attitudes, there is less interfaith marriage in Canada than in the US, but it is steadily increasing. Fern Chertok and Matthew Brookner from the Cohen Center did a study, cited in this research, that showed increasing acceptance of interfaith marriage, but “many of the couples that were interviewed indicate that they feel not fully accepted by the community,” particularly couples with mothers who were not Jewish. Several couples also reported pressure for conversion. One interviewee said, “in some congregations, it feels like if you’re not Jewish, you can come but you can’t really be part of things.”

The Canadian Jewish News also summarizes a new study of intermarriage in Canada, which says, “Our research suggests that, if the Jewish community can recruit more Jewish children to Jewish day schools and summer camps and attract more Jewish immigrants to Canada, the increasing rate of Jewish intermarriage may slow.” The researchers clearly seem to be coming from a perspective that interfaith marriage is undesirable, something to be discouraged if not prevented. They even suggest that increasing antisemitism may slow the intermarriage rate. Increasing antisemitism can’t be a good thing.

In Other News

  • Noah Wyle, star of The Pitt, talks with the British Jewish press about his Jewish background
  • It’s now clear that Season 3 of “Nobody Wants This” will be about conversion – with Sarah Silverman playing the rabbi who leads Joanne’s conversion class.

*****

A sad note: Jim Ball, one of the original board members of InterfaithFamily, died this month. I met Jim nearly forty years ago when we were both involved in the Reform movement’s northeast region outreach committee. A convert himself, he understood the importance of interfaith family inclusion and was always a kind, interesting and helpful board member. Sincere condolences to his wife Anita Diamant and daughter Emilia Diamant.