January 2025 News: Jewish Families Today, Thinking Beyond Jewish Continuity, the Impact of October 7, and more

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After all the December holiday media buzz, and with January attention focused on distressing events here and in Israel, there was little interfaith family inclusion news to report – until this week.

Jewish Families Today

This past Monday, eJewishPhilanthropy reported that Rosov Consulting released an important qualitative study, Jewish Families Today. The study focused on Jewish families with diverse backgrounds and identities, especially families not deeply involved in Jewish communities and institutions, with data generated from 40 focus groups and 40 individual interviews. It reports that parents want to build strong Jewish identities in their children, in homes that are also tolerant and inclusive of multiple heritages and faiths.

For the Center’s purposes, what’s most relevant are the “bumps, obstacles and difficult contexts” families face. In addition to cost, geographic distance, and political polarization, “Families with marginalized identities – whether interfaith, LGBTQ+, or multiracial – often feel sidelined within traditional Jewish institutions, encountering subtle or overt exclusion.”  Parents of children who have multiple identities “are especially aware that prejudice exists toward some, all, or simply the combination of these identities on the part of others, including in Jewish spaces.”

A key finding is that parents are “desperate” for community. They are not fleeing traditional institutions, but are looking for congregations that are inclusive of them. One parent said that the webpages of local synagogues did not have any kind of message explicitly addressed to interfaith families telling them who they could contact or what to expect. They are looking for “early signals of inclusion.” “Many families seek clear commitments to inclusivity that some institutions have been hesitant to extend.”

One interfaith couple had a lukewarm experience in Jewish institutions but were “actively engaged by their neighborhood Catholic church.” The study warns that “families who belong to more than one faith community may opt to participate in the non-Jewish one if it is more accessible and welcoming.” “Intentional, explicit practices of inclusion are essential if Jewish institutions are to attract families with marginalized identities.” “Families are “simply struggling to find communities … that “walk the walk” when it comes to including diverse families and where they know they will be welcomed and affirmed for their whole selves.”

I wish that the report had delved more into what underlies the prejudice or exclusion that some families experience. The Center’s theory is that interfaith families will engage Jewishly if the partners from different faith backgrounds are considered and treated as equal; they experience prejudice or exclusion when they are considered as lesser and their participation is restricted. It’s not clear from the report whether the study participants experienced this or not.

One of the study’s key recommendations is to “shift culture to become a more inclusive and welcoming community,” noting that “Even when synagogues and organizations attempt to welcome Jewish families with intersectional identities, challenges can exist in the interpersonal interactions within the community.” The Center believes that adapting how Jews think about and treat partners from different faith backgrounds is essential to any shift in culture towards inclusion.

Thinking Beyond Jewish Continuity

Then this past Tuesday, eJewishPhilanthropy published Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz’ “Thinking Beyond ‘Jewish Continuity.’” It’s very worth reading; I agree with Rabbi Shmuly’s call to go beyond defensive fear and be aspirational about fostering robust Jewish community, to “go deep” and to “feed souls.”

In describing the conversation we need to go beyond, he says “Jews are assimilating. Younger Jews are intermarrying,…” There’s a hint there of equating intermarrying with assimilating, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the way Rabbi Shmuly thinks. I do wish that he had explicitly included appealing to interfaith couples and partners from different faith backgrounds when describing his five ideas for cultivating a shift.

The Impact of October 7 on Interfaith Couples, Families and Professionals

18Doors has released an excellent resource with research and discussion questions for couples, grandparents, and professionals. “It behooves the Jewish community to lean into loving relationships when they exist. We need to welcome anyone and everyone who wants to be Jewish, anyone who is throwing their lot in with the Jews or is related to a Jewish person. These people can be among our greatest strengths.”

In Other News

Relationship advice: Your duty to the Jewish people matters more than what makes you happy” is an awful piece in the Jerusalem Post by Rav Hayim Leiter, an Orthodox rabbi in Israel, who says “our priorities need to be building and raising healthy Jewish families, and there’s no way to do that when marrying out.”

A year ago, Rav Leiter responded to a mother, who felt strongly after October 7 that her children and her family are Jewish, writing that her children aren’t Jewish because Judaism is “transmitted through the maternal line.” As I said in our February 2024 newsletter, that was cruel, insensitive, “false as to much of the Jewish world outside Rav Leiter’s Orthodox lane, and counter-productive to anyone who wants to see the number of Jewishly-engaged people expand.”

It’s unfortunate that those like Rav Leiter can’t respect that there is more than one way to be Jewish, or see the benefit to the Jewish people overall of including interfaith families. It’s unfortunate that their hostile views continue to be expressed.

Cantor Rabbi Mark Goldman, who serves a Reform synagogue in Florida, wrote two interesting but curious posts in the Times of Israel blogs. In the first, he questions whether the approach he has taken to interfaith couples, conditioning wedding officiation on their committing to raising a Jewish family and taking an introduction to Judaism course, is productive, or instead leads couples to not work with him. That’s a very good question.

But in the second, he writes that “without structured opportunities to continue engaging in Jewish life, many [young adult Jews] drift away, making intermarriage more likely… If young Jews lack community during this stage, their likelihood of marrying outside the faith increases significantly.” He urges expansion of opportunities for young adult Jews to have “appealing, contemporary experiences [to] make Judaism feel accessible and relevant.” It’s ill-advised to make the goal of engagement opportunities to make interfaith marriage less likely. Why not be explicitly clear that the opportunities are for young adult Jews who are in interfaith relationships too, with the goal of interfaith couples experiencing Judaism as accessible and relevant?

The Wall Street Journal published “Jewish Identity in Crisis” (at page 35), a review of books including If You Will It  by Elliot Abrams. I haven’t read the book yet; the reviewer says that peoplehood is the book’s “key word” and quotes Abrams as saying ““The underlying problem is that a striking proportion of American Jews have very weak feelings about being part of the Jewish people in anyway at all.” In the past, Abrams was no friend of interfaith marriage; it’s interesting and hopeful that the review at least doesn’t reflect any blaming of interfaith marriage for weakening feelings of peoplehood. Moreover, to strengthen peoplehood, it’s all the more important to be inclusive of interfaith families.

In a similar vein, eJewishPhilanthropy reported that a group of 40 Israeli leaders convened to discuss Jewish cultural (as opposed to religious) identity. It is interesting and hopeful that they spoke of those who married “outside the tribe” in a non-judgmental way:

True, these young Jewish adults are often not observant and do not belong to traditional or institutional Jewish frameworks, which may seem “too religious” or irrelevant to their Jewish identity and life choices (particularly for LGBTQ and those who marry “outside the tribe”). Nevertheless, their Jewish identity is present and meaningful in their lives. They describe taking pride in their Jewish identity, celebrating holidays, feeling a sense of tribalism and connecting to Judaism through family and pluralistic values. Additionally, as we’ve seen over the past year, they are not indifferent to Israel. Focusing on what they are and using positive terms rather than “un-” to describe them is the first cornerstone of creating a more meaningful Jewish cultural identity.

How Jewish Identity Is Formed Matters” is a very interesting op-ed that’s not directly about interfaith marriage. The author, Rabbi Yehudah Potok, is the senior director of the Jewish Education Program at Facing History and Ourselves. One comment that struck me: “when a person finds security and comfort in one’s own identity, they generally do not feel as threatened by the identity of others. Developing a strong sense of self promotes empathy and inclusivity.” That made me wonder whether, if we were more secure and comfortable in our Jewish identity, we’d be more inclusive of and not threatened by interfaith marriage and partners from different faith backgrounds.

Finally, in an interesting sign of the times, the Conservative movement in the UK is offering a discussion course for mixed-faith couples. The course is “designed to help couples think about what a mixed-faith relationship means, and a brief introduction to Jewish life and practice.” The course “isn’t about conversion, although conversion may be something that couples are thinking about.” It notes that “Masorti rabbis do not officiate at mixed-faith ceremonies, although mixed-faith couples are welcome to join Masorti synagogues.”

December 2024 News from the Center

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December has always been the biggest month for interfaith families. But in the twenty-five years I’ve worked in the field, even in the couple when Hanukkah and Christmas overlapped, there’s never been as much coverage as this year – in mainstream sources like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the  Boston Globe, the Miami Herald, the Baltimore Sun, NPR, Better Homes & Gardens, and even from England, Israel, even India.

To keep you updated, this is our longest newsletter ever. Before getting to the December holidays, there were a few other developments.

But first – please consider a charitable contribution to support the Center’s work. A generous donor has made a matching challenge grant – if you make a contribution now, it will be doubled. Find out how to donate here – or email info@cfrij.com to find out more about the match – and thank you!

Conservative Movement. Conservative Rabbi Steven Abraham argued seven years ago, and now powerfully again, that the Rabbinical Assembly should allow Conservative rabbis to officiate at weddings of interfaith couples. “When we refuse to officiate interfaith marriages, we are not protecting Judaism; we are pushing people away.” “How can we deny them our presence at this critical moment and then expect them to feel fully embraced afterward?” “Allowing rabbis to officiate at interfaith weddings does not mean abandoning our values. It means recognizing that by saying ‘yes,’ we can help these couples build meaningful Jewish lives.” “It is long past time to say ‘yes.’ Our communities, our future, and our tradition demand it.”

Exposing and Responding to Unwelcoming Attitudes. In Jeannie Sue Gersen’s important story, “Converting to Judaism in the Wake of October 7th,” she notes how unwelcoming she perceived Jewish communities to be. Gersen says the biggest barrier to conversion when she was younger was “a youthful allergy to the message that I could gain acceptance only by adopting a new identity.”

courtesy pixabay.com/geralt

Gersen and her then husband were the subjects of a famous incident where the Orthodox day school he attended left them out of a reunion picture; about that, she says, “As a young immigrant with a fair measure of pride, I recoiled intuitively at such signals that my presence was shameful – a shanda, as Jews would say. I allowed those feelings to stymie my pursuit of what I wanted for myself, which was Judaism.”

On the other hand, the Forward’s Bintel Brief advice giver responds to a mother who wants her daughter to meet Jewish boys with this: “Implicit in your letter is a concern that your daughter isn’t dating Jewish boys and therefore isn’t on the road to marrying one. Here’s my take: … many Jews who marry non-Jews stay active in Jewish life and raise Jewish kids.”

And I appreciated this tribute to Doug Emhoff, including: “Married to a non-Jewish woman, raising his children in a blended family, he showed what may have been an otherwise hostile [Jewish] community how Jewish families in the 21st century can take on many forms.”

Unwelcoming Comments from Israel. Statements from Israel about interfaith marriage often equate it with loss of Jewish identity. That happened twice this month. “We’re watching Israel self-destruct – at the hands of its own leaders and citizens” is a very informative (and very sad) piece about divisions among Jewish Israelis. On the prospect of liberal, secular Israelis leaving the country, the author says that “The Jews would become an overwhelmingly diasporic people once more. Many will likely intermarry, and many of their descendants, perhaps, lose their Jewish identities. A century hence, the Orthodox may be left as the main expression of Judaism.” The comment about intermarriage is gratuitous, but at least it seems softened by the author saying “perhaps.”

Judaism without God” is a curious essay by an Orthodox rabbi who wants secular Jews to be observant even without believing in God. But in a gratuitous aside, he says “an increasing number of secular Israelis have left Israel and assimilated in the diaspora. Today, secular Jews outside of Israel marry non-Jews at a rate of over 50 percent.”

Now For the December Holidays

Here are the lessons I drew from the outpouring of media coverage about the December holidays this year – each explained further below.

  1. The amount and tone of the coverage that was positive and accepting about interfaith families celebrating Christmas is striking.
  2. “Chrismukkah” for the most part is thought of as just the overlap in timing of the distinct Hanukkah and Christmas holidays – not as a mushing together of the two into something new.
  3. Pretty much no one is saying that interfaith families don’t transmit Jewish identity to their children if they celebrate Christmas, or that interfaith families celebrating Christmas is inconsistent with Hanukkah’s message about Jewish survival.
  4. Some interfaith families celebrate both holidays as cultural only, not religious. But many celebrate Christmas as cultural, but Hanukkah as religious.
  5. Couples’ stories show that welcoming and inclusion of interfaith families leads to Jewish engagement.
  6. Four beautiful essays are well worth reading.

Chrismukkah

Exactly twenty years ago, in December 2004, I wrote “‘Chrismukkah’ Is a Bad Idea.” At the time, it seemed that the idea of Chrismukkah was to establish a new holiday that mushed Hanukkah and Christmas into one. That was – and is – a bad idea. It’s important to respect the integrity of the distinct traditions, not blend them into one.

The general tone of most of this month’s stories recognize that the holidays are different, with any blending coming because of the unusual overlap with the first night of Hanukkah falling on Christmas day. If Chrismukkah just means celebrating two distinct holidays at around the same time – if that’s all the “blending” there is – it’s not a bad idea. (I’ve never been a fan of Chrismukkah “merch”either  – this year’s favorites are reviewed in Kveller and Hey Alma – but seen in this non-blending light, it’s harmless.)

An article in Patch gives a pretty clear explanation of Chrismukkah as just the convergence in time of the two holidays. The authors of a New York Times story define Chrismukkah as celebrating both – but not mushing them together into something new (two of the interfaith families featured in the story are very mindful of instilling Jewish identity in their children). The author of the Better Homes & Garden story says the holidays are “distinctly different.”

The Boston Globe story quotes an academic who makes this point: “I think what a ‘Chrismukkah’ kind of party at best is trying to do is to recognize and validate each other, even if the claim isn’t being made that these are the same thing.” He also says that Chrismukkah “can have a little bit of an assimilationist edge to it” – but that would only be the case if the holidays were mushed together into some new holiday.

The Jewish Identity of Children of Interfaith Parents

Twenty years ago, there was a lot of hostility toward interfaith marriage from the intellectual leadership of the Jewish community. That was the year a study purported to show that interfaith families who said they were raising their children as Jews were not transmitting Jewish identity because they were incorporating Christian holiday festivities into their lives.

I saw that view expressed in only exactly one piece this month: Arynne Wexler in Tablet says: “And dare we convince ourselves that lighting a menorah in the same home as a Christmas tree is not a risk to preserving Jewish identity.”

Here’s what Samira Mehta said in a Chicago Tribune article about whether “a tradition like a Christmas tree cuts into a family’s faith identity”: “As one rabbi put it to me, it would be a really anemic Jewish life that was threatened by three weeks of twinkly lights.”

One of the very best essays this month addresses this issue beautifully. Rabbi Sara Mason-Barkin wrote about the biblical story of Joseph which “acknowledges the complexity of raising Jewish children in a non-Jewish world.” Jacob blesses his grandsons, Joseph’s children, who were “raised in Egypt, immersed in its culture.” We still bless our children with Jacob’s words, “May God make you like Ephraim and Menasseh,”

… embracing a legacy of being proudly Jewish and part of the world around us. We are Jewish and American, spiritual and secular, traditional and innovative. We embrace the “and” of our identities. This duality can be a source of strength.

The more Decembers I live through, the more interfaith families and conversion students I see thriving, the more confident I feel in our ability to uphold our Jewish identities while living multi-faceted lives.

Some interfaith families, of course, are raising their children in both religions, as reflected in the NPR story, a CBS news segment and an article in a Spokane secular outlet. That means the children are being raised with Jewish identity and some other identity. But many, if not most, of the interfaith families in this month’s stories say that they are raising their children “as Jewish.”

For Many Interfaith Families, Christmas Celebrations Are Cultural, Hanukkah Celebrations Are Religious

A comprehensive article in Moment takes the position that “Christmas trees, playing dreidel, setting up holiday lights, [and] eating fried foods [don’t] have much (or anything) to do with the birth of Jesus or the Jewish military victory against their ancient oppressors. If they did, …  Chrismukkah wouldn’t serve the purpose it does, which is to offer a space for members of interfaith families to feel included in the joy of the holiday season. This can only happen because Chrismukkah is not inherently religious.” I may be biased, but I think that for many interfaith families, Christmas traditions do not have anything to do with the birth of Jesus, while Hanukkah traditions do have much to do with keeping the Jewish people, and Judaism as a religion, alive.

In the Washington Post, Adam Chalom and Jodi Kornfeld, who are Humanistic rabbis, suggest that we should see the December holidays as about “the human experience of the winter solstice and light”:

If we free [the December] holidays from revelation and religious rules and instead treat identity as religious heritage and culture responding to the human experience, then stories about gods and miracles can become secondary to the human experience of the winter solstice and light. Seen from this perspective, Hanukkah and Christmas have a great deal in common.

There need not be a competition between December celebrations, nor does the integrity of one holiday have to be compromised to celebrate the other. That is a false, binary choice that fosters the idea of a December dilemma. Instead, identifying with the human condition and experience, albeit from unique and different cultural traditions, brings people closer together.”

This makes good sense for many interfaith families, especially if they are raising children “both.” But many interfaith families, as reflected in many of the stories this month, are raising their children with Jewish as their religious identity, while celebrating Christmas as a cultural and not religious celebration. That doesn’t disrespect the integrity of Christmas. These families can also see the holidays as having much in common and not in conflict or a competition.

Interfaith Families Celebrating Christmas Is Not Inconsistent with the Meaning of Hanukkah

I rarely agree with Jonathan Tobin, who in the past has been a harsh critic of interfaith marriage, So I was very pleasantly surprised that he said that the joint celebration this year is “good news for the growing number of Americans who have interfaith relationships and families where both holidays are celebrated.” He says “the blending of the two holidays in some way has become normative rather than an outlier practice. There is nothing wrong with giving gifts, and the need for interfaith families to avoid religious conflicts is obvious.” He even ends his essay with “Happy Chanukah and Merry Christmas!”

I agree with Tobin that “we need to retain the holiday’s historical meaning instead of allowing it to be merged into Christmas.” I agree with his description of Hanukkah as “a festival of lights that transcends commercialism or even the acceptance of assimilation that is an inevitable part of being a small religious minority…. a holiday that emphasizes the continuance of the miracle of Jewish survival that has kept the faith of the Maccabees alive and flourishing in the Jewish homeland, as well as in America. Lighting those candles is a way for every Jew to show that the Jewish people will not die.”

In the past, Tobin might have said that interfaith families celebrating both holidays is inconsistent with Jewish survival. It’s very positive that he doesn’t say that here.

An essay in the Washington Post makes a similar point: “The lessons of Hanukkah and Oct. 8 are one and the same: The survival of Jewish identity depends on a commitment to the practices, values and traditions that make Jewish life unique.” I was concerned the author might say that interfaith marriage conflicted with that kind of commitment. I’m glad she didn’t.

Welcoming and Inclusion Matter

Photo by Finn Hackshaw on Unsplash

Several of the month’s stories note that how Jewish communities respond to interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds influences their engagement. “Oy to the world! Interfaith families and synagogues navigate Chrismukkah” has an unfortunate title, because the couples in the story aren’t experiencing the conflict that the title suggests, but it has some great comments from two 18Doors’ Rukin Fellows, Rabbi Jessica Lowenthal and Rabbi Alex Matthews, as well as from the USCJ’s Keren McGinity, about the importance of welcoming and inclusion.

I especially liked this quote from Rabbi Matthews: “I think what many progressive and liberal congregations have realized – and I really hope we’re trying to embrace – is that you absolutely can be an interfaith family and a Jewish family. If we want to be able to serve the Jewish community, we need to figure out how to make sure that those families are welcomed and engaged – that they feel at home in the Jewish community.” In the Miami Herald story, a practicing Catholic father of two teens raised Jewish said his attending services has been made easier by the rabbis and welcoming atmosphere at the synagogues his family has been a part of.

Positive Acceptance of Interfaith Families Celebrating Both Holidays

The amount and tone of the coverage that is positive and accepting about interfaith families celebrating Christmas is striking. JTA had a great national story by Jacob Gurvis that quoted Conservative Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz who said he urges interfaith families “to honor their family obligations surrounding Christmas – but to keep their Hanukkah observance separate.” He also quoted 18Doors’ Adam Pollack: “The way that we generally talk about the holidays with those who come to us is that this is an opportunity. That it can seem like a challenge to think about how to honor and respect multiple identities and backgrounds, but actually there’s a richness to it, and there’s no one way to do it.” (The Chicago Tribune article describes a discussion program along these lines offered by 18Doors.)

JTA also published “New children’s books for Hanukkah channel 2024’s unusual Christmas convergence” which noted that “Among the children’s books released ahead of the holidays are several that nod to the unusual calendar convergence and the increasing share of families that include both Jews and people who are not Jewish.”

The tone of the stories in local Jewish media was also positive, including Columbus, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh, where a rabbi was quoted as saying “Some people hold onto cultural connections when they marry outside their faith, and others don’t. What matters is that the holidays bring people together and foster kindness and giving, and that’s all for the good.” (A story in the secular Pittsburgh press took the same approving tone.)

Even in Israel! This headline from Ha’aretz was remarkable: “’Hanukkah Just Cannot Compete’: In Israel, Christmas Goes Mainstream” as was the sub-header:As an ever-growing number of Jewish Israelis choose to celebrate Christmas, past objections to a Christian festivity taking center stage in a Jewish country fade into the background, and Tel Aviv shop owners are seeing their ‘biggest Christmas sales yet.’” One Israeli Jew said, about his family, “they had some questions at first…. But I think once they saw that there wasn’t a religious aspect to it, they really got it.” An academic quoted in the article said, “Of course there are many devout Christians for whom it has religious significance. But, for the most part, Christmas has become a cultural celebration, associated more with family time and gift giving than the birth of Jesus.”

Perhaps Hallmark movies are an important marker of our culture? I watched Leah’s Perfect Gift, about Leah’s first Christmas experience with her boyfriend’s straight-laced family, reviewed in the Forward and in Kveller. It’s cheese-y. But it shows the boyfriend participating in Leah’s Hanukkah observance, and the stereotypes of the Jewish family are not at all offensive (unlike those in “Nobody Wants This”). What struck me most was the positive attention to an interfaith relationship in such a mainstream cultural place. (Coincidentally, the Wall Street Journal article suggests that “Nobody Wants This” is “adding to the fused-holiday spirit this year.”)

Four Essays Worth Reading

Rabbi Adina Allen explains beautifully what it means to share in relatives’ Christmas celebrations. As a child, “Retrieving the ornaments collected over many years and several generations from their dusty attic boxes, I carefully hung each one, arranging twinkly lights until they looked just right. I relished these rituals and took them on with pride. Rather than religious acts in service of a different deity, these Christmas preparations were acts of love done in service of my family.” Later, when the holidays overlapped, she lit her menorah and recited the blessings, explaining the ritual and what it meant to her:

Being witnessed by my non-Jewish family made me feel strong and confident in my tradition, excited for a chance to share what mattered to me with those I love. I’ll never forget the image of the candles aglow on their dining room table beneath a picture of the pope, the Christmas lights twinkling in the background. While this could have been an experience of dissonance or confusion, instead it was one of clarity and connection — one that made me feel confirmed in my Judaism and grateful for the way these traditions could live side by side…. Sharing our traditions with those we love, and experiencing theirs, is a powerful way of fostering appreciation, empathy and respect and of deepening connection across difference.

Another very evocative New York Times essay addresses “The Joy of Christmas Ornaments (as a Jew).” Ronda Kaysen describes her first Christmas tree with her husband: “he pulled out a tattered cardboard box stuffed with treasures, each wrapped in newspaper or bubble wrap…. It began to dawn on me that there was a whole world inside these little details.” Over the years her family got more ornaments, including “the hand-painted chaos my children brought home from school when they were little.” This resonated with me, because one of our favorite events of the year is helping very long-term friends decorate their Christmas tree, which involves a lot of tattered boxes of wrapped ornaments, beautiful snowflakes made out of very thin balsa wood, and everyone’s favorite, a pineapple their daughter painted black as a child.

Darren Richman offers a British take on the December holidays. Written in a humorous way, Richman, who is Jewish, says he couldn’t say no to his wife’s wanting a Christmas tree after she agreed that their son could be circumcised. (Sadly, our Facebook post on this article has been inundated with comments from opponents of circumcision, which is not what Richman’s article is about.)

Behind the humor, the essay has a very serious message. Richman was worried how his grandfather would react when he told her he was dating Kate, who’s not Jewish and is now his wife. Richman writes, “If an Auschwitz survivor felt I was ‘letting the Nazis win’ then we might be in for a pretty difficult conversation. Instead, he asked me if I was happy. When I told him I was, he explained that was the only thing that mattered.” His grandfather later anointed Kate his favorite grandchild, to the chagrin of his actual grandchildren. And,

When our first son was born, he called me at the hospital and told me, between sobs, that I couldn’t imagine what it meant for a Holocaust survivor to have not just children, not just grandchildren but great-grandchildren. He didn’t sound like a man who thought his grandson had gifted the Nazis a late victory.

Rachel Hall, who works for the Reform movement, wrote a beautiful essay, “Winterfaith.” As a child, her partner had no religion, and when asked by other children what he was, he said they went camping on weekends, they were “campers.” When he and Rachel met, and she felt strongly that they would raise their children Jewish, he asked if they could be raised as “Jewish campers.”

Rachel says “winterfaith” is a more apt description for her than “interfaith” because they’re not observing two religions. She finds the December holidays challenging and admits to being scared her children won’t be proud of their Jewishness:

Right now, it doesn’t feel like the world wants proud Jews. But every day, we are proud Jewish campers… be it the food we eat, the topics we discuss, the holidays we celebrate, the Hebrew school my kids attend, the hikes we take, etc.… Being Jewish campers is about much more than feeling left out of the magic of Christmas and I am starting to have faith that my children understand that.”

Something New

I learned something new this month. In a nice piece about the holidays on a secular New Jersey site, there was this: “Jesus celebrated Hanukkah just as other Jews of his time did, according to the New Testament. The book of John mentions it: ‘At that time, the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon.’ So Jesus was not only in Jerusalem during Hanukkah, but he went to the very temple where the miracle of the oil is said to have taken place about two centuries earlier.”

And a 91-year old Reform rabbi made an interesting comment to a Miami Herald reporter: “Were it not for [the Maccabees’] victory, there would have been no Christmas, because there would have been no Judaism, out of which Christianity ultimately was born, so it’s an interesting twist of history.”

Finally, if you’ve read this far, you deserve a lighter look: the Forward’s Rob Eshman offers “Celebrating Chrismukkah? There’s a food for that. That traditional Christmas dish you’re serving might just be Jewish.”

Also in the (non-December) News

  • A nice profile of Deborah Reichmann, a very inclusive rabbi who serves the IFFP – Interfaith Families Project in the Washington DC area.
  • A nice profile of Ari Yehuda Saks, another very inclusive rabbi, among other things co-creator of the “Interfaithing” podcast.
  • A nice profile of a Druze-Jewish couple in Berkeley.
  • A course from Hindu University of America on the dynamics of interfaith marriages focuses specifically on relationships between individuals from Dharmic and Abrahamic traditions.
  • In the what things used to be like department: Gwyneth Paltrow’s Christian mother and Jewish father married in 1969; she says “interfaith marriage was still kind of a big deal. And so it was really hard for both of my parents’ parents that they were marrying each other. It was a bit scandalous. Nobody was happy about it. They definitely grew to accept it later in life and kind of let go of all of that.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 2024 News from the Center

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In our unsettled world, my wife and I were blessed to spend time over Thanksgiving with our wonderful family – our children and their spouses, and especially our four grandchildren, each of them a unique universe of potential, sources of calm and joy. I hope you had a good holiday.

Nobody Wants This and Intermarried Rabbis

The buzz about “Nobody Wants This” has quieted. My What “Nobody Wants This” gets wrong about interfaith relationships today was featured in The Forward’s November 8 newsletter. Matt Goldberg’s “‘Nobody Wants This’ Is About Beating the Jews” criticizes the series as being “indifferent about Judaism as a religion” and for suggesting that Judaism “isn’t a big deal.”

On the other hand, in The Times, a major UK newspaper, Jessica Diner, the global beauty director of Vogue, says:

If there is one reason why I am grateful to Nobody Wants This, it is that, at a time when it feels scary to be a Jew, one of the most watched shows on the planet is a story of Jewish love, portrayed by a Jewish actor, written by a Jewish team …. If a Jewish series can give the wider population the warm and fuzzies and deliver a universal message to be open about love while the world feels like it’s on fire, then that, as a Jew, feels incredibly special.

Another UK piece, “How realistic is Nobody Wants This?” asks whether intermarrying rabbis stretches credibility. It notes that the Assembly of Reform Rabbis and Cantors and the Conference of Liberal Rabbis and Cantors in the UK do not bar rabbis with spouses who are not Jewish. Further, Britain’s Progressive seminary, the Leo Baeck College in London, changed its rules more than a decade ago to allow the admission of rabbinic students with partners who are not Jewish.

The rabbi who co-chairs the Reform Assembly, who is 41, says that for her generation of rabbis, having a partner who is not Jewish is “not an issue;” being “strongly committed to the principle of inclusion within the Progressive movement… [i]t would be quite hypocritical to say that rabbis should have a different standard.”

Conservative Movement, Arnold Eisen, Hartman Institute, “Sabbath Queen”

There’s a lot to report about the Conservative movement’s approach to interfaith marriage this month.

The presentation by Rabbi Aaron Brusso mentioned in our October newsletter is definitely worth watching. Rabbi Brusso was the chair of Rabbinical Assembly’s Standards Working Group, which issued a report earlier this year that recommended significant changes that would empower Conservative rabbis to more fully embrace interfaith couples, but maintaining the ban on rabbinic officiation at weddings of interfaith couples.

Rabbi Brusso explains that Conservative rabbis shouldn’t be in the position of disapproving interfaith marriage. Instead, they should embrace interfaith couples pastorally and encourage them to learn about Jewish practices and take responsibility for deciding how they will engage. He explains to couples how the various elements of a halachic Jewish wedding do not fit when one partner is not Jewish; he also explains that the Torah blessings are a particularly Jewish faith statement. I understood him to suggest that after these discussions, the partners from different faith backgrounds are persuaded that it’s not appropriate for them to have a rabbi officiate at their wedding, or for them to say the Torah blessings.

I also led a webinar for 18Doors’ Rukin Fellows. The current cohort, for the first time, has a significant number of Conservative rabbis. Some of them appeared to be very challenged by my “equality theory” – that in order to feel belonging, and therefore engage Jewishly, partners from different faith backgrounds need to be considered and treated as equal to their Jewish partners. I understood one rabbi to say that they were stewards of a two thousand year tradition that couldn’t easily change because of current demographic reality.

Eisen. Coincidentally, Andy Silow-Carrol interviewed Arnold Eisen, who served as chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, about Eisen’s new book, Seeking the Hiding God. In the interview, Eisen says,

Yes, the number of people who say “I’m a Conservative Jew” is much less than it used to be. I think that is primarily because Conservative rabbis will not perform intermarriages, and if you can’t have a Conservative rabbi [officiate] your wedding and you’re intermarried or the child of an intermarriage, you’re not going to say, “I’m a Conservative Jew.”

 

Hartman Institute. In a very interesting Shalom Hartman Institute podcast, “Spheres of Belonging,” Yehuda Kurtzer says:

At Hartman we’ve been doing some work on the idea of “Jewish adjacents,” the people connected to Jews and Jewish community and who are themselves not Jewish, and we’ve been asking: what are their responsibilities to our norms when they seek to participate in Jewish life, and what are our ethical obligations to them as players in Jewish life?
How do they add to the richness of our community and how do we make space for their involvement without compromising our commitment to a unified identity?

Conservative Rabbi Ari Kaiman, reiterating the view that it is inappropriate for a partner from a different faith background to say the Torah blessings, says:

Not only Jews find meaningful living through Judaism, and there are many people in our congregation who are finding meaning and community. It was an anxiety to think, well, what does that mean for our halakhic practice? But Judaism itself, halakha, articulates boundaries and porousness. There’s nothing that’s forbidden about a non-Jew learning Torah. There’s nothing forbidden about a non Jew sitting in a prayer service. There’s something that would be inappropriate about a non Jew saying at the Torah, asher bachar banu mikol ha’amim, who chose us from all other peoples. It’s incoherent.

And so the, but I also don’t have a lot of non-Jews saying, Hey, that’s the thing I want to do. Or if they were to say that, I would say, that’s really interesting. Let’s explore that more because maybe you want to be Jewish. But what we strive for is welcoming people for who they are and not having expectations of them becoming like us or like Jewish any more than they want to be.

Kurtzer then notes the need

to acknowledge the seriousness of a commitment to halakha and other forms of normative thinking that require of us to take boundaries seriously, and at the same time an effort to enable a productive porousness that keeps more people in than it leaks them out. This is one of the greater missions of rabbinic work: the curation and definition of peoplehood through listening to the needs both of individuals and the greater Jewish people.

“Sabbath Queen.” At the most inclusive end of the spectrum, “Sabbath Queen,” a new film about Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, is getting a lot of attention. Lau-Lavie, founder of LabShul, was ordained at JTS, but left the Conservative movement to officiate at weddings of interfaith couples. A review of the film says he advocates for “the need to leave tribalism without leaving Judaism.” It quotes Lau-Lavie as saying “It is necessary to move from the old paradigm of either/or to ‘yes and’… When you welcome someone fully, that person becomes part of the community. We must blur the old boundaries because it is practical and realistic.” He continues:

You love who you are now, in community with, or in a neighborhood with, or in relationship with, beyond the tribal boundaries that we grew up with. It’s not instead of who and where we are. It’s in addition to that. Either you stay behind your walls, or you meet people where they’re at, welcome them in, and keep Judaism thriving and expansive and inclusive. Keep it love-driven, not fear-based. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But there is no other recipe for survival.

Gary Rosenblatt explains that Lau-Lavie had hoped to change the Conservative movement’s policy on officiation “from within,” but after a “year of intense study of Jewish texts and in conversation with rabbis and congregants, he found a path he believed would enable him to officiate,” developing “a new form of wedding ceremony, incorporating certain Jewish rituals, preceded and followed by a commitment by the couple to study and engage in Jewish life.”

Rosenblatt writes about a scene in the film from a LabShul board meeting when, after Lau-Lavie said he planned to join the Rabbinical Assembly, a LabShul member said “’My family needs you,’ reminding him that he had created a community based on inclusivity.”

In “Welcoming the ‘Sabbath Queen’” Peter Fox, noting that Lau-Lavie left the movement because he chose to officiate at the wedding of a Jewish-Buddhist gay couples, put it more bluntly: ““It’s funny, because the gayness isn’t controversial. It’s the interfaithness … such a mindfuck, right?”

Interfaith families and antisemitism

18Doors’ board chair, Laurie Beijen, and chief program officer, Adam Pollack, write that the increase in antisemitism has affected interfaith families in different ways than their Jewish-Jewish counterparts. Some partners from different faith backgrounds lack foundational knowledge about antisemitism; couples face communication challenges, with one partner feeling upset and unsupported and the other confused and unaware. The organization partnered with ADL to offer guides for interfaith families on how to identify, address and talk about antisemitism, and how to be an ally as a partner who is not Jewish, as well as spaces for couples to discuss their experiences. They conclude,

Despite the challenges unique to interfaith couples regarding antisemitism, there are also immense opportunities. Having family from different backgrounds allows for increased awareness, influence on opinions and the formation of a coalition of allies, ultimately leading to greater advocacy and safety for Jews and their loved ones.

Jack Wertheimer’s Latest

Jack Wertheimer addresses the impact of October 7 and resurgent antisemitism on American Jews in “What American Jews Gave After October 7: An Accounting.” I don’t think he is aware of how negatively his comments about interfaith relationships come across. He says, “Jews in online discussion groups and other social media have described breakups with intimate partners who disagreed with them about the war; some have decided to swear off dating non-Jews as a result.” And “There even is evidence of a substantial increase in the numbers of non-Jews, many in relationships with Jews, who have been motivated by the resurgence of anti-Semitism to throw in their lot with Jews by converting to Judaism.” Noting that Employee Resource Groups are “attracting younger Jews between the ages of 35 and 45, many of whom are intermarried,” he adds, “Perhaps for the first time in their adult lives, they wish to connect with other Jews in some kind of collective effort.”

Wertheimer says, “The question keeping professionals in the field up at night is how much of Jewish communal life can be sustained if the donor base continues to shrink.” Expressing negative attitudes about interfaith marriage is not likely to increase the donor base.

The December Holidays Are Coming

Hey Alma’s advice columnist tackles Will I Confuse My Jewish Kid If We Celebrate Christmas. We definitely agree that in the family posing the question, celebrating Christmas wouldn’t confuse the child’s Jewish identity at all. But we weren’t sure about the unsolicited advice that encouraged the parents to share more of their own interfaith identities and backgrounds.

I’m disappointed that the folks at Kveller and Hey Alma are talking about Chrismukkah. I’ve defended interfaith families from criticism because they celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah for over twenty years, while also saying that “Chrismukkah Is a Bad Idea.” Celebrating each distinct holiday doesn’t mean mushing them together – even if they fall at the same time.

Celebrities

Martha Stewart on what things were like in 1961: “I went home and told my dad [about the engagement], and my dad slapped me. And he slapped me hard on my face and said, ‘No, you’re not marrying him. He’s a Jew.’ I remember getting that slap.”

The Forward’s Benyamin Cohen asks, “Is Seth Meyers Jewish? His wife, kids and jokes are.” Cohen reports that “Over the years, he’s become ‘Jewish enough’ for his in-laws.” He believes “that’s the only religion that that happens in. Which is why it’s great that it’s the only religion that ends with -ish.” I say it doesn’t matter whether he’s formally Jewish or not.

In Other News

  • Interfaith Work and Interfaith Families: A Toolkit is a new resource created by Susan Katz Miller and Dalia El Ariny, for interfaith families and multiple religious practicioners, organizations that work with them, and scholars who conduct research about them.
  • Our friend Marion Usher was the scholar in residence at Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation. You can watch her initial presentation here.
  • News from Israel: ynet reports that “The Reform movement converted 303 people in Israel last year, a record number compared to previous years, which is about 17% of the aggregate converts in Israel during this period.”
  • The Jewish News Service chose to highlight, from new research presented by the UJA-Federation of New York, that “Sephardic and Mizrachi New Yorkers … have lower intermarriage rates … than the overall New York Jewish population.”
  • Finally, a really wonderful story: “How My Southern Interfaith Family Pulled Together the Perfect Bat Mitzvah.”

October 2024 News from the Center

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Nobody Wants This

The news this month was pretty much all about the Netflix hit show, Nobody Wants This, in which “hot rabbi” Noah falls for Joanne who’s not Jewish; she says she’ll convert then realizes she’s not ready; he appears to choose to stay with her which means he won’t get the promotion to senior rabbi he’s always wanted.

The Forward published my take on it, What “Nobody Wants This” gets wrong about interfaith relationships today. I enjoyed watching the show. It depicts some aspects of Jewish life in a refreshing, positive way, while it’s portrayal of Jewish women is awful.

But the messaging about interfaith relationships is terrible. It suggests that nobody in the Jewish community wants interfaith relationships; that they don’t produce Jewish children; and that if the partner from a different faith background doesn’t convert, the Jewish partner will lose their Jewish identity (or in Rabbi Noah’s case, his dream to be senior rabbi).

While all of that is wrong, the show’s exaggerations do reflect an underlying reality – many interfaith couples do not feel a sense of belonging to the Jewish people, because of lingering negative attitudes about interfaith marriage. I’m hoping that Season Two will change the messaging and show a happy interfaith family raising children with Judaism; with Rabbi Noah becoming senior rabbi at a congregation that accepts him as intermarried; and perhaps even with Joanne taking an Introduction to Judaism course, whether or not it leads to conversion right away.

In a NY Times interview, the show’s co-producer, Sara Foster, says that “to draw an audience in for 10 episodes you need conflict.” I get that, and maybe what I’m hoping for doesn’t provide that. But given the messaging about interfaith marriage, let alone the stereotyping of Jewish women, it seems tone-deaf to me when her sister Erin Foster, the show’s writer and co-producer, says she feels fortunate to have shined “a positive light on Judaism and Jewish people and Jewish culture.” I feel the same way about Sara’s statement that “for there to be a Jewish romantic comedy that is number one across the world… is good for Jewish people.”

I tried to keep track of all of the writing about the show but can’t report on everything, let alone all the social media buzz. A Canadian academin, Celia Rothenberg, thinks that the stereotypes and depiction of interfaith marriage is harmful. I especially like Rabbi Denise Handlarski’s piece, in Hey Alma, I’m a Rabbi in an Interfaith Marriage — Here’s What I Think About ‘Nobody Wants This’; Lior Zaltman’s piece in Kveller, Should Jews Want Netflix’s ‘Nobody Wants This?’; Jessica Radloff’s piece in Glamour, Netflix’s Nobody Wants This and the Persistent Jewish Stereotype; and Keren McGinity’s piece in JTA, Netflix’s ‘Nobody Wants This’ casually celebrates Judaism. I want a second season.

There were other pieces in the NY Times and Time and Moment; an interview in the LA Times with and a profile of Erin Foster and her response to criticism of the show; a piece by Samira Mehta that puts the show in the context of past plays and movies featuring Jewish men dating women from different faith backgrounds; Rabbi Talia Kaplan explains “Why the charming ‘hot’ rabbi in ‘Nobody Wants This’ is bad for clergy and congregants everywhere”; an interesting podcast on the show with Conservative rabbis Michael Knopf and Jesse Olitzky; a piece by a British Reform rabbi; even a piece from Australia. Susan Katz Miller reasonably asked why Joanne had to be someone who is an ex-Christian (as opposed to from some other religious background) while “her people” – people who are practicing two faiths in an interfaith relationship – are never represented; she also objected to the pressure on Joanne to convert.

There were even commentaries from the Orthodox community. In a piece on Aish, a Jewish matchmaker says, not in an offensive way, that love cannot conquer all and that marrying within the faith is a foundational value that enriches our lives and communities.

But a piece in Jew In The City, by Allison Josephs, is offensive. She among other things refers to intermarriage as a “cardinal sin” that “leads to the extinction of the Jewish people” and says the non-Orthodox community is “marrying itself out of existence.” She says Rabbi Noah, by choosing Joanne, “becomes part of the extinction of the Jewish people.” Jew In The City describes itself as a nonprofit “dedicated to changing negative perceptions of religious Jews and making engaging and meaningful Orthodox Judaism known and accessible. This is achieved by highlighting an approach based on kindness, tolerance, sincerity, and critical thinking.” Tolerance?

Conservative Movement News

Just as this newsletter was about to be sent, a powerful essay appeared on Mark Hoffman’s Times of Israel blog: Too Little, Too Late for Conservative Judaism? Hoffman describes the movement’s recent efforts to reassess its approach to interfaith marriage, and discusses a very interesting-sounding presentation by Rabbi Aaron Brusso that I haven’t had a chance to fully watch yet. I’ll plan to comment more in the November email newsletter.

In Other News

This profile of Alexandra Meyer, tells about a young woman who grew up in an interfaith family, with a Jewish mother, with no synagogue or camp or bat mitzvah, who built a Jewish life through her own exploration as a late teen and in college, and is now the managing director of GatherDC,  a nonprofit that helps young adult Jews connect to Jewish life and to each other.

September 2024 News from the Center

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As the new year approaches, I can’t help thinking how it’s been an awful year in Israel and Gaza and now Lebanon, and scary in our domestic politics. I sympathize with all the rabbis who want to give sermons that are hopeful. I’m trying to be hopeful, and if it’s any help, the news this month about interfaith family inclusion has been quite positive.

Very Welcome News: New 18Doors Program to Increase Belonging

18Doors and the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston announced the launch of B’Yachad, a program aimed at helping Jewish organizations increase feelings of belonging among interfaith couples and families. Four synagogues, a day school and the federation are participating.  B’Yachad programs are set to follow in Atlanta and Chicago. Rabbi Scott Hausman-Weiss, an 18Doors Board member, said “a community-wide discussion and energy on this subject is desperately needed to develop best practices toward strengthening these families and, in so doing, our Jewish community.”

What Doug Emhoff and the HUC Admissions Decision Say About Attitudes Towards Interfaith Marriage

Emily Tamkin wrote a great story for Ha’aretz, “For American Jews in Intermarriage Partnerships, Doug Emhoff Has Become an Inspiration.” She notes:

For many American Jews in interfaith partnerships, Emhoff’s embrace of his identity and his way of speaking about his partnership [including at the Democratic National Convention] … has meant representation for something they take both as a given and find questioned by others – especially other Jews.

18 Doors’ Adam Pollock agrees that prominent representation for interfaith families can be very validating to them. (Coincidentally, Jonathan Tobin, who is no friend of interfaith marriage, questioned whether Doug Emhoff is a Jewish role model, but was surprisingly not very critical of the fact that Emhoff intermarried.)

Tamkin quotes Rabbi Lex Rofeberg as saying that HUC’s decision to admit rabbinic students in interfaith relationships was “a bigger deal” than Emhoff’s convention speech, because it counters the way interfaith relationships are besieged or attacked in Jewish spaces. Andrew Rehfeld is then quoted as saying that the new policy is recognition of a shift in American Jewish life with many interfaith families deeply engaged. He makes the point, echoed by the USCJ’s Keren McGinity, that partners from different faith backgrounds can result in deeper commitments from their Jewish partners.

Separately, Rabbis Robyn Frisch and Miriam Wajnberg of 18Doors wrote a nice explanation of how the HUC decision affects five different groups – not just prospective applicants or current students, but also congregants, those who grew up in an interfaith family, really everyone in the Jewish community.

They mention one issue which I think is still a sticking point:

And if you’re not Jewish, but your partner is, then you’ll also hopefully come to see that while there may be limits to your ritual participation in given communities, your relationship is not “less than.” The Jewish community values your partner, you and your relationship – without trying to change you. As a couple, you’re not just “welcome” in Jewish spaces; you also “belong” in Jewish spaces.

There certainly are communities where there are limits to ritual participation by those who are not Jewish. I think that makes it very difficult for interfaith couples and partners from different faith backgrounds to not feel “less than” or that they “belong.” Allowing full ritual participation to partners from different faith backgrounds doesn’t mean changing them – it doesn’t make them Jewish; instead, it prioritizes and maximizes not Jewish identity, but Jewish engagement.

More Good News: Bravo Jewish Future Promise

Hadara Ishak, president of the Jewish Future Promise, wrote an important post on the Times of Israel blog, with the sub-title “Building a Bigger Tent for the Jewish Community.” The Jewish Future Promise, founded by my friend Mike Leven, is a wonderful organization that asks for a moral commitment that at least 50% of charitable contributions made upon passing will be allocated to Jewish causes and/or the State of Israel.

So I was incredibly pleased to see the president of such a mainstream organization with such an eminent Advisory Board say:

[E]mbracing a broader definition of Jewish identity and fostering interfaith dialogue, we can stand united and build a stronger, more resilient Jewish future. The inclusion of interfaith families and their diverse experiences will only enhance our collective strength, enabling us to speak with a singular, powerful voice in support of Israel and Jewish values worldwide.

Another very welcome sign of positive change in attitudes.

Is “Nobody Wants This” Net Positive? Not Sure Yet

The just released Netflix series, “Nobody Wants This,” about a “hot” rabbi played by Adam Brody, dating a woman who’s not Jewish played by Kristen Bell, is getting a lot of attention. Benyamin Cohen wrote a nice story for the Forward that featured two intermarried rabbis, Lex Rofeberg and Denise Handlarski. Mira Fox wrote a more critical review, which I can’t respond to fully because I haven’t seem the entire series yet. She suggests that the rabbi in choosing love for a woman not Jewish is giving up his “entire identity and value system” – if that’s the show’s message, I’m not going to like it.

18Doors’ Miriam Wajnberg offers “A Rabbi’s Review of the First Three Episodes” and it’s the best I’ve seen so far, listing the delightful moments and the cringe-worthy ones. Another interesting review concludes “delightful despite flaws.”

JTA’s story by Shira Li Bartov, “How a real-life rabbi coached Netflix’s ‘Nobody Wants This’ about making interfaith relationships realistic,” points out that the show comes at a time when Jewish institutions are increasingly accepting intermarried rabbis, pointing to the HUC decision among others. She adds that the stereotypes of Jewish women in the show overbearingly objecting to the “shiksa” (a word I hate) runs counter to that trend of acceptance.

Kveller has a story about whether the word “shiksa” is offensive. Hey Alma has a story that fact-checks the accuracy of “the Judaism” in all ten episodes of the show. The show’s creator, Erin Foster, is the subject of a long piece, “Erin Foster brings her conversion story to the forefront in ‘Nobody Wants This’.”

Also in the News

  • An awful piece in the Cleveland Jewish News by someone who’s been described as an “Israeli ultranationalist” who tells parents not to send Jewish children to Ivy League schools because they’ll intermarry, risking the future of Jewish identity in America. I hate the way anti-interfaith marriage views seep into a mainstream Jewish publication — another example why ongoing advocacy for more positive attitudes about interfaith marriage is needed.
  • On the other hand, times certainly are changing. This obscure mention caught my eye in a piece describing the history of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle: “during the turbulence of the late 1960s … [t]here was also a big debate about whether interfaith marriage announcements should be printed in a Jewish publication.”
  • And I was pleased to see, in a September 16 email solicitation for a contribution from the Conservative movement, that Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal included, as one of five examples of what gifts supported, that the movement “developed new interfaith bylaws and resources to help congregations create a true sense of belonging for all.”

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Best wishes for a better, hopeful, and healthy new year.

February 2024 News from the Center

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October 7, Antisemitism, and Interfaith Families

Writing in eJP  about “Communal transformations in our time of crisis,” Rabbis Ben Spratt and Joshua Stanton aptly summarize the current moment: “The growing notion of a wisdom tradition with universal appeal is largely being eclipsed, at least for the moment, by the visceral call to peoplehood as a group under threat by an increasingly hostile society.”

We’ve expressed before the hope that “peoplehood” will be understood to include partners from different faith backgrounds, as well as their families. Our group under threat needs to be as broad as possible, with as many allies as possible.

The ADL and 18Doors announced a new partnership to support interfaith families in countering rising antisemitism. Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO, described “an increasing need for resources … for those in interfaith families…. Our partnership with 18Doors will bring inclusive tools and guidance to more people in interfaith relationships, addressing the challenge of antisemitism family by family.”

This article in the New York Times, “Navigating Israel’s War When One Spouse Is Jewish, and One Is Not,” based on interviews of numerous interfaith couples, feels honest and accurate. We appreciated the sub-title, “For some couples, figuring out how to talk about the war in Gaza is a hurdle in the relationship, but ultimately one that has brought them closer.”

The War Made My Husband, A Jew By Choice, Even More Jewish,” is an important albeit troubling personal story. The author writes about “gaps between my convert husband and my born-Jewish background.” She says his conversion is a joy to her and a boon to their relationships, but they “diverge in knowledge, in attachment, and in attitude.” She says to him,

“It’s in my blood and bones, and I know I come from this, that I am made by this history, forged by these words and these concepts and this people. I don’t think you can feel the same way. You’re not of it in the same way. It’s not of you. You can love it and hold it and participate in it, and you do, but it’s not the stuff of you. It didn’t make you in the same way.”

She refers to the prohibition on reminding converts of their former status, but then says there is a

“running undercurrent that if you’re not born Jewish, you can’t possibly become so, can’t possibly understand. You’re a wannabe, a hanger-on, an interloper. I had always bucked this sometimes-not-so-quiet attitude, and now here I was subjecting my own beloved husband to the same blood-based scrutiny. Suspicion and clannism run deep among the humans. Jews, in this instance, are no exception (however we may try to be, or think that we are).”

Then, after her husband responds to October 7 with “solidarity and support,” goes to services with her, wears an anti-antisemitism button, ties blue ribbon around their trees, and listens to Jewish podcasts, she is

“no longer worried about our different experiences growing up; I know that when disaster befalls our people, he will be right in the thick of it with me, fully identifying, fully supportive. The proof is in his actions and attitudes every day of this war; he is more completely a Jew than I ever dreamed of.”

It certainly rings true that people who grew up with Judaism will have differences in knowledge, attitudes and attachments about and towards it. But responding with suspicion and tribalism to converts, let alone partners from different faith backgrounds, who are actively “doing Jewish” – regarding them as interlopers – weakens the overall Jewish community. This story genuinely surfaces the deep-seated tribalism many Jews feel; we need to be aware of it, and to resist it.

Conservative Movement

Last month we commented on the Conservative movement’s new report on efforts to engage interfaith families, without lifting the ban on its rabbis officiating at weddings of interfaith couples. Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, head of the movement, then wrote a heartfelt explanation, “Why the Conservative Movement Is Changing Our Approach to Interfaith Marriage.

Rabbi Blumenthal did not fully explain why the movement is maintaining the ban, but it appears to be the view that a rabbi-officiated interfaith wedding ceremony would not have “Jewish integrity” for either the rabbi or the couple. Telling that to an interfaith couple looking for a rabbi to officiate can only push them away from Jewish engagement.

(The only other mention we saw of the Conservative movement’s new efforts to engage was this JNS report.)

Orthodox Triumphalism

Judaism Is Not a State of Mind” is an awful piece. Last month’s newsletter highlighted Jennifer Cox’s “I Chose for My Family to Be Jewish. Even After October 7, I Would Choose It Again;” she is a mother who is not Jewish but who feels strongly that her children and her family are Jewish. Now comes an Orthodox rabbi, Rav Hayim Leiter, who tells Cox her children aren’t Jewish, because Judaism is “transmitted through the maternal line.” He says, “I don’t point this out to be cruel or insensitive,” but that’s exactly what it is, because it’s false as to much of the Jewish world outside Rav Leiter’s Orthodox lane, and counter-productive to anyone who wants to see the number of Jewishly-engaged people expand. For many people outside of his lane, and contrary to his title, Judaism is largely a state of mind – and there’s more than one way to be Jewish. It’s too bad he can’t respect that and see the benefit to the Jewish people overall for Jennifer Cox’s family to be and to be considered Jewish.

Hebrew College Admissions Policy

When Rabbi Art Green opposed the Hebrew College Rabbinic School’s change of policy that allowed admission to students in interfaith relationships as “giving in to assimilation,” the Times of Israel published my response, What’s More Important, Being Jewish or Doing Jewish. There’s been a lot of recent commentary about Rabbi Green’s sanctioning for sexual misconduct that we did not think was relevant for the Center to mention – until this blog post where Rabbi Dr. Alon Goshen-Gottstein suggests that the sanctioning can’t be separated from Hebrew College’s change in policy. He refers to a tragedy that “a generation of rabbis [is] being trained by this particular form of ‘Judaism’” and expresses concern for “congregations who will encounter a gay, intermarried rabbi as the authentic representative of Judaism, with no sense of commandment, obligation, and submission to tradition.” To repeat: there is more than one way to be Jewish.

British Jews

The UK Institute of Jewish Policy Research issued a new report that shows the rate of interfaith marriage has increased from 17% in the 1990s, to 24% of those who married between 2000 and 2009, to 34% of those who married between 2010 and 2022. More women (21%) than men (14%) are intermarried; more secular/cultural (48%) and Reform (20%) are intermarried. On traditional measures (belonging to a synagogue, having half or more Jewish friends lighting Chanukah candles), the intermarried are more “weakly connected.” Curiously, the report does not include data on how children of interfaith families are being raised religiously.

We appreciated the lack of negative commentary about the increasing rate of interfaith marriage. The author of the report, Dr. Jonathan Boyd, doesn’t comment on it one way or the other. The initial coverage in the UK Jewish press is titled “Steep Rise in Jews Marrying Out as the Number of Zionists Drop Says New Survey,” but only reports the intermarriage data and doesn’t otherwise comment.

Moreover, there was a very strong statement by a Progressive Rabbi, Josh Levy, whose response to the one-in-three rate is “Leap of Faith: it is our sacred task to welcome mixed-faith families” where he says “Jewish identity doesn’t cease to be important to a Jew who falls in love with and marries a non-Jew. Rather, it is the quality of our welcome that matters most.”

Also worth noting:

  • Steven Windmueller’s “Ten Trends That Are Reshaping American Judaism” is another example of ignoring interfaith marriage. He mentions “non-binary Jews, Jews of color, and ‘unchurched’ individuals” as new constituencies, heightened awareness of diversity and inclusion, and generational differences regarding identity and affiliation, all contributing to “redefining American Judaism” – with nothing said about interfaith families.
  • Last month we mentioned the controversy around the Israel Education Ministry pulling funding from a program because Lucy Aharish, an Israeli Arab married to an Israeli Jew (Fauda star, Tsahi Halevi) participated as the program host. Now in a long interview with Bari Weiss, Aharish talks about raising their child as Muslim and Jewish, and discusses the backlash she and her husband received when they married.
  • This article in Catholic Review says that Catholics are supposed to marry only other Catholics, in Catholic ceremonies, but there are dispensations available. This article says “Hinduism has no rules against marrying outside the faith. But couples say it has its bumps.

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The Center is proud to have signed up to be a distribution partner with Everyone Counts, an initiative aimed at freeing the hostages.

January 2024 News from the Center

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There were several developments this month reflecting progress towards inclusion of interfaith families, and the need for more progress.

More Representation in Children’s Literature

Laurel Snyder, an award-winning author of children’s books who grew up with a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, wrote a beautiful story about the importance of children seeing their kind of family represented in books. In her own latest, The Witch of Woodland, Snyder sees the journey of Zippy, the heroine that reflects Snyder’s life, “as authentically Jewish” and “was able to love Zippy for the very complexity of her identity and the bravery it took to examine herself and her community.” Snyder posted on Facebook her gratitude that her book, and another about intermarried families, were just named as finalists for National Jewish Book Awards in middle grade literature: “stories about kids navigating Jewish lives from outside what we understand to be the ‘norm.’” This is important progress, and we congratulate Laurel Snyder.

(In a piece from last September reflecting more progress, “My Own Bat Mitzvah Was Stressful. I Wanted Better for My Sons,” Snyder describes the damaging exclusion her mother experienced at Snyder’s bat mitzvah, and the inclusion her husband, their sons, and Snyder’s mother experienced many years later at the sons’ bar mitzvahs.)

Conservative Movement

JTA had a major story by Jacob Gurvis about a new report from the Conservative movement, summarized well in the article’s title: “Conservative movement maintains its ban on officiating at intermarriages but urges its rabbis to engage more with interfaith families.” There is a lot about this in the new report that I hope to comment on at a later time.

Coincidentally, JTA had an earlier interesting story about a Conservative synagogue outside of Boston that hired a cantor who can officiate at weddings of interfaith couples (but not in the synagogue building) because she was not ordained in the Conservative movement and does not belong to its clergy associations. I have mixed feelings about this “half-way” or maybe “quarter-way” step, and more broadly about the movement’s approach. On the one hand, it’s good that interfaith couples will have an avenue to a Jewish clergy-officiated wedding with clergy affiliated with a Conservative synagogue (that’s convoluted, but it’s a convoluted situation). On the other hand, I continue to question how the movement can achieve a goal of engaging interfaith families while maintaining a no-officiation policy for its own clergy that is difficult to understand as other than an official disapproval of interfaith marriage.

October 7, Antisemitism, and Interfaith Families

More stories are starting to appear about the impact on people in interfaith relationships of Israel’s war against Hamas and increasing expressions of antisemitism. In “I Chose for My Family to Be Jewish. Even After October 7, I Would Choose It Again,” Jennifer Cox, who is not Jewish, feels strongly, even defiantly, that “my children are not ‘half’ Jewish. They are Jewish. My family is Jewish.” She adds, “On October 7, and on every day since, Hamas terrorists and other antisemites haven’t differentiated between patrilineal or matrilineal Jews.” Her essay is a fascinating description of her and her Jewish husband’s different attitudes, experiences, and choices as they relate to current events. She concludes, “I chose for my family to be Jewish, and to whatever extent the choice is mine, I will choose it every time.”

Tablet also had a piece about what Henry Wilhelm, a partner from a different faith background in an interfaith relationship, learned about antisemitism after October 7. Wilhelm happens to be in the process of conversion, but his perspective might be shared by many partners in interfaith relationships.

JTA reported that the horrible events of October 7 have fueled, for some, a renewed dedication to converting. A person featured in the story says, “I felt my need to be a Jewish mother was growing stronger, and my desire to be in Israel, to help and just to be unified with the people. So for me, this was the biggest push. I want to start my Jewish family.”

As we’ve said repeatedly, conversion is a wonderful personal choice that we support and celebrate. But we were troubled that a rabbi featured in the story is quoted as saying, “the perfect reaction to this war was creating really strong Jewish families.” We were troubled because conversion is not necessary to create strong Jewish families; if that rabbi met Laurel Snyder, or Jennifer Cox, maybe he would speak differently. The Forward also reported increased interest in conversion, without any similar judgmental hint.

Finally, the New York Times had a maddening story by Joseph Bernstein about a woman who “issued a call to ‘#MakeJewishBabies’.” In describing young Jewish women who in response to October 7 have “rediscovered the imperative to have Jewish children,” the story describes their seeking to do so only with Jewish men. There isn’t even a glimmer of recognition that interfaith couples raise Jewish children!

Dan Horwitz’ Important New Book, Just Jewish

Just Jewish: How To Engage Millennials and Build a Vibrant Jewish Future by Rabbi Dan Horwitz, the founder of The Well, has a lot of helpful advice on how Jewish organizations can build relationships, market, partner, develop programming and fundraise – and not just around millennials.

What we appreciated about the book is the matter-of-fact acknowledgment of the prevalence of interfaith relationships and seeing them as an opportunity. This starts with the Introduction: “Jewish Millennials are globally connected, have mostly non-Jewish friends, and are living in interfaith households at an incredibly high clip (whether as products of an interfaith marriage and/or in one themselves).” Or the book’s end, “For those concerned about Jewish continuity, the math argues for viewing interfaith marriages as a Jewish communal growth opportunity.”

Rabbi Horwitz has an interesting take on the interplay between the universal and the particular that applies to interfaith couples generally: “[T]here remains an important role for a particularistic community to play, and Millennials are willing to embrace the particular – so long as it’s not to the exclusion of the universal.” He suggests that the traditional particularistic fundraising pitch that “All of Israel are responsible for one another” will not resonate with many Millennials who are from or in interfaith relationships, and suggests a more universal pitch that emphasizes services provided to people of all backgrounds.

I appreciated the frequent mentions of the importance of inclusion of interfaith couples. The Well’s leaders decided to describe it as “inclusive” “to make it clear that as an organization we embraced interfaith couples, LGBTQ+ folks, etc.” and “were pleased to learn that for several of our interfaith couples, the word ‘inclusive’ is a signaling word they look for when trying to determine whether a Jewish organization will warmly welcome them.”

“If a Jewish Millennial feels that they can be their whole selves and include the people they love in what they’re doing, they’re much more likely to do Jewish… Part of our communal strategy should be … making sure they know their non-Jewish friends and partners are welcome…”

Rabbi Horwitz traces the response to interfaith marriage since 1990 and concludes that “while there are still some who are concerned with preventing these marriages…, much of the communal agenda has shifted to how best to welcome these families… viewing an interfaith marriage as welcoming someone new as opposed to treating the Jew who married a gentile as someone who has chosen to leave the community…” But he acknowledges, as 18Doors’ Jodi Bromberg writes, that many interfaith couples have “not found a Jewish community that felt comfortable for them or inclusive of interfaith families.”

Rabbi Horwitz acknowledges still-problematic issues of attitudes and policies. On officiation, he says, dryly, “Being turned away by rabbis when it’s time to celebrate their marriage and then hoping they’ll join synagogue communities where they experience rejection isn’t an ideal strategy.”  Further, “Also troubling are the inevitable micro-aggressions that many of these couples are met with across denominations, as it’s still normative to hear people say to the parents of young children things like, ‘Just wait until he grows up and finds a nice Jewish girl to marry!’”

If I have one quibble, it’s with the sub-chapter heading, “Interfaithless Marriage” and with Rabbi Horwitz having “taken to referring to these couples as ‘interfaithless.’” I don’t think that terms that describe people (i.e., “non-Jew”) or relationships (i.e., “interfaithless”) as something they are not, is a good idea. He seems to define “interfaithless” as neither partner actively practicing their inherited faith in a traditional manner – but how liberal Jewish-Jewish couples are doing that?

Rabbi Horwitz says, based on working with scores of couples, some interfaith, that their desire for a rabbi to officiate, or traditions like breaking a glass, or to please their parents or grandparents, does not indicate anything “religious.” But there’s no reason to suggest that interfaith couples have less or different spiritual needs than Jewish-Jewish couples, or that they don’t want as much spirituality in their weddings.

I do very much appreciate where Rabbi Horwitz ends up:

“Being sensitive to the needs of these couples is key….The simple truth is that there are wonderful human beings in this world who don’t happen to be Jewish who will make wonderful partners for our own Jewish children… [O]ur focus must be on how we make being part of Jewish community so welcoming, joyous, meaningful, relevant and substantive that these couples can’t imagine not wanting to be actively part of it themselves and are excited about raising any future offspring within it as well…. Turning away, shaming, or simply ‘tolerating’ mixed-heritage couples as opposed to embracing them is a missed opportunity to begin forming lasting relationships with them.”

Also in the News

  • HeyAlma had a powerful story by a college sophomore who calls for patrilineal Jews to proudly celebrate themselves. This especially resonated: “Like all groups, one’s identity being affirmed and celebrated is what indicates future commitment to it, and being excluded will … ultimately lead to feeling the need to leave.”
  • Ha’aretz reported that the Education Ministry of Israel pulled funding from an annual all night learning event on the eve of Shavuot, that promotes pluralistic, progressive Judaism, because Israeli-Arab broadcast journalist Lucy Aharish, who is married to an Israeli Jew who is stars in Fauda, participated as the event’s host. The Director of the Division of Jewish Culture is quoted as saying, “We live in a ‘Jewish State’ and as the Wing of Jewish Culture, it makes sense that a woman who represents mixed marriage cannot represent Jewish culture.” Aharish said the Ministry was saying, “we judge you for being an Arab, you are not a part of us.”
  • The forthcoming Rosov Consulting study, mentioned in our December newsletter, that recognizes the impact of attitudes and ideologies about interfaith marriage on interfaith families’ Jewish engagement, was discussed in eJewishPhilanthropy.
  • A very interesting page on “Marriage Services,” from the website of Muslims for Progressive Values, notes, “we do not require conversion by the non-Muslim partner. Please view the theological basis for the permissibility for such a marriage at the bottom of the page.”
  • There was a nice, matter-of-fact story in a Houston TX area local secular paper, about interfaith couples finding their community welcoming.
  • In the Boston Globe’s “Ask Amy” feature, atheist parents asked for a second opinion on not celebrating Christmas with their child because “we don’t want to push religious messages;” Amy’s answer: “For many people, Christmas is more a commercial celebration than a religious one. If you wanted to, it would be possible to do the whole Christmas shebang without ever delving into any Christian thought or belief.”

September 2023 News from the Center

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High Holiday Sermons – Inclusive and Not-so-inclusive

Rachel Timoner, senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brookly, gave an incredibly inclusive Rosh Hashanah sermon. In discussing parallels between religious issues dividing Israelis and dividing American Jews, she describes her congregation as “a prime example of the other liberal Judaism: the progressive, multiracial, interfaith, pluralistic, justice-focused, thriving Judaism.” I loved the sound of “interfaith” modifying “Judaism” along with “progressive, justice-focused” and all the other adjectives.

Rabbi Timoner eloquently describes interfaith family inclusion:

“We do not have one kind of look. We do not have one kind of name. We come from every race and myriad cultures. You may meet a white Ashkenazi or Sephardi Jew, a Black Jew, an Asian Jew, a Latino Jew, an Arab Jew, and no matter what we look like we might know a lot about Judaism or a little. We also include a lot of people who aren’t Jewish. The only thing you can assume – the only thing you should assume – is that every single person you meet at CBE belongs here exactly as much as you do.

Our community includes many intermarried families. Jews have been intermarrying forever. We’re the children of Moses AND Tsippora. We’re the children of Ruth the Moabite who was the ancestor of King David who is the ancestor of the messiah. Some of the most dedicated and outstanding Jewish teens of this community have been children of intermarried families. There is no such thing as a half-Jew. Jewish children of intermarriage are Jews, full stop. When we embrace the diverse families of our community, intermarriage makes us stronger.”

I was very disappointed in the Kol Nidre sermon of Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in Manhattan, which you can listen to here. I hate to disagree with Rabbi Buchdahl, I have been privileged to know and talk with her, and admire her greatly – she is deservedly one of America’s iconic, outstanding rabbis. And I loved the first part of the sermon, which criticizes how the Jewish community has for many years passed judgment on interfaith marriage as a negative. Rabbi Buchdahl nicely describes engaged partners from different faith backgrounds as not “b’nai yisrael,” children of Israel, but “bonei yisrael,” builders of Israel.

But the sermon veers badly off course, in my view, recommending renewed efforts to encourage those builders of Israel to convert. This is personal for the rabbi; she relates how her own mother was only welcomed as a guest, never asked if she were interested in converting.

Here are some of my questions for Rabbi Buchdahl: what do you say to those “bonei yisrael” who do not want to convert? That they can only be welcomed as a guest, whose presence is appreciated, but they can’t be included in Jewish communities – feel that they belong – unless they convert? Isn’t it necessarily passing judgment on partners from different faith backgrounds as second class, if they’re not worthy of being included without converting?

Just before Yom Kippur, Religion News Service ran “This Yom Kippur, she’ll pray inside the synagogue, he’ll secure it on the outside.” It’s a very positive story about the “growing ranks of intermarried synagogue members.” It says ,“the liberal Jewish movements have come a long way in welcoming non-Jewish spouses and encouraging their involvement” and that “religious intermarriage, which once carried a stigma, is now commonplace and is reshaping the contours of Jewish belief, practice and community.” It quotes Len Saxe of the Cohen Center as saying “The future of the Jewish people turns on whether we’re going to educate the children of one, as well as two, Jewish parents… That’s what’s happened in America, and it has led to an increase in the population.” I was pleased to see 18Doors prominently mentioned in the article.

The Detroit Jewish News ran a nice article about my friend Natalie Louise Shribman becoming the rabbi at local Reform Temple Kol Ami. Rabbi Shribman, whose mother isn’t Jewish, says “Throughout my career as a rabbi, I have been trying to find different ways to make interfaith families feel at home for both Jews and their non-Jewish partners.” Meanwhile, Allyson Zacharoff, who “grew up as the Jewish child of a happy interfaith marriage,” is the new rabbi at Reconstructionist Congregation Beth Hatikvah in Summit NJ.

The Movements

The URJ’s September 12 “Inside Leadership” email newsletter featured a blog post titled “Interfaith Inclusion in Our Communities.” I was told that a version had been available for several years and that there is a similar resource on the URJ’s website, “Interfaith Inclusion in Our Congregations & Communities.” These resources very cautiously address issues of terminology, as well as leadership roles and ritual participation by partners who are not Jewish. They do say that “the general trend has been expanding eligibility for leadership positions,” but that ritual participation is “usually determined by [clergy] working alongside lay leaders.”

It’s unfortunate that there isn’t more bold leadership by the movement on these issues, and that there is little attention explicitly given to them. There probably is not bold leadership because, as exemplified by the different sermons of Rabbi Timoner and Rabbi Buchdahl, some rabbis recognize that full inclusion of unconverted partners is necessary, while others want them to  convert. This may also be what stifles discussion; the URJ is celebrating its 150th anniversary in December, but it doesn’t appear from the information available on the event’s website that engaging interfaith families even will be a specific topic of discussion.

On the Conservative side, Daniel Stein, the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek, writes for the J that he wants to officiate at weddings of interfaith couples. Rabbi Stein says that in the Conservative congregations he’s served, interfaith couples “contribute in remarkable ways… their presence enriches our community.” Referring to the movement’s decline, he asks, “How much richer would our Conservative Jewish communities be if rabbis like me could seriously engage with couples at the outset of their marriage?” He concludes by saying that “non-Jews who love Jews … should be welcomed and loved as a vital part of a new Jewish future. Hopefully, the leadership of the Conservative movement will embrace the spirit of the moment before it is too late.”

The Religion News Service story about Yom Kippur focuses on one interfaith couple and welcoming changes that have been made at their Conservative synagogue, Beth Mayer, in Raleigh NC led by Rabbi Eric Solomon (who would like to officiate at weddings of interfaith couples if he could).

(In the August newsletter, I misspoke about the date of the “Can We Talk About Patrilineal Descent” program at the United Synagogue’s convention – it’s in December.)

Europe

My understanding is that local Jewish communities in Europe are highly organized and controlled by Orthodox authorities. This month there were two stories that indicated challenges to that hegemony and possible future liberalization.

New synagogue in Dresden plans to operate outside of Germany’s Jewish mainstream” describes a new “egalitarian congregation” that has some 200 members and “is officially open to Jews and their non-Jewish partners – something that sets it apart from most synagogues in Germany.” The founder told JTA “We don’t need anyone’s authorization to be Jewish or to have our own community, and we don’t accept the Central Council as any authority about how Jewish life should look.”

Meanwhile in Calabria, in southern Italy, a Reconstructionist synagogue founded by Rabbi Barbara Aiello includes descendants of Sephardic Jews, who were forcibly converted to Christianity and are not halachically Jewish, and accepts same-sex and interfaith marriages. As a result, Orthodox communities do not recognize or include Rabbi Aiello’s community.

At our May 2023 Radical Inclusion program, UK Rabbi Guy Hall spoke compared the status of interfaith inclusion in the US and in Europe — watch here.

Missed opportunity

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is the senior rabbi of a major Los Angeles synagogue, Stephen Wise Temple, wrote “Big Tent Judaism” for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. He argues that American Jews have a stake in and should be willing to fight for gender equality and inclusion in Israel.

Rabbi Zweiback cites a recent Haftorah portion in which “the prophet Isaiah invites us to imagine a more expansive Jewish community, one that makes room for every person: ‘Enlarge the site of your tent, Extend the size of your dwelling, Do not stint! Lengthen the ropes, and drive the pegs firm.’ (Is. 54:2).” He is proud that his synagogue community is committed to egalitarianism and LGBTQ+ inclusion, a big tent where there is “room for Jews of all beliefs, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, and levels of observance,” in which “our whole community is included – along with our friends, allies, and beloved guests.”

This is a fine piece. I just wish that Rabbi Zweiback explicitly referred to interfaith couples, and in particular partners from different faith backgrounds, as being included in the tent – made to feel that they belong – and not just welcomed as “beloved guests.”

Also in the Media

Amy Beth Starr, whose husband is not Jewish, wrote very poignantly for Kveller about living in an area where there are very few Jews and sending her son to a Jewish summer day camp where she hoped he’d make some Jewish friends. While he loved the camp, sadly there weren’t many  Jewish kids there and he didn’t make any Jewish friends.

My Google alert on interfaith couples picked up an entry on J Station X – a blog by a video gamer – titled “What Role Did a Rabbi Play in the Process” (I have no idea what game the entry is about). Part of the entry asked “Can a rabbi marry interfaith couples?” I thought the answer was very fair: “It depends on the rabbi and their denomination. Some rabbis are willing to officiate interfaith weddings, while others may have specific guidelines or restrictions.”

An article in a secular paper, the Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram, focused on the findings in recent demographic studies of Long Beach and of nearby Los Angeles that many Jews don’t feel a sense of belonging in their Jewish communities. While not about interfaith families in particular, the article notes that a vice president of the Long Beach federation said that “though she is part of an interfaith family, her children were welcomed into a local Jewish preschool with open arms.”

August 2023 News from the Center

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Our Jerusalem Post Op-ed

In the run-up to the High Holy Days, the Jerusalem Post published my op-ed, Can Judaism find a loving approach to include interfaith families?

The UK’s Institute for Jewish Policy Research had published a report of rates of interfaith marriage around the world. I was startled when the Post’s editorial said interfaith marriage is not only “a significant phenomenon that cannot be ignored” but more importantly that it must “be approached thoughtfully and sensitively.” I was more startled when the editors applauded creative approaches to interfaith marriage that among other things took into account “the feelings of both Jewish and non-Jewish spouses.”

My op-ed applauds the Post editors’ enlightened thinking. I wanted to say more about what a thoughtful and sensitive approach would involve, and took the opportunity to explain how considering and treating interfaith couples as equal to inmarried couples, and partners from different faith backgrounds as equal to Jews, is both essential to more interfaith families feeling included in Jewish settings, and very challenging to traditional views.

The IJPR’s executive director, Jonathan Boyd, in his own op-ed in the Post, said that in the month of Av, “We’re called on to choose between love and hate across our differences. Choose the former, and we may achieve something together.” In my piece I asked if a loving approach to interfaith couples and partners from different faith backgrounds was too much to hope for, and that’s where the Post got the title.

Embark Acquired by Moishe House

eJewishPhilanthropy reported that Embark, a program for interfaith couples funded by Laura Lauder, has been acquired by Moishe House. Embark has run programs in Miami, Atlanta, San Francisco and Philadelphia to educate interfaith couples about Jewish life and rituals; under Moishe House, a two-day retreat will be added, allowing participants to meet, and Moishe House will offer interfaith couples the option to live its trademark subsidized homes in exchange for hosting Jewish programming for fellow Jewish young professionals.

This sounds like a great match.

The article has a lot of back-and-forth about conversion; I appreciated Laura Lauder’s conclusion, “Whether or not people convert is not going to be a sign of success. We enable young Jewish couples to raise Jewish children, and I would like the world to know that Jewish life in America is going to thrive with interfaith couples, not despite interfaith couples.”

Traditional Attitudes About Interfaith Marriage

The IJPR report, and the Post article about it, are refreshing for concluding that low fertility rates – not interfaith marriage – are the “main threat to Jewish demographic sustainability.” But the author, Dr. Daniel Staetsky, clearly expresses a traditional perspective, in particular when he says that “transmission of Jewishness is partial in the case of intermarried [Jewish] mothers… based on empirical reality.” There isn’t acknowledgment or recognition of the possibilities for full, powerful “transmission of Jewishness” by interfaith parents.

Dr. Staetsky says that “the definition of Jewishness dictated by Jewish law… is broadly accepted by all Jews, while the modifications to it, or expansions, are not.” That’s the root of the problem – the traditional perspective doesn’t tolerate inclusion of interfaith couples or their children. It views high rates of interfaith marriage as a problem, a failure. Comparing the rate of all married Jews who are intermarried, the IJPR study finds the US in the middle of the pack at 45%, compared to Israel at 5% and Poland at 76%; a self-congratulatory comment in the British press notes their 22% rate is third lowest in the world.

The report is positive in mentioning the possibility that Jewish law could change, saying that that is beyond the limits of a demographic study and “belongs in the realm of rabbinical thought.” It is also positive in recognizing the “critical question” of “how to treat the consequences of intermarriage” and asking “How and to what extent … should communities accept and incorporate the offspring and spouses of intermarried Jews into communal activities.” It goes on to ask, “can some normative standards be developed across the Jewish world?” Given traditional attitudes, I’m not optimistic about that.

Conservative Movement

More evidence of the persistence of traditional attitudes is news that the Rabbinical Assembly’s ban on Conservative rabbis officiating at weddings of interfaith couples will continue, the outcome of a strategic planning process. The RA reportedly does want to help rabbis “lead productive conversations with interfaith couples prior to their weddings, even though they can’t officiate.” The article describes a “deep divide,” possibly generational, among the movement’s rabbis, with some optimistic that the ban would not change even in the long term, and others openly defying it.

From our perspective, even if there are “productive conversations,” the ban will continue to make interfaith couples feel that they do not belong in Conservative synagogues.

On the other hand, the schedule for the United Synagogue’s March 2024 convention includes “Can We Talk About Patrilineal Descent.” The description includes: “Given the reality of modern families and ready availability of genetic testing, are our reasons for preserving matrilineal descent still valid? Does maintaining the status quo align with our egalitarian values? Our commitment to LGBTIA+ inclusion? How has it felt when we’ve needed to turn people away from our synagogues and institutions? Is the language of “completion” or “affirmation” instead of conversion sufficient to create meaningful portals of entry?” It’s a positive sign that these questions are being discussed.

Jewish Unity Efforts

In an effort to connect with the editors of the Jerusalem Post to submit the op-ed, I reached out for help to Sandy Cardin, a longtime friend and strong advocate for inclusion in the Jewish community. Sandy is Chair of the Board of the Global Jewry initiative. In my op-ed I said that efforts to build unity among Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, like Global Jewry and President Herzog’s Kol Ha’am, did not explicitly refer to the need to include interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds.

Sandy pointed me to new text on the Global Jewry website: “We believe in inclusivity and embrace Jews of all backgrounds, affiliations, and levels of observance. Whether you’re Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, Just Jewish, exploring your Jewish identity or supporting your Jewish partner, you’ll find a warm and accepting space here.”

I asked the Jerusalem Post to change the statement about Global Jewry, which was no longer accurate, prior to publication, but they unfortunately did not.

I’m thrilled to see the inclusive language on the Global Jewry site, and thrilled that Sandy invited the Center to partner with Global Jewry. We look forward to participating as we continue to work with all who will listen to the call for a more inclusive unity among Jewish communities.

In Other News

I have mixed feelings about “There is a solution to 70% intermarriage among US Jews.” On the one hand, the author’s “solution” is to “make immigration [to Israel] easy, attractive and compelling for families who have intermarried” so that their children in turn will not intermarry, given the rarity of interfaith marriage in Israel. Not only is this unrealistic, it is based on an underlying attitude that interfaith marriage is bad. On the other hand, the author does call strongly for welcoming and embracing interfaith couples and their children, and even for Jewish weddings in Israel for children of interfaith couples. Sadly, that’s unrealistic too.

I liked “Building the Jewish Future One Bunk at a Time” because it says “Jewish camps are essential in building Jewish identity, creating lifelong Jewish friendships and nurturing future Jewish leaders” – which is great – and doesn’t say that attending camps leads to less interfaith marriage. I do wish the authors had included some mention of the importance of Jewish camps for the children of interfaith families though.

I liked a JTA article about the wedding of David Corenswet, the actor who will next play Superman, because it is so matter of fact that the actor’s rabbi, Edward Cohn in New Orleans, co-officiated his wedding in a Catholic church. The church’s wedding coordinator reportedly said, “The bride and groom were just so determined to intersperse the Jewish traditions with the Catholic traditions, which to me just enhanced the beauty and the strength of both faiths.” Rabbi Cohn said Jewishness is an important part of the actor’s life and that the couple intended to affiliate with a congregation. A model of inclusion keeping doors open to Jewish engagement.

This Torah portion commentary was very challenging – it says that Deuteronomy 23, 20-21 says that it is permissible to lend money and charge interest to a “gentile” but not to a fellow Jew. The author, an Orthodox rabbi, says this is not discrimination against those who are not Jewish, they are to be treated with justice and morality, but there is a preferred attitude towards Jews, our spiritual brothers, to be treated like siblings. I don’t know, sounds discriminatory to me.

Thanks to Susan Katz Miller for pointing out that in an otherwise fascinating article about the Bradley Cooper “Jewface” controversy about his prosthetic nose playing Leonard Bernstein, the author says, “I’m Jewish, and was raised culturally Jewish, but because I had a Jewish father and a Catholic mother and am therefore not a matrilineal Jew, I grew up hearing from various schmucks and nudniks that I was ‘not really Jewish,’ ‘not technically Jewish,’ and ‘not Jewish enough.’”

Finally, a very interesting piece on ableism and people with disabilities included this statement: “The presumption of normativity forces disabled folks to shoulder the burden of disclosure and do the work of negotiating access. Every disabled person I know has stories about the cost of living in a one-size-fits-all society, about being shut out by attitudes, assumptions and physical structures that demand everyone’s body and mind fit within the same basic norm. This isn’t only a disability story. Fat bodies, Black and brown bodies, Jewish bodies, Muslim bodies, femme bodies and queer, trans and nonbinary bodies — so many of us know the costs that normativity exacts.” I wish the author had included interfaith families among the groups disadvantaged by notions of normativity.

Interfaith Inclusion at the Biennials

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[Portions of this essay appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy on February 4, 2020 under the title “Reconceptualizing Conversion.”]

Conflicting views about conversion were at the core of what was said – and not said – about interfaith inclusion at the recent biennial conventions of the Conservative and Reform movements.

With 84% of new households that include non-Orthodox Jews being interfaith, it clearly is essential to engage more of those couples if any liberal Jewish activity is to thrive in the future. Experts agree that people engage with a group if they feel included – that they belong. But many Jews think that if partners from different faith backgrounds want to belong, they can and should convert.

Holding up conversion as a condition to inclusion – a persistent view expressed at the biennials – is a bad strategy that will push more couples away at the outset. Instead, we should see conversion “for the right reasons, and at the right time” as an incidental possible future outcome of an approach of full inclusion without condition that will bring more couples in.

That interfaith inclusion was more of a focus at the United Synagogue/Rabbinical Assembly gathering represents a sea change. In the past when I would try to interest Conservative rabbis in InterfaithFamily’s work, most were standoffish because of our position on conversion: when I said it was a wonderful personal choice but if promoted too aggressively would turn people away, the typical reaction was “not good enough.”

With membership declining, attributed by most to the movement’s less than welcoming response to interfaith families, attitudes are changing. Over the past two years, the United Synagogue partnered with InterfaithFamily on a survey about welcoming interfaith families in Conservative synagogues, the subject of a well-attended biennial session.

The most striking development occurred when Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz delivered a passionate statement that Conservative rabbis should be permitted to officiate at weddings of interfaith couples who intend to raise their children Jewish. Rabbi Eliot Cosgrove advocated in response for standing by the sociological and halachic value of inmarriage, and positioning the Conservative movement as the movement of conversion. Acknowledging that many might not convert, he said it is not the movement’s responsibility to serve everyone or to risk standing for nothing.

Rabbi Gardenswartz had this to say about conversion:

It would be great if Christopher [the hypothetical partner of Rachel] would convert.  Conversion would clearly be our preferred option. We would move heaven and earth to encourage him to convert if he were open to it.  But here is what he says…. I love Rachel for who she is.  I want to be loved for who I am.  Maybe in time I might choose to convert, but I want to do it for the right reasons, and in the right time.  The right reason is that this is something that I want to do, that I am drawn to.   The right time is when I feel ready.  I don’t want to do it to make her parents happy, or to make clergy happy, or as a condition to a wedding.  I am happy if our children are raised Jewish.  I would be partners with Rachel in their getting a Jewish education. But I am not ready to convert to Judaism unless I feel it is something I want to do because it feels right to me.

Half of the room enthusiastically applauded after each rabbi spoke, reflecting the movement’s sharp division. Rabbi Gardenswartz noted one outcome of saying no is couples might go to “the fabulous Reform rabbi, of the thriving Reform synagogue, the next town over.” But the situation wasn’t so rosy at the URJ Biennial.

Out of more than 100 learning sessions, only four were focused on interfaith families. At one, I presented the results of a survey the Center for Radically Inclusive Judaism (CFRIJ) conducted of interfaith inclusion policies and practices at Reform synagogues. One key takeaway was that leadership positions continue to be largely restricted to Jews; in only 43% of congregations can partners from different faith traditions serve as board members, and in only 21% as officers. Second, while ritual participation has opened up, with 70% of congregations allowing parents from different faith traditions to have or join in an Aliyah at the b’nai mitzvah of their children, it is not clear how many congregations allow partners from a different faith tradition to recite the words of the Torah blessings. Many congregational leaders clearly view conversion as a requirement for full inclusion in leadership and ritual.

Shortly before the Biennial, CFRIJ announced a grass-roots campaign to have Reform congregations propose a resolution at the 2021 URJ Biennial calling for full inclusion of interfaith families and partners from different faith traditions. One rabbi strongly objected, saying that if partners from different faith traditions can do everything Jews can do, Jewish identity would be meaningless and no one would convert, and that it’s like citizenship, where aliens have certain rights but can’t vote.

As I said at the learning session, addressing what inclusion means, maintaining high boundaries and applying the citizenship analogy – essentially, requiring conversion as a condition to full inclusion – is a recipe for decline. At another biennial session, on supporting “Jewish adjacent” members, two partners from different faith traditions detailed their extensive Jewish engagement in both their families’ lives and in their synagogues. Questions from the audience commented that they were more Jewishly engaged than many Jews, and wondered how they felt about conversion. Both indicated that for their very personal reasons, it wasn’t the right time, but it might be in the future.

The most striking development was Rabbi Rick Jacobs’ speech, As Numerous as the Stars of Heaven. After stating that “Jewish life was meant to expand and grow” and urging the Reform movement to enlarge the size of its tent, the speech focused almost entirely on embracing Jews of Color, and ended with a call to action to address antiracism. I am all in favor of embracing Jews of Color, but the impact of doing so is dwarfed by the potential numerical gain available from embracing partners from different faith traditions.

Rabbi Jacobs did make a passing reference to “so many people out there who are Jewishly adjacent… and they are part of this family of ours.” But instead of saying “There are millions of North American Jews … looking for a place to belong,” I wish Rabbi Jacobs had referred to millions of “North American Jews and their partners from different faith backgrounds.” When he said, “It is time that we make every person who comes under our tent feel like they already belong,” I wish he had said “that means partners from different faith backgrounds, too.”

The leaders of liberal Judaism are missing opportunities to explicitly prioritize engaging interfaith families, the defining challenge of our time. Another takeaway from the survey was that congregations do not talk effectively about their interfaith inclusion policies and practices either among their leadership or with their congregants, with only 18% publishing them on their websites.  We need to rise above the lingering ambivalence that conditions inclusion on conversion and instead embrace full inclusion as our goal.