March 2025 News: An Orthodox Rabbi Raised by a Christian Mother, an Interfaith Mom Demands Inclusion, Birthright Israel’s Good Messaging, New Data about Intermarriage, and More

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A Remarkable Orthodox Rabbi’s Remarkable Essay

I’m always glad to draw attention to prominent Jewish leaders when they speak positively about interfaith families. This essay, by an Orthodox rabbi, in the National Catholic Reporter of all places, is just remarkable: “I’m a rabbi raised by a Christian mother. We need religious diversity now more than ever.”

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz, a truly inspiring leader, has this to say:

Critics point to the 72% interfaith marriage rate among non-Orthodox Jews …, as a sign of cultural crisis. Yet my personal experience offers a different narrative, one of spiritual enrichment through dual heritage. Growing up with a Christian mother while embracing Jewish Orthodoxy in adulthood taught me that religious conviction and pluralistic engagement are not mutually exclusive….

Interfaith families, where traditions often intertwine, can discover consequential ways to celebrate both heritages without erasing their unique identities.

A Powerful Statement by an Interfaith Mom Demanding Inclusion  

I’m also always glad to draw attention to statements by partners in interfaith relationships who speak out strongly in favor of inclusion. 18Doors’ weekly email newsletter this past week featured “Say Yes to Interfaith Families” by Susanna Perrett, a self-described “partner who is not Jewish, raising a Jewish family,” who says,

In the eyes of the Jewish community there is a lot of hand wringing about the status of interfaith couples. What to do about the problem of intermarried couples? The subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle current of isolation that I have felt as an intermarried couple is significant. I always know I am not quite as equal as the in-married couples. I am struck by double standard of inclusion as I watch my Jewish community fight against intolerance in the outside world. Do as we say, not as we do.

A very good friend of mine reminded me that I am a guest in their house, and that I should try to not cause problems. I am left to wonder, do we want interfaith families to feel like guests or like full participants in Jewish life?

It is my belief that religion is about behaving well and treating other people with kindness, compassion and love. It is very hard for me to reconcile the conflict within the Jewish community about who is and is not considered Jewish. While I understand the halachah (Jewish law) on the topic, I often wonder, is that more important than kindness, compassion and love?

Birthright Israel Gets the Messaging Right

At times in the past, I’ve criticized Birthright Israel, and the Jewish media, for touting the program’s impact in decreasing interfaith marriage. That message would deter children of intermarried parents – an applicant pool Birthright needs to reach – when the more important impact is to increase the likelihood of future Jewish engagement regardless of who the trip participants marry. That’s why this piece by Elias Saratovsky, president and CEO of the Birthright Israel Foundation, is excellent.

The lesson Saratovsky draws from the latest survey of the impact of Birthright Israel trips (discussed in our February eNewsletter) is not that fewer participants intermarry, but rather that more of them “instill Jewish pride and identity in their children” “regardless of their spouse’s background.” Noting that more of those children get Jewish education, become b mitzah, and go to Jewish camp, he says those are the results that promote Birthright’s value. This is a very welcome change of emphasis; this and this article on the survey are also good in this respect.

Does This Include Interfaith Families?

Sometimes Jewish leaders say things that sound great but don’t explicitly refer to interfaith families, leaving me wondering if they are included. That was the case with this interesting comment in an eJP piece by Yona Shem-Tov, CEO of Encounter, about reimagining Jewish citizenship and Jewish civics education:

[N]o meaningful engagement with Israel or Jewish life itself can ignore the importance of internal Jewish pluralism. Jewish civilization has always been defined by a diversity of thought and practice. Strengthening Jewish peoplehood requires fostering a culture that respects and embraces different approaches to Jewish identity, ensuring that ideological and religious differences are a source of richness rather than division.

Data

The Pew Research Center released its third Religious Landscape Study. Given that Jews make up only 2% of Americans, most of the massive study is about other religions. But the section on Religious Intermarriage is still filled with interesting data.

  • Compared to Mormons (87%), Protestants (81%), Catholics (75%) and the religiously unaffiliated (68%), Jews are the least likely, at 65%, to have a spouse of the same religion. Of their 35% of spouses of different religions, 15% are religiously unaffiliated, 11% are Catholic, and 7% are Protestant.
  • People who identify with the same religion as their spouse tend to have higher levels of religiousness than people married to someone of a different religion, but that doesn’t mean that interfaith marriage causes people to become less religious; it could be that less religious people are more inclined to intermarry.
  • Other findings relate to similarities in religious views, in the importance of religion, and frequency of religious discussions.

(On the lighter side, here’s DatingNews.com’s take on the study: Rising Interfaith Marriages Drive Demand for Diverse Dating Platforms.)

Another part of the study addresses religious “switching” including into and out of Judaism  (covered by the Jerusalem Post).

  • Among Americans raised Jewish, 76% are still Jewish; comparable retention rates are 77% for American Muslims and 73% for American Christians. Of those no longer Jewish, 17% are religiously unaffiliated, 2% identify as Christian and 1% as Muslim; 4% identify with another religion or didn’t answer. (Note this study reports on those who say their religion is Judaism; it does not include those who identify as Jewish but not by religion.)
  • Among Jewish adults in the US, 14% converted in to Judaism.

The St. Louis federation and the Cohen Center released their 2024 local Jewish community study, covered in the St. Louis Jewish Light. I quickly noted that the individual intermarriage rate (i.e., the proportion of Jewish adults with a spouse who is not Jewish) is 53%, higher than the national average of 42%, as well as this open-ended comment (at p. 154):

Not nearly enough resources or connections or community for intermarried families—we don’t fit in anywhere. Because I am married to a non-Jew, despite trying to be involved in many Jewish organizations, I always feel like an outsider, like I’m less-than.

In Other News

  • JTA’s Philissa Cramer writes in “Kitty Dukakis, dead at 88, was the first Jewish spouse of a US presidential candidate” that the Colorado Jewish newspaper in 1988 questioned what kind of role model she would be for Jewish children given her interfaith marriage. Like Doug Emhoff, the second Jewish spouse of a presidential candidate, she said she “engaged more with her Jewish identity because of her marriage than she might have without it.”
  • “Orange for Hope: Finding Strength in the Fight for Jewish Identity” is a very interesting story about Jewish identity and efforts to liberate Israelis from restrictions of the Orthodox Rabbinate.
  • The Guardian ran a very nice story about the First United Methodist church in Pasadena is now hosting the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, whose building was destroyed in the LA fires, as well as an outpost of the Islamic Center of Southern California.

March 2024 News from the Center

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The Jewish world’s attention continues to be focused on Israel and antisemitism. There have been mentions in the media of increased interest in Jewish identity, but they haven’t been connected with inclusion of interfaith families. The topic apparently was not discussed on the agenda or the sidelines at either the Jewish Funders Network or CCAR conferences in March.

One significant development was the release of prominent Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman’s new book, To Be a Jew Today – A New Guide to God, Israel and the Jewish People. Attention to the book has, not surprisingly, focused on what it says about Israel. But as my enthusiastic review published on the Times of Israel blogs says, Feldman offers A Fresh Perspective on Interfaith Marriage.

Feldman explains how the strong taboo against interfaith marriage has been overcome among progressive Jews by the competing values of free choice and romantic love. I was heartened by two points. First, Feldman suggests that traditional Jews could evolve Jewish law that they consider binding so as to accommodate interfaith marriages, as some have for gay marriages. Second, in what sounds like a radically inclusive Judaism in which partners from different faith traditions are thought of and treated as equal, he says that “the only challenge left” for progressive Jews “is to reframe the acceptance of interfaith marriage as affirmatively positive,” not just a reluctant concession to reality. I hope Feldman’s thinking on interfaith marriage gets the attention among Jewish leaders that it deserves.

Another significant development was the announcement of an important partnership between ADL and 18Doors that will address the need for programs and resources on antisemitism specifically for interfaith couples. As Jodi Bromberg said, “Couples and family members come from a place of love, connection and shared humanity—and yet, these conversations around antisemitism and allyship can be hard to navigate.” This partnership is a clear sign that the ADL recognizes the importance of helping interfaith couples remain allies and feel included in Jewish communities.

II do remain worried that statements, like one in the Boston Globe this week, that the Jewish people “are fundamentally alone,” and ongoing calls for strengthening Jewish peoplehood, by focusing on the “mainstream,” and putting our own oxygen masks on first, could result in pushing interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds away. I’m seeing more emails coming from Jewish organizations and professionals ending with “Am Yisrael Chai!” It’s a sentiment I share – may the Jewish people live and thrive.

But “Jewish people” is a shorthand term susceptible to different interpretation. It could mean Jews only. But it could include partners from different faith backgrounds who are not Jewish themselves. As I’ve said before, I wish people would use the term “Jewish community” because it’s more inclusive. The partners from different faith backgrounds and their extended families are the natural allies of the Jewish people – and the Jewish community needs all the allies it can get.

It’s very tricky. In The Jewish Mainstream, Adina Poupko writes that the Natan Fund, which she leads, has paid close attention to “outliers” – people not yet included in Jewish communal life – as “an early funder of LGBTQ inclusion, Jewish farming and environmentalism, new models of synagogues and grassroots communities, and Jewish arts and culture.” (She could have included interfaith families among her outliers – when I ran InterfaithFamily (now 18Doors), Natan was a very influential early funder).

But now, with Israel and the Jewish people at war on many fronts, she says we need to direct more of our funding to “the mainstream”:

“We need to shift from meeting people ‘where they are’ to providing them with opportunities to learn and engage and invite them over to where we are, where most Jews are. We shouldn’t be so accommodating that we turn our communities upside down or compromise on core tenets that are existentially important to nearly all of us.”

Poupko thankfully is careful to say that she’s not suggesting “that we put our support for the outliers on hold.” The point of her essay may be that anti-Zionists should not be accommodated, which is a whole other question. But it would be terrible if Jewish leaders start thinking that, and acting like, we shouldn’t be accommodating to those not yet included in Jewish life.

Finally, Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, writes that in the aftermath of October 7 Jews have been “made to feel utterly alone by the hostility of the world,” but that ironically the Jewish spirit of many has been awakened – what he calls “a tidal wave of prosemitism.” Rabbi Hauer caught my eye when he said that we must figure out how to lock in the wave of prosemitism “for those who have yet to firmly establish themselves within the Jewish communal family.” Given the Orthodox Union’s past statements, I doubt that Rabbi Hauer had interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds in mind. But there’s always hope.

Also worth reading:

  • In Kriah and a Crucifix: A Rabbi’s Story of Interfaith Mourning Rabbi Simon Stratford, an 18Doors Rukin Fellow, writes that “I’ve realized that in a person’s darkest hours, my role as a rabbi isn’t to set boundaries and limit the participation of mourners but rather to do what I can to make them feel included and supported in their grief.”
  • In The Story of Esther, the Story of Us,  Crystal Hill relates her own interfaith family to Purim’s story of Esther’s interfaith family and current concerns about expressing identity.
  • A group of Orthodox Church and Catholic Church representatives are recommending that the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church take steps to recognize each others’ marriages.

More Who Is a Jew

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A month ago I blogged about the “who is a Jew” question that arose from the tragic attack on Gabrielle Giffords. My main point was this:

It behooves everyone in the Jewish community, Orthodox included, to regard Gabrielle Giffords as a Jew for all purposes except where halachic status matters. Many would say that the entire community benefits from having a staunch supporter of Israel in the US Congress, for example. When halachic status is important, it can be dealt with. A Jew to whom halachic status is important in a marriage partner, for example, can choose not to marry someone who does not measure up to his or her halachic standards, or the non-halachic Jew can convert according to those same standards. It would be a major advance if the idea took hold that the Jewish community consists of Jews who are halachic and who are not halachic and that issues of halachic status could be dealt with when they arise.

The Forward issue dated today has two related articles of interest. My former colleague Rabbi Sue Fendrick, in Beyond ‘Yes or No’ Jewishness, seems to agree with me. She makes the interesting point that the State of Israel recognizes the advantages of distinguishing “Jewish for what purpose?” – the state’s eligibility rules for immigration and for ritual status are different. I loved her statement,

… we gain nothing by ignoring or failing to name the ways that an individual’s Jewishness “counts” – whether they live a Jewish life and identify as a Jew, come from a Jewish family or are “half-Jewish,” or are simply identified by other Jews as being “one of us.” … Simple yes/no definitions of Jewishness are inadequate to the task of naming reality. We need to make room for descriptions that tell us about Jewishness as it is, not obscure its realities and complexities.

Rabbi Andy Bachman, in Patrilineal Promise and Pitfalls, suggests that children raised as Jews who are not considered Jews outside of the Reform movement because their mothers are not Jewish should be taken to the mikveh for conversion by Reform rabbis by the age of Bar of Bat Mitzvah. The problem with that approach is that the Jews who don’t consider those children Jewish, wouldn’t recognize such a conversion if it were under Reform auspices. If Reform conversions were so recognized, I would be in favor of this kind of process, or even of incorporating conversion into a bris or baby naming ceremony. Sadly this is not in the cards.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Who Isn’t a Jew?

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In the aftermath of the terrible attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, there has been a lot of discussion in the Jewish press about the “who is a Jew” issue. Two and a half weeks ago I blogged that it was a shame that it took a tragedy to get leading Jewish commentators like the editors of the Jerusalem Post to write that a non-halachic but self-identifying Jew like Giffords should not be excluded and that “many ‘non-Jews’ are much more Jewish than their ‘Jewish’ fellows.”

Now the editors of the Forward have offered Who Isn’t a Jew? but they don’t give a satisfactory answer. They write that there is a disconnect between religious standards and the people’s behavior: Giffords, who has a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, is no more Jewish according to traditional Jewish law than Chelsea Clinton, but is being widely treated as a Jew across the country. The editors say this is cause for cheer, because tolerance and inclusion are good, but also cause for dismay — and that’s where they go wrong. They lament that intermarriage leads to fewer Jewish families, when the Boston 2005 demographic study concluded that at least in that community, intermarriage was leading to more Jewish families, not less. And they lament the divide on this issue between the Orthodox and everyone else.

There is a solution to the halachic divide. It behooves everyone in the Jewish community, Orthodox included, to regard Gabrielle Giffords as a Jew for all purposes except where halachic status matters. Many would say that the entire community benefits from having a staunch supporter of Israel in the US Congress, for example. When halachic status is important, it can be dealt with. A Jew to whom halachic status is important in a marriage partner, for example, can choose not to marry someone who does not measure up to his or her halachic standards, or the non-halachic Jew can convert according to those same standards. It would be a major advance if the idea took hold that the Jewish community consists of Jews who are halachic and who are not halachic and that issues of halachic status could be dealt with when they arise.

Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic. I thought, after last year’s GA, that attitudes were perhaps turning more positive towards intermarriage, but the Forward editorial is a setback. Lamenting that intermarriage leads to fewer Jewish families and that inclusion may cause the communal tent to collapse is self-fulfilling: young interfaith couples are not going to want to associate with a community that regards them as undermining and destructive. And it certainly won’t encourage those on the traditional end of the spectrum to be more tolerant and inclusive of non-halachic Jews.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

A Shame That It Takes a Tragedy

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Everyone at InterfaithFamily.com, like most people, feels terribly about the awful attack on US Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson.

The violent incident in itself is not something that we would ordinarily comment about. (My personal view that there should be a huge outcry about gun control isn’t something that is an issue for InterfaithFamily.com either.) If Congresswoman Giffords didn’t have an interfaith family background, we wouldn’t have commented. But she does, and we thought it would be interest to our readers, and in part it was our way of expressing our distress.

The mission of InterfaithFamily.com is to empower people in interfaith relationships to engage in Jewish life and make Jewish choices. There are so many interfaith couples that are potentially interested in Jewish life, we want to present information that will attract them to give it a try. When a person of celebrity comes from or is in an interfaith relationship and is engaged Jewishly, we want to let our site visitors know, because it may trigger interest or steps in that direction. From all accounts, Gabrielle Giffords is a very wonderful person in the public eye, who came from an interfaith family — her father is Jewish, her mother is not — and was not raised very Jewishly and yet chose to identify Jewishly as an adult. We think it’s important for our readers to know that.

There is another significance to the Giffords story that is very relevant to IFF’s advocacy work for more welcoming of interfaith families by Jewish communities. Thankfully Gabrielle Giffords apparently was not greeted, when she decided to get more Jewishly involved, with an attitude that she was not welcome, she was not “really” Jewish, etc. In that regard, the Jerusalem Post ran a very important editorial yesterday. The Post, not exactly known to be liberal on intermarriage issues, basically says that Giffords should be considered to be a Jew – even though she is not halachically Jewish.

Some of the Post’s language is striking. They say for example that Giffords “actively embraced Judaism” after a 2001 trip to Israel – this about a person who has not converted. They also say that the “broadening definition of Jewishness is not restricted to the Reform movement,“ citing a paper about halachically non-Jewish offspring of intermarried parents not being excluded from Conservative congregations. The editorial concludes:

Is it conceivable to exclude Giffords, another “non-Jew,” who is so unequivocally Jewish? With all our desire for a universally accepted definition of “Who is a Jew?” that would unify the Jewish people, we cannot ignore the complicated reality that many “non-Jews” are much more Jewish than their “Jewish” fellows. Congresswoman Giffords is one of them.

The flip side of IFF’s work trying to attract people in interfaith relationships to Jewish life is that Jewish communities need to welcome them. It’s a shame that it takes a tragedy like this one for leading Jewish commentators to come to that conclusion.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.