February 2026 News: the 2025 Boston Study; Honeymoon Israel; Conversion and Messaging About Who Is Included; What Gets Prioritized

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Boston 2025 CJP Survey

CJP released the 2025 Greater Boston Jewish Community Study on February 12. As readers of this newsletter know, I am most interested in what research reveals about interfaith families’ feelings of belonging in Jewish communities (see What Recent Studies Reveal About Interfaith Family Inclusion). Most of the data relevant to that issue is not included in the thirteen individual reports that make up the Boston study; my understanding is that CJP is planning to make available a tool that will enable anyone to make inquiries about the data.

You can find what I have to say about the study, which I will update when more data is available, in  Review and Analysis of the Interfaith Marriage Data in the 2025 Greater Boston Jewish Community Study. Some highlights:

  • The Boston Jewish community is heavily and increasingly intermarried – 50% of married/partnered Jewish adults are in interfaith relationships; of marriages since 2020, 58% were interfaith.
  • 69% of children in interfaith families are being raised Jewish in some way (the breakdown of Jewish only, Jewish and something else, etc. is not currently reported). Fewer children of interfaith families have Jewish education – 16% are in part-time K-8 programs compared to 61% of children of inmarried families.
  • CJP states that “interfaith households… are an integral part of the Greater Boston Jewish Community,” but data on how interfaith families feel about their connection to Jewish community is not currently available, although it is for LGBTQIA+ Jews, Jews of color or people of color, Jews with disabilities, Russian-speaking Jews, Israeli Jews, and Jews of Sephardic or Mizrahi heritage.
  • There are indications in what’s been reported that interfaith families are less connected to the local Jewish community, which would be consistent with national and other local studies. The study says that “While most Jews in interfaith homes say they feel welcome, they are significantly less likely to participate in Jewish communal life.” The reported data shows that those who feel connected and part of the local Jewish community are more Jewishly engaged on all measures. But on one measure that is reported, only 22% of those who do feel part of the local Jewish community are interfaith, while 78% are inmarried.
  • There were follow-up interviews and focus groups with community members that gave “more insight on their feelings of inclusion and belonging.” But “most” of these community members “are avid synagogue participants who generally feel welcome in the spaces they choose to be in,” which raises questions about how representative the comments are of less engaged community members.

There is a lot of good news in the study. It’s great that a high percentage of children of interfaith families are being raised Jewish, but it’s worrisome that relatively few are getting Jewish education – that’s something I hope CJP will focus on in any implementation efforts. It’s great that interfaith families generally feel welcome, but it’s worrisome that that doesn’t translate into feelings of connection that foster engagement. It will be interesting to see what further data shows when it becomes available. 

Honeymoon Israel

In “‘It’s Complicated’ to Connected: Honeymoon Israel and Jewish Belonging Post 10/7,” Honeymoon Israel staffer Emma Dunn describes Honeymoon Israel fosters a sense of belonging among partners from different faith backgrounds. She relates how Avraham Infeld speaks to trip participants about Jewish peoplehood as a shared sense of responsibility that “Jews by birth, Jews by choice, and partners who had come to Jewish life through love and relationship” can develop. Infeld asks, “If you are choosing to build your life connected to the Jewish people, how will you show up for one another now and into the future?”

Dunn writes that “Honeymoon Israel offers a space where Jewish and mixed-heritage couples can explore their place in the Jewish people with honesty and care…. [C]ouples experience a broad and generous welcome into Jewish peoplehood. When they return home, they carry that sense of belonging with them and continue building Jewish life together.”

Conversion and Messaging About Who Is Included

Mijal Bitton wrote an essay about conversion that unfortunately implies that partners from different faith backgrounds who do not convert remain outsiders. That is not an inclusive message that encourages interfaith families to be Jewishly engaged.

Bitton says that after the mikveh, “Someone who stood at the edge now stands inside;” that those “who bind their fate to the Jewish people by choice, are not meant to remain at the edges. They are meant to be received as insiders, with standing and responsibility.” She refers to the “rabbinic claim that converts are said to have been present at Sinai” and says that “to have stood at Sinai, whether by birth or by choice, is … to accept responsibility for a covenant that is still being made.”

But there are other textual claims that it was a mixed multitude that stood at Sinai, including the strangers in the camp, who can be understood to have accepted responsibility for a covenant to be Jewishly engaged.

Messaging by Jewish leaders about the standing of partners from different faith backgrounds matters. I was struck by a comment in a very different context, a New York Times opinion piece about the conflict in Minneapolis, that expressed the importance of recognition by others:

“[W]ho we are is not just the idea we have of ourselves. It is also how others see us. The German philosopher Hegel elucidated this truth: The essence of our identity is not something we make on our own – it requires the recognition of others to be real. How we are perceived by others doesn’t just reflect who we are. It constitutes it.”

Left Out and Envious

There were several instances of engaging interfaith families not being mentioned where it could have been. Moment Magazine listed fifty Jewish innovators over the past fifty years; there was just one explicit reference to engaging interfaith families, a mention of Paul and Rachel Cowan’s 1989 book, Mixed Blessings. The Sapir journal published a conversation between Joshua Foer and William Foster on “What Makes a Moonshot?” and Charles Bronfman and Jeffrey Solomon offered “We Backed Birthright Israel. Now It’s Time for More Big Ideas for a Post-Oct. 7 World;” efforts to engage interfaith families weren’t mentioned as potential moonshots/big ideas.

There was a great essay by Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi about how Jewish disability inclusion efforts got started and grew. I’m replacing “disabilities” with “interfaith” in the following quote to illustrate what I wish will someday be true:

[A] small group of Jewish philanthropists and foundations began asking a simple but transformative question: What would it take for people [in interfaith relationships] to be fully included in Jewish life? A group of people active in Jewish philanthropy who had found that their families were not welcome in Jewish life due to [interfaith family inclusion] issues connected through the Jewish Funders Network. Together, they helped bring [interfaith family] inclusion into the philanthropic spotlight, and other philanthropists joined as allies.

Coincidentally, an essay about the JCC movement’s approach to inclusion of people with disabilities expressed the importance of a comprehensive approach: “What we’ve learned is simple: inclusion is possible when shared, systematized and woven into the fabric of an entire movement. … With centralized leadership and shared language, frameworks and responsibility, we all can expand inclusion efforts and empower each other to join in this vitally important work.” That’s relevant to all inclusion efforts.

Should the Jewish Press Survey Whether Intermarriage Is a Threat to Jewish Continuity?

The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle polled its readers, asking “Is intermarriage a threat to Jewish continuity?” 52% said yes, 48% said no. Asking that question and publicizing that result sends a message to interfaith couples that their marriage is viewed negatively by many Jews, discouraging couples who might be potentially Jewishly involved.

The paper published some of the comments it received. Some were positive about interfaith marriages resulting in children being raised as Jews; some were negative – “Of course it’s a threat. You can pretend it’s not and do a bunch of interfaith stuff but it’s not authentic Jewish identity.” My favorite: “Intermarriage will continue regardless of the opinions of rabbis or families. Either the Jewish community finds a way to embrace these marriages or lose members of the community. One thing is certain, we lose if we don’t welcome them.”

In Other News

  • In the outright hostile to interfaith marriage department, an article on the Aish website says that the greatest threat facing the Jewish people isn’t antisemitism, it’s interfaith marriage (or the assimilation that is the result of interfaith marriage), and an ultra-Orthodox authority in Israel told followers not to go to the very wonderful ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv because, he says, it promotes interfaith marriage.
  • Israeli political parties are advancing legislation that would extend control over the entire Western Wall to the Orthodox rabbinate, which would result in Reform and Conservative Jews not being able to have prayer services there, and even criminalizing their egalitarian prayer at the Wall. (Forward, Times of Israel, JTA)
  • Jack and Quinn Hughes, whose parents are an interfaith couple, are featured in a JTA story as Jewish Team USA hockey stars; the very sad news about Savannah Guthrie’s mother generated a story about her interfaith marriage.
  • I happily stumbled on the website of Mosaic Law Congregation, a Conservative synagogue in Sacramento, that has a vibrating banner on its home page that reads “We Welcome Interfaith Families.”

January 2026 News: What’s Changed In Twenty-five Years; Important New Research; Making Jewish Camp Accessible; More Conservative News

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How Times Have Changed

On January 11 I spoke at Congregation B’nai B’rith in Santa Barbara CA for the second time – the first was in December 2005. I took the opportunity to reflect on what’s changed about interfaith family inclusion over the past twenty years – and what work remains to be done. You can see the presentation on this video; the powerpoint slides are visible, and I’d be glad to share them.

One thing that’s changed is the fading away of the explicit hostility to interfaith marriage that was prevalent among Jewish leaders in 2005. In 2001, Sylvia Barack Fishman had done a study which concluded that interfaith families who say they are raising their children as Jews “incorporate Christian holiday festivities” into their lives such that Jewish identity is not transmitted to their children, even though they say that these festivities have no religious significance to them. I described this back then as “simply ridiculous,” based on surveys and an essay contest conducted by InterfaithFamily (now 18Doors).

After Fishman turned the study into a 2004 book, Double or Nothing?: Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage, I expressed fear that Jewish leaders would say that the “latest research” showed that “interfaith couples who were trying to raise their children as Jews shouldn’t bother because they won’t succeed,” and that “the Jewish community shouldn’t waste resources on outreach to mixed-married families, since the vast majority are not ‘really’ raising their children as Jews.”

I expressed hope that responsible Jewish leaders would insist on more conclusive social science research “before writing off the new families of the half of all young Jews who are intermarrying, thereby alienating their Jewish parents and relatives as well.”

I’m feeling vindicated all these years later. The Cohen Center at Brandeis just announced a new study which I think provides that more conclusive social science research. It notes:

Other work [citing Fishman’s 2004 book] has suggested that Jewish families who celebrate Christian holidays, or use Christian holiday decorations such as Christmas trees, struggle to instill Jewish identity in their children – even if these families do not treat these holiday activities as religious.

However, the results presented here suggest that at least some of the families who celebrate Christmas expose their children to more Jewish experiences than other families that had no Christian experiences at all…. [E]xposure to some non-Jewish religious-cultural experiences during childhood does not necessarily preclude high levels of involvement in Jewish life. (page 22)

The study (you can read a more detailed review here) even finds that children who celebrated Christmas and Easter (presumably in interfaith families) but were otherwise Jewishly involved “were more likely to have had a bar or bat mitzvah, to have attended Jewish supplementary school, and to have attended Jewish camp” than children who celebrated Hanukkah and Passover and had no other Jewish or Christian experiences (presumably these are inmarried families). (page 21)

Think of it – research confirms that some interfaith families are more Jewishly engaged than some inmarried families! Twenty years ago, we used to say that interfaith marriage didn’t determine the Jewish engagement of a family, the family’s choices did; we used to say that the Jewish partners in interfaith families couldn’t take their Jewish engagement for granted, they had to work harder at it. The new study seems to confirm that we were right.

Coincidentally, with all this looking back, in early January JTA published an article about the long-ago (1926) interfaith marriage of songwriter Irving Berlin that described issues around interfaith marriage as long-standing and continuing.

Even back then there were enlightened views. The editor of a Jewish newspaper actually said, “Mazel tov, Mr. and Mrs. Berlin!” Irving Berlin said, “It never struck me that I would be sacrificing a parcel of my Jewishness by marrying Ellin, and I suppose Ellin felt the same way about her religion. I am proud of my Jewishness, but you will never convince me that intermarriage is anti-anything.”

Jewish Camp

“For multifaith families, Jewish camp doesn’t have to feel awkward anymore” is a very promising report about the Foundation for Jewish Camp partnering with 18Doors to increase participation of children from interfaith families in overnight camp.

Noting that only about 22% of overnight campers come from interfaith families, 18Doors’ Adam Pollack says “That gap [with the high rate of interfaith marriage] tells us camps are not yet representative of the Jewish population today. We’re trying to find ways to make Jewish overnight camp accessible and appealing to families who already consider themselves part of the Jewish community but may not feel certain that camp is for them…. We know how transformative camp can be. We want all Jewish kids – including those from multi-heritage families – to have access to that experience.”

Conservative News

The main point of my Santa Barbara talk was that we still need to adapt attitudes and policies so as to help interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds feel that they belong in Jewish communities. The tension between including interfaith families and maintaining traditional understandings of Judaism as a boundaried system just for Jews continues to manifest in the ongoing turmoil in the Conservative movement.

As reported last month, the movement’s Joint Working Group issued a report with a goal to “engage intermarried couples more fully” but retaining the movement’s ban on their rabbis officiating at weddings of interfaith couples.

The report says that the Working Group “commissioned thirteen informal position papers from historians, social scientists, and rabbis.” I was invited to make a submission to the Working Group, and with their permission it is now public, on our new resource that chronicles related developments in the movement since 2014.

There was a lot of discussion about the report this month. 18Doors’ Adam Pollack offered a very interesting and positive response. I hope he’s right that “By ‘acknowledging and healing hurt,’ the movement has set a new course toward belonging” for interfaith couples. I hope 18Doors can help the movement in implementing the report’s recommendations. But I also hope the movement will address and change its position on officiation as I believe it must to truly be a place of belonging for interfaith families.

Conservative Rabbi Ari Yehuda Saks explained why, despite the movement easing its stance on interfaith marriage, he is quitting the Rabbinical Assembly:

I could not in good conscience remain a member while being prohibited from co-officiating intermarriages — ceremonies that I, from deep study and pastoral experience, have come to believe are not only possible within the halakhic, or Jewish legal, tradition, but are also vital for the future of American Judaism.

On the other end of the spectrum, Conservative Rabbi Amy Walk defended the movement’s approach. While pleased that the movement apologized for its past rejections of interfaith families, she says criticism of not allowing Conservative rabbis to officiate is short-sighted, binary, sloppy thinking.

Rabbi Walk said these critics “abandon ideas about commandment and covenant.” But the movement adapted halacha to allow women to be rabbis, and to allow wedding officiation for gay and lesbian couples – was that abandonment of commandment? And if the rationale for not officiating is Judaism’s traditional view that interfaith marriage is wrong, doesn’t maintaining the ban on officiating undermine the report’s efforts not to disapprove of and reject interfaith couples?

Even further out on the spectrum, Conservative Rabbi Daniel Gordis in a substack post says he was “stunned” at the Conservative movement’s apology; he “would argue that the policy against intermarriage has been a central pillar of maintaining Judaism’s tribal nature.” Gordis recognizes that defending the tribal dimension of Jewish life “has becoming increasingly difficult in a world in which young people, Jews definitely among them, find tribal sentiments either foreign, or outright objectionable.”

Gordis’ attitude is a prime example of what still needs to change. Thinking of Judaism as a tribe of Jews, instead of as a community of Jewishly-engaged people, is a huge obstacle to engaging interfaith families.

And finally, from the Orthodox perspective, Rabbi Emanuel Feldman says that by “’welcoming people as they are,’ the Conservative movement is declaring that they accept intermarriage.”

Also in the News

  • On January 27 the Jewish Grandparents Network hosted a virtual Grandparents Learning Fest that included a session led by Rabbi Samuel Klein, the director of Jewish engagement at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, titled “Doing Jewish, Feeling Jewish, Being Jewish: Grandparents as Guides in Mixed-Heritage and Multifaith Families.” The session was to “share practical insights and provide inspiration for grandparents to nurture Jewish identity in diverse families.”
  • “Talking to Children About Jewish Identity in an Interfaith Family” is a new offering on the Reform Judaism website.
  • A lovely story in The Free Press, “I’m Christian. My Wife Is Jewish. Our Marriage Is an Act of Faith,” by a Catholic editor who says his marriage to a Jewish woman brought him closer to God. I loved this part:

One day when our children were small, I was playing with them in our living room. Our 3-year-old son was keen to put things in their proper categories. Attempting a slightly more advanced version of the ‘square pegs in square holes’ game, he observed, ‘I’m Jewish and Rachel is Jewish and Mommy is Jewish.’ His brow furrowed, and he looked at me with a compassion that still causes my heart to ache. ‘Don’t worry, Daddy; Toby is an Episcopalian.’ Toby was our dog at the time.

* * * * *

Congregation B’nai B’rith in Santa Barbara is a warm and thriving synagogue with a very popular monthly Sunday morning breakfast and speaker series. The audience of about 120 was very engaged, with questions during and after the presentation. Rabbi Daniel Brenner told me they had great feedback, with one person inspired to restart their interfaith family conversation series. I’m very interested in speaking elsewhere.

One last point about the Cohen Center’s new study shows that interventions can increase feelings of belonging: it found that for those who were Jewishly involved but celebrated Christmas and Easter, the percent that reported feeling “very much” part of a worldwide Jewish community after participating in a Birthright Israel trip increased from 27% to 37%. (page 19)

Finally, thank you to all who made a year-end contribution to the Center. Support is always welcomed, at www.cfrij.com/donate.

December 2025 News: Antisemitism and Interfaith Marriage; Conservative News; Views from Buchdahl, Sanderson and Kurtzer; December Holidays; Missed Opportunities; Pew Data

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Addressing Antisemitism – a Personal Note, and the Importance of Inclusion

As usual in December, there’s a lot to report on about interfaith family inclusion. This year, it’s important to start with how that relates to antisemitism.

The month began with a report that Senator Cory Booker had married a Jewish woman. At the time, I commented on the Center’s Facebook page that I was glad to read that Booker’s friend Rabbi Matthew Gewirtz of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills, New Jersey participated at the wedding, with Booker’s pastor.

Then there was a report that Booker lit Hanukkah candles for the first time at home – on the same day as the horrible antisemitic attack in Australia. He said, “My parents sort of told my brother and I about the ancient evil of antisemitism and the urgency to fight against it. But now that I’m married to a Jewish woman and we’ll – God willing, b’ezrat Hashem, have Jewish children, it’s taken on an even deeper, more personal sense of urgency.”

I’ve often felt that one positive by-product of interfaith marriage is that it can result in more allies of the Jewish people, and of Israel. I don’t just mean the partner from a different faith background – I mean all of their relatives, too. People who are not Jewish and might have no reason to think one way or another about Jews now, after their loved one is in an interfaith relationship, have a reason to be positive and supportive.

In that vein, I was very touched and moved this week when my son-in-law’s mother emailed me to say, “I have been struggling to find the words to let you know our abhorrence of the Australia attack. It is frightening what is happening, not just here but in the world, with the appearance of antisemitism.” My first thought was that it would not be irrational for her to regret that our mutual beloved grandsons are at risk of hate and even violence because they are Jewish. But that wasn’t her response. Her response was, “I can only have hope and do what I can.”

Our advocacy is motivated by the belief that we will have more people Jewishly engaged or supportive of their relatives’ Jewish engagement, the more we help make interfaith families, especially the partners from different faith backgrounds, feel a sense of belonging in Jewish communities. Addressing rising antisemitism is one reason why that advocacy is so important – something that Pulitzer Prize winning author David Shribman pointed out in “Welcoming the Intermarried: A Challenge and An Opportunity.”

Shribman writes that addressing the findings in our paper, What Recent Studies Reveal About Interfaith Family Inclusion, that “those in interfaith relationships don’t feel nearly as strong a connection to the Jewish people, or to their local Jewish communities, as those in relationships of two Jews” is “vital to the survival of Judaism in the United States, and to the preservation of Jewish values, especially at a time of rising antisemitism and divisions within the Jewish community over Israel and its response to” October 7.

Conservative News

It is fair to say that the Conservative movement is still struggling with how much of a sense of belonging it will foster among interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds. There is a lot that is positive in the movement’s just-released Joint Intermarriage Working Group Report. But the question of wedding officiation overshadows the progress.

The authors of the report “deeply apologize” for their historical stance disapproving of interfaith marriage. They “celebrate the meaningful contributions of Jewish-adjacent partners and spouses, and the children of such unions, in the work of creating and sustaining Conservative/Masorti Jewish households.” They want to “welcome, bless, and affirm intermarrying couples” (albeit only those “who are committed to solely Jewish practice.” They “recognize the delicate balance between ensuring that non-Jewish partners are aware of the option to convert while avoiding undue pressure.” They want to “ensure an appropriate path to formal affirmation for those who already identify as part of the Jewish people.” The “primary goal” of the process of finding a life partner is not endogamy, but “to empower the individual to articulate for themselves the kind of Jewish life they seek to lead. If they seek a partner, their goal would be to find a partner aligned with that vision of Jewish life.”

Much of this is quite remarkable coming from the movement. I hope all of their next efforts help them reach their goal to “engage intermarried couples more fully.”

But the elephant in the room remains whether and how Conservative rabbis will be allowed to participate in weddings of interfaith couples. Articles in eJP and JTA focus on the division in the movement over that issue.

It seems clear from the report that some members of the working group want the movement to allow more participation. The report itself talks about a “halakhah that recognizes that boundaries shift depending on circumstances and are not always a reason to say ‘no’; halakhah can also provide an opportunity to be inclusive and say ‘yes.’” They talk about having “ritual options to welcome, bless, and affirm couples with one Jewish partner and one partner who, while not formally Jewish, is firmly committed to co-creating an exclusively Jewish household. This includes opportunities to bless the couple, independent of the traditionally prescribed Jewish wedding ceremony, in the synagogue or elsewhere, before, on the day of, and after the wedding date.”

Ultimately, it’s going to be up to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, who the report asks to provide further clarification because “the standard of religious practice [which bans wedding participation] was created in part as a statement of disapproval of certain relationships and that we are shifting away from messages of disapproval.” The report asks the CJLS to “clarify whether other paradigms of marriage besides kiddushin that the CJLS has already developed and approved [presumably referring to gay and lesbian unions] might apply in the case of the union of a Jew with someone who is of another background.” In striking evidence of the split in the movement on this issue, the report notes that “Working group members asked that it be reported that there was not unanimity on this issue.”

Keren McGinity is quoted in the JTA article saying that fears of a “mass defection” if the movement were to allow its rabbis to officiate “have long been overstated.” She aptly pointed out that “avoiding change … also carries risks, pointing to the 2020 Pew study showing that fewer than half of Jews raised Conservative still identify with the movement. That is hugely concerning.”

Indeed it should be.

Three Thought Leaders with Important Statements

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl is on a tour this month speaking about her wonderful book, The Heart of a Stranger, which I have read and hope to write about in more detail later. I was struck by this comment in an interview in San Francisco:

“You can be a part of a family by just being born into it … and you can also become family through what’s called a covenantal relationship,” such as between spouses, Buchdahl said. “We don’t share any blood, but we made a covenantal promise, and that made us into a family. Every one of us who wants to be a part of the Jewish community [is] in a covenantal relationship with our people and with God. What if we were to imagine that everyone who wants to be a part of that covenant is 100% fully Jewish?”

This sounds an awful lot like what the Center has consistently advocated for: that everyone from a different faith background who wants to be part of the Jewish community should be thought of as and treated equally with their Jewish partner.

Jay Sanderson, president of American Jewish University, explicitly refers to the importance of including interfaith families in “The Jewish Future Is Calling.” AJU’s goal is “to reimagine and rebuild the foundation of Jewish life in North America.”

Sanderson says AJU “transformed Jewish learning when it launched the first intensive class for interfaith couples and individuals exploring conversion, helping countless people build Jewish homes and families.” They are now expanding to create “more welcoming pathways for anyone Jewish, Jew-ish and Jew-curious and nurturing the earliest steps of every Jewish journey.” They are offering in-person classes in multiple cities, to connect “interfaith couples and individuals learning about Judaism to each other so they can build peer groups that continue beyond the class.”

Sanderson says AJU is “building a Jewish future where Jews, no matter where they live or how they self-define, can find a place inside a reimagined Jewish community, one where every voice has value and everyone is contributing to the Jewish future.” This all sounds very promising, if a bit generalized; it’s not clear whether the voices of partners from different faith backgrounds would have equal voice and be allowed to contribute equally.

Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, wrote a brilliant essay, mostly about divisions between the Left and the Right over Israel: Our Fragile Tents: Community, Consent, and Care. One response to the 1990 National Jewish Population Study (with its finding of a high rate of interfaith marriage) was to “cultivate attachment through radically open approaches to welcoming people in.” This “found expression in the shift of liberal Jewish leaders who first tried to fight against intermarriage, then accepted it as inevitable, then welcomed interfaith families, and eventually worked to break down the barrier between Jews and the “Jewish-adjacent” among their stakeholders.”

“Opening the flaps of the Big Tent promised new possibilities for the Jewish community to expand and for all the moral gains that come with greater inclusion.”

Kurtzer laments that since October 7, “the primary emphasis of Jewish leaders has moved from widening the Big Tent to narrowing it, and from building Jewish community to trying to protect it.” “The kind of fear that has taken root in the Jewish community – of danger on the outside, of threats already on the inside – destroys any desire or incentive to think expansively about our networks of belonging.”

To reverse this trend, Kurtzer says “[W]e must be clearer about when and how we set boundaries in Jewish communities, so that our safety instincts do not harm our efforts to be welcoming more than they need to.” He says it is fair for institutions to cease partnering with other institutions over major values disagreements, but “it is a terrible side effect when individuals who affiliate with the rejected institution … are treated by members of the first institution as heretics.” Although he’s talking about divisions over Israel here, this made me think of how Orthodox leaders tend to be so disparaging of liberal Jews. They could maintain boundaries where halachic status matters (like marriage), while uniting with liberal Jews on other causes common to the larger Jewish community. Kurtzer doesn’t address this specifically; it would be interesting if he did.

Kurtzer makes an interesting observation about what belonging means, talking about being

“uplifted by an experience of communal singing and prayer, one that makes you feel connected to everyone in the room, or [experiencing] the warm hug of strangers caring for your needs in your own home while you are sitting shiva…. We have core anthropological, psychological, spiritual, and even biological needs for community in ways that are hard to define – though most of us can tell when a community ‘feels right’ and when it is time to move to a different one.”

It would be interesting to know what Kurtzer thinks is needed to cultivate those kinds of feelings of belonging in partners from different faith backgrounds.

December Holidays

Jessica Grose’s “What My Children Taught Me About Interfaith Tradition” is a very beautiful essay in her NY Times newsletter. She describes realizing that her family had “integrated” their interfaith household – she’s Jewish, she doesn’t identify her husband’s faith background, but it included Christmas: “On Sunday night, my family decorated our Christmas tree … Earlier in the day, my older daughter was practicing her Torah portion, and my younger daughter was working on a school slide show about the menorah we use every year …”

Looking back, she had wanted her children “to know what it meant to be Jewish, but … wanted to impart that in a way that didn’t feel oppressive or a rejection of my husband’s faith.” She hadn’t expected, as her children matured, that what she describes as “blending faiths” would become easier: “Our older daughter chose to start attending Hebrew school when she was 10, and has become part of a Jewish community that is welcoming to interfaith families. Her sister is eager to follow in her footsteps.” They also enjoy Christmas holiday rituals and traditions.

It’s interesting that she describes this as “blending faiths” – they clearly are very Jewishly engaged as a family. But she concludes with a key observation – that her daughters “don’t have to abandon any part of themselves for our family to feel whole.”

In a similar vein, in a nice article in the Boston Globe, Meredith Goldstein says, “There is no Christmas tree in the world that can erase who I am and the fact that I was raised by Ashkenazi Jews who studied music in New York City.” I liked this: “I believe that when people of different backgrounds get together and share a home, all of these traditions can and should coexist so everyone feels seen.”

Our friend Rabbi Melinda Mersack of Cleveland’s jHUB is featured in “Observing different holidays can be done, rabbis say,” emphasizing the importance of couples communicating what’s important to them about their holiday celebrations. Rabbi Matt Cohen is also featured, and I love what he says:

“In interfaith families, it’s important everyone feels equally a part of our community. We reach people through education, by teaching someone who is not Jewish, who is taking part in celebrating a holiday they haven’t celebrated in their upbringing, that they are just as much a part of our community.”

In other December holiday news:

Missed Opportunities

Two essays responding to the ATRA study on the rabbinate alluded to, but could have said more about, interfaith relationships. In “We have an opportunity to revamp liberal rabbinic education and Jewish lay leadership,” Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu notes that many contemporary Jews and their families “have non-Jewish members,” without saying more about the implications for rabbinic education. In “Rabbinical training doesn’t have a pipeline problem – we have a preparation problem, Rabbi Jesse Paikin says that “Genuine pluralism demands more porous boundaries than many legacy institutions prefer,” again without saying more about what those boundaries might be with respect to interfaith families.

Similarly, in an eJP interview about a new study by about disability inclusion, Matan’s terrific executive director Meredith Polsky says, “Disability spans every aspect of Jewish community life,” giving two examples: “If you work with individuals who identify as LGBTQ, there’s going to be people with disabilities. If you work with Jews who are multiracial, there’s going to be people with disabilities.” It’s unfortunate she didn’t include interfaith families among these other historically disadvantaged groups.

Pew Data

Some interesting new data from Pew considers why people keep their religion or leave. Jews are pretty high up (76%) in keeping their childhood faith (ranked third, after Hindus (82%) and Muslims (77%), but before those with no religion (73%), Protestants (70%), Catholics (57%), Latter-Day Saints (54%) and Buddhists (45%).

What struck me was how important a sense of community was as a reason why lifelong Jews remain are Jewish compared to other groups: Among U.S. adults who were raised Jewish and still identify as Jewish by religion, 57% cite liking the sense of community (compared to 38% of Catholics and 46% of Protestants).

Among those Jews, 60% say liking the traditions is an extremely or very important reason they are Jewish (compared to 46% of Catholics and 33% of Protestants); about half of Jews (53%) say they are Jewish because it’s their family religion (compared to 44% of Catholics and 30% of  Protestants).

In Other News

  • I thought it was extreme and unnecessary for Zohran Mamdani’s aide to have to resign because she made antisemitic posts on social media when she was 19 – given that now she’s married to a Jew and raising their children as Jews! This seemed like a pretty good case for  redemption to me.
  • Rabbi Barbara Aiello offers “The Challenges of Jewish Christian Grandparenting.”
  • A large synagogue’s executive director explains how he says “shalom y’all” to be inclusive.

Please Support the Center

We found spiritual support for our advocacy in an unusual place this month: the new bishop of the Church of Norway, whose focus is inclusion, not conversion; her calling has been to “swing open the doors … as wide as possible.”

We rarely ask for another kind of support – financial – but in the spirit of the season, with year-end rapidly approaching, we would be grateful for it. If you find our newsletter useful, if you value advocacy for inclusion of interfaith families – please make a contribution, in any amount, at www.cfrij.com/donate. Thank you!

November 2025 News: Laura Lauder and Embark; Rabbis and Interfaith Marriage in ATRA Study; Nobody Wants This; Chosenness

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Laura Lauder and Embark

eJP ran an important interview of philanthropist Laura Lauder about the Embark program she launched and supports, now as part of Mem Global. The goal of Embark is “to have [non-Jewish partners] feel comfortable in their identity as a parent of Jewish children and as a member of a Jewish household. …[W]e are here to provide you with an educational experience with a cohort of other people in your same shoes, to enable you to decide for yourself, and whatever you decide, what we hope is that the decision is to make a warm, loving Jewish home and raise your children Jewish.”

The questions by eJP’s Jay Deitcher seem hostile to Lauder’s positions. He asks, “Do you ever fear that changing expectations of children related to interfaith relationships and intermarriage is a mistake? That the community’s leniency has gone too far….” He suggests that Embark does not strengthen Jewish community when he asks, “[S]tudies show that Jews who marry other Jews have stronger engagement with Judaism. Why not focus your effort on pushing for a stricter Judaism, or pushing for day schools or focusing your finances on strengthening the Jewish community?” Even the title given to the interview – “Still preferring Jewish marriages, Laura Lauder pledges $500K annually to boost interfaith couples” – is slanted; Lauder never says that she prefers “Jewish marriages.” The title also begs the question, with a 72% rate of interfaith marriage among non-Orthodox Jews, what is a Jewish marriage today?

Lauder’s position is laudable: “It’s not a conversion program…. [M]y sense is that we have to be inclusive and embrace these families who are interfaith and who want to raise their kids Jewish, so we want to provide a vehicle to enable them to do that.”

The Embark program includes a unit on Israel, about which Lauder says: “[W]e hope that these young people will keep their views on the issue on the Gaza war out of their decision as to how much they want to incorporate Judaism in their lives. I’m hoping that this particular Israeli government doesn’t dissuade them from wanting to have more Judaism in their lives.”

Rabbis and Interfaith Marriage

ATRA released a fascinating study conducted by Rosov Consulting about the rabbinate. Many of the study’s observations relate to interfaith families.

  • Congregations apparently want to be inclusive of interfaith families. In searching for rabbis, “inclusivity is a key characteristic of desired candidates. This inclusivity appears to be aimed at interfaith families … and those who are not halakhically Jewish but still seek to participate in community life. The postings include phrases [that reflect] a need for openness and acceptance. The candidate is characterized as a bridge between tradition and modernity, which requires a personality that is open and adaptable. This focus is clearest in positions aimed at fostering community with younger demographics (e.g., college students), but it is also present in many congregations seeking to remain relevant in a rapidly evolving society.”
  • More rabbis and future rabbis have interfaith backgrounds or relationships; among current rabbinical students, 20% were not raised Jewish or not raised exclusively Jewish. This creates issues for them.
  • Some students were “deterred by concerns, whether true now or not, that some aspect of their identity would disqualify them from being able to attend rabbinical school. Perceptions of how inclusive various rabbinical schools are for … students in interfaith marriages … shaped decisions about where to attend.”
  • “For some interviewees, coming from interfaith or non-Jewish backgrounds created feelings of exclusion and added hurdles in the admissions process. They described concerns that their backgrounds might be scrutinized more heavily, requiring them to prove their Jewish authenticity or justify their place in rabbinical training in ways that peers from more traditional backgrounds did not face.” One comment: “I have one non-Jewish parent, and that is a problem with a lot of people in the Jewish community, especially because it’s my mother. So, there’s plenty in the community who look at that and go, ‘you’re not really Jewish.'”

Nobody Wants This

Rabbi Lisa Rubin, who runs the very successful Center for Exploring Judaism program based at Central Synagogue, had an interesting take on the show, “Conversion isn’t a solo act. So why is the rabbi in ‘Nobody Wants This’ acting alone?” Rubin sees interfaith marriage as “an extraordinary opportunity for growth. Interfaith relationships, approached thoughtfully, can be pathways into Judaism rather than exits from it.” Her main point is that Rabbi Noah shouldn’t have tried to mentor Joanne himself, but rather should have connected her to a program – like the Center for Exploring Judaism – which she describes beautifully. She sees the show’s title as ironic, because “Jews should want this… [W]e should want our communities to see interfaith love not as a threat, but as a chance to expand the circle.”

For more on the Nobody Wants This front, it looks like there will be a season three, but the speculation is that Joanne will convert. I won’t get the show I was hoping to see, about a happily married, Jewishly-engaged, interfaith couple.

Chosenness

The Reconstructionist journal Evolve published an interesting essay by Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie about chosenness. At his congregation, Lab/Shul:

“[W]e have replaced the blessing at the Torah with asher bakhartanu im kol ha’amim – ‘Who has chosen us, along with all other peoples, to live this life with love.’ That is because I estimate that a good half of my community is not necessarily Jewish according to Jewish law. They are Jewish, they are Jewish-adjacent, they are people who have chosen to live with Jewish people. Some are Jewish patrilineally. Others, matrilineally. Still others, Jews by choice. We are human, and being Jewish is part of who we are.”

In Other News

  • An article from Religion News Service about how Vice President Vance hopes his Hindu wife converts to Christianity quotes our friend Susan Katz Miller, who aptly says, “To respect your partner and everything they bring to the marriage – every part of their identity – is integral to the kind of honesty that you need to have in a marriage.” And, “pressuring one’s spouse to convert or even hoping they would convert is not a good basis for a successful marriage.”
  • The Jewish Education Project’s otherwise excellent “What Will Jewish Education Look Like in 2050” does not mention any emphasis on reaching or including interfaith families.
  • I was not able to attend the JFNA’s General Assembly. I heard that there was discussion of engaging interfaith families, but have not seen anything published or public on that issue. An essay before the GA talked about “unveiling innovative platforms and programs that foster an inclusive culture and provide opportunities for deeper Jewish learning and involvement for those who may have been disconnected” before October 7. In an interview after the GA, JFNA’s CEO Eric Fingerhut said “There are great opportunities to increase the number of people engaged in Jewish life and education.” It remains to be seen how much priority will be given to engaging interfaith families.

September 2025 News: Conservative movement, 18Doors, PJ Library, Jew vs. Jew, & Data

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More Conservative News

eJewishPhilanthropy has focused on one aspect of interfaith family inclusion, that relating to the Conservative movement, this month. Adam Pollack and Sophie Mortman of 18Doors had an oped, “Conservative rabbis are already engaging interfaith families, with or without the movement.” They report that many Conservative rabbis want to be inclusive of interfaith families and that 18Doors is helping them to do so, which is very good. But in my opinion, these efforts collide with the movement’s current understandings of halakhah which lead to policies that exclude partners from different faith backgrounds from Jewish engagement (and, since partners tend to stick together, the Jewish partners too).

As one parent who is not Jewish said in the recent Parenting When Jewish and Something Else study, referring to a nearby Conservative synagogue: “It would be great for our son to do his bar mitzvah there and I could participate. But I know that Conservative synagogues have a lot of restrictions and traditions I’m excluded from. I don’t want my children feeling like I’m excluded.”

Later in the month Rabbi Steven Wernick, former CEO of the United Synagogue, wrote “Here’s what renewal looks like in the Conservative movement.” Rabbi Wernick is an excellent congregational rabbi leading a thriving Conservative synagogue. He says they cultivate belonging primarily by offering free membership to those under 40 and building relationships during the early years – an excellent strategy. He says they embrace interfaith families with warmth and respect with non-judgmental invitations – also excellent.

But in my opinion, he goes way too far calling that approach “radical welcoming.” My question is, do the interfaith families in the congregation feel belonging, and choose community there, when confronted with the boundary that the clergy won’t officiate at weddings of interfaith couples – and all that implies about status issues and other restrictions on ritual participation by partners from different faith backgrounds? And how many interfaith families don’t come in the door because of those restrictions?

Rabbi Wernick says the boundary is vital to halakhic integrity. As I wrote in my response to Rabbi Brusso’s Sources essay last month, which took a similar position, if the movement cannot evolve halakhah, as it has in the case of women, and gay and lesbian Jews, in ways that validate interfaith marriage and permit officiation, more and more people are going to say, “I’m not a Conservative Jew.”

(eJP had another piece, “Conservative Judaism’s Procedural Paralysis,” which didn’t focus on interfaith families.)

News from 18Doors and…

18Doors and Honeymoon Israel announced Rabbi Shena Potter Jaffee as Director of Rabbinic Talent Development. The organizations share a “deep commitment to giving rabbis and Jewish educators the tools, training, and support they need to engage young multi-heritage couples and families in meaningful, inclusive ways.” Rabbi Jaffee will lead 18Doors’ Rukin Rabbinic Fellowship, and oversee the recruitment and training of rabbis and educators across North America who lead immersive travel experiences for young couples through both Honeymoon Israel and Togethering, which are coming together.

News from PJ Library

Jessica McCormick, director of family experience at PJ Library, writes in eJP that “PJ Library has the highest impact on families who need accessible, parent-led Jewish engagement the most. 42% of households we reach aren’t affiliated with a synagogue, and less engaged families and multifaith families score higher than average on every measure we track. In other words, PJ Library books and programming help those families even more with everything from increased knowledge of Jewish traditions to greater confidence in engaging their children with Jewish values.” Their Get Together microgrant initiative helps families host gatherings, “encouraging them to be the builders of their own Jewish community, which is itself a core Jewish value. Because when families get together, belonging takes shape. And that sense of belonging? It’s exactly what will help keep Jewish life vibrant for the next generation.”

Looking Back at “Jew vs. Jew”

Andy Silow-Carroll, a terrific journalist, interviewed Sam Freedman on the 25th anniversary of his book “Jew vs. Jew.” One comment caught my eye: “If the Jewish vote becomes more conservative or more Republican, two statistics will tell you why: the birth rate and the rate of interfaith marriage.” I can understand that the Orthodox have a high birth rate, and tend to be conservative and Republican. But I was afraid that the comment meant that interfaith families, or the children of interfaith families, aren’t Jewish, which would also result in a higher percentage of Jewish voters being conservative and Orthodox.

So I contacted Sam and am very glad to report that that is not his view. He says that interfaith families tend to be Democrats, and he is concerned that if pollsters stop counting many adult children of interfaith families as Jewish voters, then the share of Jewish votes for Democrats will appear to be dropping. But he didn’t mean to suggest that he thinks they shouldn’t be counted as Jewish voters.

Data

eJP reported on a CASJE webinar I attended, “Signals of a Surge: What does Jewish engagement look like post-October 7th?” where panelists from the JFNA, Hillel, UJAFed-NY, URJ and Prizmah described their research. eJP also reported on the JFNA’s recently-released breakdown of a survey released this spring that showed that “the impact of ‘the Surge’ is waning more quickly among Jews from minority populations, including LGBTQ Jews, Jews of color, Jews with disabilities and financially vulnerable Jews, than it is among the broader Jewish community.”

Mimi Kravetz, JFNA’s chief impact and growth officer, said, “We’re sad and disheartened to see that these marginalized groups are engaging so much less than they were at this time last year….   It’s still higher than baseline. There’s still people showing up more. But there has been a more significant drop among these most marginalized groups.” She also said that what affects the sense of engagement and belonging of Jews of Color is that “they need to see a reflection of themselves in leaders and other participants. They need space to show up as their whole self, whatever that looks like for them. They need to see visible evidence of diversity and inclusion policies and practice, and that those policies will be followed, and they need to know before they enter.” I’d say the same is true of interfaith couples and families.

Although none of the panelists at the webinar offered any data on either surging or declining engagement by interfaith families, David Manchester said JFNA was currently working on an analysis of that data. He also aptly said, as quoted by eJP, “The hardest thing to walk into a Jewish program is the concern about not knowing people. … What I’ve over the last few years been saying to people is [that it] doesn’t matter what the topic of the program is, it is a relationship-building program, and that needs to be our top goal if we want to keep these people engaging in the Jewish community.”

Jimena: Jews Indigenous To The Middle East and North Africa released a fascinating study, “Sephardic & Mizrahi Jews in the United States: Identities, Experience, and Communities.” Sephardic Jews are estimated to be 10% of American Jews, and they have lower intermarriage rates – the study says 25% compared to Ashkenazi Jews’ 36% (based on data in seven communities studied by the Cohen Center, plus New York, p. 66). The goal of the study is to create a more inclusive Jewish environment for Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews.

The study includes portraits of four communities. I learned about a Syrian Jewish community’s Takkana edict from 1936 which forbids not only intermarriage, but also marriage to converts (p. 85); that interviewees from a Persian community gave “mixed reports” with some saying interfaith marriage is “definitely not common” and others describing it as “a former taboo that is now being challenged” (p. 102); and that in a Miami community, “There are strong mores against intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews – but Sephardic and Ashkenazi couplings are generally accepted.” (p. 128)

Jewtina y Co. released “Latin-Jewish Los Angeles,” a reanalysis of the federation’s 2021 Study of Jewish LA. It found that 94% of children in Latino/a Jewish households are being raised J; 19% of respondents have intermarried parents; 33% of married respondents are intermarried. (p. 8) The study includes a page on navigating interfaith relationships (p. 18) and recommendations for inclusive programming, mentioning 18Doors and Base LA. (p. 21)

In Other News:

  • An interesting podcast discussion between Yehuda Kurtzer and Christine Hayes, “Non-Jewish in the Shadow of the Synagogue.”
  • Chabad announced a “New Global Matchmaking Database to Combat Intermarriage.”
  • The Cleveland Jewish News had a nice article, “Experts help interfaith families connect during High Holy Day services,” featuring among others Rabbi Melinda Mersack and Rabbi Miriam Wajnberg.
  • The Jewish Chronicle reports on a summit for young Jewish professionals held by the UK’s Jewish Leadership Council that explored ways to avoid declining Jewish engagement post-college. Unfortunately the concern seemed to be all about marrying out and not about welcoming interfaith couples in. One participant said “There’s a lot of marrying out going on in the Jewish community. Maybe that’s due to a lack of suitable events taking place for young people…. People marrying out is a concern for me as I want to have a strong Jewish community around me. The more people who marry out, the less of a community there will be.”

August 2025 News: Choseness Without Exclusion, and More Conservative News

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The news this summer has felt unrelentingly bad. This comment caught my eye, by Mayor Jacob Frey, after the awful shootings in Minneapolis, talking about his Jewish engagement with the Forward: “There’s also not just a beautiful acceptance – but a kind of hospitality of inclusivity that is entrenched in the fabric of being a Jew, and that’s something I also believe in.” We surely need more hospitality of inclusivity these days.

Choseness Without Exclusion

Rabbi Noa Kushner wrote a wonderfully enlightened essay, “American Sinai,” for the Sapir journal. She very clearly expresses a radically inclusive approach. My favorite parts:

In our era (as well as others), spheres of Jewish commitment and Jewish ethnicity may overlap, but they are not the same. Rather than drawing our circle of chosenness solely around those who have converted or who were born Jewish, we might instead draw that circle wider, including all who participate in Jewish life, whose Jewish actions and faith speak repeatedly over time. It is possible that to be chosen is not only a designation at birth or conversion.

In my community, we ask for the action, the participation, first. Instead of asking a newcomer whether he or she is Jewish, we ask: “Are you coming for Shabbat on Friday?”

It is possible to display commitment to the covenant, even if that covenant is not sealed. If the barrier to entry is not primarily one’s pedigree but rather one’s participation, sustained over time, the commitment is undeniable. In this version of chosenness, any claim of ethnic bias or genetic superiority as it relates to “chosenness” is unfounded. Being chosen is now equal opportunity, a lesson gained from America itself.

Hopefully more rabbis will adopt similar views.

More Conservative News

Right after the July newsletter went out, the Hartman Institute’s Sources journal published an essay by Rabbi Aaron Brusso that I found very upsetting. As I explain in the Times of Israel blogs, he says not only that marriages of interfaith couples are not Jewish marriages so a rabbi cannot officiate in accord with halakhah, but worse, that Jewish traditions are only for Jews, and not their partners from different faith backgrounds, absent conversion.

Rabbi Brusso leads the Conservative movement’s “collective process” currently underway to respond to interfaith marriage. Given his views, it’s hard to be optimistic that that process will result in a more inclusive approach.

Then JTA ran a story about Rabbi Ari Yehuda Saks resigning from the Rabbinical Assembly after it opened an investigation into his officiating at weddings of interfaith couples. He is quoted as saying, “By continuing to equate rabbinic participation in intermarriage ceremonies with an ethical violation the RA is sending a message to Conservative rabbis and the Conservative Jewish community at large that marrying a non-Jew is ethically and morally wrong, which is a statement believed only by very few on the fringes of our community.” Rabbi Saks also explains his decision, and his thinking, in a very interesting podcast.

In the meantime, the Forward had a nice story about a young rabbi taking the pulpit of the Conservative synagogue in Charleston, West Virginia – he notes that many interfaith couples are in the congregation. And the Jewish Week reported that Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate for mayor who is Catholic, attended the bar mitzvahs of his two Jewish sons; “At the latest one, he opened the Torah ark and joined the procession carrying the Torah. He was so insistent on participating that Katz left her family’s longtime Conservative congregation for a Reform synagogue that allowed him to stand on the bimah as a non-Jew.”

Also in the News

A fascinating podcast from Project Ruth, an Orthodox conversion program, about the remarkable journey of our friend Eleanor Harrison Bregman, from Protestant minister, to working at a synagogue, to converting under Orthodox auspices. One of my favorite parts: the (presumably Orthodox) co-host of the podcast acknowledged that a parent who is not Jewish could raise Jewish children.

Two nice stories from Houston this month: “Jewish community embraces interfaith families with help from 18Doors,” a concrete example of the impact of 18Doors’ B’Yachad program that “aims to strengthen belonging and inclusion for interfaith couples and families across Jewish communal life”; and a sweet story about the impact of Honeymoon Israel, including on interfaith couples: “Spreading the love: Houston young adults celebrate Jewish holiday of Tu B’Av.”

A nice story about Congregation Ner Tamid in Atlanta: “We are proud to be a community where interfaith families feel not only welcomed, but fully embraced….  Many of our families include partners from different faith traditions, and we see that as a strength. Our services and programs are designed to be accessible, meaningful, and respectful of every individual’s path.”

July 2025 News: Turmoil in the Conservative Movement

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As you know, the Center’s work addresses interfaith family inclusion. But it is difficult to focus these days on anything other than the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

While these issues are of vastly different scale, there is a commonality: othering. The othering of interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds leaves many to feel they don’t belong in Jewish settings. The othering of innocent Palestinians leaves many to starve.

As one rabbi said, “What kind of Torah are we living if it does not reach into the rubble and say, ‘You are human. You too are children?’”

We hope Jewish leaders will heed the increasing calls imploring them to speak out. We applaud the Reform movement and the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly for doing so.

Conservative Turmoil

On July 2 JTA reported that a leading Conservative synagogue, Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Minneapolis, would allow its clergy to participate in, but not officiate, weddings of interfaith couples. The stated goal is to make the congregation “more welcoming and inclusive.” The clergy participation comes with conditions: no rituals from other religions, outside the synagogue, not officiated by any clergy.

We’ve covered the Conservative movement’s wedding officiation challenge for a long time (see for example this July 2017 blog post and November 2024 email newsletter). While any step forward is a good thing, we’ve always maintained that not allowing the movement’s rabbis to officiate at weddings of interfaith couples undermines its efforts to be welcoming and inclusive.

JTA also reported that, apparently for financial reasons, the movement terminated Keren R. McGinity’s position as director of intermarriage engagement and inclusion. On July 16, eJP published Jay Deitcher’s “Conservative movement cuts interfaith specialist position, alarming advocates,” with the sub-title, “After making moves toward allowing USCJ clergy to officiate interfaith weddings, latest move indicates the movement may be maintaining its status quo.”

Deitcher writes that “To many, it appeared that the movement was poised to cross the Rubicon and allow its clergy to officiate interfaith weddings,” but that “After heading toward acceptance of interfaith couples, the pendulum appears to be swinging back – a welcome development for more traditional voices in the movement.”

Quoted in the eJP story, Conservative Rabbi Oren Steinitz said, about McGinity’s dismissal, that not having a full-time paid intermarriage inclusion position is “honestly a spit in the face of so many congregations that are not only grappling with these issues, but it’s a spit in the face of these interfaith families that are basically becoming the backbone of Jewish American communities.” Lay leader Joshua Kohn said, “without investing in interfaith families, the movement will continue to shrink.”

Deitcher reports that the movement’s Intermarriage Working Group is processing the feedback from an ongoing survey and is expected to make recommendations in the fall. In the meantime the USCJ released an internal statement asking congregations not to take individual actions (like the Minneapolis congregation did) that “preempt or circumvent the collective work still underway.”

We’ll watch with great interest. But it seems unlikely that the Working Group will recommend that rabbis be allowed to officiate at weddings of interfaith couple; it seems likely that the movement will continue to struggle to attract and retain intermarried families and their relatives.

In the middle of the official news, there is a fascinating Facebook post by Conservative Rabbi Ari Yehuda Saks that generated numerous comments. Saks argues that Conservative rabbis should be allowed to participate in, and even officiate, weddings of interfaith couples, and even co-officiate with clergy from other religious traditions. He argues that interfaith marriages cannot be halachically valid, but rabbis could participate by avoiding the elements of a wedding ceremony that make it halachically valid (for example, by not using the word “kiddushin,” not exchanging something of value, etc.). As Rabbi Jen Gubitz said in a comment on the post, the rabbis wouldn’t be violating halacha, they just wouldn’t be operating in the halachic system.

But interfaith couples would be alienated by being told that their marriage does not count, in any respect, as Rabbi Gubitz and also Rabbi Lex Rofeberg make clear in the comments. Rofeberg goes on to say that “If it is not possible for halakha to shift in order to meet the sacredness of interfaith families, our takeaway from that should be that halakha is fundamentally not a Jewish pathway that is a good fit for our time.” I would say that halachic systems, like the Conservative movement, that cannot evolve in ways that are truly inclusive of interfaith families, will dwindle as interfaith families stay away from them.

Missed Opportunity

On July 23 eJP published “Experts champion Jewish education as the key to thriving Jewish communities.” I appreciate that the author cites one of the better things I’ve written for eJP, “The Pew number that matters: 72%.” Unfortunately, the link was for a throw-away mention of “record-high intermarriage,” along with antisemitism and Israel, as challenges to Jewish life in America.

The article tells about yet another group of Jewish leaders getting together and talking about “the condition and direction of Jewish life in America for the coming generations.” It’s understandable that the current focus of these kinds of discussions is antisemitism and the conflict in Israel and Gaza. But not talking at all about the imperative to engage more interfaith families by making them feel that they belong in Jewish communities is a missed opportunity to address a critically important long-term issue.

In Other News

  • A far-right lawmaker in Israel is proposing to change the law that allows individuals with one Jewish grandparent to claim citizenship, a move that would exclude many people in interfaith families.
  • Some lighter news: a very nice story about a rabbi with a fascinating interfaith family background. “Growing up in an interfaith family made me painfully aware of how unwelcoming Jewish spaces can be to those of us who don’t fit the mold,” said Rabbi Cody R. Bahir. “Too often, people’s Jewish journeys include pain – stories of exclusion or judgment.” At his new synagogue “I strive to create a space where every Jewish, Jew-ish, Jewish-adjacent, Jewish-relative or Jew-curious person feels embraced.

June 2025 News: Some Israelis Demean Interfaith Marriage; Important Thinking on Inclusion and Belonging; Huma Abedin, Alexander Soros, and an Iranian Princess Intermarry

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This month’s newsletter is early because I’m traveling the rest of June – we’re taking our grandson for a delayed, post-bar mitzvah trip – you can read about his bar mitzvah here. It was shortly after October 7; it feels like the news in this country and around Israel has been terribly challenging ever since.

Israel, Belonging to the Jewish People, and Interfaith Marriage

The last thing I want to do is anything to distance American Jews from Israel. That’s why it’s sad when prominent Israelis express demeaning attitudes about interfaith marriage specifically and liberal Judaism more generally that can only contribute to that distancing.

Item. This month the Pew Research Center released its Global Religious Landscape study, which includes a section on Jewish population change. The JTA asked “How Many American Jews Are There?” and didn’t address any impact of interfaith marriage, which is fine. But in a Times of Israel story, eminent Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola exhibited maddening obliviousness to the realities of interfaith marriage.

He doesn’t explicitly say “interfaith marriage,” but he says, “For about 100 years, assimilation increased steadily. In the US and many European countries, it reached 60%. Essentially, it can’t go higher.” The 2020 Pew report found that 61% of Jews who married between 2010 and 2020 intermarried. It’s clear that Della Pergola is equating interfaith marriage with assimilation.

He does this even though, according to the article, he pointed out “a growing trend of assimilated or partially assimilated Jews reconnecting with their Jewish identity.” In other words, by his own admission, more people in interfaith marriages and their children are identifying as Jewish – the opposite of assimilation.

Worse, he credits antisemitism as the reason, even though the trend of more children of interfaith marriage identifying as Jewish was reported in the 2020 Pew report, long before the recent resurgence in antisemitism.

This kind of gratuitous demeaning of interfaith marriage is tiresome and maddening.

Item. Then there was a story in eJP about a Likud parliamentarian, Galit Distel-Atbaryan, who ejected, from a subcommittee hearing, Gilad Kariv, an Israeli Reform rabbi who is a member of the Knesset. During discussion of an initiative to add Jewish content into school curricula, including allowing time for students to put on tefillin in school, Kariv said the measure should include all students, male and female, noting that one of his daughters puts on tefillin. Distel-Atbaryan reportedly called his comments “provocative,” made a joke about Kariv inviting her “to a bar mitzvah for a dog,” and called the ushers to “get the enlightened Reformi out of here, we Jews wish to continue.”

Thankfully, these remarks sparked outrage from many Israeli leaders. The heads of the Jewish Agency for Israel appropriately said, “Divisive and ignorant remarks like this … weaken our people and the unity of the Jewish People specifically at a time when we more than ever need to be strengthening our ties and bringing our hearts closer together.”

Item. Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin wrote an interesting piece for Religion News Service about the World Zionist Congress election, in which the Reform movement received more votes (about 20% of the total) than any other slate. (The Congress allocates more than $1 billion to Israel and world Jewry.) Slates affiliated with Orthodox Judaism got 40% of the vote, however; Rabbi Salkin notes with “sadness” the discrepancy that 95% of Orthodox Jews feel a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people, compared to 49% of Reform Jews, and exhorts liberal Jews to repair our ties to our people.

But of course, many Reform Jews are in interfaith relationships, and it’s challenging for people in interfaith relationships to feel a sense of belonging to the Jewish people when prominent people dismiss them as assimilated.

Inclusion Is About Belonging – For All Groups

Meredith Englander Polsky is the co-founder, twenty-five years ago, and now executive director, of Matan, the leading Jewish disability inclusion organization. In an important essay for eJP about the ongoing need for Matan’s work, I loved what she had to say about inclusion of and belonging for all marginalized groups:

Disability inclusion is not separate from other efforts to build an equitable and welcoming Jewish community – it is deeply intertwined with them. Jews with disabilities are also part of the LGBTQ+ community …. They are Jews of Color. They are interfaith families. … When we talk about creating inclusive spaces for one group, we must consider how multiple identities intersect and how exclusion is compounded when we fail to recognize those intersections.

Our tradition teaches that every person is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. That includes people with disabilities…. And it includes people living at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities. If we believe this, truly believe it, then our institutions must reflect it in every policy, every classroom, every synagogue, every leadership table.

This work is not just about access — it’s about belonging. It’s about ensuring that people … are not merely present in Jewish spaces, but that they are valued, heard, and empowered as essential contributors to our communal life. It’s about recognizing that inclusion is not a destination, but an ongoing process that requires continual reflection, adaptation, and accountability.

Item. eJP had a story about Seth Farber, an Orthodox rabbi, and his organization Itim, which  seeks to facilitate conversions in Israel. One of their initiatives is Shabbat v’Ahavtem, a special Shabbat just before Shavuot, when the story of Ruth, considered to be the first convert, is read. It concerned me, though, that the program refers to the Biblical commandment that appears thirty-six times, which I’ve always understood to mean to “love the stranger,” as instead to mean to “love the convert.”

I’m well aware that the Hebrew word “ger” can be translated as both “convert” and “stranger,” and I’m all for loving converts, but it feels like a misappropriation to say that the commandment is about loving converts. After all, in many of the thirty-six instances is appears, the commandment’s rationale is stated as “for you were strangers in Egypt.”

But the best thing in this story was a quote from Rabbi Adam Scheier of a traditional congregation, Shaar Hashomayim in Montreal, which I thought was so applicable to interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds:

When you build a community of closeness, there’s a natural resistance to letting someone from the outside in because it in many ways forces you to reconfigure what your definition of community is. Yet this is emphasized [in the Bible] because that’s exactly what our mandate is: to both build a close-knit community and at the same time always keep doors open and make sure that we’re welcoming to those who come in.

Also in the News

There were two celebrity interfaith marriages in the news this month. Huma Abedin (most known for her work with Hillary Clinton) and Alexander Soros had an “intimate, interfaith ceremony” officiated by Rabbi Darren Levine with a Muslim life cycle celebrant participating and a “roster of A-list Democrats … in attendance.” Princess Iman Pahlavi married American businessman Bradley Sherman, who became the first ever Jewish member of the exiled Iranian royal family.

Interfaith Family Inclusion at the Jewish Belonging Summit, Boston Globe, Canadian Podcast and eJP

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Jewish Belonging Summit

Amid the horrible news this month, I was glad to participate in the first Jewish Belonging Summit sponsored by the JFNA’s Center for Jewish Belonging and the SRE Network.  The Center’s Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein and SRE’s Rachel Gildiner were interviewed by eJP before the summit and afterwards wrote “Belonging cannot wait” for eJP.

I met many very interesting people and there were many interesting discussions. The summit captured how plenary participants’ defined “belonging.” I wondered how Rabbi Sandra Lawson’s definition – that “we are called to create community where no one has to leave out parts of themselves” – would apply to interfaith couples and partners from different faith backgrounds.

At a workshop that discussed survey data about the “surge” of Jewish engagement post-October 23, I heard a phrase that was new to me: “historically disadvantaged” groups, referring to LGBTQ+ Jews, Jews of color, and “mixed heritage” Jews. The overall point made was that while “belonging is critical to building flourishing communities,” historically disadvantaged groups find meaning in Jewish life personally but not in their larger communities.

I didn’t feel enough was said about inclusion of interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds. At the opening plenary, 18Doors’ Adam Pollack told a personal story about how he was told fifteen years ago that having such a partner was not a good model for a Jewish professional, and how 18Doors now helps people in interfaith relationships. That was the only mention of interfaith family inclusion I heard at the plenaries.

There were some passing references. Rabbi Rothstein usually referred to “Jews and their loved ones.” Schusterman’s Lisa Eisen said, “You’re welcome and belong here, whether you’re Jewish or not.” But most of the discussion was about inclusion of LGBTQ+ Jews and Jews of Color.

I am totally in favor of LGBTQ+ and Jews of Color inclusion, which is extremely important. But Jews who are in interfaith relationships vastly outnumber those who are LGBTQ+ or of Color.

There is also tremendous intersectionality between these groups. Just before the summit, Bruce Phillips provided me with information he had drawn from the 2020 Pew report data: 77% of gay or lesbian Jews and 80% of Jews of Color have a spouse or partner who is not Jewish (compared to 43% of straight Jews and 43% of white Jews). By comparison, only 5% of gay or lesbian Jews are Jews of Color (another 3.5% are Hispanic), and only 4.7% of Jews of Color (and 4.9% of Hispanic Jews) are gay or lesbian.

In his comments at the opening plenary, Adam Pollack mentioned that he saw “so many partners” at the summit. But over many years, despite the very high proportion of interfaith relationships, I haven’t heard advocates for LGBTQ+ inclusion or Jews of Color inclusion say much about interfaith family inclusion. I didn’t hear that at the summit either.

Keshet recently released “Threads of Identity,” a report on “the unique experiences, challenges, and resilience of LGBTQ+ Jews of Color in Jewish spaces.” They find that “a lack of support, representation, and biases from fellow Jewish community members often lead to feelings of isolation, exclusion, and the need to compartmentalize aspects of their identity” and call for Jewish spaces to be more inclusive of their unique needs. I would love to see reports on LGBTQ+ Jews and Jews of Color in interfaith relationships.

I hope that there will be future summits, where there will be more airtime for interfaith family inclusion, in deep collaboration with all other historically disadvantaged groups.

Wrong Ideas About Interfaith Marriage and Demographic Loss

The Boston Globe published a story about a Massachusetts synagogue in which a gratuitous comment seemed to partly blame intermarriage for its closing. I wrote the following letter to the editor (it’s behind a paywall):

In his moving essay about the closing of the synagogue where generations of his family had gone, Larry Tye writes, “Intermarriage rates are climbing, but more slowly, and rates of conversion are rising.”

The Pew Research Center’s report, “Jewish Americans in 2020,” found that “the offspring of intermarriages have become increasingly likely to identify as Jewish in adulthood.” Len Saxe, who leads the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis, has suggested that that is one of the most important reasons that the Jewish population in the United States is increasing.

A Jewish Telegraphic Agency story in 2021 concluded, “Intermarriage, rather than acting as a net negative for Jewish population, actually has resulted in more Jews.”

Globe readers should understand that welcoming and including interfaith families is key to the ongoing growth and thriving of American Jewish communities.

The false idea of demographic loss also came up in a short podcast, “1 in 3 Canadian Jews have a non-Jewish spouse. What does that mean for the country’s Jewish future?” A new study of Canadian Jews found that “intermarriage is no longer as rare as it used to be in Canada, with 30 percent of Canadian Jews marrying outside their faith.” The podcast introduction reads:

So what do we make of this? Doomsayers have called intermarriage a “second Holocaust”, but the unavoidable reality of young people moving away from religion can’t be fought. Should Jewish institutions and community leaders expand their outreach, or do they tighten their grip on what it means to be a Jew?

Phoebe Maltz Bovy asked how much of the negativity about interfaith marriage was because of concerns over continuity, and how much about religion. She said the demographic concern, that interfaith marriage means fewer Jews, “might not be the thing.” Matthew Leibl, a rabbi in Winnipeg who officiates at weddings of interfaith couples, agreed. He said he uses the term “dual faith” because “interfaith” and “intermarriage” have such negative connotations. Leibl also offered what he called an “easy fix” for the religious concern – to recognize patrilineal descent – an important idea, but not so easy to implement.

Ignoring the Partners 

Finally, in time for Shavuot, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin and Sandra Lilienthal offer “The Jewish People stood together at Sinai. Can we today?” It’s a nice emphasis on pluralism and plea for unity, but a missed opportunity to explicitly acknowledge and embrace interfaith families and partners from different faith backgrounds.

The authors surely know that a “mixed multitude” (Exodus 12:38) left Egypt with the Israelites and was present at Mount Sinai when the Torah was received. But their essay only says, “Every Jew past, present and future and everyone who would someday become a Jew was present at Sinai” and “the entire Jewish people was present for the same revelation.”

If they meant to include, in “the entire Jewish people,” Jews and their loved ones, that would have been a very welcome Shavuot message.

April 2025 News: Steps Forward – Embark, Reinventing Hebrew School, What Belonging Requires; Obstacles – Bad Attitudes, Patrilineality, Officiation

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There’s a lot to report this month: promising feelings of inclusion from a new program for interfaith couples; a great discussion of what’s involved in feeling belonging; new Hebrew school research that reflects that feeling unwelcoming is an obstacle; a Conservative rabbi advocates for officiation; a patrilineal teen’s determination to be recognized; the UK progressive movements are now both “equilineal”; negativity about interfaith marriage in an advice column question; a play with “shiksa” in a title song; and commentary on new demographic data about Montreal.

I’m looking forward to participating in the Jewish Belonging Summit sponsored by the Center for Jewish Belonging and SRE Network May 7-8 in Baltimore – especially discussions about advancing “belonging for all Jews and our loved ones.” It will be interesting to see how including interfaith families fits in with the larger agenda of affirming and celebrating the social and cultural diversity of Jewish life.

Inclusion: New Program, Research, Discussions and Omissions

Embark is a relatively new program, now part of Mem Global, for young adult interfaith couples. Rabbi Ari Perten of Mem Global and Ezra Kopelowitz, describing their program evaluation, say that Embark addresses the many interfaith couples who often experience “a sense of not fully belonging;” “rather than feeling like guests at Jewish events, [couples] gained the knowledge and confidence to lead rituals, host Shabbat dinners and engage meaningfully with Jewish learning on their own terms.” But “while Embark made them more comfortable in Jewish spaces generally, they still feel like outsiders in synagogue settings or other institutional Jewish environments.” The essay discusses steps to “help ensure that Embark participants feel not just welcomed but truly at home in Jewish life.” Embark seeks to create “a foundation for a more inclusive Jewish future – one where interfaith couples actively choose how they want to participate in Jewish community, rather than simply observing from its margins.”

New research about reinventing Hebrew school (the report, a summary of the report, and an eJP essay) notes the importance of inclusion. The research addresses the 70% of Jewish families who are underserved by Jewish education, “defined as those North American, non-orthodox, self-identifying Jewish and Jewish+ families who currently choose not to affiliate with traditional Jewish institutions or enroll in traditional supplemental Jewish education.” It doesn’t call out interfaith families, but does say “Often, Judaism is but one of multiple identities for these families,” and that some are “parents newly considering Judaism, but they don’t feel welcomed by Jewish institutions.” Traditional Jewish communities are perceived by some as “unwelcoming,” “judgmental,” “closed, insular,” “not always open to interfaith families.” The research makes an important call for an integrated family strategy, which I hope will include fostering feelings of belonging in interfaith families.

Rabbi Liz PG Hirsch, executive director of Women of Reform Judaism, talked about interfaith inclusion on her podcast with Rabbi Miriam Farber Wajnberg, director of professional development at 18Doors. It’s a very interesting discussion of what belonging means and requires, alluding to maintaining parameters as well as obstacles to inclusion.

Steven Windmueller missed an opportunity in “The third stage: An American Jewish revolution is upon us once more.” The first reason he gives for the need to “reinvent the Jewish brand” is that “we are not ‘growing Jews’; that is to say we need to increase our numbers, levels of engagement and our financial base. To do that requires a Jewish awakening that excites and energizes Jews to become involved.” I wish he had explicitly nodded to perhaps the greatest opportunity to increase our numbers: to excite, energize and engage more interfaith families – which requires including their partners from different faith backgrounds.

Obstacles to Inclusion: Attitudes, Patrilineality, and Officiation

Negative attitudes about interfaith marriage are still with us. Hey Alma’s advice columnist responded to a question from Jewish woman marrying a Jewish man who was worried that his two brothers would intermarry and forget Jewish traditions so that her own future children wouldn’t be able to celebrate Jewish holidays with future cousins. I loved Vanessa Pamela Friedman’s advice:

“I’m sure you didn’t mean to invalidate all interfaith families with your question, but it is really concerning to me that you’re making assumptions about how these Jewish men will continue to celebrate and honor their Judaism if they end up marrying non-Jewish women. You are experiencing anxiety over a hypothetical issue that may or may not come to fruition, but a lot of people in our community experience real anxiety over the very material judgements and marginalization they experience as patrilineal Jews. So I do find it very, very important to state upfront: Interfaith families who celebrate Judaism in meaningful ways are real, their Judaism is valid and it’s not up to you or anyone else to judge them.”

Related: there’s a song, “Shiksa Goddess,” in a 2001 musical The Last Five Years now playing on Broadway. I’ve always hated the word “shiksa” and agree completely that the song should be removed. I especially agree with the the Forward’s Rukhl Shaechter that “shiksa, even when used with positive intent, comes with demeaning cultural baggage.”

The Canadian Jewish News had an interesting discussion about Montreal’s relatively low but growing rate of interfaith marriage. In 2021 the rate was 22% compared to the Canadian average of 31%, but the number of Jews living in intermarried families grew by 29% in the preceding ten years. Comments by McGill sociologist Morton Weinfeld seem not particularly hospitable to interfaith families: he says research should look into “the quality of the life of those individuals where there’s been no conversion to Judaism, Chrismukkah families. The question often on the table now is to what extent is there space in modern Jewish life in Montreal for these mixed marriages… there are people clearly who will identify as Jewish, but their framework will be different from what it has been in the past. So how will other Jews in the community respond?”

In “I’m Half-Jewish But My Jewish Life Is As Full As It Gets” a patrilineal and very Jewishly-engaged teen gets told by a close family friend “you’re not actually Jewish” but concludes “while I may not fit others’ ideas of a Jewish teen born to Jewish parents, I will not let their comments affect my journey.” She quotes an essay from nine years ago by another patrilineal Jew who’s now a rabbi: “Being Jewish but not having a Jewish mother can be a symbol of a Judaism that is more desirable than a Jewish identity that insists on matrilineal Jewish inheritance or halachic conversion…. The Judaism I favor is a Judaism that is not built on being born into an ethnicity, but instead on choosing to live up to the Jewish covenant and choosing to belong to the Jewish people.”

In the UK, where the two progressive movements, Reform and Liberal, are creating a single Progressive Jewish movement, they call it “equilineality”: “Both movements now have an established route to equilineality, enabling children of one Jewish parent, irrespective of gender, to have recognised Jewish status. Both movements today are built by people of any sexuality. Both are fully egalitarian. Both have become fully able to integrate and build the Jewish lives of mixed faith couples and families.”

“Eight Years Later and We Are Still Lost” is an important contribution by Conservative Rabbi Steven Abraham. “We need to acknowledge openly that the current model – rejecting rabbinic officiation while encouraging outreach – is sending mixed signals that confuse and alienate more than they reassure.”

Also in the news:

A recent 18Doors email newsletter featured “See Me For Who I Am” by Stephanie Zulkoski who describes herself as “one half of an interfaith couple” who has “embraced Jewish traditions and culture.” She describes “small, negative experiences” that cause sadness and frustration and hopes people will become more open-minded and non-judgmental. Her advice: “please do not call me a shiksa”; “I am of a different faith background but would prefer not to be called a ‘non-Jew’”; and please don’t ask me “if I plan to convert.”

“Welcoming Baby” is beautiful advice from Rabbi Jen Gubitz for all Jewishly-engaged or potentially Jewishly-engaged couples.

The Cleveland Jewish News had a nice article with advice from Rabbi Melinda Mersack of jHub about seders for interfaith families (unfortunately termed “interfaith seder” by the reporter).

“My Husband and I Want To Host Passover But His Parents Won’t Let Us” has more good advice from Hey Alma’s Vanessa Pamela Friedman who questions whether part of the husband’s parents’ opposition is because his wife is not Jewish.

Ha’aretz has a story about a bad decision by an Israel ministry denying recognition of Reform and Conservative conversions done in Israel, disregarding a Supreme Court ruling.

We Open the Door for Elijah. Can We Open It for Seekers Too? is about fostering inclusion among those who are drawn to Judaism, but the descriptions are apt for interfaith couples too: “Sometimes the barrier … [is] [l]ingering doubts about who belongs.” “More people are seeking meaning—and many are finding their way toward Judaism. But they’re not always sure the door will open.” “I know what it feels like to be embraced – and what it feels like to be quietly be held at arm’s length.”