Choosing Love and Family at a B’nei Mitzvah

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I’ve been to a lot of bar and bat mitzvahs in my life, but I’ve never been so deeply moved as I was on a recent Shabbat.

My cousin, Nancy Sharp, who I’ve always adored, has experienced a life of tragic loss and re-found joy. Her husband, Brett, who I remember vividly as a most wonderful young man, died of brain cancer when their twins, Casey and Rebecca, were 2 1/2 years old. Nancy decided to move from Manhattan to Denver, where she had one friend.

both_sides_now

After relocating, Nancy read about Steve Saunders, a local TV journalist, in a magazine article about eligible bachelors; Steve’s wife had died of cancer and he was raising two young teens, Ryan and Dylan. Long story short, Nancy and Steve met, married and combined their families. Nancy has told her story in a remarkable book, Both Sides Now. And this spring, Casey and Rebecca became bar and bat mitzvah.

The service and the celebration were amazing. Brett’s family, though living at a distance, has remained very close to Nancy and her children. Brett’s mother, an aunt and uncle, and many cousins were all present and there were not a few tears when Brett’s mother presented his tallit to Casey at the start of the service. But Steve’s family, who are not Jewish, were very present too; I could see that Casey and Rebecca have acquired a third set of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. The kindness and the love that flowed between Steve and Brett’s family, and Steve’s family and my cousins, was plain for all to see.

I learned that Ryan and Dylan had many Jewish friends growing up, attended Jewish summer camp and one of Steve’s very adorable nephews (who is not Jewish) even attends the pre-school at Temple Micah, where Nancy and Steve are members. So the Saunders family was not unfamiliar with what happens at a bar or bat mitzvah. And Rabbi Adam Morris did an extraordinarily sensitive job of bringing Brett into the service while keeping the focus on the present.

But what I especially appreciated was how inclusive Rabbi Morris was of Steve and his family. In many Reform synagogues, part of a bar or bat mitzvah service is a symbolic passing of the Torah from grandparents to parents to child, but at many, the grandparents and parent who are not Jewish don’t get to participate (on the theory that the Torah is not “theirs” to pass, or perhaps that they couldn’t have passed Judaism to the child). At this b’nei mitzvah, I was very glad to see the Torah passed from my cousins Ron and Sue to Brett’s mother, to Steve’s parents, to Steve and Nancy and then to their children.

As in probably all Reform synagogues, part of the bar or bat mitzvah service involves the parents having an aliyah (saying the blessings before and after a portion of the Torah is read). But as best I know, the vast majority of Reform rabbis will not allow a parent who is not Jewish to join in reciting the Torah blessings at their own child’s bar or bat mitzvah. I believe this is based on theory that the blessing refers to God choosing “us” and giving “us” the Torah, and the parent who is not Jewish isn’t part of the “us.” I felt so grateful to Rabbi Morris, and told him so afterwards, for allowing Steve to join with Nancy in the parents’ aliyah. I wish the rabbis who wouldn’t have permitted that could have been at the b’nei mitzvah of Casey and Rebecca Zickerman. Maybe seeing the contribution that Steve, not to mention his extended family, has made to passing Judaism on to Casey and Rebecca might persuade them to change their minds. Something is very wrong, in my opinion, when rabbis can’t consider the family of a person like Steve to be the “us” to whom the Torah was given, making it fully authentic and appropriate for a person like Steve to thank God for giving the Torah to his family—to “us.”

Rabbi Morris’ inclusive approach should not have been a surprise; in 2004 he wrote an excellent sermon explaining why, as it says on the Temple Micah website, “I proudly officiate at the weddings of interfaith couples.” To our knowledge, he is the only congregational rabbi in Denver who will do so.

Nancy Sharp’s story is very personal and emotional for me, and one of, if not the, most inspiring stories I have ever encountered. I love Nancy and her family; the loss she suffered was painful, and the love that she found is a source of great joy. I think the lesson here is about being open to and choosing love. The love that Nancy was open to and chose with Steve, and the love that flows between their families, including Brett’s, is what makes their example so powerful. I hope that the inclusive approach of their rabbi, who chooses to privilege love and family over other concerns, becomes an increasingly powerful example to his colleagues, too.

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

Mazel Tov, Michael Douglas – and Our Cause

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Today was a very big day for everyone who wants to see interfaith families engage in Jewish life and community.

As we previously covered in a post in January and another in April, the Genesis Prize Fund had announced that it was awarding its $1 million annual prize to Michael Douglas in order to emphasize the importance of welcoming interfaith families.

Today Douglas received the award – now doubled to $2 million – in a ceremony in Israel covered by JTA and the Times of Israel.

According to JTA,

Douglas said he will use the prize money to reach out to other Jews from intermarried families seeking a connection to the Jewish community. He announced grants to Hillel and the Jewish Funders Network for programs that reach out to intermarried children and couples…. Coupled with matching grant programs from Genesis and the Jewish Funders Network, some $3.5 million would be available for such programs as a result of Douglas’ prize.

The Genesis Prize Fund and the Jewish Funders Network simultaneously announced a $1.65 million matching grant fund for organizations and projects that support and enhance avenues to Jewish engagement for intermarried couples and their families. The goals of the matching grant are:

  • To encourage the creation of a culture of welcoming and acceptance within the Jewish community of intermarried couples, their families, and individuals who come from these families.
  • To energize and strengthen organizations working in this field and to encourage the creation of new programs in that area.
  • To use the leverage of matching funds to foster the field and bring both new funders and new funding into the field. These new funders offer a prospect of long term sustainability to the field.
  • To encourage funders to engage with non-profits and other organizations on particular projects and take an active role in developing the field.

We are thrilled for our friends at Hillel and for the opportunity that this very significant funding provides to InterfaithFamily and other organizations in our field. Two years ago, in an essay in eJewishPhilanthropy, I asked whether interfaith families were even included in what was then a growing movement towards “inclusive Jewish philanthropy.” The Genesis Prize Fund, by selecting Michael Douglas as its 2015 recipient, joined now by the Jewish Funders Network, has turned that corner. InterfaithFamily has been operating for fourteen years; now we are finally seeing significant philanthropic resources that will be devoted to what we believe is the most pressing opportunity the Jewish community has to grow and be enriched. This is truly a wonderful day.

And we hope that this philanthropic turn will lead many more leaders in the Jewish community to agree with Mikhail Fridman, a founder of the Genesis Philanthropy Group, who said in his comments at the award ceremony:

In the strictest sense, our laureate this year is not a “perfect” Jew. His mother is not Jewish. I even suspect that he does not spend every Friday evening in a synagogue and does not follow kashrut. Yet, he is someone who put his energy and determination into being Jewish, who exercised his free will and showed commitment to follow the path of his ancestors in search for a foundation. Should we deny his Jewishness on the basis of his mother’s birth or should we celebrate it on the basis of his commitment to embrace Judaism and pass his Jewish heritage to his children? Are not free will and determination the essential qualities of the Jews? We can respond to freedom by building barriers and closing up, or we can respond to it by being inclusive and supportive of those who chose a path of Judaism. I choose the latter…. [W]e should support and encourage those who have made a decision to embrace their Jewish identity and pass their Jewish heritage to their children, like Michael Douglas is doing. We should welcome them with open arms – not turn away from them.

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

Three Voices from the Conservative Movement

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In March Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky, a Conservative rabbi at Ansche Chesed in Manhattan, explaining “Why I Will Not Simply Accept Intermarriage,” wrote for the Forward that “Celebrating interfaith weddings… [would] diminish a sacred covenantal tradition, and risk making liberal Judaism into a jumble of traditional gestures that might please individuals but demand nothing from them.” I wrote a letter to the editor which appeared in the March 20 print issue of the Forward (it’s not on the Forward’s website):

We respect Rabbi Kalmonofsky’s perspective and emphasis on the centrality of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. But most Jews today don’t approach Judaism that way. They are looking for meaning through Jewish practices and a community of like-minded, Jewishly-engaged others. We don’t agree with Rabbi Kalmonofsky’s apparent dismissal of that as just seeking “happiness” or “sampling” Judaism.

Rabbi Kalmonofsky says that “No matter how nicely you say it, declining to perform someone’s wedding implies a cruel rejection.” That is certainly what we hear from the many interfaith couples with whom we connect over our officiation referral service – and it fully applies to his suggestion that rabbis says “for now, have a civil wedding, and we’ll wish you mazel tov.”

Rabbi Kalmonofsky says that a Jewish wedding ceremony cannot be a nonconverting gentile spouse’s “own” ceremony or “summon her to join our shared past, shared future and shared mission.” This is very off base; in our experience, when interfaith couples seek a rabbi to officiate at their wedding, they are looking for a ceremony that they both can own. The ceremony may not “summon” the partner who is not Jewish to formally “join” as a Jew, but it can certainly invite ongoing engagement and participation – which may or may not ultimately lead to conversion.

In the end, circling the wagons as Rabbi Kalmonofsky suggests may entrench his covenantal emphasis, but it will do so to an increasingly diminished group. As one Conservative rabbi we know says, this is “doubling down on a failed policy of rejectionism” that has “driven many away from Jewish life.”

Today another Conservative rabbi, Michael Knopf from Temple Beth-El in Richmond VA, had a very important response published in Ha’aretz, “Getting over intermarriage: Judaism’s guide to finding the right partner.” Rabbi Knopf says that “Jewish leaders’ obsession with discussing intermarriage through the prism of permissibility risks trivializing Judaism as a religion of policies, rather than as a fountain of relevant and enduring wisdom and values.” Stating that Jewish tradition has much wisdom to offer about finding a partner that is just as relevant to those who intermarry, he says “What if, instead of trying to finger-wag Jews into endogamous relationships, we offered compassionate and nonjudgmental support to people, drawing from the riches of our tradition, as they seek to couple?” Among his many refreshing comments are, “Judaism teaches that marrying Jewish is not a guarantee of a successful relationship” and “people of different backgrounds can be oriented to faith in harmonious ways” and “two people of different backgrounds can sharpen each other in myriad ways.” Rabbi Knopf concludes,

If Jewish leaders shifted to teach young people these and other pieces of relationship wisdom, rather than harping on the importance of in-marriage, we could help people truly flourish and, as a result, bring them closer to Judaism, regardless of who they marry.

We applaud Rabbi Knopf’s novel approach and the welcoming attitude he expresses. But what happens when interfaith couples are brought closer to Judaism, specifically to Conservative synagogues? In March, Rabbi David Lerner of Temple Emunah in Lexington, MA, wrote a blot post for The Times of Israel describing a New Conservative/Masorti ceremony for interfaith couples, which is described in greater length on the website of the Rabbinical Assembly (the association of Conservative rabbis).

Rabbi Lerner was a co-chair of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Commission on Keruv (Outreach), Conversion, and Jewish Peoplehood and he concentrated on creating a ceremony to welcome interfaith couples, “a ritual through which a couple could celebrate their love and the Jewish choices they were making, while including family and friends… within our understanding of halakhah (Jewish law).” The core of the Hanukkat Habayit ceremony is putting up a mezuzah; the ceremony is described at length in the blog post and on the RA website and it does appear to offer a lovely and meaningful ritual and celebrate the Jewish choices the couple has made. It also comes with a three- to six-month learning period with the rabbi before the ceremony and continuing conversations with the rabbi afterwards, all aimed as supporting the couple’s Jewish growth.

We applaud this effort to support and recognize interfaith couples who make Jewish choices in a Conservative context, but it’s important to note that very clear Jewish choices are required for the ceremony: It is “for interfaith couples who have decided to build an exclusively Jewish home and family together;” “if the mother is not Jewish, the children would undergo a halakhic conversion;” “There should also be the clear expectation that non-Jewish symbols and observances would not be a part of the couple’s home, such as a Christmas tree.” Many interfaith couples who might want to make Jewish choices in a Conservative context may note be quite as far along in terms of their decision making as is required for the ceremony. And there is continuing tension with those coming from the perspective of tradition – as Rabbi Lerner says, “some” in the movement may be uncomfortable with the ceremony, even with its requirements, “as we seek to straddle the space between our tradition and keruv.”

This will surely be a continuing discussion worth following.

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

You’re One of Us

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Steven M. Cohen and Rabbi Joy Levitt have written an extremely important op-ed for JTA: “If You Marry a Jew, You’re One of Us.” For the past 14 years, we at InterfaithFamily have been advocating for Jews to welcome, embrace and fully include interfaith couples and families into Jewish life and community. We have always maintained that the attitudes Jews have toward intermarriage need to change from negative or ambivalent, to seeing the potential for positive Jewish engagement by interfaith families.

It is wonderfully affirming to now hear Jewish leaders like Levitt, the brilliantly successful director of the JCC in Manhattan, and Cohen – until recently one of the most vociferous critics of intermarriage – espouse the same views.

The crux of their essay (I am quoting what I feel are the most important points):

We know that where both parents identify as Jews, nearly all their children identify as Jews as well. And when only one parent sees himself/herself as Jewish, only a minority of their children grow up as Jews. Aside from raising the inmarriage rate, how can we create more households where both partners see themselves as part of the Jewish people?

One answer is for all of us to change the way we think of, and treat, those who love and marry our children, family members and friends. Basically we should agree and fully internalize the idea: If you marry a Jew, you’re fully part of our community until proven otherwise.

Born Jews would undergo a subtle but critical shift in the way they relate to family members and friends not born Jewish. It would mean fully including them in holiday practices, life-cycle ceremonies, and Jewishly centered social action and political activities.

[F]or those who choose to be part of our community without formal conversion — who come to the Passover seder and drive their children to Hebrew school, who sit shiva with us, or who bring their sons into the community at a brit milah, who shep naches at their daughters’ bat mitzvah and who go to Israel on vacation — we say welcome. It’s a pleasure to know you. Come learn. You’re one of us if you want to be.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

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

More Debate

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Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, a very eminent Jewish scholar and leader, has the next say in the “promoting in-marriage” debate, with The Facts On In-Marriage Advantages. He says we should engage in “truth telling” that they will increase their chances of having Jewishly engaged children if they marry other Jews.

We were heartened to see Rabbi Greenberg say that his intended message is that “Whoever you choose and love, we love you and want you to be part of us, to participate in our community, to share our destiny.” The problem is that Rabbi Greenberg thinks that we can promote in-marriage and still convey that intended message, and we think he is very wrong about that.

Jodi Bromberg and I submitted this letter to the editor of the New York Jewish Week:

With enormous respect, we have never known any advocate of in-marriage to convey Yitz Greenberg’s “intended message” that “Whoever you choose and love, we love you and want you to be part of us, to participate in our community, to share our destiny.” Proponents of in-marriage don’t typically stop at “your chances of having an active Jewish life are increased if you marry a Jew,” followed immediately by “warmth and assurance of welcome no matter what,” which might work. Instead, they insist on saying that in-marriage is preferable – read, intermarriage is bad – or that in-marriage is a Jewish norm – read, if you intermarry you are a norm-violator. That is a terrible turnoff to most young Jews – especially to the majority of young Reform Jews whose parents are intermarried. It is unnecessary and destructive to mount a campaign to promote in-marriage as justification for the “intense educational and magnetic experiential programs that enrich lives” that all of us want. As Rabbi Greenberg himself notes, those programs often include substantial numbers of interfaith families – and they could include many more, if marketed not as promoting in-marriage, but rather the joy and meaning of Jewish life.

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

Kudos and For Shame

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As we mentioned last week, the “let’s promote in-marriage” debate has reignited, and we weighed in with Promote Jewish Engagement, Not In-Marriage.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Reform movement, has weighed in with an important op-ed on JTA, Outreach to Interfaith Families Strengthens the Jewish Future. We offer kudos for thoughts like this:

While other voices will surely proclaim that endogamy is the only effective way to have a committed Jewish family, the Reform movement has something altogether different to say: Jewish commitment can be established in a variety of settings, especially with support and increased opportunity for learning and engaging. Falling in love with someone who is not Jewish is not a failure of Jewish commitment at a time when young adult lives are just beginning.

But to Steven M. Cohen and Rabbi Leon Morris, we say “for shame” for their Did Moses Intermarry? Who Says He Did—and Why Do They Want To Know? Cohen and Morris certainly are entitled to take the misguided position that Jewish leaders should encourage in-marriage. But it strikes me as twisted and shameful to criticize those who want instead to promote Jewish engagement by interfaith families for holding out Moses and Tzipporah, among others, as Biblical models of interfaith couples who contributed to Judaism. The people in the “promote in-marriage” camp profess, however reluctantly, to want to engage in Jewish life those interfaith couples who do marry, but their readiness to take away these positive role models for that engagement reveal the very low priority they would give to those efforts.

Two related kudos: to our friend Rabbi Kerry Olitzky for publication of his new book, Playlist Judaism: Making Choices for a Vital Future. And to the Forward’s Nathan Guttman for his article, Rabbis Shift To Say ‘I Do’ to Intermarriage, which quotes at length Rabbi Daniel Zemel and Rabbi John Rosove, both of whose writings on officiation can be found on our site.

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

Promote Jewish Engagement, Not In-Marriage

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with Jodi Bromberg
Reprinted with permission from eJewishPhilanthropy.

As Gary Rosenblatt has revealed (“Continuity: Why Should We Care,” January 22nd), a group of two dozen “concerned Jews” have met, exchanged papers, and propose to take some as yet undefined action to counter a “disturbing trend” of increased intermarriage. The group seeks a strategy to re-direct the approach of communal leaders and change-makers, like philanthropists, so as to promote in-marriage. We write to urge this group to re-frame their effort, not as one to discourage intermarriage, but rather as one to promote Jewish engagement.

Intermarriage is the reality of our time, as the Pew Report confirms, whether or not Jewish leaders “acquiesce” to that trend, as the group complains. Seventy-one percent of non-Orthodox Jews who married after 2000 married someone not Jewish. Most Jews today are marrying someone who is not Jewish. This is not a shifting tide of the ocean; this is the ocean.

We ask the group to consider: how will that vast population respond to an organized communal effort to promote in-marriage? Promoting in-marriage as ideal or preferable will necessarily have the effect of turning off those who will intermarry – as most will – to Jewish engagement. People don’t go where their choices are demeaned.

The New York Times recently featured a photo exhibit by an Israeli, Yael Ben-Zion, of twenty intermarried couples, including five with a Jewish partner. Ben-Zion is quoted as saying that “the really important questions” interfaith couples face include, “Are you accepted by your family and community?” A campaign to promote in-marriage will only contribute to interfaith couples and families feeling not accepted by the Jewish community.

We understand that the group is motivated by studies showing that by traditional measures, interfaith families are relatively disengaged from Jewish life and community. But we have no doubt that that picture of engagement would be markedly different today if the “audacious hospitality” recently endorsed by URJ President Rick Jacobs had been the Jewish community’s response to the continuity crisis that arose in the early 1990s.

Nearly twenty-five years later, however, the prevailing attitude towards intermarriage among too many Jewish leaders – and too many Jews – is still terribly negative. While Mr. Rosenblatt professes not to consider intermarriage a “disease,” that is the message that the group’s approach to intermarriage conveys. That message contributes directly to feelings of lack of acceptance, and the interfaith couples in Ben-Zion’s photo exhibit are the least of it. The relatively few attempts to ask interfaith families about their experiences with Jewish communities – focus groups assembled by philanthropists, surveys conducted by a federations, qualitative studies by academics, as well as numerous surveys conducted by InterfaithFamily – have consistently revealed negative off-putting experiences.

Conversely, audacious hospitality matters, and has a direct impact on families’ willingness and desire to make Jewish choices. As one Catholic mother wrote in her response to InterfaithFamily’s recent user survey, “The temple that we belong to is very open to interfaith marriages and that is why I am choosing to bring my son up Jewish.”

We recently spoke with a rabbi who leads one of the thriving urban groups that is attracting young Jews to worship services, text study and other Jewish experiences. Many of the participants are interfaith couples and the rabbi told us that she imposes no restrictions whatsoever on participation. She doesn’t ask whether a person is Jewish or not Jewish or some place in between; whatever anyone wants to do Jewishly, she allows. That is the kind of radical invitation and acceptance that is needed to maximize Jewish engagement. Another similar group describes their approach as “radical accessibility” – the idea that everyone is welcome to find meaning and community there.

Mr. Rosenblatt describes the programs that his group is apparently considering as those “that would bring young Jews into contact with each other socially, … subsidized child care, day schools, summer camps, and intensive Israel travel [to] provide the experiential and textual elements needed to create literate, caring Jews.” All of these programs, many of which are already funded, are desirable – regardless of their impact on intermarriage – because they strengthen Jewish identity and lead to increased engagement in Jewish life and community – something that we all want.

But if we want Jews in or from interfaith families to be so engaged, we can’t promote our programs by touting them as the cure or antidote to intermarriage. That is self-defeating, destructive and unnecessary. As importantly, there is an opportunity cost to spending time and resources thinking about ways to encourage endogamy rather than engagement. Interfaith families make up a substantial and increasing portion of our population. Why not focus on spending those resources on understanding and engaging that already existing population?

We were heartened by one voice in the group who is quoted as writing that “the communal response to increasing intermarriage should be encouraging intermarried families to raise their children as Jewish…” We urge the group to take that approach. Rather than promoting in-marriage, promote Jewish engagement – and in particular, join us in promoting Jewish engagement by interfaith families.

 

Debate Reignited

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A group of “concerned Jews” in response to the Pew survey propose to take concerted action to encourage Jewish leaders to encourage in-marriage. Julie Wiener writes that “the intermarriage debate” has “reignited” in a JTA article that was picked up by the Forward. Jodi Bromberg, InterfaithFamily’s new President, and I wrote an op-ed for eJewishPhilanthropy, Promote Jewish Engagement, Not In-Marriage. Paul Golin from JOI also had an op-ed in the New York Jewish Week.

To us the key point is that all of the actions any proponent of in-marriage proposes – increased Jewish education, social networks, Israel trips – are worthwhile because they promote Jewish engagement, which is what everyone on all sides of this debate wants. We say encourage those actions for that reason – because they promote the Jewish engagement we all want, regardless of who people marry. Encouraging those actions because they promote in-marriage is self-defeating – it will alienate the majority of the audience who will intermarry regardless of what Jewish leaders recommend.

Ironically, perhaps coincidentally, yesterday was the day of the very moving memorial service for Edgar Bronfman. One very subtle comment stood out to me: Hilllary Clinton expressed gratitude to Edgar and Jan Bronfman for the friendship and support they provided to Chelsea Clinton when she married a Jewish man. Edgar Bronfman, who will be sorely missed, understood the importance of genuine acceptance and welcome much more than the group of Jewish leaders who want to encourage in-marriage.

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

Bad Attitudes from Jewish Journalists

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In an unfortunate convergence, some of the leading Jewish journalists have almost simultaneously published more counter-productive negative messages about intermarriage.

The first piece is by Gary Rosenblatt of the New York Jewish Week. Here is the letter to the editor I just submitted:

I applaud Rabbi Rick Jacobs’ comments at the URJ Biennial and to Gary Rosenblatt (“A Call For ‘Audacious Hospitality’,” Jan. 15). Rabbi Jacobs is right that “finger-wagging” is a turnoff for intermarried Jews and their partners who might otherwise make Jewish choices. Mr. Rosenblatt professes not to think of intermarriage as a “disease,” but that is the message that he and Messrs. Cohen, Bayme and Wertheimer convey. The communal intervention they seek to encourage in-marriage would be a roadblock to the “on-ramps to Jewish life” that Rabbi Jacobs rightly wants to build for the majority of the next generation who will be the children of intermarriages.

The second is an editorial in the Forward. Here’s my letter to them:

I applaud Rabbi Rick Jacobs’ comments to the editors (“Intermarriage Rorschach Test,” Jan. 16) that “Jewish living, values, commitments… can be upheld in interfaith families” and not the “exclusive province of Jewish-Jewish couples.” By questioning “however Jewish” those individuals who choose to live lives of Jewish depth and meaning “actually are,” the Forward’s editors become part of the problem. Characterizing intermarriage as “diminishment” and in-marriage as “essential” is a self-fulfilling prophecy that will lead to more interfaith families who might otherwise make Jewish choices not doing so.

The people in these positions of Jewish leadership ought to stop to think about the impact of what they say about intermarriage on young interfaith couples – the Jewish partner or the partner who isn’t Jewish – who are exploring Jewish life, considering making Jewish choices, and quite naturally looking for welcome, acceptance, and embrace.

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

He Will Be Missed: Remembering Edgar M. Bronfman, Sr.

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All of us at InterfaithFamily are mourning the loss of Edgar Bronfman, who died last night.

edgarbronfmanEdgar had a powerful wonderful personal impact on our organization. He was a true pioneer and visionary for the cause of engaging interfaith families in Jewish life and community.

As early as 2004, we reprinted an article from the Jerusalem Post whose title conveyed Edgar’s attitude and foreshadowed all of his future efforts in our field: Bronfman: Children of Intermarriage Are Also Jews.

Back in 2008 I wrote that InterfaithFamily, which started as an independent non-profit in 2002, had plateaued at a funding level of $375,000 until 2006, and that I had given serious thought to closing IFF because of lack of funding support for our cause. But a tide turned in 2006, and we raised over $500,000 that year, and over $800,000 in 2007. How did this happen? Because Edgar Bronfman was the key catalyst. The Samuel Bronfman Foundation was our first major new funder that year.

We enjoyed support from Edgar and SBF for many years after. I’ve only been to the Jewish Funders Network annual conference (which isn’t meant to be a place for grant-seekers to seek grants) once: because Edgar and SBF sponsored a reception at which we spoke about IFF. And I had two memorable lunches with Edgar at what I understood to be “his” table at the Four Seasons.

More important than his impact on InterfaithFamily, though, was his impact on the cause of engaging interfaith families. The importance of welcoming interfaith families was the centerpiece of his important 2008 book, Hope, Not Fear: A Path to Jewish Renaissance. Edgar’s son, Adam, has also been outspoken in the past on the same issues, with coverage in a 2007 JTA article, and in a speech at the 2008 GA.

But the sentiments that Edgar Bronfman spoke so explicitly and repeatedly about welcoming interfaith families have sadly been rare among Jewish leaders. Unfortunately, I can’t think of anyone of Edgar’s stature who has been willing to forcefully assert the critical importance of engaging interfaith families to the liberal Jewish future. When the Pew Report generated huge discussion in the Jewish world starting this past October, the voices of the leadership of the Jewish community seemed to all be delivering the tired old “stem the tide of intermarriage” message.

No one comparable to Edgar Bronfman was heard delivering his prophetic message, in Hope, Not Fear:

 If we speak about intermarriage as a disaster for the Jewish people, we send a message to intermarried families that is mixed at best. How can you welcome people in while at the same time telling them that their loving relationship is in part responsible for the destruction of the Jewish people? No one should be made to feel our welcome is conditional or begrudging. The many non-Jews who marry Jews must not be regarded as a threat to Jewish survival but as honored guests in a house of joy, learning and pride.

The oft-cited figure that among intermarried families only 33 percent of children are raised Jewish does not take into account the possibility that if the Jewish community were more welcoming, those numbers could grow dramatically.

We can only hope that some Jewish leader somewhere will pick up the mantle Edgar has left behind and continue to champion the cause of engaging interfaith families Jewishly.

We send our condolences to Edgar’s family and to the staff of The Samuel Bronfman Foundation and the non-profit organizations that were closest to his heart.

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