October 2025 News: Lessons from Research on Interfaith Families’ Belonging; What Season Two of Nobody Wants This Gets Right

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Today’s eJewishPhilanthropy Op-ed: What Research Reveals About Interfaith Families’ Feelings of Belonging

For the first time ever, we held this email newsletter beyond the end of the month, so that we could tell you that today, eJewishPhilanthropy published our op-ed, Making Interfaith Families a Valued Part of Jewish Communities.

We’ve been working for many months on a project to gather and review all of the data on interfaith families’ feelings of belonging in a dozen years’ worth of research: two national Pew reports, twenty-six local community studies by the Cohen Center at Brandeis, one quantitative and three qualitative Cohen Center studies of interfaith families, a recent qualitative study led by Tobin Belzer and a recent local community study by Rosov Consulting.

Today’s op-ed summarizes the Center’s detailed paper, What Recent Studies Reveal About Interfaith Family Inclusion. The paper’s conclusions:

  • people in interfaith relationships do not feel very connected to or part of the Jewish people or their local Jewish community, and significantly less so than inmarrieds do;
  • interfaith families, and partners from different faith backgrounds, want to feel like part of Jewish communities, but instead persistently feel othered and excluded;
  • not having many Jewish friends or knowing many people in the Jewish community may contribute to not feeling belonging, and could be countered by extending personal invitations;
  • policies that restrict participation contribute to not feeling belonging, and policies around diversity and inclusion being made explicit are a welcoming factor; and
  • clear communication that interfaith families are a valued part of the Jewish community is needed to help move interfaith families from othering to belonging.

This was a major effort for the Center and we are grateful to eJewishPhilanthropy for publishing the op-ed and to Rachel Kohn for her careful and helpful editing.

We hope the information contained in the paper will be helpful to everyone who is working to foster more Jewish engagement among interfaith families. We’re very interested in discussing the paper and in your feedback; please contact us at info@cfrij.com

Season Two of Nobody Wants This

There seemed to be a lot of buzz about the show before it was released, but not so much afterwards. My take, in the Times of Israel blogs: What Season Two of Nobody Wants This Gets Right About Interfaith Relationships.

Season two’s messaging is much improved. Most of the negativity about interfaith marriage from the first season is gone. The story throughline, about whether Joanne will convert, illustrates how pressure to do so is counter-productive. It hints at what inclusive attitudes and communities would be like, including that partners from different faith backgrounds should be accepted exactly as they are.

By focusing on conversion, the show misses the opportunity to depict a relationship and community where an interfaith couple, and especially the partner from a different faith background, can find a sense of belonging. Perhaps that will come in season three?

Some articles on the show worth reading:

In other news:

  • I was delighted to see that Sheila Katz will be the Chief Jewish Life Officer at JFNA overseeing a portfolio that seeks to engage Jews of all backgrounds including “initiatives supporting multifaith and mixed-heritage families.”
  • A nice story from the Forward’s Bintel Brief about interfaith families and Jewish cemeteries; there’s not much new in the article, but it highlights the halachic/non-halachic divide on this issue.
  • 18Doors launched its largest B’Yachad cohort yet in Atlanta.
  • A nice story in The Conversation by Samira Mehta on interfaith weddings weaving traditions together.
  • Another negative story about Israel’s Interior Ministry making life difficult for converts.
  • Finally, speaking of pressure to convert – and I try to keep politics out of this newsletter – Vice President Vance seems to have applied some public pressure, then tried to walk it back hoping that his Hindu wife would become Catholic.

October 2024 News from the Center

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Nobody Wants This

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservative Movement News

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

In Other News

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