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.

Sadness and Hope

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It’s been a hard week in Boston. A family member of someone very important to InterfaithFamily was severely injured in the Marathon bombing. I live in Newton a few miles from where the second suspect was ultimately captured and we were on lock down Friday, wondering what we might encounter if we stepped outside.

Unfortunately I also felt a pall settling over the attitudes towards intermarriage of the leaders of the Jewish community. First I felt the cause of engaging interfaith families Jewishly left out. In eJewishPhilanthropy Jay Ruderman wrote about a major upcoming conference for funders on inclusivity for Jews with disabilities. It made me wonder, will we ever see an announcement like this (paraphrasing Ruderman’s):

The upcoming [Including Interfaith Families] Funding Conference is specifically designed to engage and challenge Jewish funders. We do not want philanthropists to change their funding strategies but we want them to consider being more inclusive with their charitable donations.

Conference attendees will learn:

  • how to include supports, services and opportunities for [interfaith families]
  • how to recognize programs that promote inclusion
  • how to deal with pressure from prominent organizations to fund programs that [exclude].

To advance the cause of inclusive philanthropy, the conference partners with major Jewish organizations so they too can bring this message to their funders. Partners include the Jewish Funders Network, Jewish Federations of North America, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston. Their participation shows the importance attached to full inclusion and their commitment to making it a reality.

Next, IFF’s friend and colleague Idit Klein wrote a truly wonderful piece about the remarkable turnabout in acceptance of LGBT Jews. But again I felt left out and wondering whether Idit’s conclusion will ever apply to interfaith families:

[E]xpanding the circle of stakeholders starts when we locate the particularities of our identity within the larger collective. In doing so, the larger collective begins to see each of its members as part of the “we” — embracing diversity as a unifying element of the Jewish future.

Don’t get me wrong — I am totally in favor of inclusivity for Jews with disabilities and LGBT Jews. But the inclusivity agenda should not be co-opted so as to not apply to interfaith families, and without detracting at all from those other worthy causes engaging interfaith families should not be neglected. Just in terms of numbers, the potential impact of engaging interfaith families Jewishly vastly outweighs any other issue. When will the Jewish Funders Network and the Jewish Federations of North America and individuals with the capacity and will of Jay Ruderman seize that opportunity?

Second, I felt that continuing expressions of negativity about intermarriage seemed to peak this week, and I have to wonder whether the relative neglect of our cause still is tied to these kinds of views. Our Board Chair, Mamie Kanfer Stewart, had a very positive piece in Sh’ma, No Conversion Required, urging Jewish leaders to

[R]eframe the question, “Who is a Jew?” into “Who is part of the Jewish community?” Rather than focusing on Jewish status, we can honor everyone, Jewish or not, who is bringing the riches of Jewish traditions and sensibilities to our lives.

But then came a comment from Harold Berman, who with his wife Gayle Berman has been getting a lot of publicity about their book, Doublelife: One Family, Two Faiths and a Journey of Hope, and has founded an organization to help intermarried families who wish to explore becoming observant Jewish families, which is what happened to the Bermans. Again, don’t get me wrong: I think it’s great if partners who aren’t Jewish decide to convert and become traditionally observant. But Jewish leaders must realize that this is not likely to happen in anything but a marginal fractional of the large intermarried population.

And then came a comment from Rabbi Richard Hirsh, the Executive Director of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Assembly, who questions why the Jewish community should thank parents who are not Jewish for raising their children as Jews, asking whether doing so suggests that there is something “negative, risky or difficult” about someone being raised as a Jew. Rabbi Hirsh explicitly takes great pains to not be insensitive, but with all respect, his question reveals a lack of understanding of the dynamic of interfaith families raising Jewish children. It’s quite simple: people who are giving up passing on their own religious traditions to their children, in favor of raising them as Jews, something the Jewish community needs to have happen if it is to grow and be enriched, deserve expressions of appreciation.

Elsewhere in Sh’ma is perhaps the worst of all, Identity, Intermarriage and the Larger Picture by a Conservative Rabbi, Amitai Adler, who says “intermarriage does the Jewish People no favors” and that “We solved the problem of what to do if one falls in love with a non-Jew a long time ago, by creating the halachot of conversion. There is little reason to think that solution is insufficient.” Rabbi Adler, the outflow of members from the synagogues of your denomination, which most people attribute to a relative lack of welcoming to interfaith couples, suggests otherwise. If you are right that “endogamy… [is] essential to the integrity and continuance of the Jewish People” [emphasis in original] then the future of our people is dim, given the ongoing reality of intermarriage.

In the meantime there is Naomi Schaefer Riley, who continues to get publicity for her book ‘Til Faith Do Us Part, that I’ve blogged about before. Despite the fact that she is herself an intermarried Jew raising Jewish children apparently in a happy marriage, and despite the fact that the survey on which she bases her book had only 44 Jews which she admits is “too small to draw definitive conclusions,” her message in her New York Times op-ed still is that Jewish (and other) intermarriage leads to more divorce and weakened religious affiliation.

I do try to keep my eye on the positive. On April 28 the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is sponsoring a “community conversation” in which we are participating that I hope will lead to increased programming for interfaith families there. On June 19 the UJA Federation of New York is sponsoring a “Touching Lives and Growing Our Community” forum on engaging interfaith families in which we are participating that I hope will have the result. In March I spoke at the Beth El Temple, a leading Conservative synagogue in West Hartford CT, and we are finding increased interest among Conservative rabbis. Our friends at the Jewish Outreach Institute are making progress too.

In the meantime we are steadily advancing our InterfaithFamily/Your Community model and finding increasing willingness from Jewish communal organizations to partner with us in Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia. Thousands of people are coming to our website every day — almost 5,000 on the day Passover began. We get on average six requests a day to our referral service that helps interfaith couples find rabbis and cantor for their weddings and other life cycle events. There is no doubt in my mind that the future growth and vitality of the liberal Jewish community depends on engaging these very real people in Jewish life, and I hope that those who are making the effort aren’t hearing or aren’t affected by the negative views of some Jewish leaders. I’m certain we would have many more interfaith families engaging Jewishly if we had a truly inclusive culture.

We also are extremely fortunate to have some enlightened funders who have not been swayed by negativity. But like Jay Ruderman, “we need more partners in our efforts.” To paraphrase him again, I ask, when will we see importance attached to full inclusion of interfaith families in Jewish life and community — and commitment from Jewish leaders to making that a reality?

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

A Razzie Award for the Jewish Media?

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I’ve been thinking about starting a “Razzie Award” — referring to raspberries, referring to the negative sound of “blowing a raspberry,” sort of like “worst of” awards — for the Jewish media. The latest contender would be “Branding Judaism” by Mayrav Saar in Orange County Jewish Life.

What particularly bothers me about this one is that Saar quotes a podcast by Archie Gottesman, who happens to be my cousin, and a supporter of InterfaithFamily, saying: “If you don’t want to see your grandchildren being baptized someday, the time to think about it is now.” Suggesting that Gottesman was sending a “don’t intermarry” message, Saar says:

I’ve been to church weddings of people with Jewish surnames. I’ve sent Christmas presents to children whose grandmothers lit menorahs. And we all know the stats: 47% of Jews marry non-Jews. When they have kids only 28% of them are raised Jewish and only 10% of those Jewish kids go on to marry Jews themselves. So nearly all children of intermarriage are lost to the Jewish people.

Aside from the outdated statistics, the assumption that receiving Christmas presents makes children of intermarried parents not Jewish, and the flat wrong statement that “nearly all children of intermarriage are lost,” Saar is wrong about Gottesman’s message. Archie’s December, 2010 JTA op-ed, New Ten Commandments for the Jewish People, includes this:

  1. Jewish grandchildren
    You want them, right? Then raise your children to be Jewish. Children do not decide religion; parents do. No matter who you marry, decide ahead of time that the kids will be brought up as Jews. Wishy-washy will get your children joining a church or just not considering themselves Jewish. If the thought of being invited to your grandchild’s baptism troubles you, do something about it now. [emphasis mine]

Like I said about two other Razzie Award contenders recently, I would hope that Jewish media writers would like to contribute to attracting young interfaith couples to engage in Jewish life and community. Making gratuitous negative comments about intermarriage doesn’t help.

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

What Draws Interfaith Families to Jewish Life

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I’m pleased to report that the New York Jewish Week has published my op-ed, What Draws Interfaith Families to Jewish Life. A considerably longer version is on the Huffington Post, A New Year To Engage Interfaith Families in Jewish Life.

Having just come off Yom Kippur’s intense period of introspection about the past and the future, it feels that the time is now right for this call for a new sustained effort to engage interfaith families in Jewish life and community.

You can find the report on the first year of our InterfaithFamily/Chicago project here, and the report on our holiday surveys here.

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

What Our Surveys Say About What Attracts Interfaith Families to Jewish Organizations

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There is a great deal of concern in the Jewish world about the degree to which interfaith families are engaged or disengaged in Jewish life and community. A headline of the New York Jewish Community Study of 2011, released in June 2012, was that interfaith families generally score low on that study’s index of Jewish engagement, while interfaith families who join synagogues or send their children to Jewish education score comparably to in-married families. Community studies like New York’s, and other available communal research, however, tell us precious little about what factors contribute to interfaith families joining Jewish organizations and expanding their connections to Judaism – or what they experience as barriers to that expanded connection.

Starting in December 2009, Interfaith Family’s annual December Holidays survey and Passover/Easter survey have asked precisely those questions. We’ve just published a report on the responses to those questions. Our surveys are not “scientific” or based on a random sample; the respondents are self-selected and some may have responded to more than one survey. But no one else is asking these questions, and our report sheds what is currently the most available light on these important issues: it summarizes and analyzes close to 700 responses from six consecutive surveys from respondents who were in interfaith relationships, were raising their children as Jews, and were members of a synagogue or Jewish organization.

Interfaith families are attracted, in order of importance, by explicit statements that interfaith families are welcome; inclusive policies on participation by interfaith families; invitations to learn about Judaism and, to a much lesser extent, invitations to convert; the presence of other interfaith families; programming and groups specifically for interfaith couples; and officiation by rabbis at weddings of interfaith couples. Read the full report for the data and many comments to our open-ended questions.

The policy implications of these findings are that Jewish communities that want to increase engagement by local interfaith families need to:

  • Ensure that local interfaith families receive explicit messages of welcome from the community and its organizations and leaders.
  • Ensure that there are some Jewish clergy in the community who will officiate at weddings of interfaith couples so that their experience with the Jewish community at that critical point in their lives will help them connect to Jewish life.
  • Offer programs and classes explicitly marketed as “for interfaith families,” and foster the formation of groups of interfaith couples and families in which they can explore and experience Jewish life together.

That’s the approach we are taking in our InterfaithFamily/Your Community initiative.

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

Insights on Engaging Interfaith Families from the NY Community Study

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The 2011 Jewish Community Study of New York, released in June 2012, has important findings for all those interested in engaging interfaith families Jewishly.

The study confirms that there is a huge amount of intermarriage, and it is continuing. Between 2006 and 2011, one in three non-Orthodox Jews who married, married someone who was not Jewish (a 33% individual rate of intermarriage); 50% of the non-Orthodox couples formed were intermarried couples (a 50% couples rate of intermarriage) (135).1 Twelve percent of the children (age 0 to 17) in Jewish households — 50,000 children — are in intermarried households (183).

The study reports that 31% of the children of intermarried households are raised Jewish and 11% are raised “Jewish and something else,” while 13% have parents who are undecided and 46% are raised not Jewish (180-81).2 A goal of having more than 50% of intermarried parents raise their children Jewish is reachable — if the undecided parents and the parents raising their children Jewish and something else can be influenced towards more Jewish choices.

The tone of much of the study follows an approach consistently taken in the past by Steven M. Cohen, the study’s principal author, that lumps together all intermarried couples and then highlights their relatively low levels of Jewish engagement when compared to all in-married couples. The policy implications of this approach are that it is not worth making efforts to engage interfaith couples. A different approach, which compares those intermarried couples who are Jewishly engaged with in-married couples, highlights their relatively comparable levels of Jewish engagement; the policy implications of that approach, which is reflected to a degree in the study, are to make efforts to move more intermarried couples to Jewish engagement.

For example, the study reports that the children of intermarried households receive relatively little Jewish education — only 35% are sent to supplemental school; but of the 15% of intermarried households that are synagogue members, 90% send their children to supplemental school. The policy implication clearly is to try to influence intermarried households to become synagogue members — and the study does say, somewhat reluctantly, “Perhaps expanding congregation-based efforts to engage intermarried households is worth pursuing” (28).

For another example, of intermarried households that are raising their children exclusively Jewish, 54% score high or very high on the study’s index of Jewish engagement (182).3 The policy implication clearly is to try to influence intermarried households to raise their children as Jews — and the study does say that the fact that 13% of intermarried parents are undecided about how they are raising their children “suggest that communal efforts to engage intermarried couples should support efforts to raise Jewish children” (28).

For another example, the study reports that the intermarried are less engaged because they have fewer Jewish social connections, with 77% of those age 30-39 living fairly isolated from other Jews — but adds, “These patterns suggest one approach: connect the intermarried socially to other Jews” (162).

The study’s authors ask an important question: “To what extent has the Jewish community made progress in closing the engagement gap associated with intermarriage?” Comparing their findings to those of the 2002 community study, they conclude that the intermarried (again lumped all together) became more distant when compared to the in-married (140). Given the negligible communal efforts to engage interfaith families Jewishly since 2002, the lack of progress should not be a surprise.

The study reports that the vast majority of the intermarried say they do not feel uncomfortable attending most Jewish events and activities — only 14% feel uncomfortable, compared to 10% of the in-married (144). In an exchange with Shmuel Rosner, Cohen says, “If discomfort is not a major obstacle to Jewish engagement, then welcoming is not the solution.” Cohen seems to recognize, however, that there is a big difference between not feeling uncomfortable, and feeling truly invited to engage: “Rather than focusing all our energies on welcoming the intermarried, we ought to be focusing on engaging the intermarried, approaches that certainly include welcoming, but go to building relationships and offering opportunities to educate and participate.”

But a related finding exposes widespread negative attitudes about intermarriage that potentially result in disinviting, unwelcoming behavior: high percentages of parents say they would be upset if their adult child married someone not Jewish who did not convert. While 6% of intermarrieds and 12% of converts would be upset, 56% of non-Orthodox in-married Jews would be upset. Feeling that the fact of their relationship is a cause of upset in a community is a factor likely to discourage a couple from engaging with that community.

Sensing negative communal attitudes may explain why more intermarried households make charitable contributions exclusively to non-Jewish causes, and fewer give to Jewish causes (203-05) — and the study does suggest “experiment[ing] with new ways of connecting with those who seem the most disconnected from communal Jewish philanthropy — [including] intermarried households” (30).

The fact that people go where they feel welcomed is supported by another study finding, namely a significant shift of Conservative Jews to Reform, which clearly has been perceived as the more hospitable movement for the intermarried. Of all Jews raised Conservative, 29% now identify as Reform; of all now Reform, 31% were raised Conservative (124).

The study has a very helpful discussion of the current context of shifting identities. It highlights fluidity, with people freely choosing identities based on relationships; malleability, with identities changing over time; and hybridity, a confluence of multiple traditions that is the ethos in American society generally (111-12) .

One aspect of hybridity briefly mentioned in the study is that in 9 of 10 intermarried households, synagogue affiliated or not, Christmas is celebrated by a household member. The study states that “In about half, it is celebrated as a religious holiday” but provides no explanation of what that means. InterfaithFamily’s eight years of December holiday surveys have consistently reported, in contrast, that high majorities of interfaith families raising their children as Jews celebrate Christmas but not as a religious holiday.

The Jewish Community Study of New York report can be found at ujafedny.org/jewish-community-study-of-new-york-201.

[1]The study may understate the amount and the Jewish engagement of what have commonly been thought of as intermarriages. Five percent of study respondents were people who had no Jewish parent and had not formally converted, but identified as “Jewish by personal choice.” A marriage between a Jew (by birth or formal conversion) and such a Jew by personal choice has up to know been thought of as an intermarriage, but the study appears to count such couples as “conversionary, in-married” — resulting in less intermarriage. Moreover, Jews by personal choice almost by definition would be more Jewishly engaged than non-Jews; if marriages involving Jews by personal choice were counted as intermarriages, that should mean more Jewish engagement by intermarried couples than this study, which treats those couples as in-married, reports.

[2]The study frequently attributes cause and effect to intermarriage while being very cautious about doing so with any other issue. Thus the study concludes that intermarriage — as opposed to other factors such as what the partners bring to the marriage — “strongly influences” whether children are raised as Jews, the Jewish engagement level of the home, and the Jewish educational choices for their children (191). In contrast, for example, on the question whether having fewer Jewish acquaintances causes less engagement, the study says “Of course, the chicken and egg here are difficult to discern. Do people with many Jewish intimates acquire and sustain Jewish engagement, or do Jewishly engaged people form and sustain Jewish friendships and family relationships?”

[3]Many of the study’s findings are organized around an index of Jewish engagement, based on twelve factors selected by the study’s authors (118), and the study frequently refers to intermarried households scoring low on that index — for example, 70% of the intermarried score low on the engagement index (142). The authors acknowledge, however, that indicators that can be undertaken individually or with friends and family, that don’t demand formal affiliation or collective action, are not included in their engagement index (119). As intermarried households are more involved with these indicators that are not included on the study’s index, their Jewish engagement is understated by the index.

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