What the Camp Study Was Really About

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Our blog post, Why Intermarrieds Stay Away, on Steven M. Cohen’s new theory that the Jewish community is plenty welcoming of interfaith families, attracted many very thoughtful comments. I mentioned that this new theory was revealed in a study done for the Foundation for Jewish Camp, but until recently hadn’t had a chance to look at the study itself.

It’s a shame that all of the publicity seems to have focused on Cohen’s new theory, because the study – Recruiting Jewish Campers: A Study of the Midwestern Market — wasn’t about that issue at all. The Foundation for Jewish Camp had partnered with the Jack & Goldie Wolfe Miller Fund on an initiative to provide camps with the market research, marketing consultation, and training tools to enable them to reach new families. The preface of the study, which was the result of the market research, states that “enormous opportunity exists to engage a much larger number of Jewish children and teens. Particularly important is the opportunity to engage the children of mixed married families.” One of the specific goals of the research was to address this question: “How can Jewish camps reach out to Jewishly unengaged families and those mixed married who are raising their children as Jews in some way? How should their messaging and communication change for the same purpose?”

There is a lot of interesting discussion in the study. I was particularly glad to see the recognition “that if you want to predict whether a family will send their child to a Jewish camp, you’re better off knowing about how involved they and their children are in Jewish life. Once you know that, it won’t help much, if at all, to learn whether they happen to be an in-married or mixed  married family.” I’ve argued with Steven Cohen for years that instead of reporting on the Jewish behaviors of all intermarrieds as compared to all in-marrieds, it would be more helpful to report on the Jewish behaviors of Jewishly-engaged intermarrieds as compared to in-marrieds, because if the gaps are lower – which they are – the policy question becomes how can we get this population to be more Jewishly engaged.

Another interesting point made is this: “Camps need to recognize that messages which testify to their Jewish cultural depth and sophistication … probably alienate parents (and children) who feel ill-at-ease or unfamiliar with more intense Jewish cultural environments, such as may be symbolized by use of Hebrew letters and phrases.”

One recommended strategy aimed specifically at attracting the children of intermarrieds is “to focus initially (if not well beyond) on the selected subset of the mixed married who are congregationally affiliated. The congregationally affiliated mixed married are so much more engaged in Jewish camps–and  so much more aware of them–than their counterparts who are outside congregations.”

Another strategy: “the likely efficacy of offering scholarship assistance. Those who are the least attracted to Jewish camp are the ones who find camp least affordable.  Financial aid or incentives may be especially valuable in  prompting the least interested (such as many mixed married families) to sample Jewish camp for the first time.”

You can find the complete study on the Foundation for Jewish Camp website, or the Berman Archive website. It’s worth reading.

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

Why Intermarrieds Stay Away

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There’s a new article coming out in the Forward by Gal Beckerman,  New Study Finds That It’s Not a Lack of Welcome That’s Keeping the Intermarrieds Away.

Beckerman starts by saying that “the guiding principle” of organizations like InterfaithFamily.com and the Jewish Outreach Institute is to “be more welcoming.” Then Beckerman says that Steven M. Cohen in a recent study for the Foundation for Jewish Camp found that most interfaith couples feel like that have an open invitation to be part of Jewish life. Cohen is quoted as saying that outreach “has been misguided by focusing simply on being welcoming” and that “the response of welcoming, making personnel more sensitive to the intermarried, and watching your language and having smiling ushers is not going to be effective.” He suggests that there is a competence barrier, that the couple does not have access to what is going on once they are in a synagogue, that they need not open arms but a helping hand.

Encouraging Jewish communities to be more welcoming is only one part of InterfaithFamily.com’s strategy. We have a theory of change that posits that interfaith couples will engage in Jewish life if they are attracted to it, if they feel knowledgeable about it, if they can reconcile the other religious tradition in their family – and if they experience welcome in Jewish settings. In short – there is a need for the community to be welcoming, and there is a need to help interfaith couples feel competent.

The notion that interfaith couples don’t feel unwelcome in Jewish settings simply does not recognize reality. Belittling being welcoming as a matter of having smiling ushers may explain why Cohen doesn’t “get it.” Being welcoming is much more than that. Sylvia Barack Fishman chimes in with a particularly insulting comment. She suggests that outreach leaders focus on overcoming stigma because they are intermarried themselves and had to overcome uncomfortable stares in an earlier era, decades ago, no longer relevant.

I’ve got news for you Sylvia, and Steven: there is still a tremendous need for improvement in the welcoming department. I just watched the video of a focus group that IFF’s marketing communications consultants conducted last week. People said they didn’t feel welcomed when they heard “don’t intermarry” messages, when they felt subtle pressure to convert, when rabbis tell them what they have to do in order to participate, when the first reactions they experience are suspicion and infiltration. The issue of officiation came up a lot; one person said, “rejection stays with you. It turns you off to the synagogue and it turns you off to Judaism.”

At least Cohen says that being welcoming is “a good thing to do.” That’s a start. And his support for providing Jewish education to the intermarried, and “changing our own expectations of new initiates to Jewish life” – that is very positive as well.

I appreciate being quoted in the article for saying that welcoming institutions and increased Jewish literacy are both necessary, and I agree with Kerry Olitzky from JOI that literacy can be addressed but “you have to demonstrate to people… that they are going to be welcomed and embraced, that there are others like them that are part of this community, that they will feel like they belong.”

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

Edgar Bronfman In the News

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edgarbronfmanEdgar M. Bronfman, one of InterfaithFamily.com’s most important supporters, has been in the Jewish press again recently: j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California re-printed an article about him from the Canadian Jewish News.

Mr. Bronfman, who is approaching 80, occasionally speaks publicly about his book, Hope, Not Fear. We published an excerpt from the book and blogged about it back in 2008 when it first came out.

The recent j. article includes many pithy, to-the-point observations by Mr. Bronfman:

I’m not advocating intermarriage. What I’m saying is that intermarriage is here. It’s here to stay. Let’s make it work for us, rather than against us.

Being Jewish is a choice today, not a condition … The problem is not that Jews are falling in love with non-Jews, it’s that Jews are not falling in love with Judaism.”
Jewish law [should be changed] to recognize paternal, as well as maternal, lineage…. Patrilineage was the norm among Jews until the 12th century and the time of Maimonides. We don’t have to worry about keeping the bloodlines pure nowadays. We have DNA.

bronfmanbookcoverIn 2008, at the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities (now the Jewish Federations of North America) both Mr. Bronfman and his son Adam spoke out in favor of inclusivity. In a blog post at the time, I reported that Mr. Bronfman said in his speech that the Jewish community needed to stop regarding intermarriage as the “enemy” while Adam urged the Jewish leaders in attendance to consider the potential for positive Jewish involvement by interfaith families.

Long before his book, Mr. Bronfman was a leading advocate for including interfaith families in Jewish life. In 2004 we reprinted an article about him from the Jerusalem Post, and the article title says it all: Bronfman: Children of Intermarriage Are Also Jews. We ran Sue Fishkoff’s fascinating interview of Adam Bronfman in 2007.

I hope both of the Bronfmans will continue to lead the effort to welcome interfaith families to Jewish life.

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

A Jewish Leader Who “Gets It”

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I hardly need to say that intermarriage is not a popular topic. I am often frustrated when Jewish leaders do not agree with me that engaging interfaith families in Jewish life is an issue of such overriding importance for the liberal Jewish community that it should be talked about openly and even aggressively.

Shortly before Passover this year, I had one of those frustrating meetings. When I arrived home later that day, I found in my mail the Passover message to donors to the Boston federation, Combined Jewish Philanthropies from Barry Shrage, CJP’s president.

The contrast in attitudes was striking.

In a two-page letter to people who are certainly key constituents of his federation, Barry Shrage explicitly brought the issue of engaging interfaith families directly into the spotlight. Here is how what he said appeared in the digital edition of Sh’ma:

How will this year’s seder be different from all others? Who will sit at our seder? What questions will they ask and what stories will we tell? As we gather our families and friends around the table, many of us will be sitting with children raised in interfaith households and young adults who have returned from Taglit-Birthright Israel trips to Israel. Those children and grandchildren may be asking surprisingly spiritual questions. (A recent study found that the next generation of Jews is actually more spiritual than the last and that the children of intermarriage are the most spiritual of all.)

Hopefully in the future, statements from Jewish leaders, that recognize the reality and presence of people from interfaith relationships in the Jewish community, and say something positive about that reality, will become increasingly more common.

By the way, Barry’s answer to his question is extraordinary too, and well worth remembering:

  • In a time that lacks vision and prophecy and that yearns for meaning, our stories are carrying an ancient faith in an ancient God so that our children and grandchildren will have spiritual options to fill their lives with light and joy.
    • In a time of greed and selfishness, our stories are part of an old – a very old – tradition of caring for strangers – love of the poor and oppressed – and responsibility for widows and orphans, the elderly and handicapped.
    • In a time of forgetfulness, our stories are part of a living chain of learning and literature in the world, inheritors of an ancient and hauntingly beautiful culture.
    • In a time of anomie and loneliness, our stories are imbued with a thirst, and we maintain a commitment to creating community and providing a sense of belonging.
    • In a time of rootlessness and alienation our stories are connected to a religious civilization with a 3500-year-old history and an infinite future and the ultimate responsibility for the betterment of humankind in the name of the God whose story is at the heart of our existence.

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

Are Attitudes Towards Intermarriage Changing?

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J.J. Goldberg, senior columnist at the Forward, has written an important essay, Generation to Generation, Our Changing Judaism, that I wanted to share with the IFF community.

Goldberg was attending a family bar mitzvah at the Pelham Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue outside of New York City. He spoke with a cousin, a federation executive, who was “trying to figure out the next phase in American Jewish history.”  Then the bar mitzvah boy, a public school student, delivered an insightful homily on the Torah portion: “‘a religion can change and grow,’ Jon said. We’re not exactly the same community we were yesterday, he said, and our religion grows with us. ‘The Torah wants us to understand that.’”

Goldberg continues that the parents’ role in the ceremony was “downright astonishing:”

[W]hen the rabbi called them to the bimah for an aliyah, a Torah blessing, something new happened. … [H]e called the parents’ names: Geoff Lewis ve-Chana bat Yosef…. Jon’s father, doesn’t have a Hebrew name. He’s not Jewish.

Goldberg had been to b’nai mitzvah ceremonies where children of interfaith families “performed the traditional rituals as credibly as any other Jewish child,” but:

I’ve never before seen a traditional, old-fashioned Hebrew davening in which a non-Jewish parent was welcomed as a participant, honored like any other parent who brings a Jewish child into the covenant — perhaps even more so, since he was bringing his child into a covenant he had not taken as his own…. The inclusiveness didn’t stop there. Both parents stood before the open ark and offered blessings to their son — Anne in Hebrew, Geoff in English.

Goldberg describes his reaction:

At first it was a shock to watch. Almost immediately, though, it felt completely natural. Now I can’t get over the shock that this is still unusual.

He then makes two conclusions. First, the father was “one-half of the couple that raised this Jewish child. How could he not be part of the celebration, not share his joy with the community as his child becomes a man?” Second, “how many other parents don’t bring their children into the covenant because they think — correctly, all too often — they won’t be welcomed?”

I think I was particularly taken with Goldberg’s essay because I spent most of the end of February and early March traveling around the country trying to raise funding for the cause of engaging interfaith families in Jewish life. Two comments stuck with me and made me wonder whether attitudes are really changing. A genuinely welcoming Reform rabbi said that he did not officiate at weddings of interfaith couples because he favors Jews marrying other Jews and thinks that by officiating for interfaith couples he is communicating an inconsistent message. The executive director of a Jewish foundation said he wants his children to marry other Jews and is not sure that InterfaithFamily.com’s work is conducive to that — although he wants to welcome couples once intermarriage has happened. Lydia Kukoff, our new Board member, told me that these are the same things she heard forty years ago, when she was a founder of the effort to engage interfaith families in Jewish life.

It is heartening to me for a thought leader of J.J. Goldberg’s stature to say that it felt natural and necessary for a non-Jewish parent to be an integral part of the celebration of raising a Jewish child, to question “how many other parents don’t bring their children into the covenant because they think — correctly, all too often — they won’t be welcomed,” and to give praise (very well-deserved, in my opinion) to Rabbi David Schuck who “dared to open [his community’s] gates as few other rabbis have done.”

When more Jewish leaders recognize that Goldberg’s cousin’s family — with an unconverted non-Jewish parent participating in raising a Jewish child — is not sub-optimal, but instead is a positive Jewish outcome equal to any other — then we will have a truly “changing Judaism.” I hope Goldberg’s essay will help move us in that direction.

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

A Terrible Message from the “God Squad”

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We got a Google alert about an April 3 “God Squad” column that appeared in the Edmond Oklahoma Sun. In the column, Rabbi Marc Gellman responds to a young Jewish woman who wrote to him in pain, seeking advice because of her parents’ rejection of her Catholic boyfriend, even though she says she intends and her boyfriend accepts that their children will have the same connection to Judaism as she had. His response is a classic example of the wrong way for Jewish parents (and leaders) to speak to young adults about their interfaith relationships:

I’ve tried to write you an equally eloquent response that could have come from sensitive parents. It may not reflect your parents’ sentiments, but they are mine. I want you to understand how they view things, not so you’ll agree with them but so you might understand them. Hopefully, reconciliation will come on the far side of understanding.

To our dearest daughter:

We will always love you, and even in the heat of this disagreement, we believe in you and are happy you’ve found love. We don’t care about the color of your boyfriend’s skin, and we don’t hate his religion. What we do care about is your life and your duty to preserve the faith and traditions of the religion in which you were raised.

Our task in life is not merely to find love for ourselves, but also to honor and preserve the spiritual legacy and traditions bequeathed to us. Hundreds of generations of Jews before you have lived as Jews and sacrificed as Jews, even in the face of terrible oppression and death. If they could preserve their faith through times of hell, why can’t you preserve your faith in times of freedom?

The idea that Judaism will end in our family with you for no other reason than that you met a nice Catholic guy is devastating to us. There’s nothing wrong with him or with his faith, but there is something right about our Jewish heritage, and this fact must be weighed, even against your own personal happiness.

Furthermore, we disagree with you because of the rights of your future children. A child needs to be able to walk into a church or a synagogue and in one of the two places be able to say, “I am home here.” Despite your protestations, your children may not be able to do that with one Jewish parent and one onlooker.

May God forgive us, but we’d be more able to accept your conversion to Catholicism than your present plan. At least then your kids would have a single religious presence in the home and full and clear support from both of you to give them firm religious identities. Of course, if your boyfriend were to convert to Judaism, we’d be more than slightly happier, but that is his choice and cannot be coerced.

You get the idea…

I wrote this letter to the editor (and to Rabbi Gellman):

Rabbi Gellman’s response, conveying his sentiments about intermarriage, is based on two wrong assumptions. First, he says that children need a single religious presence in the home in order to develop a firm religious identity; the fact is that many intermarried parents — in Boston, 60% — are raising their children as Jews. Second, he says that a non-Jew willing to raise Jewish children has no good reason not to convert; in fact, many of the thousands of non-Jewish parents who are raising Jewish children have very thoughtfully decided not to convert for important reasons such as maintaining their own religious beliefs and lack of familiarity with Judaism.

Guilting young Jews with the notions that their ancestors preserved Judaism through persecution and that they should choose their Jewish heritage over their personal happiness, as Rabbi Gellman does, will alienate young Jews today who know that is a false choice. They know they can intermarry and still maintain their connection to Judaism and raise Jewish children — but being made to feel terrible about their choice by Jewish leaders is bound to push them away for Jewish involvement.

I surely hope this column is not picked up and published anywhere else.

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

Breaking New Ground with Jewish Leaders

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Last week the United Jewish Communities (UJC) held its annual convention, called the General Assembly (GA). Something different and potentially very significant happened: there was talk about intermarriage, in a positive way.

Since I got involved in the professional Jewish world nine years ago, I think I’ve been to every GA except for two that were held in Israel, including last week’s. There are probably more Jewish leaders gathered at the annual GA than at any other time or place.

For many years I have lobbied the UJC, usually  unsuccessfully, to devote  convention sessions to the subject of outreach to the intermarried. (Like most conventions, there are big “plenary” sessions where most participants attend, and then there are multiple competing sessions over many time slots that attract smaller groups.)

I’ve actually spoken on panels at at least two GA’s, but the sessions were always about inclusivity generally, not outreach to interfaith families in particular. At last year’s GA in Nashville, there was nothing about intermarriage on the program. A GA visitor who didn’t know better, based on the absence of discussion at GA’s, wouldn’t be aware that outreach to interfaith families was the biggest challenge and opportunity the Jewish community faces.

I’m sorry I couldn’t go to Jerusalem this year, because finally things changed. I urge you to watch a video blog posted by Jacob Berkman of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which is embedded below. Berkman reports that Edgar Bronfman and Adam Bronfman broke new ground by bringing the subject of welcoming interfaith families to the front stage of the Jewish world.

I blogged last month about an important new book by Edgar Bronfman, Hope, Not Fear, and we recently published an excerpt from the book that has attracted some interesting comments. But the Bronfmans’ speeches at the GA have taken the discussion to an entirely new level.

Edgar Bronfman spoke first, at a pre-GA gathering focused on the “Next Generation.” In his speech he said the Jewish community needs to stop regarding intermarriage as the “enemy.”. UJC leaders, including Kathy Manning, chair of the UJC executive committee, are quoted as responding sympathetically to viewing intermarriage as an opportunity.

adambronfman250Most remarkably, Adam Bronfman, Edgar’s son and managing director of the Samuel Bronfman Foundation (one of InterfaithFamily.com’s most generous supporters), spoke at a plenary session about the future of the Jewish people. Based on his own experience he urged the thousands of Jewish leaders in attendance to consider the potential for positive Jewish involvement by interfaith families if Jews and Jewish institutions welcome them.

Berkman’s video blog includes excerpts from the speech as well as a revealing interview in which Adam further explains his views: if an interfaith couple chooses to lead a Jewish life, institutions should be completely open to them; interfaith couples “on the ground” are living Jewishly and not focusing on status issues; more and more Jewish institutions are recognizing that the future for them lies in the Jewish world as it is composed, with 50% of young adults who identify as Jews having grown up with one Jewish parent. He concludes by saying that Judaism was never meant to exist in a “gated community” but was always meant to be open, that its central ideas will remain but be surrounded by evolving new ideas; and that if something is of value, people will be attracted to it and will not leave.

It is extremely gratifying to me to know that a positive response to intermarriage has finally made it to the front stage of Jewish leadership. I can only hope that those in attendance take the message to heart and that positive attitudes and concrete actions follow.

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

“Keeping the Faith”

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Yesterday’s Boston Sunday Globe magazine “Coupling” column by Alison Lobron provides an illuminating perspective on how young adult Jews think about interdating and intermarriage.

Alison describes herself as a “not-very-active Jew” who had no Bat Mitzvah, no Hebrew lessons, and no family tradition of Jewish holidays. After a two-year relationship with a “not-very-active Protestant” on which religion had little impact broke up, friends suggested Alison enter Boston’s lively Jewish social scene.

She relates how the first time she went to services at a synagogue known as a young-adult mixing spot, she felt that she “barely counted as Jewish,” “spent most of the evening searching the prayer book for a nonexistent English translation,” felt lonely when two people assumed she was an out-of-town, non-Jewish guest of someone, and felt that she didn’t have much in common with “people with whom I was supposed to share a culture.”

Alison writes that in dating, people “must figure out how much we care about” ethnic, religious and family affiliations, and concludes that just as she wouldn’t limit her friendship circle to Jews, she wouldn’t limit her dating pool, either. However, “a funny thing happened during my adventures in Jewish dating… I did become attracted to aspects of Judaism itself, like the ritual of Friday night dinners with family as a peaceful door to the weekend… I do see [cultural identity] as a part of myself that will need to be reconciled and sorted out with any future Prince Charming. Still,… that prince can come from any number of tribes.”

Those of us who are interested in encouraging Jewish choices among young adults who are interdating or likely to interdate can draw many lessons about effective programmatic responses from Alison’s short account:
* Jewish cultural identity has a strong attraction even among Jews with little Jewish upbringing
* Jews–let alone non-Jews–feel unwelcomed when prayer books don’t have English translations and when people make thoughtless comments about whether they are or aren’t Jewish
* Shabbat ritual can be a very attractive aspect of Judaism

The organized Jewish community should capitalize on the opportunity presented by young adult Jews like Alison Lobron, who are not willing to restrict their dating to Jews and expect that their intended one can come from “any number of tribes,” but see their Jewish identity as something that to reconcile and sort out with that partner.

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

Two Friends

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We had a pretty big week at InterfaithFamily.com last week. As we’ve already mentioned, it’s our fifth anniversary as an independent organization, and the 200th issue of our Web Magazine, and we had great coverage in the New York Jewish Week and the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. We launched our new User Survey and have already had a big response (you can win an iPod if you take it!), and we revamped our Discussion Boards so that registration isn’t required, and they’re already busier. I was in Los Angeles Monday through Wednesday, speaking at a conference for RAVSAK (the association of Jewish community day schools) and having a series of meetings that are going to result in significant new funding for us. And we had a meeting of InterfaithFamily.com’s Board of Directors on Thursday, with a presentation by Harvard sociologist Chris Winship, the co-chair of CJP’s community survey committee, on the results of the 2005 Boston Jewish Community Survey.

But something happened Friday night that topped it all.

On Friday night I went to services at a local Reform synagogue. The husband of someone very involved with IFF went to the mikvah at Mayyim Hayyim on Friday and completed his formal conversion to Judaism; his conversion was recognized at the service, and he spoke about his journey.

This wonderful, accomplished man met his wife in college. She made it clear that having a Jewish family was very important to her, and he was willing to go along. He didn’t know what it would all mean at the start, and he was supportive, but on the periphery. Then they came to Boston, and his wife started getting involved in the Jewish community here. He said that he experienced an incredible welcome from CJP, the Boston federation, being invited to participate in programs and just warmly included by CJP’s leaders. And he said he felt invited and welcomed by what he found on InterfaithFamily.com. He got more involved himself, studied, and — sixteen years after his wedding — he decided to “make it official.”

To think that the work we do at InterfaithFamily.com had even a small part in this man’s journey was deeply moving to me. It made the impact of a welcoming approach to interfaith couples very concrete and inspired me to move ahead to the next five years.

*****

In other news, there is a story in the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle about our friend Sherry Israel, who spoke at Beth Shalom, a local Conservative synagogue. Sherry is a highly regarded social scientest (and my teacher at the Hornstein Program at Brandeis). Among other quotes:

On day schools admitting the children of non-Jewish mothers: “Here’s a family that wants to give a child a Jewish upbringing, and that includes a deep Jewish education. We should say no? Let’s find a way to say yes.”

On permitting non-Jewish family members to participate in life-cycle events, including taking part in the symbolic passing of the Toard during a Bar or Bat Mitzvah: “People who study these matters say the bimah isn’t sacred space… There is no prohibition against non-Jews touching a Torah. Take the situation of the non-Jewish mother who has done all this work raising the child. Hasn’t that mother been helping pass the tradition?”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

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