IFF Network Blog

JOI Announces Outreach Coalition

At its oversubscribed conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this week, the Jewish Outreach Institute announced the creation of a national directory of Jewish organizations committed to reaching out to the unaffiliated, including the intermarried, gays and lesbians and converts. Called "The Big Tent Coalition," the online directory will list organizations that are friendly to the unaffiliated as well as provide a space for organizations to share resources, provide organizations with a "stamp of approval" from JOI and give individuals a place to find outreach-friendly organizations.

Much of this is similar to our own Connections in Your Area system, which also allows interfaith-friendly organizations to sign up and individuals to search for organizations. But the addition of JOI's coalition to the field is laudable nonetheless.

I unfortunately had to back out of the conference at the last minute because we are putting the finishing touches on a redesigned website that will launch on Thursday, Oct. 25. That's why I've been MIA from blogging the last few weeks, and why I will probably blog little again until the relaunch. There will be some exciting new features of the site as it rolls out, and I will keep you updated.

Are Museums The Next Frontier of Outreach?

On Sept. 30, several hundred people gathered at a construction site at Fifth and Market Streets in Philadelphia to celebrate the groundbreaking on a new $150 million museum devoted to American Jewish history, according to the (Philadelphia) Jewish Exponent.

The National Museum of American Jewish History is just one of several ambitious Jewish museum projects opening around the country in the next few years. In San Francisco, the Contemporary Jewish Museum is reopening this spring in a dramatic 63,000-square-foot structure marked by a giant glass cube pirouetted on one corner. In Boston, plans are afoot for a $40 million New Center for Arts and Culture on the greenway covering the central artery. While nothing in the New Center's mission explicitly says the museum will be Jewish, all of its previous events have been Jewish-themed and the project was first proposed by the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston and the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston.

Continue reading "Are Museums The Next Frontier of Outreach?"

The Forgotten 360,000

When Alex Schindler pioneered outreach in the early '80s, the focus was on interfaith couples. It was all about getting those who had intermarried to feel welcome in the Jewish community, and feel like the Jewish community was something they wanted to be part of.

But what about their children?

According to the National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01, there are 360,000 Jews aged 18 to 29 whose parents are Jewish and something else. While some of these children benefited from the outreach revolution of the '90s, most did not. Yet the Jewish community's outreach efforts remain mostly focused on interfaith couples.

The latest cover story for j, the Jewish news weekly of northern California, explores this untapped population of children of interfaith couples. It's a very diverse population, ranging from children who grew up with no religion, to children who grew up with too much religion, to children who were raised solidly in one faith.

Continue reading "The Forgotten 360,000"

Intermarriage: Helping Jews Find Their Hotel Since 1970

Ed Siegel, the Jewish intermarried former theater critic for The Boston Globe, has written an amusing piece for the Globe about interfaith couples. It begins:

I have a theory about intermarriage. I know some people think Judaism is going to die out if Jews keep marrying outside the religion, but if my circle of friends is any indication, there's a practical, perhaps even evolutionary, reason for Jews to be marrying gentiles. In every relationship I know of, the Jew has the worse sense of direction.

...It's the same in every relationship, male or female, gay or straight. The gentile looks at the map and says, "This way." The Jew says, "After you." Why is this? Did our forebears walk around the desert for 40 years because they couldn't find their way out? It couldn't have been that they liked the sights so much.

It's a funny essay, but its point is less about the distinction between Jews and gentiles--his portraits strike me as a little tongue-in-cheek--than about the way that partners in a couple should complement each others' strengths. In that way, intermarried partners can be a positive influence on each other because of their different cultural and religious backgrounds.

Interestingly, I think his theory is bogus. I've never noticed Jews having an exceptionally poor, or exceptionally good, sense of direction. But that's why I also think his essay is notable. Even when the stereotypes have no connection to reality, I don't mind seeing somebody put them in print. We should all be able to laugh out our foibles, whether real or imagined.

Embracing Intermarriage?

Noam Shpancer, the always controversial columnist for The (Columbus, Ohio) New Standard, an undiscovered gem of a Jewish newspaper, has written a new essay sure to stir up the paper's more traditional readers. It's titled Nu' Ma? Let's embrace intermarriage.

He is for welcoming interfaith families, but for a slightly different, and more radical, reason than typical outreach advocates. He notes that both sides of the intermarriage debate in the Jewish community "agree that protecting Judaism is the superseding goal." For Shpancer, the value of that goal deserves "critical scrutiny."

Promoting Judaism is not superior, as a value, to advancing the cause of humanity as a whole. Being a good person is more important then being a good Jew. And it’s hard to deny that intermarriages, with their tendency to foster the intimate knowledge and full humanization of the "other," embody a more promising future strategy for humanity than the bitter historical legacy of tribal separatism and animosity.

In Shpancer's eyes, outreach advocates' rationale is wrong even if their tactics are right. He sees the value of the continuity of any particular culture as ultimately contingent on its serving the greater purpose of bettering humanity. In Shpancer's view, intermarried couples should be embraced because they promote humanity, not just Judaism. Moreover, the very phenomenon of intermarriage itself--not just already intermarried couples--should be promoted as a way to improve humanity.

If you accept Shpancer's assumption that the ever-greater intermingling of races, religions and cultures will lead to greater peace and harmony, then his argument is rock-solid. But his universalist humanistic ethics are an ideal, not a reality.

While every religion or ideology may start out innocently as a system of universalist ethics, ultimately that belief system must gain cultural trappings to maintain group cohesion. And group cohesion is not merely a way of sustaining power and excluding the "other" to make insiders feel safe; group cohesion and discipline can help enforce sound moral codes. For all the faults of Islamist regimes, a widespread sense of moral responsibility (both self-enforced and state-enforced) keeps crime low. For whatever reason, humans have yet to be able to embrace a non-exclusive universalist system of ethics. We need cultural specificity and defined boundaries. To promote behaviors that don't recognize this reality is naive at best and irresponsible at worst.

The Emerging Consensus

Shmuel Rosner, Ha'aretz's intrepid American correspondent, has started an ambitious series on American Judaism. The first article, Reaching Out to Interfaith Families, focuses on intermarriage through the microcosm of Boston. It's an appropriate starting point. We are based just outside Boston, in Newton, and the 2005 demographic study of Jewish Boston released last year showed that 60% of interfaith couples were raising their children Jewish. More recently, Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor, rankled traditional Jews everywhere with his critique of Modern Orthodox attitudes toward intermarriage, The Orthodox Paradox.

While in Boston, Ed Case and I met with Rosner and we had a very interesting debate. Rosner argues that there is an "emerging consensus" on intermarriage in the American Jewish community. While many leaders remain uncomfortable with intermarriage, there is a widespread acceptance that "intermarriage must be accepted and interfaith couples embraced," according to Rosner. Ed didn't completely agree. I argued that the statement should be amended: in non-Orthodox Jewish communities (synagogues, JCCs, etc.), there is a near-unanimous acceptance and embrace of interfaith families, but the leadership is much more ambivalent. That ambivalence can be measured by the paltry sums given to outreach to interfaith families.

I think Rosner's new series is particularly significant for non-American, particularly Israeli, readers. Israelis often are willfully ignorant about the contours of the American Jewish community. They have a triumphalist attitude about the prevalence of assimilation and intermarriage in the States--without acknowledging their own privileged position as the only majority-Jewish country in the world. Other international Jewish communities, such as Britain and France, are way behind the United States in being welcoming to interfaith families. The British Jewish community especially is dominated by the minority of traditional Jews, who set a standard for religious involvement that few abide by. Everyone could learn from what Rosner refers to as "the great experiment" taking place in America.

The Rabbi Formerly Known as Half-Jewish

Not much time to blog today, but I need to mention these two great articles from The Jewish Week that are now a few days old:

Rabbi Beth Nichols, the daughter of a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father, writes about her experience as an interfaith child in the rabbinical seminary. On Christmas day 2001, she was in Jerusalem at Hebrew Union College, attending a class on intermarriage:

I found it both ironic and disconcerting to be discussing intermarriage on Christmas Day. That morning I approached my professor to express my apprehension for the day’s class: “I know we’re talking about intermarriage, and, well, this is my first Christmas away from home.” Registering his look of surprise, I explained, “My Dad’s not Jewish, and Christmas was a really important time in his childhood, so it became an important time in my family. I’m Jewish, obviously, but Christmas has a lot of wonderful family memories attached to it.”

Continue reading "The Rabbi Formerly Known as Half-Jewish"

The "Communal Welcome Mat"

Adam Bronfman, managing director of the Samuel Bronfman Foundation (one of our funders), has written an important essay for The Forward titled "Let's Put Out a Communal Welcome Mat."

Adam, grandson of Samuel, founder of the Seagram's liquor conglomerate, considers himself both an "insider" and an "outsider" in the Jewish world:

My Jewish education was limited as a child. I did not participate in communal or institutional Jewish life. The concept that I would need to marry-in to be accepted was never discussed.

I married the non-Jewish woman I fell in love with as a teenager, and we have raised four wonderful children. We have enjoyed an exclusively Jewish home for the better part of the last 18 years.

If not for my status as a “Bronfman,” my connection to the Jewish world would be much more tenuous. Where do I fit in? What is my place in the Jewish world and in my Jewish community?

Continue reading "The "Communal Welcome Mat""

Saving Your Date From Hell

I'm always fascinated by the approach of other religions and cultures to interfaith and intercultural marriage. A few have similar concerns to the Jewish community; Zoroastrians, for example, share the same sense of anxiety over dwindling numbers. Others, however, have radically different perspectives on interdating.

Take Evangelicals, for example. Unlike Jews, a shrinking or static population is not a concern. Also unlike Jews, culture has nothing to do with their connection to each other. Belief--in God, in Jesus, in the need to embrace Jesus to go to heaven--is everything.

Continue reading "Saving Your Date From Hell"

The Associated Press and Officiation

Associated Press religion writer Rachel Zoll recently wrote an article about
the difficulties interfaith couples can face trying to find a rabbi to
officiate at their wedding. She gives examples of rabbis whose status as
rabbis is questionable, who do not respect Jewish tradition in the weddings
they conduct, and who charge unreasonable fees for their services.

Rabbi Lev Baesh and I were interviewed and photographed for the article. We
told her that there is a trend for more and more legitimate and respected
rabbis who do respect Jewish tradition to officiate at intermarriages
without charging unreasonable fees.

Continue reading "The Associated Press and Officiation"

Rosh Hashanah Round-Up

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins this evening. The High Holidays can be a challenging time for interfaith families; Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are probably the two most inaccessible major holidays on the Jewish calendar. Fasting, spending all day in synagogue, paying hundreds of dollars to pray, listening to the powerful but atonal blasts of an instrument fashioned from a ram's horn--it's all quite strange and sometimes off-putting for the non-Jewish members of an interfaith family. But the message of the holidays--reviewing your misdeeds and making amends for them, and considering how you will change your life in the future--is potent and necessary.

Accroding to a recent National Rabbinic Leadership Survey conducted by STAR (Synagogues: Transformation And Renewal), 92% of rabbis are concerned with the need for their synagogues to reach out more to interfaith families, gays and lesbians, single parents and singles. A plurality of these rabbis (45%) say their High Holiday sermons will focus on the need to participate in Jewish life beyond the High Holidays. Last year, this topic didn't even make the top three of the most popular planned sermon topics. (Granted, the High Holidays did follow on the heels of the Israel-Lebanon war.)

But some people have already decided that traditional High Holiday services aren't for them. As reported in The (New York) Jewish Week, they're attending services at Chinese restaurants, in museums, at rented churches and on hikes through the Colorado wilderness. But as Rabbi Niles Goldstein, author of Gonzo Judaism and leader of non-traditional High Holiday services, says, "It's very important to separate substance from shtick... The real challenge is to figure out what the right balance is."

Continue reading "Rosh Hashanah Round-Up"

The Link Sink

I've been meaning to give a shout-out to our friends at Jew-ish.com for a while, but better late than never. Since February, they've had a blog on interfaith marriage called Half-Torah (clever title). It was originally written by a gay man named Brian who was converting to Judaism; since May, it's been written by a Jewish woman named Becca married to a non-Jewish "Jew-ish" man. I haven't read every post, but I believe "Jew-ish" means that he doesn't have any Jewish roots, but he's so involved in Jewish life that he's essentially an honorary MOT. Check it out. Becca puts up new posts more frequently than I do, and she's not even paid for it.

Here's the latest update on the polls we've conducted since July 10, the last time I updated you on our polls. Our July 10 poll asked "Can a person be half-Jewish?" and respondents were almost evenly split: 53% said "Yes, of course" and 47% said "No, you're either Jewish or you're not." The July 31 question also saw a fairly even split. In response to the question "Is divorce harder for an interfaith couple than an all-Jewish couple?", 55% said for an interfaith couple, 45% said for an inmarried couple. However, in response to our Aug. 14 question--"Is making your partner happy a sufficient reason to convert to Judaism?"--nearly all of the respondents (90%) said No. And most of you (60%) thought that children should not be allowed to decide their religion for themselves, according to our Aug. 28 poll.

In Broward County, Fla., a large Jewish cemetery, the 52-acre Star of David Cemetery and Funeral Home, is adding 31 acres and 10,000 plots for intermarried Jews and their families.

Adam Goldberg, son of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, says he is tired of being typecast as a neurotic Jew.

Interfaith, Interracial, International

In a continuation of its series on religion in black America, NPR interviewed Dara and Oded Pinchas, a black-Jewish couple who are expecting twins. Dara is an African-American Baptist while Oded is an Israeli Jew affiliated with the Secular Humanistic Movement.

They avoided the officiation issue by getting married on a beach in Hawaii. Dara says her family embraced Oded, while for his family, "It's been a growing process... over time we've come to accept each other." His parents, basing their definition of Jewishness on the widely accepted Israeli standard of Jewish maternity, are concerned that his children won't be Jewish.

Continue reading "Interfaith, Interracial, International"

The Link Sink

We're based in Newton, Mass., and receive great support from Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Boston's Jewish federation. One of our biggest fans is Barry Shrage, executive director of CJP. So admittedly I'm a bit biased, but this article in Ha'aretz about Shrage's recent sabbatical in Jerusalem shows that Shrage "gets it" in a way that few Jewish establishment leaders do. A sample of quotes: "Our obsession with numbers is simply not a good thing." "Within 10 to 15 years, most Jews will live in religiously intermarried families, and in such a situation, it is no longer possible to rely solely on ethnicity and continue to be relevant to all these Jews." "For us, Israel no longer has to justify its existence, but it must progress to the next stage, of the joint creation of a perfect Jewish society..."

The (London) Jewish Chronicle reports that rabbis in the country's small Liberal movement (similar to America's Reform movement) have seen a "sharp rise in requests to give blessings to mixed-faith marriages." It's still only a tiny amount: 60 so far this year for the entire country, compared to 30-40 last year. But the increase shouldn't be a surprise considering recent official census figures from Britain on the increase in interfaith dating and cohabitation.

Continue reading "The Link Sink"

Reaction to Rob Eshman's Column

Three weeks ago, Rob Eshman, editor-in-chief of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, wrote a provocative editorial arguing that the Jewish community should encourage single women in their 30s and 40s to interdate--better to intermarry and be happy than be Jewishly pure and miserable.

Predictably, it inspired a lot of response. Unpredictably, an equivalent number of the letters printed in the Jewish Journal supported his proposal as opposed it. One of the endorsements came from us:

Continue reading "Reaction to Rob Eshman's Column"

Three Little Birds

It's been two weeks since Hurricane Dean left surprisingly little damage in Jamaica, a place filled with shoddily constructed housing and tenuous infrastructure. A few days after the storm, Paul Rockower wrote an essay for The Jerusalem Post about Jamaica's "small, vibrant Jewish community" of 250-300.

Despite the community's microscopic size--down from a one-time high of 5,000-6,000--Rockower reports that 20 people were at the island's only synagogue, Sha'are Shalom, on Shabbat when he visited. The sounds of the synagogue's pipe organ filled the room, and the floors were carpeted with white sand. The community's spiritual leader, Stephen Henriques told Rockower how intermarriage was common but that "nearly all children from those unions were raised as Jews."

I've always found it interesting how the Jewish establishment in the U.S. makes a stink about intermarriage, while far smaller Jewish communities--such as Jamaica and Nicaragua--accept it as a fact of life, and move on. Better to keep up the important business of living a rich Jewish life and building Jewish community, and whoever wants to participate does so. Even a few days before Hurricane Dean, when water was thigh-deep in the streets of Kingston, nearly 10 percent of Jamaica's Jewish population came out for services.

As Bob Marley sang, "Every little thing's gonna be alright."

Better Late Than Never

The few studies on the Jewish affiliation patterns of children of interfaith families have consistently shown that children of intermarriage have stronger Jewish identities as adults if they are bar or bat mitzvahed.

This article and video from The Charlotte Observer tells the story of Paloma Wiener, 16, and her brother, Brandon, 15, who are studying for their bat and bar mitzvah together. Their mother is Mexican and their father is Jewish, and they moved to Charlotte from California recently, so they got a late start on studying to become b'nai mitzvah. The fact that they are going through the process at a later age reaffirms their commitment to Judaism, and makes it highly likely their religious identity will remain with them throughout their lives.

Continue reading "Better Late Than Never"

High Holiday Tickets: High Prices, High Barriers to Involvement

Across the spectrum, including among the Orthodox, synagogues have done an admirable job in recent years making themselves more welcoming to the unaffiliated, the intermarried and the just plain timid. There's a long way to go, but between Chabad's outreach, the Reform movement's embrace of interfaith families and the Conservative movement's push for keruv, religious life is more welcoming and more accessible than it's ever been. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that the practice of charging non-members for High Holiday tickets--and in some cases, barring non-members from attending--persists.

It's one of the most shortsighted strategies in modern religion: during the small number of days that Jews actually want (or at least feel obligated) to go to synagogue, congregations charge them exorbitant prices to enter, either through one-off ticket prices or a requirement that the non-member pay dues to join the synagogue. Rather than use the holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah as an occasion to show non-members how welcoming they are, they use it as an occasion to show how restrictive--and expensive--they are.

Continue reading "High Holiday Tickets: High Prices, High Barriers to Involvement"

That Thing We Do

I need an intervention. No matter how much I try to move away from writing about Noah Feldman's The Orthodox Paradox, I keep getting called back by the tantalizing aromas of fresh opinions. The way it makes me feel part of something bigger than myself, the way it makes my worries wash away, the way it builds my self-confidence... My name is Micah and I am an Orthodox-Paraholic.

But maybe one last taste?

Andrew Silow-Carroll, the ever-insightful editor of the New Jersey Jewish News, wrote a follow-up to his op-ed "The way we do the things we do." In that essay he argued that the Feldman essay--and a recent volley of intellectual fireworks between Jack Wertheimer, provost of the Conservative movement's rabbinical seminary, and Joey Kurtzman, editor of Jewcy--demonstrated the growing schism between the "particularists" and the "universalists." The particularists, like Wertheimer, see Judaism first and foremost as a culture and view Jewish strength in inverse relationship to Jewish assimilation. The universalists, like Kurtzman (and to a lesser extent, Feldman), see Judaism as a universally accessible philosophy that is compromised by the obsession over communal boundaries. Silow-Carroll is more sympathetic to the first position--indeed, he lives his life by the rules of the particularist--but in this new column, he wonders whether his "choices will ensure the survival of anything."

Continue reading "That Thing We Do"

Ay, There's the Snub

Leave it to Julie Wiener of The Jewish Week to come up with an original take on Noah Feldman's The Orthodox Paradox.

Rather than use her column as an opportunity to critique or praise Feldman, she ponders the value of the snub--both Maimonides School's snub of Feldman and Feldman's snub of the school and the Modern Orthodox community. Does the snub work? Does it lead to a desired change in behavior, or does it just piss people off?

Wiener certainly leans toward the latter option. Feldman's case provides a double dose of evidence that the snub doesn't work: Feldman intermarried and was unashamed of his life decisions despite his exclusion from the announcement section of his day school's alumni newsletter while the Modern Orthodox community has responded to Feldman's essay not by reconsidering some of its policies but by counterattacking Feldman with often virulent force.

Continue reading "Ay, There's the Snub"

Three Stories

I've got three interesting stories today about the quirks of interdating and growing up in an interfaith family. I tried to come up with a clever way to link the three, but I'm at a loss. Here they are:

• On Jewcy, Jordie Gerson complains that Jewish men have a hard time seeing her as a sexual being after they find out she's a rabbinical student. She finds she can only have flings with non-Jewish men:
  

  ...the non-Jews, they knew better. They knew that in my world they were not welcome, at least not for long. Well, by me, maybe, they’d be welcome. But not by the places I was going, and in the communities I would someday lead. Non-Jewish men assumed our relationship couldn’t become serious—and after the Jewish men who put me in the serious category automatically, this was an enormous relief.



• Chris Schwarz, a photographer who opened a museum to honor the heritage of the thriving Polish Jewish community destroyed by the Holocaust, died a few weeks ago. Despite his devotion to Jewish history and remembrance, he was buried in a municipal cemetery in Krakow because his mother was not Jewish. He once said, "I am Jewish enough for the camps, but not for the rabbis."


• Also on Jewcy, the daughter of a Korean woman adopted by a Jewish family tells her story: how her mother rebelled against religion and didn't raise her Jewish, how her grandmother "was always pushing" Judaism, how she went on a birthright israel trip because it was free, how she dated an Israeli soldier who was killed by terrorists. Now, she's a firefighter in Israel.

How Jesus Made Jeremy a Better Jew

Jeremy Greenberg, a stand-up comic, has written an amusing, albeit perplexing, essay on "How Jesus Made Me a Better Jew" for American Jewish Life magazine. "Jesus first came to me in sixth grade through my friend's older sister's breasts," he says.

Breasts aside, I was a prime candidate for receiving a Christendectomy. As a kid, being a Jew meant going to Sunday school instead of playing with my friends. It meant missing football practice and games during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Until I graduated high school, Judaism was a religion based on separating me from my friends — me from who I wanted to be.

Continue reading "How Jesus Made Jeremy a Better Jew"

It's Raining Men... As If

Rob Eshman, editor-in-chief of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, has written an op-ed that is sure to generate controversy. In "Hindu Widows," he argues that the Jewish community should encourage single women in their 30s and 40s to interdate. Why, his article ask, should Jewish women sacrifice their happiness and their child-bearing years at the altar of endogamy?

I talked with four of these women over the space of three days last week, all wondering if I had come across any single Jewish men. I mentioned a name. Here's what happened: They had already dated the guy. I mentioned another name. Already dated him, too: At 41, he was not quite ready to settle down. A straight, eligible Jewish man in his 40s gets around this town faster than the weekend box office numbers.

Continue reading "It's Raining Men... As If"

Noah More!

As I was reading the latest batch of think-pieces on Noah Feldman's essay on intermarriage and Modern Orthodoxy in the New York Times, I couldn't help but think of a book I'm reading, Rabbi Arthur Blecher's The New American Judaism, which will be published by St. Martin's Press in October.

Blecher's central premise is that modern mainstream American Judaism relies on a set of myths and misguided motives to justify its current form. One of the myths is that intermarriage is decreasing the size of the American Jewish population. One of the misguided motives is that the most important reason to be Jewish is so that Judaism continues to survive. The former, Blecher argues, is factually incorrect; the latter is simply uninspiring, playing on Jews' fears rather than their hopes.

Continue reading "Noah More!"

The Bratz Pack

BRATZ's movie debut last week was no match for the Transformers--it made $4.2 million in its opening weekend vs. $155.4 million for Transformers--but when it comes to toy sales, it's no contest. BRATZ has generated more than $2 billion in revenue, and its sales are closing the gap on the most successful girl's toy in history, Barbie.

So what--or who--are Bratz? They're the anti-Barbie, large-headed, wide-eyed, multiethnic dolls who wear skimpy clothes and are supposed to be teenagers, unlike the mature, demure 20-something Barbie. Like Barbie, they were created by a Jewish entrepreneur and like Barbie, they reflect the ethos of the time. When Barbie debuted in 1959, the ideal of feminine happiness was white, blonde, rich and monogamous; in 2007, the ideal is younger, more racially diverse, sassier and independent.

Continue reading "The Bratz Pack"

The Jewish Cardinal

Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger died on Sunday.

Cardinal Lustiger was a key figure in the Catholic-Jewish dialogue that Pope John Paul II so valued. He was the Pope's representative at the commemoration ceremonies for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 2005 and served as a middle man between Jews and the Church on sensitive issues like Catholic anti-Semitism. He was uniquely fitted for these responsibilities because he was actually born a Jew--a fact that made many Jewish figures who worked with him uncomfortable.

He was born in Paris to secular Polish-Jewish emigres in 1926. Following the German invasion of France in 1940, he and his sister were sent for their own protection to live with a Catholic woman. At 13, he was baptized. Despite his conversion, he considered himself Jewish: "I was born Jewish, and so I remain, even if that is unacceptable for many," he once said. And, in a way, he had the most unassailable Jewish credentials: his mother died as a Jew in Auschwitz.

Continue reading "The Jewish Cardinal"

Breaking Down Walls

Part of a growing trend around the country, a new "synagogue without walls" is opening in Cleveland, according to the Cleveland Jewish News. Called simply "The Shul," it will cater to unaffiliated and interfaith families, especially baby boomers.

The rabbi of this new congregation, Edward Sukol, has clearly done his research. He's not centering the congregation's spiritual life around Shabbat attendance. He is getting rid of Sunday school and doing family education instead, where the whole family learns about Judaism together (an approach that Stepping Stones in Colorado has perfected over the years). Bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah services will be tailored to family's needs. And one of his most radical ideas will see Sukol and a local minister running a joint study session for interfaith families:

“We will talk about the similarities and differences of shared symbols within Judaism and Christianity such as wine, water and bread,” he says. “We will discuss the ethical and moral differences of these two religions and let interfaith families articulate for themselves how they want to express their religious identities in their homes.”

This approach touches the third rail of the Jewish community's response to intermarriage: letting families decide for themselves how to raise their children. As tolerant and sensitive as outreach organizations try to be, most of us have a not-so-hidden-agenda: we want interfaith families to make Jewish choices. It's exceedingly rare to see a rabbi, especially one trained in the Conservative tradition, willing to share information about other religions with interfaith families.

We wish him the best of luck.

Does Noah Feldman Feed the Anti-Semites?

Norman Lamm, the highly respected former president of Yeshiva University--the flagship of the Modern Orthodox movement--stoops to a surprising low in his critique of Noah Feldman's essay on intermarriage and Modern Orthodoxy, on the Forward's website. He says that Feldman "succeeded in supplying via the New York Times article enough anti-Jewish material to last a few good years." It's the oldest trick in the book, and it's been used to quell honest criticism of Israeli policies for years: don't air our dirty laundry because it just gives the anti-Semites fodder for their hate.

But this argument rests on a false and cowardly premise. The "dirty laundry" argument assumes, ridiculously, that if only there weren't negative information about Jews, Judaism or Israel, anti-Semites would realize that Jews really aren't so bad. It also assumes that authentic critiques of Judaism are any more valuable to anti-Semites than the stuff they make up, like the Jewish blood libel and the Elders of Zion. But worse, crying anti-Semitism prioritizes the prejudices of idiots over the value of honest dialogue between intelligent Jews. And effectively, it doesn't really matter. Anti-Semites are some of the most active and savviest users of the Internet. Don't you think, Rabbi Lamm, that they can find all the anti-Jewish material they need (whether from Jews or non-Jews) on the World Wide Web?

To blame Noah Feldman for the fact that non-Jews are asking Orthodox Jews critical questions about their faith is a cheap shot. And, due to their substantial Jewish education, aren't Orthodox Jews the best-equipped to respond to these questions in an intelligent and informed way? Indeed, one of the premises of Modern Orthodoxy is that one can be Orthodox and involved in the secular world; inevitably, this means responding to non-Jews' ignorance about the faith. Feldman's essay didn't start this phenomenon any more than Michael Lerner gave birth to anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semites hate Jews, regardless of the facts. Non-Jews who encounter Modern Orthodox Jews know little about Judaism, and will continue to do so. Rabbi Lamm should rethink who we should spend more time educating.

The Link Sink

Catching up on some notable articles from the last few weeks:

• Adam Wills, a fine writer at the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, has written a singles piece unlike anything you've seen before in a Jewish paper. He's been giving his brother dating advice since his divorce, the only difference is that while Adam is a devoted Jew, his brother converted to Catholicism--but is slowly crawling his way back to Judaism.
• I'm interviewed as part of a story on a Jewish dating service in The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier. For a piece written by a (presumably) non-Jewish reporter on an issue that I doubt he had much prior knowledge of, it's quite well-done, sensitively handling those who promote Jewish in-dating and those who are friendly to interfaith couples.
• The Forward recently reported on the push by a small group of activists to take circumcision out of the bris ritual. The article itself is interesting enough, but check out the comments--in print form, there are more than 60 pages worth of comments.
Continue reading "The Link Sink"

Posted by Micahs at August 1, 2007 10:15 AM | Comments. Click to post.(0)

Cracking the Paradox

The "Orthodox Paradox" continues to provide fodder for bloggers and Jewish thinkers.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has written another insightful column on the issue, in response to the vociferous criticism he received for his first stab at defending Noah Feldman. The central problem, says Boteach, is that Jews must distinguish between "an immoral sin and an irreligious act":

Does driving on Shabbat make you a bad person, or a nonobservant one? Does failure to attend synagogue make you into an irreligious Jew or a flawed human being?...

The greatness of the Lubavitcher Rebbe was his genius in distinguishing between religious and moral sin. Before the Rebbe those who ate non-kosher were treated as though they themselves were unkosher.

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The Orthodox vs. "Orthodox Paradox"

Noah Feldman's "Orthodox Paradox" may be influencing people, but it's not making him many friends.

In today's issue of The (New York) Jewish Week, Editor and Publisher Gary Rosenblatt, probably the most respected Jewish journalist in America, picks apart Feldman's essay with his typical mix of respectfulness and incisive logic. One of the things that I've found fascinating in Modern Orthodox readers' response to his essay is how much "pain" they see in his essay, which to me, seems a fairly rational, dispassionate look into some problematic aspects of the Modern Orthodox approach to the world. A Modern Orthodox person I work with said it was full of "pain," while Rosenblatt calls it "a long and bitter complaint."

Rosenblatt goes on to call Feldman's essay "intellectually dishonest" and calls Feldman "unfair" for "expecting to be lauded by a community whose values he has rejected." It's interesting that Rosenblatt reads into Feldman's essay a desire to be lauded; at no point does Feldman ask to be lauded, nor does he gloat over his truly impressive personal achievements. All he appears to be asking for is acknowledgment of the existence of his marriage and children. Getting a one-sentence mention in an alumni newsletter is a far cry from expecting community plaudits.

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Pork Rinds vs. Life Partners

The "Orthodox Paradox," Noah Feldman's thoughtful discussion of his intermarriage and the Modern Orthodox community's response to it, has clearly struck a nerve among Jewish bloggers, Orthodox and non-. Joey Kurtzman, the whip-smart senior editor of Jewcy, conducted a Q&A with Feldman, which, unsurprisingly, generated a flood of comments. (There's a broad cultural stereotype that Orthodox Jews are Luddites, but judging from their activity on blogs and discussion boards, that couldn't be further from the truth.)

Kurtzman's Q&A only briefly touches on intermarriage and gets more into the whole debate over Orthodoxy vs. modernity. But there is a nice line from Feldman. Kurtzman asks:

You were surprised when Maimonides—the yeshiva from which you graduated—airbrushed out you and your (non-Jewish) wife from a photo published in the alumni newsletter. Your surprise struck many readers as rather strange, since the community makes no secret of its rejection of intermarriage. It’s a bit like you’d pulled out a bag of pork rinds, devoured them with relish throughout the evening, and then expressed bewilderment when someone asked you if you'd set them aside until later. What are your critics missing here?

To which Feldman replies:

What is troubling about the view you describe—which I never sensed from my classmates—is its implication that somehow modern Orthodox people should be protected from my living my life as I choose. As if choice of life partner were as trivial as a snack... People who are comfortable with their own life choices don't get "offended" when others choose differently.

Feldman's response reminds me of something Rabbi Steven Greenberg, the only openly gay Orthodox rabbi in the world, once said in a speech I saw. Orthodox Jews often liken homosexuality to eating a cheeseburger--it's obviously prohibited by the Torah, so how could gays expect Orthodox Jewry to accept them? But, said Greenberg, nobody ever cried when their cheeseburger left them--or moved across the country to be with their cheeseburger.

Obituary for Sherwin Wine

JTA published a story today on the death of Sherwin Wine, the founder of Humanistic Judaism.

In many ways, Wine injected an honesty into the practice of Judaism that had been missing prior to his arrival. While many Jews don't believe in God (certainly more than believe in the Torah as the word of God), the vast majority of affiliated Jews worship at synagogue services infused with God-language. Wine, a Reform rabbi by training and an atheist by inclination, felt reciting such prayers was intellectually dishonest. So he founded an entire movement of Judaism, one that celebrates Jewish traditions but removes mention of a deity.

Despite its growing popularity in Israel, it has never caught on in the States, one of the few countries in the developed world where not practicing a religion is more of a social stigma than practicing one. The funny thing is, even the most Orthodox of the Orthodox will tell you that believing in God is incidental to being Jewish; either you're born Jewish or convert under the proper auspices, or you're not Jewish. It doesn't matter what you believe in.

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Rabbi Sherwin Wine, 1928-2007

We just found out that Rabbi Sherwin Wine, founder of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, died on Saturday in a car accident while on vacation in Morocco. Secular Humanistic Judaism has consistently been an extraordinarily friendly place for interfaith families to explore Judaism.

Our sincerest condolences to his family and loved ones.

Shalom in the Orthodox Home

Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard and graduate of a modern Orthodox day school in Massachusetts, wrote a remarkable article for the New York Times magazine about his day school's response to his marriage to a Korean-American woman. It's all the more remarkable for the response it has elicited: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the best-known Orthodox rabbi in America via his TLC show "Shalom in the Home," has written a column powerfully and truthfully titled, "Stop Ostracizing Those Who Marry Out."

In Feldman's article, titled "Orthodox Paradox," he relates how he and his then-girlfriend took part in an alumni group photo at his day school's 10-year reunion. But when the alumni newsletter came out, he and his girlfriend were nowhere to be found. He says:

So I called my oldest school friend, who appeared in the photo, and asked for her explanation. “You’re kidding, right?” she said. My fiancée was Korean-American. Her presence implied the prospect of something that from the standpoint of Orthodox Jewish law could not be recognized: marriage to someone who was not Jewish. That hint was reason enough to keep us out.

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The Rising Tide on Officiation

Not to toot our own horn, but we appear to have tapped into something with the hiring of Rabbi Lev Baesh as the director of our Rabbinic Circle and rabbinic officiation referral service. Julie Wiener of The Jewish Week has written her most recent "In the Mix" column on the growing interest in officiation at intermarriages. At last year's convention of Reform rabbis, Rabbi Jerome Davidson, of Temple Beth El in Long Island, advocated for the Reform rabbis' association to change its position on officiation; currently its official line says that intermarriage "should be discouraged," but leaves the decision on officiating to the discretion of individual rabbis.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Erica Greenbaum, a recent graduate of Hebrew Union College, the Reform rabbinical seminary, recently completed her senior thesis on rabbinic officiation at intermarriage.

Rabbi Greenbaum, who is director of Jewish life at the Jewish Community Project Downtown in Lower Manhattan, says the research for her thesis was heartening overall.

“There continues to be a perception in some parts of the non-Reform community that any rabbi officiating at intermarriages is a shady character just doing it for the money,” she [says]. “That’s not a fair characterization. Certainly there are those people, but lots of rabbis on both sides are doing what they’re doing with a lot of integrity.”

Further, we're aware of two studies in different stages that look at the impact of rabbinic officiation on Jewish involvement.

To all this, we say "Mazel tov!" We've long been of the opinion that the Jewish community is missing a golden opportunity to attract interfaith couples to Judaism through officiation at intermarriages. Nobody yet knows whether a rabbi's involvement in an interfaith wedding makes it more likely for an interfaith couple to engage with Judaism, but it certainly can't hurt. A rabbi's involvement in an interfaith wedding gives a couple a personal, emotional connection to the Jewish community that they might otherwise not have. We have received numerous thank you notes from couples who we've helped find a Jewish officiant.

In the coming months, I suspect we will hear even more about this issue.

Critical Mass?

A week and a half ago, the Pope issued a decree authorizing Catholic clergy to conduct the old Latin Mass without permission of the Church. This bit of liturgical news wouldn't seem to be of much interest to anyone other than Catholics, but nothing involving the Catholic Church is ever just about Catholics. The Good Friday edition of the old Latin Mass includes a prayer for Jews to convert to Christianity. The potential revival of this prayer was not received very positively in the Jewish world; Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League and self-appointed spokesman for the Jewish community, called the news "disturbing."

I have a variety of responses to this news: as a Jew, as a secular observer of the Catholic Church and as someone interested in the cause of inclusiveness for those in interfaith relationships.

As a Jew, I find the news disappointing but not disturbing. It's not clear that the Pope's decree will lead to a widespread revival of the conversion prayer. Even if it does come into more common use, it doesn't turn back the clock on years of reforms in the Church since Vatican II; this is not going to lead to a restoration of the charge of deicide against the Jews. In the U.S., it will have little to no impact on American Catholics. I highly doubt many priests will decide the way to restore their dwindling congregations is by conducting a Mass with their backs turned to their congregation and speaking in a language that none of his congregants understand. It's certainly possible that the Latin Mass may be adopted in those parts of the world where Orthodox Catholicism has a strong hold--specifically South America--but there are latent anti-Semitic attitudes there that the introduction of a prayer once a year will not change for good or bad. And, it's not like calling for the conversion of non-believers is an uncommon practice in Christian churches; one of the most Zionist groups in the world, evangelical churches, make it a point of both calling for the conversion of non-believers and actively missionizing to them. The only difference is that the Southern Baptist Convention never led an Inquisition.

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Making a Half- Whole

A good counterpoint to Sue Fishkoff's article on half-Jews is Deborah Sussman Susser's op-ed in the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix on her Jewish identity. It begins: "I didn't think of myself as half Jewish until I'd been told I wasn't [Jewish] at all."

This is the other side of the coin of those who define themselves as half-Jews while the Jewish community insists on defining them as Jews or non-Jews. Susser considers herself Jewish, while society in general considers her half-Jewish and the traditional parts of the Jewish community consider her not Jewish at all.

I knew I was Jewish enough that the other kids at school made jokes about picking up pennies and told me I was going to hell, Jewish enough that my first "boyfriend" at summer camp had broken up with me when I told him my religion. "I hate Jews," he'd said simply.

This sense of being both on the inside and outside of the Jewish community made affiliation difficult for her. In college, she worried that she would be "outed" at Hillel events. At synagogue, she cried. When she got engaged to a Jewish man, her Reform rabbi told them theirs was a mixed marriage. The amazing thing is, despite her bad experiences, she still identifies strongly as a Jew, lighting Shabbat candles and sending her daughter to Hebrew school.

A Symposium on "Doing Both"

At InterfaithFamily.com, a fundamental point of our mission is arguing that interfaith families should make a religious choice for their children. But it is interesting to hear the perspectives of those who advocate for the opposite view, that it's OK to raise children in a dual-faith household.

Interfaith Community is one of the handful of organizations nationwide that have this opposing view, alongside the Interfaith Families Project in Maryland, the Family School and Jewish-Catholic Couples Dialogue Group in Chicago, Ill., and Dovetail Institute. These organizations exist on the fringes of the established religious community as nearly all religious educators and leaders stress the impossibility of adopting two religions simultaneously.

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Half-and-Half

Our current poll question for our Web Magazine issue on Growing Up in an Interfaith Family is "Can a person be half-Jewish?" Appropriately, a day before the issue went online, jacqueline-of-all-trades JTA reporter Sue Fishkoff wrote a story titled "'Half-Jews' fight for acceptance."

For years, people have been saying they were half-Jewish, but the Jewish establishment never gave the moniker any credence. The different denominations are divided on what makes someone Jewish--the Orthodox and Conservative say only a Jewish mother can have a Jewish child, the Reform and Reconstructionist movements say a Jewish father can have a Jewish child provided the child is raised Jewish--but they are united in their opposition to the notion of divided identity. You can't be half-Jewish. You either are Jewish, or you're not.

But a growing number of grass-roots efforts are looking to gain acceptance for those who identify themselves as half-Jewish:

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What You Think

Since the Sept. 26 issue of our Web Magazine last year, we've been running polls alongside the table of contents. We typically get around 20 responses. While nothing like a statistically reliable sample, they do provide an interesting barometer of our readers' opinions on interfaith issues.

For example, in our last issue on interfaith weddings, we asked "Do you think interfaith couples are more likely to participate in the Jewish community if a rabbi officiates at their wedding?" Eighteen people responded. 72% said Yes, 28% said No. In our new issue, out today, on growing up in an interfaith family, we asked, "Can a person be half-Jewish?"

We received the most respondents to our December holidays question: "Christmas music: Love it or hate it?" The 69 respondents were evenly split. Half said it was "OK in limited doses," while slightly more than a quarter (28%) said "Love it" and slightly under a quarter (22%) said "Hate it." Count me in the last category.

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An Unnoticed Outreach Hero

Rabbi Abraham J. Klausner died on June 28. The obituaries in the Jewish press, including JTA and the Jerusalem Post, described how Rabbi Klausner, the leader of a Reform synagogue in Yonkers, N.Y., for 25 years, was the first Jewish chaplain in the US Army to enter Dachau and had been a leading advocate for Holocaust survivors. The New York Times obituary tells that story too, with quotes from Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, that Rabbi Klausner was "the father figure" for more than 30,000 survivors found at Dachau, and was instrumental in improving conditions in the displaced persons camps after the war. But the Times tells one more story about Rabbi Klausner that the Jewish press didn't mention.

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The Appeal of the Other

Everyone who's dated--that is to say, everyone--knows that figuring out why you are attracted to someone is often the greatest mystery in your life. Are you interested because the other person is interested? Is it physical attraction? Does the person laugh at your jokes? Is there a chemistry that can't be explained?

One factor that is particularly difficult to untangle is the cultural factor. Are you attracted to someone because they come from a similar background--or because they come from a different one? In Elizabeth Rosner's "Everything I Know About Being Bad I Learned in Hebrew School," an excerpt from Bad Girls: 26 Writers Behave published in The Forward, a girl who grew up with a stringent Orthodox upbringing rebels against Judaism and dates every non-Jewish boy she can find:

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Speaking of San Francisco...

Keeping with yesterday's return-from-San-Francisco theme, j., the Jewish news weekly of northern California, and The Forward recently wrote about a clever new outreach strategy from Rabbi Moshe Langer of the Chabad of San Francisco: free trolley tours of the diverse and beautiful city. But unlike other Chabad marketing--free iPods in exchange for enrolling in Hebrew classes, "spa day for the soul"--the trolley rides are not about getting people to become traditionally observant or join Chabad. All that the bearded Rabbi Langer asks is that all his passengers, Jewish or not, perform one mitzvah (good deed) that day.

It's what the Jewish Outreach Institute calls "Public Space Judaism," whereby the Jewish community engages the global community wherever they are: grocery stores, coffeeshops, even trolleys on Powell Street. I particularly admire the Chabad Cable Car because it doesn't sound like Rabbi Langer is pushing his religious agenda. By "soft-selling" Judaism and showing people of all creeds how welcoming and friendly a strongly Jewishly identified person can be, he's making Judaism appealing to unaffiliated Jew and non-Jew alike. That can send a powerful message to interfaith couples.

Turns out, though, that Rabbi Langer is only following in his dad's footsteps. His father, Rabbi Yosef Langer, has been dubbed "Rally Rabbi" after blowing the shofar during the San Francisco Giants' Jewish Heritage Night. At this year's Jewish Heritage Night in August, the Giants will be giving out Rally Rabbi bobbleheads.

The State of Jewish Journalism

I returned from San Francisco today, where I attended the 2007 conference of the American Jewish Press Association, the professional association of Jewish publications and websites. This was the fourth conference I attended and the sessions tend to be similar from year to year. There's always one or two on how to make your print publication work on the Internet, there's always one where everybody bemoans their inability to reach young readers and there's always one on media coverage of Israel. The irony in the perpetual inclusion of the first two sessions is that few significant Jewish websites are members of the AJPA and almost none of the few Jewish media outlets that have had some success reaching young Jews--Heeb, American Jewish Life, Jewcy or Jewschool, for starters--are members either. So the conversations about web presence and youthful audience occur in a vacuum, led by old media print editors.

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The Link Sink

Some links to sink your teeth into:

Two high-profile conversions: Mare Winningham, best known for playing Wendy Beamish in St. Elmo's Fire, is starring in a new off-Broadway play, "10 Million Miles" and has just released a new country album of Jewish songs, titled "Refuge Rock Sublime." She tells The Jewish Week of her enthusiasm for Judaism, "Converts can be annoying sometimes. We can be too enthusiastic and passionate, if there's such a thing." The other convert is Bob Tufts, a former pitcher for the San Francisco Giants and Kansas City Royals, who converted when he married his Jewish wife. It's interesting to compare the reactions to their conversions. Tufts converted 25 years ago, and recalls telling a fellow player he was converting to Judaism. "His eyes kidn of bugged out," Tufts said, "and he said, 'Well, then, you're going to hell.' and turned back to watch the ballgame." Meanwhile, Winningham converted five years ago and found that her devout Catholic father was happy for her: "It was more important to her that her children be happy and have a relationship with God. When she found out I was having one, that was more important to her than what religion it was in." I think the contrast highlights the way American culture's relationship to Judaism has changed, even since the early '80s. Especially among religious Christians, there seems to be a widespread acceptance of Judaism as a valid, and even perhaps blessed, religious path.

Julie Wiener wrote a provocative column last week on intermarriage in the Bible:

Yes, there are passages in the Bible that rail against Jews marrying gentiles, and certainly much of the midrash, commentary and Talmud are devoted to this theme. But every spring, when Purim, Passover and Shavuot come and go, I can’t help but notice that the Bible stories we read for these holidays are all about people — Esther, Moses and Ruth — in interfaith marriages. (Yes, I know Ruth converted, but not until after her Jewish husband died.)

She gleans some good insight from Rabbi Brian Field, who led a session on the topic of a "midrash of intermarriage" at our conference last month.

The Forward has a thought-provoking column on the relationship between Jewishness and whiteness and the Jewish community's newfound enthusiasm for "diversity." One of the more interesting observations:

For instance, as immigrants from Eastern Europe arrived in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, they were expected to conform and adapt to the sensibility and style of the more established and better-off German Jews, who themselves were hypersensitive about the reactions of the American Protestant elite of that time. They feared that their hard-won position would be disrupted by their wretched Eastern European cousins. In this climate, the concern was about conforming and being respectable, rather than celebrating diversity.

Baby Talk

I participated in some fascinating discussions about birth ceremonies last week. The occasion was another excellent Outreach Training Institute program held on June 14, 2007 titled “Embracing the Covenant: Brit Ceremonies in Interfaith Families.” Dr. Paula Brody of the Reform movement’s Northeast Council runs four of these programs a year, funded by CJP, the Boston federation.

One of the most interesting parts of the day was a presentation by Father Walter Cuenin – author of one of the most popular articles ever published on our site, Is Heaven Denied to an Unbaptized Child?. Apparently, Catholic theology and practice has changed in many respects that apply to intermarriage situations, but “the people” aren’t always up to speed on the changes. For example:

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Cassandra vs. Nero?

Jewcy is making a quite a name for itself with its readiness to wrestle sacred cows. It helps when the staff is made up of some of the most talented, eloquent, innovative young Jews around.

This week, Senior Editor Joey Kurtzman goes toe to toe with Jack Wertheimer, provost of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative movement's rabbinical school. Wertheimer has written extensively about the unwelcome demise of ethnocentric Judaism, a Judaism that is focused on Israel, internal socialization and helping other Jews, while Kurtzman, the product of intermarriage, is a proud defender of a catholic perspective that sees the suffering of Africans in Darfur as no less a tragedy than the suffering of Jews. And the notion of socializing with, or dating, only Jews? Both impractical and nearly "laughable," he says.

Kurtzman launches the opening salvo by arguing that "American life has annihilated Jewish peoplehood.":

Modern American life is the most corrosive acid ever to hit the ghetto walls. Young American Jews are whoring after Moab so fervently that the boundaries between Israel and Moab are being washed away. We‘re not merely influenced by the non-Jewish world—we‘re inseparable from it. Judaism and Jewishness have never had so limited a claim on the identity of young Jews.

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Officiation as a Litmus Test?

The question of rabbinic officiation at intermarriages threatens a schism in the Reform movement, writes Steve Lipman's in today's The (New York) Jewish Week:

A decade after the movement’s rabbinical arm, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, examined the effects of intermarriage and outreach within its ranks, the largest Jewish denomination in the United States is again dealing with a question that may determine its immediate future: Is the marriage ceremony threatening to cause a divorce in Reform Judaism?

I wouldn't quite go that far, but Lipman does focus on a growing phenomenon: friction between rabbis who won't officiate at intermarriages and members of their synagogue who want them to officiate. According to the story, officiation has become a litmus test for hiring in many congregations, especially congregations in small Jewish communities. "Officiating has become a sine qua non for rabbinic placement," says Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, who is leaving The Temple in Atlanta partly due to his refusal to perform intermarriages and the tension that causes.

This kind of controversy shows the importance and relevance of our recent hiring of Rabbi Lev Baesh to run our Rabbinic Circle. Rabbis grappling over the issue need a safe space to talk about the issue. Those who do officiate need templates for ways to articulate their decision to their congregations, and those who don't need ideas for how to welcome and engage interfaith couples. And those on the fence need intelligent, reasoned arguments for and against.

The fact that there is a gap between the desires of the lay membership and the consciences of their rabbis further demonstrates the need for the service Rabbi Baesh will be providing. People who are Jewishly engaged, as demonstrated by their membership in Reform synagogues, want authentic, credible rabbis to officiate at their interfaith weddings and don't want to wade through the hazardous seas of the web, where it is difficult to determine who's "legit" and who's not.

We've Hired a Rabbi

The story broke today. We have hired our first rabbi. Rabbi Lev Baesh, who led a congregation in Dover, N.H., for 12 years and has taught classes for the Reform movement's Northeast region, will start July 9 as director of our Rabbinic Circle.

His role will have two goals:

1. To help couples find rabbis to officiate at their interfaith weddings and help them connect with synagogues in their local communities. This will entail responding to requests, developing our referral list, establishing standards for the inclusion of rabbis on the list and following up with couples.


2. To provide a safe space for rabbis to discuss and consider the question of officiation, without pressuring them to officiate. The enhanced Rabbinic Circle section of our site will include arguments for and against officiation, sermons from rabbis who have decided to officiate and other resources for rabbis interested in the question.

We are well aware that rabbinic officiation is one of the most controversial issues among rabbis today--even the Reform movement's rabbis are divided on the issue. We're not looking to tell rabbis to officiate, but we are looking to provide greater reliability, efficiency and integrity to the process of looking for a rabbi to officiate.

Let My People Convert!

Russian Jewish immigrants to Israel face an absurd situation. In Russia, their identity cards marked them as Jewish, and they experienced anti-Semitism in their professional and personal lives. They were reminded of their Jewishness on a regular basis, whether they liked it or not.

But once they get to Israel, if they can't confirm that their mother was Jewish, they are viewed as non-Jews--and must face a laborious conversion process to be considered as Jews. The conversion process is controlled by the Orthodox religious monopoly, which demands these "non-Jews" adopt a traditional Orthodox lifestyle. Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist conversions are not officially recognized. The rationale for such a restrictive, demanding system is that "Non-religious converts, even if their conversions were performed by Jewish organizations, will not adapt, will not become acclimatized, and will lead to a future trail of separations and tragedies," says Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, a rabbi for the conversion courts. But Rosen, like most arbiters of Jewishness in Israel, ignores the fact that half of Israelis consider themselves secular, and even the majority of those who consider themselves "traditional" are flexible about the rules of Shabbat.

Continue reading "Let My People Convert!"

Anti-Semites Who Loved the Jew, But Hated the Race

Mandy Katz of Moment magazine has written a fascinating, occasionally repulsive, story about anti-Semites who fell in love with Jews.

The big names are Hitler and Mussolini, although Hitler gets off on a technicality. The flirtatious girl he fantasized about marrying, as well as killing, was not Jewish, as he thought. Mussolini, however, was a notorious philanderer, and one of his most passionate conquests was Margherita Sarfatti, a wealthy Jew who wrote for the Socialist party paper Mussolini edited in 1911. She was part of his inner circle for nearly two decades, ghostwriting articles for him, helping him write his political diary, until the early 1930s, when Mussolini wanted to project the image of a decisive strongman.

The Jew-loving Nazi stories get even more bizarre, with Leni Riefenstahl (the filmmaker behind the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will) being romanced by an Austrian Jewish currency trader, and an Aryan Nazi officer marrying and sheltering a Jewish former law student who escaped from a slave labor camp. Their child was the only Jew known to have been born in a German hospital during the war.

The article delves into the Jewish (or at least Hebraic) loves of the Roman emporer Nero, the mentally unbalanced horror writer H.P. Lovecraft and even Wilhelm Marr, the creator of the term "anti-Semitism."

The tales aren't pretty, but they illustrate how prejudice against groups always breaks down when confronted with the messy reality of interpersonal relationships.

Half-Jewish SF Seeks Ortho Jewish SM

A. Pinsker of the New York Press has written a moving, funny story about her relationship with a self-described "post-modern Orthodox Jew" and the way his spirituality ignited her--and his dogma made him reject her.

Pinsker's father is Jewish and her mother is not, but both share a distrust of religion. She'd never dated Jewish before--"it'd just be too close to home," she says--instead opting for a rainbow of races, religions and nationalities. Meanwhile, she says, "my mother married my New York Jewish dad most likely to spite her very old-school, anti-Semitic parents."

Despite of--or perhaps because of--the lack of religion in her home, she says, "secretly, there was nothing I liked more than celebrating the Sabbath at my Orthodox neighbor's home."

Dating this hip-hop-loving guy who lived in rabbinical students' quarters helped re-awaken that fondness for Orthodox practice, but eventually she runs into the brick wall facing all Jews with non-Jewish mothers: the traditional community's denial of their Jewishness.

I'd say more, but it's worth reading. The title alone should be enough to grab you: "A semi-shiksa lusts for her ultimate fetish: A cute Jew-boy."

Intermarriage in Less Religious Countries

It's widely known that the United States is the most religious of the major industrialized countries. Weekly church attendance may be as high as 40% and the great majority of people believe in God. Even the most liberal of politicians feel obligated to affirm their faith on the campaign trail.

I'm not quite sure what the connection between intermarriage and our high level of religiosity is, but it's interesting to notice the contrasts between the U.S. and other industrialized countries. Great Britain and Canada have significantly lower levels of church attendance and yet in both, the Jewish community is much more cohesive and insular--leading to much lower rates of intermarriage than in the U.S.

Diane Flacks, author of Bear With Me, writes in the (Toronto) Globe and Mail about raising children in her intermarriage. She's Jewish, her partner is not. "Is there a more polarizing issue than the place of religion in parenting?" she asks. I would bet no American writer would ask that question. In the U.S., it's a given that religion will take a significant role in parenting.

Continue reading "Intermarriage in Less Religious Countries"

Thank God for Non-Jewish Moms

Recent research has shown that children are more frequently raised in the mother's religion than the father's religion, so when a non-Jewish mom raises a Jewish child, their family is bucking the odds. What's more, these women are often the ones driving their children to Hebrew school, reading their children Jewish children's books and buying their children dreidels. What a noble sacrifice they make to their husband's religion.

A beautiful example of such a mom is Amy Cummingham of New York, who writes about preparing for her son's bar mitzvah in The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, S.C. Cunningham is a committed Christian who attends church on a weekly basis, but agreed to raise her children Jewish because she "felt that the world could not, should not, lose any more of its radiant Jewish people." She did indeed drive her children to Hebrew school twice a week and even went so far as to work events at the synagogue. She has some goals for the bar mitzvah ceremony:

Continue reading "Thank God for Non-Jewish Moms"

We're All Intermarried

At our conference a few weeks ago, Rabbi Sam Gordon, of Con