Is It OK for Jews to Proselytize?

Is it OK for Jews to proselytize?

A terrific new article in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles tackles the question by looking at the Reform movement's "Taste of Judaism" program. "Taste" is a three-part class that teaches the basics of Judaism to anyone who is interested--Jewish, non-Jewish, interfaith partner, whatever. Since its launch in 1994, more than 75,000 people have taken the class at 450 synagogues around the country. "Taste" is typically marketed through ads in secular newspapers.

While Orthodox Judaism still discourages converts, the Reform movement has been in favor of seeking converts for decades. In 1949, Leo Baeck established a "missionary center" to train Reform leaders to teach Judaism. In 1978, Rabbi Alex Schindler called on Reform Jews to offer Judaism to those unaffiliated with a particular Christian church.

The article also points out that Judaism has not always been against proselytizing. There are even mentions of forcible conversion in the Book of Joshua. In any case, in the early centuries of the first millenium C.E., Jews were active proselytizers--up to 10 percent of the Roman Empire converted to Judaism. Only when Jews went into the Diaspora and Christianity rose did the zeal for proselytizing die.

In modern America, an increasing number of Jews understand that Judaism needs to market itself. With geographic mobility, assimilation, intermarriage and the weakening of communal and family ties, Jews can no longer expect people to stay with Judaism simply because their parents were Jewish. Judaism must compete in the free market of ideas, like every other religion and philosophy. In today's world, every Jew is a Jew-by-choice. Understood in that lens, "Taste of Judaism" is just a form of marketing.

Steve Arnold, a reporter with the Hamilton (Ont.) Spectator, converted to Judaism although his attraction went far beyond seeing an ad for "Taste for Judaism." In a fascinating first-person piece, Arnold details his 40-year journey to Judaism, beginning with his high school reporting assignment where the baptized Christian attended services at a synagogue. He writes eloquently about all the joys and hardships of being a convert, from the inchoate longing for Judaism he felt for years to the bonding with fellow Jews-to-be to the sense of loss over some cherished Christian rituals. Here's his poignant explanation of how he finally got to the place where he had to make a decision about what faith to adopt:

Like so many baby boomers, I've come late to the search for religious answers, spending the first 53 years of my life searching for "meaning" in possessions and position. During those years, getting ready for "the world to come" was always less important than reaching the next rung on a career ladder that was supposed to lead to success and security.

With time, those priorities have changed. I'm in the last quarter of my career now and there are no more rungs on the ladder. With my parents in frail health, and no children to ensure my own future, I know the family that has been such a support for so long will soon drift apart.

The Link Sink

I need to unclog the drains of some links that have been piling up over the last two weeks:

• In what can be categorized as the least surprising news of the last two weeks, the purported "agreement" between the Rabbinical Council of America and Israel's chief rabbinate on conversion standards has hit a snag. Even more unsurprising is that the Israeli rabbinate appears to be to blame, demanding that U.S. rabbis who have never served in a rabbinical court must travel to Israel where they must pass an examination. As the two sides battle it out, sincere future Jews languish in limbo.
• In a much more positive sign of intra-Jewish cooperation, the Conservative and Reform rabbinical seminaries recently announced that a few rabbinical students from each school will train and learn together as part of a pilot program. Beginning in 2008, four students each from the Reform Hebrew Union College and the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary will take part in joint classes on outreach to interfaith families, outreach to LGBT Jews, leadership development, fundraising and marketing. The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation will be funding the project.
• In late March, Robert Leiter, a fine writer for The (Philadelphia) Jewish Exponent, wrote an offensive article praising two books titled Why Marry Jewish? and Dear Rabbi, Why Can't I Marry Her? We made our thoughts known in a letter to the editor of the Exponent. It garnered this response from Rabbi Eliezer Shemtov, author of Dear Rabbi.
• The Kansas City Star has the haunting story of a half-Jewish, half-Catholic woman who once stood an arm's length away from Adolf Hitler when she was a child:

  “He had this tremendous look and charisma about him, and he looked right into our eyes,” she said. “I saw his eyes. They seemed like they were violet to me. They had a dark, purplish appearance.”

Posted by Micahs at 10:44 AM | Comments (1)

Intermarriage as a Form of Outreach?

We often speak of Jewish outreach to intermarried families, where progressive organizations and programs can serve as a bridge between the intermarried and the Jewish community. But it works both ways. The intermarried can serve as a bridge between the Jewish community and the non-Jewish community. Intermarriage can actually be a form of outreach to the general secular world.

Rabbi Kerry Olitzky elaborates on this notion in an op-ed for the New Jersey Jewish News:

Numerous Jewish community relations councils (throughout the country and in cities of all sizes) have worked tirelessly to nurture tolerance among various segments of the non-Jewish population. Some of their efforts have been technically defensive but most of the time they have followed the notion that education through familiarity is the key to promoting tolerance. So they make sure that people in the community learn about the rhythms and idiosyncrasies of Jewish life, beginning with simple things such as the rituals surrounding Shabbat, kosher dietary laws, and the timing of the Jewish holidays. All of this is a sincere effort to make members of the Jewish community seem less like "others" or "outsiders" by actively sharing our rites and beliefs with people from other religious backgrounds.

In an effort to find friends in the community to make their work easier, we are missing the proverbial answer that is right in front of us: all of the non-Jewish relatives of those who have intermarried. These relatives can seamlessly be incorporated into Jewish celebrations and life-cycle events, and we know we can count on them to support us. In an era when anti-Semitic events seem to be increasing, we should be able to use all of the resources at our disposal. Why not seek out interfaith families and their extended family members when facing a community crisis or even when there is a need to communicate basic information, including the back story in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?

In a well-done segment on intermarriage for PBS's "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly" (available in both video and transcript format), Saul Gonzalez interviews voices on all sides of the debate in the Jewish community, including Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, author of Making Intermarriage Work. Reuben seems to share a similar perspective on the possibilities of intermarriage to open people's eyes to the "other":

It is the natural outgrowth of having a society that is open and free and accepting, where there aren't the same barriers that shut down communities and make people live in ghettos and make people live only with their own religion, or their own race, or their own culture, or their own kind, whatever that might be. Every interfaith relationship is like a pebble in the pond. There are ripples that go out that touch many more people than that couple and their kids.

Engaging the relatives of non-Jewish members of intermarried couples may be the next frontier in outreach. By befriending the extended families of non-Jewish partners, the Jewish community just may find the bigger project--raising Jewish children--to be a little easier than it was before.

Our First Ever Conference of Outreach Professionals

Last week was blog-free because I was at InterfaithFamily.com's first-ever conference, a retreat for outreach professionals called "Nurturing Outreach: Embracing the Other, Taking Care of Ourselves." Taking place at the Capital Camps and Retreat Center in Waynesboro, Pa., it was the first-ever national conference for professionals working exclusively in outreach to interfaith families.

More than 50 people attended, including:

• every regional director of outreach for the Reform movement;


• the national director of outreach for the Reform movement, Kathy Kahn;


• Rabbi Chuck Simon, the head of the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs, who has been doing pioneering outreach work in the Conservative movement for years;


• Rabbi Samuel Gordon, the founding rabbi of Congregation Sukkat Shalom in Illinois, a congregation that caters to the needs of interfaith families;


• Rosanne Levitt, the creator of Interfaith Connection at the JCC of San Francisco, one of the first outreach programs in the country (1986);


• Rabbi Gary Schoenberg and Rabbi Laurie Rutenberg, the creators of Gesher, an innovative 17-year-old outreach program in Portland, Ore., that immerses unaffiliated Jews in home-based Jewish celebrations;


• and other longtime veterans of the field, like Debbie Antonoff, Dawn Kepler, Karen Kushner and Lynn Wolfe.

Among the highlights were a Biblical text study of midrash relating to intermarriage, led by Rabbi Brian Field; a session on research on outreach and intermarriage, led by Dr. Sherry Israel of Brandeis University; and a model outreach program visioning session. One of the most exciting developments was the broad-based support--the hunger, really--for a national organization of outreach professionals. Many of the people who work in outreach work in isolation, with little professional respect and for not much pay, and an organization could help them connect and share information in a way they haven't done before. It could also potentially advocate for them, and the field of outreach in general, among major Jewish funders. As Eve Coulson, former assistant director of the Jewish Outreach Institute and IFF board member, said at the conference, we need to make outreach a fixture in Federation funding, like day schools, camps and Israel.

The Perils of Intermarriage--'70s-Style

Let me paint a picture: It's the age of lava lamps and rollerskates. Lynyrd Skynyrd rules the airwaves. America has yet to discover the gritty urban raps of the Sugarhill Gang. It's an innocent time, the '70s, a time before intermarriage was commonplace, a time when a Jewish man and a Catholic woman would have to be crazy to fall in love. Can their passion survive the anti-Semitic glares of their neighbors? The disapproving tweed jackets of their fathers? The confused sideburns of their friends?

Eli Valley, Jewcy.com's talented humorist, has the answer.

In his recent post, "When Jewish David Met Irish Eileen," Eli analyzes a 9-part series from the obscure '70s comic book series "Just Married." The storyline? An Orthodox Jew--who never wears a yarmulke but is partial to turtlenecks--falls in love with a devout Catholic woman. A typically hilarious passage from his analysis:

Although they have already eloped, David and Eileen get remarried, twice, to please their parents – first in a church, and then in a synagogue. In the storyline’s solitary visit to a Jewish house of worship, we glean fascinating insights into Orthodox Jewish customs – the burning incense, the rabbi wearing a circular necklace, the resemblance of the rabbi to Jesus, the prayer book inscribed with a Jewish Star drawn to resemble a Pentagram. It is as if the comic book is asking, are not all religions the same? Especially if they all look like Christianity? Finally, the comic book reveals that in Orthodox Jewish weddings, it is customary for the rabbi to make out with the bride, particularly if she is a Gentile.

Now, if in the wake of the Don Imus affair, you're wondering what is acceptable to joke about and laugh at, and what is not, Peter Moore, a self-described "half-Jewish" ("I always tell people that I'm not really one of the Chosen People, but I am an Alternate.") actor and director, created a list of guidelines for telling jokes in the PC age, in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune.

Jewish Identity in Anti-Semitic Lands

Russia and England provide interesting contrasts when it comes to anti-Semitism. Both have rather shameful histories of Jewish persecution--anti-Jewish pogroms were a common feature of 19th century Russian life, Jews were banned from England for more than 350 years from 1290-1656--and both retain legacies of anti-Semitism. In Russia, Jews are openly discriminated against and blamed for the ills of society, while in Britain, anti-Semitic statements are surprisingly commonplace.

Two recent stories illustrate how the particular cultures of these countries can affect people's sense of religious and cultural identity. The JTA tells the fascinating story of Bella Leidentel, the 73-year-old matriarch of a a small Jewish community in Russia's Far East. As a child she doesn't remember much anti-Semitism, but after World War II, she noticed that people began blaming Jews for the war. As a young woman, she found anti-Semitism so overt that she made a decision to turn her back on Judaism. She told people her Jewish-looking features were actually Armenian.

"I promised myself that there wouldn't be a single Jew in my family," she said... without even a whisper of regret. "So I married a Russian."

The only problem was, the Russian man she found was a Judeophile. When she wanted to get a nose job to remove her most distinctive Jewish feature, he told her he wouldn't allow her back in the house if she went through with it. "He read heavily about Jewish culture and history, and passed on the information to Leidental with pride," says the article. She ended up embracing her Judaism, and becoming a fixture in her local Jewish community. In a bizarre way, intermarriage was an antidote to anti-Semitism.

The story of Julian Anderson, a British composer, is quite different, according to the Hampstead and Highgate Express. His grandmother came to England after fleeing anti-Semitism in Lithuania.

Julian describes himself as a half-Jewish lapsed Anglican who is now attracted to the spirituality of Buddhism. "My father, though nominally a Litvak, was agnostic and I became an adherent of Anglicanism in my late 20s, though when it set out its doctrinal attitudes on certain issues that I felt strongly about and with which I could not accept, I moved away from the Church."

One wonders if English anti-Semitism didn't have something to do with his drifting away from Judaism. Ironically, despite having no religious attachment to Judaism, Peterson has made a name for himself with works inspired by Eastern European folk music. His most-performed work is the "Khorovod," which is greatly influenced by the hora. This is an interesting demonstration of the way Jewish culture has undergone a resurgence in modern-day Europe while Jewish religion continues to struggle.

Israeli Conversion Impasse Broken--Sort of

The (New York) Jewish Week broke the news last week that the Chief Rabbinate of Israel has agreed to recognize all conversions by the Rabbinical Council of America, the largest Orthodox rabbinical association in North America. In exchange, the RCA will set up regional conversion courts that will follow the strict standards requested by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.

I've written about the sorry state of affairs for would-be converts in Israel before, and this is welcome news. Would-be converts from the U.S. who are looking to undergo an Orthodox conversion can now be confident that their conversion will be recognized in Israel. At the same time, there are numerous groups that this decision doesn't help, including: those who converted before the official network of regional courts were established; those who went through the state-funded conversion academy in Israel; those who converted under Conservative or Reform auspices; and those who converted under Orthodox auspices outside of North America.

While potential converts still face numerous obstacles in Israel, the Orthodox in America, to their credit, are beginning to open up toward non-Jewish spouses looking to convert. Traditionally, Orthodox rabbis did not accept intermarriage as a legitimate reason to convert, but Eternal Jewish Family, a non-profit based out of New York, is looking to change that.

The group is holding a seminar in Phoenix May 13-15 on "Universally Accepted Conversion in Interfaith Marriage."