August 31, 2007
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.
A while back The Jerusalem Post wrote an op-ed arguing that Israel needs to do more to attract American visitors beyond the three core groups: Orthodox Jews, evangelicals and birthright-ers. One of the trips it proposes--and one we were thinking about helping organize last summer before the war broke out in Lebanon--is a trip for interfaith couples. The Post's expectation is that a trip to Israel would "widen their faith-based definition of Judaim to include historical concepts of peoplehood, land, state, language and culture." It will certainly do that, but a less agenda-oriented way to look at is that Israel is a fascinating place for people of all religions: some of the world's holiest sites in four religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Ba'hai) are packed into a country smaller than New Jersey.
The Forward has a wonderfully amusing interview with Alessandro Piperno, the Italian author of The Worst Intentions, which is being billed as Portnoy's Complaint on the Tiber. Piperno is the son of a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, as is his protagonist, Daniel. The book has been controversial in Italy for its portrayal of Rome's Jewish upper class as hedonistic and self-abosrbed. Says Piperno, "After an endless series of books written in the footsteps of Primo Levi, here we find ourselves with a half-Jew who tells the story of a Jewish family who, to exorcise the memory of extermination, chooses hedonism, wealth, sex-mania. Evidently, in Italy, this is intolerable."
In France, a rabbi who married a Protestant pastor has been fired from his post. Interestingly, Jonathan Levy, 53, and his wife, Catherine Stoerkel, 35, met when Stoerkel was investigating her past and found out she had Jewish family origins.
Posted by Micahs at 10:21 AM
| Comments (1)
July 24, 2007
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.
On a totally unrelated note, I found this interesting piece in The New York Sun about Ataturk's Jewish roots. Ataturk was the founder of modern Turkey, a fierce secularist and nationalist who banned any public display of the Muslim faith. As interesting as the search for his father's Jewish roots is as a detective story, I feel the entire article is undermined by the author's disdain for the recently elected Islamic Justice and Development Party.
The Islamic Justice and Development Party is the only functioning, democratic moderate Islamic political organization in the Middle East, as far as I know. To say that "The Islamic counterrevolution has won the day in Turkey" is an incredible insult to a party that has been remarkably focused on economic growth, bureaucratic reform and compromise with the old-line secular establishment. If a party anything remotely like the IJDP achieved popularity in any of the Middle East hotspots like Iraq, Iran, Syria or Lebanon, we'd be jumping for joy.
The IJDP's electoral victory isn't a strictly intermarriage-related issue, but I think it's important for non-Jews in relationships with Jews to see that all Jews aren't instinctively hostile to any public expression of Islam.
Posted by Micahs at 10:05 AM
| Comments (0)
July 23, 2007
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.
Posted by Micahs at 03:27 PM
| Comments (0)
January 17, 2007
A Disney Star and a Samoan Fighter
While many critics doubt whether the children of intermarriage will identify as Jewish over the long term, at IFF we constantly run into examples of children from mixed marriages who identify as Jewish.
Two interesting recent examples include:
Ashley Tisdale, who was in the hit Disney film High School Musical. According to the Detroit Jewish News:
Ashley's Mother, Lisa Morris Tisdale, is Jewish (her father Mike is not), and Ashley identifies as Jewish. Her family attends High Holiday services at a Los Angeles-area synagogue.
Cooper Andrews, a 21-year-old stuntman in Atlanta. The son of a Samoan father and a Hungarian Jewish mother, he manages a martial arts team, the Fading Fists, that works in movies, and is a part-time bouncer at a bar in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta. His profile was in the Atlanta Jewish Times; unfortunately, it's not online.
In other news, our friend Kathy Kahn, the national director of outreach and membership for the Union of Reform Judaism, will be the scholar-in-residence this weekend (Jan. 19-21) at Suburban Temple - Kol Ami, a Reform synagogue in Beachwood, Ohio. This article in the Cleveland Jewish News details her thoughts on the importance of reaching out to the intermarried.
Posted by Micahs at 09:13 AM
| Comments (0)
December 14, 2006
Responding to the Critics
As we had hoped, the authors of the 2005 Greater Boston Jewish Community Study responded to the op-ed by Steven Cohen, Jack Ukeles and Ron Miller questioning the findings of the Boston study. Their letter in today's Forward is short and sweet but makes an essential point: unlike the demographic studies of Ukeles and Miller, which ask about children's "identification," the Boston study asked only about children's religion--which is actually "a more stringent criterion for Jewish identification."
In the same issue, Bethamie Horowitz, research director for the Mandel Foundation, a Jewish foundation that trains leaders in the non-profit world, has an interesting piece charting the evolution of the sociology of intermarriage from the 1940s to today. Titled "Are We More Than Just a Category?", the piece not only looks at why intermarriage has increased (a familiar subject) but why intermarrieds today are open to making Jewish choices (a less familiar subject). Here's her explanation--and conclusion--on the second issue:
The second major change that makes intermarriage today very different is that the credit rating of Jews as a group in American society has radically improved in comparison to its valuation half a century ago. Many people with previously hidden or partial Jewish backgrounds are now open to, and even seek out, their Jewishness. They have become truly interested in Judaism, indicating that there is no longer a unidirectional pull away from Jewish life.
In this context, intermarriage does not in and of itself rule out a serious Jewish life; that depends on social climate as well as the individual’s and family’s commitments. It’s time to realize that intermarriage isn’t the major threat. Rather, it is indifference — viewing one’s heritage as simply a fact of one’s background, without a sense of its power or potential as a guiding force — that is the more fundamental problem. The irony of our hyper-focus on intermarriage is that it has kept us focused on the boundaries, and distracted us from the more important issues of meaning.
In other news, Julie Wiener is at it again, writing another terrific column, this one on balancing Christmas and Hanukkah, with a nice shout-out to our recent December Holidays Survey.
And another friend of IFF, Laurel Snyder, who compiled and edited Half/Life: Jewish-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes, has started another blog called faithhacker, on Jewcy.com. For those keeping score at home, that's her third website, alongside jewishyirishy.com (also a blog) and Killing the Buddha (a web mag).
Also, the Detroit Free Press article on interfaith families that quotes us was picked up by the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel.
Assuming there isn't more news on the Boston study front, tomorrow I'm going to do a round-up of stories on the December dilemma from the secular press. (And it won't be the last one, I assure you...)
Posted by Micahs at 09:41 AM
| Comments (0)
October 27, 2006
The Link Sink
Some links for y'all:
Sue Fishkoff's Hadassah magazine package on converting non-Jewish spouses is now available online. It includes quotes from IFF President and Publisher Ed Case.
For several years, I was a loyal reader of Jewsweek.com, which was founded by Binyamin Cohen. But when Cohen left Jewsweek to help start up Atlanta Jewish Life--which is easily the hippest, most accessible Jewish magazine in the country (sorry Heeb)--Jewsweek fell into disrepair. Jewcy.com took it over, but every time you visited Jewsweek.com it said something like "Come back soon for the new Jewsweek!" Finally, after a year-and-a-half hiatus, Jewsweek is back! It's not quite what it was when Cohen was running things, but it still is a solid spot to find edgy and hip Jewish stories. Like this one from Israeli Jewsweek columnist Orit, on dating a non-Jewish man for the first time. And if you're interested in a contrary perspective from an equally hip, but more serious perspective, read this critique of Orit on Jewlicious.
Hillel has a profile on National Public Radio broadcaster Scott Simon, who is the child of a Catholic mother and Jewish father and also has adopted a non-Jewish child from China.
Posted by Micahs at 09:53 AM
| Comments (0)
October 12, 2006
The Link Sink
A little catch-up on some relevant stories from the last two weeks or so:
The j., the Jewish news weekly of Northern California has another great intermarriage-related article. It's a feature on an interfaith discussion group led by Helena McMahon, who runs Interfaith Connection in San Francisco. Founded 20 years ago, Interfaith Connection is one of the granddaddies of outreach to interfaith families.
I'm not sure if they were inspired by Associated Press reporter Rachel Zoll's recent piece on conversion, but the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram recently ran a piece on the Conservative movement's push to convert non-Jewish spouses.
We've written letters to a number of Jewish papers, including the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, about the wonderful JTA piece on rabbis who used the High Holidays as an opportunity to honor non-Jewish spouses who are raising their children as Jews. Here is the text of the letter we've sent:
Dear editor,
The key to the growth and vitality of the Jewish community is interfaith families deciding to raise their children Jewish. But for interfaith families to make this choice, they need to be encouraged, welcomed and even occasionally thanked.
That’s why it was so wonderful to read Sue Fishkoff’s article on honoring non-Jews during the High Holidays services (“The Way to the Bimah,” September 21). Non-Jews who decide to embrace the Jewish community and raise their children as Jewish are making a significant personal choice; they are choosing to sacrifice the passing on of their own religion for the sake of their partner’s religion, and for the sake of the Jewish community at large. They deserve to be honored. As Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, has said and written numerous times, they are “heroes” of Jewish life. It is great to see that a growing number of congregations throughout the country agree with him.
-Micah Sachs, Online Managing Editor, InterfaithFamily.com
-Ed Case, President and Publisher, InterfaithFamily.com
The Jewish News of Greater Phoenix ran a sidebar to the story where they interviewed nine rabbis and one temple administrator at Phoenix-area synagogues. Of the 10 synagogues surveyed, only one has ever used a service as an opportunity to thank non-Jewish spouses. The JTA piece made this phenomenon seem like a bit of a national trend, but I suspect it's not particuarly common.
But if you're curious what a sermon thanking non-Jewish spouses looks like, check out this 2004 sermon from Rabbi Janet Marder of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, Calif.
We told you about the flawed article on interfaith dating in the Jewish Journal North of Boston yesterday. We sent them this letter to the editor as well:
Dear editor,
Susan Jacobs has written an interesting but flawed article on Jews who specifically seek out non-Jews to date (“The allure of interfaith dating,” October 6).
There’s nothing wrong with looking at this particular subset of Jews, but to do so without acknowledging that they represent the minority of Jews in interfaith relationships is just irresponsible. Despite Susan Jacobs’ insinuations, very few Jews end up dating non-Jews because they are intrigued by “the mystery of the unknown” or are looking for “a way to rebel against [their] parents or society.” They date non-Jews because they live among them, work among them and socialize among them.
By not recognizing that those turned on by “shiksappeal” (her word, not mine) are in the minority, Jacobs’ article makes all Jews in interfaith relationships look shallow, or self-hating or bigoted. The vast majority of Jews in interfaith relationships are just like Jews in intrafaith relationships: regular people who looking for a love in a world where Jews are a tiny minority.
-Micah Sachs
Online Managing Editor, InterfaithFamily.com
Our letter to the Jerusalem Post regarding Binyamin Netanyahu's comments on intermarriage was also just published.
Posted by Micahs at 10:03 AM
| Comments (0)
September 13, 2006
A Muslim-Jewish Wedding
It appears that we're not the only ones interested in Muslim-Jewish relationships.
Ha'aretz recently published this story about the wedding of Hadar Harris, a Jewish human rights lawyer, and Rahim Sabir, a Moroccan Muslim who was one of the United Nations' first human rights observers in Darfur. This follows a New York Times story about their wedding.
In the interest of full disclosure--and self-promotion--we should note that Hadar is a loyal reader and supporter of InterfaithFamily.com. Congratulations, Hadar and Sabir!
Posted by Micahs at 08:45 AM
| Comments (0)
A Muslim-Jewish Wedding
It appears that we're not the only ones interested in Muslim-Jewish relationships.
Ha'aretz recently published this story about the wedding of Hadar Harris, a Jewish human rights lawyer, and Rahim Sabir, a Moroccan Muslim who was one of the United Nations' first human rights observers in Darfur. This follows a New York Times story about their wedding.
In the interest of full disclosure--and self-promotion--we should note that Hadar is a loyal reader and supporter of InterfaithFamily.com. Congratulations, Hadar and Sabir!
Posted by Micahs at 08:45 AM
| Comments (0)
|
|
