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.

Interfaith Community was founded in 1987 by a small group of Jewish-Christian families in New York City who felt rejected by churches and synagogues for their choice to practice two religions at home. The group has grown into a small organization with several chapters in New York state and one in Colorado, and offers counseling and support for couples, a formal educational curriculum for children, educational seminars for adults and some religious services and celebrations in both traditions. According to a recent report from a symposium the group held in New York in March, "[Interfaith Community] sees itself as helping to inspire children and adults to take religion seriously."

About 100 people attended the symposium. Attendees included: interfaith families; adult children of the organization's founding families; heads of congregational religious schools; Christian and Jewish clergy; and faculty and students from seminaries and universities. There was one rabbi, Rabbi David Posner of Temple Emanu-El, a major Reform synagogue in New York. Surprisingly, there was both a professor and student from the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative movement's rabbinical school. Said Kate O'Brien, the coordinator of the symposium and a graduate student at JTS, "We've brought ourselves out of the safety of our communities, and we are taking a risk."

The conclusions of the symposium include:

• There is no typical interfaith family.


• Interfaith couples believe in the importance of cultivating mutual respect.


• Many interfaith couples found that the fact of interfaith difference in their relationship led to them taking their own religious affiliation more seriously. Said one Jewish partner: "I'm more Jewish than I've ever been, because it's all on me."


• Interfaith education can be, but doesn't have to be, confusing for children. Not sure I agree, but if you're going to try to do both, it's better to do it in the structured context of a community than do it on your own.


• Some clergy and religious educators regard the treatment of interfaith families as a matter of "justice."


• Even the most open-minded progressive clergy feel torn between the desire to be open and welcoming and their duty to preserve the distinctiveness and authenticity of their own tradition.


• Adults in interfaith relationships should have more opportunities for religious education. "Their understanding of their own traditions--let alone that of their partners'--tends to be limited," says the report.


• "The long-term impact of educating children in two religious traditions is uncharted and needs to be studied." Good point.


• Seminaries should develop curriculum to prepare future clergy to work with interfaith families.

While I don't agree with the premise of the IFC's work, I do respect their desire to prevent interfaith families from "making it up as they go along." But as they say, we still don't know what the long-term effects or raising children in "both" is. Anecdotally, we've seen that it is detrimental to children's emotional health and often leads to a default adoption of the more mainstream faith.

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:

• Catholic theology no longer takes what Father Cuenin called a “magical” approach to baptism – it is not essential to salvation, but instead a welcoming into a particular religious community. But even non-religious Catholics expect and want their children baptized – which seemed similar to me to Jews wanting their sons circumcised.
• Catholic theology now holds that it is wrong for children to be baptized without their parents’ consent, even in emergency situations. But we still hear the occasional story that a Catholic grandparent had secretly baptized a grandchild over the kitchen sink.
• It used to be the case that once a person had a Catholic baptism, he or she was considered a Catholic forever. Now, if a Catholic takes another religion, he or she is no longer “bound as a Catholic.”
• An interfaith couple wanting a Catholic wedding no longer has to promise to raise their children Catholic. The Catholic partner has to promise not to give up his or her own faith, and also to provide some exposure to Catholicism to any children. But, according to Father Cuenin, the requirement is worded so as not to preclude the Catholic parent from raising children as Jews.

Another fascinating part of the day was the juxtaposition of a panel of grandparents and couples (including a raised Orthodox Jewish father, his Catholic wife, and their very adorable little boys converted to Judaism under Conservative auspices). One of the parents on the panel used an expression I hadn’t heard before: “ceremonial bris,” referring to a ceremony held on the eighth day after birth, but for a boy who was already circumcised in the hospital. Later in the day, Rabbi Dan Judson reviewed a series of halachic rulings on just that situation – whether an “improperly circumcised” child, i.e. one who had a “medical” circumcision before the eighth day, could properly have a naming ceremony in a synagogue, or whether hatafat dam brit (a ritual drawing of a drop of blood), would be required. It felt like there was a wide gap between the legal requirements and where the lay panelist was, in terms of clearly wanting what she understood to be something very much like a bris for purposes of welcoming her child into her family and her tradition.

In the course of discussing whether a patrilineal male Jew would need to convert to Judaism (with immersion in a mikveh and hatafat dam brit) in order to have a conservative rabbi officiate at his or her wedding, a conservative rabbi made an interesting distinction between Jewish identity and Jewish status. In his view, a patrilineal Jew who was raised in the Reform movement and regarded himself as Jewish clearly has a Jewish identity, but in the eyes of the Conservative movement does not have the Jewish status that conversion would confer. The rabbi used an analogy – I’m not sure how well this works – of a car driven without a state inspection sticker – it’s a car and it drives but it isn’t “legal” for all purposes.

One concrete lesson I took from the day: young couples may not be familiar with Jewish birth rituals, or the significance of a Jewish name, especially if they don’t have friends who have had Jewish birth ceremonies – and this can be as true of the Jewish partner, as of the partner who is not Jewish. There is a great need for model ceremonies – like our Guide to Birth Ceremonies for Interfaith Families and for information geared to grandparents, both Jewish and not Jewish.

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:

I want the bar mitzvah ceremony to be memorable, meaningful, imbued with gratitude and love. I want the whole day to be authentically ours, as well as in keeping with what millions of Jews have done before us. I want to bring myself, as a supportive non-Jewish parent, to the table ... or to the Torah, proud of my son and his Jewish heritage. I want to show that Jewish-Christian intermarriage won't complete what Hitler started and that, at our house at least, faith breeds faith, and love is all that matters.

Like most moms, she worries about whether the party is going to be too ostentatious--"too much Martha Stewart... and not enough shtetl," she says. But it's her husband who pushes her to involve her heritage more in the planning. And she does so in a lovely way, which I won't reveal.

You could argue that Susan Ivers of Montgomery, Ohio, has maken an even greater sacrifice. When she and her Jewish husband Joel got married, they decided to raise the children in her Lutheran faith, mainly because she was more religious than Joel. Their first child was baptized but their second child was not as Joel started to have second thoughts. Then their second child attended a bat mitzvah "and was mesmerized." He pleaded to go to temple services with his dad, and they relented. When they were pregnant with their third child, they decided to raise all their children as Jews. So not only did Susan make a huge compromise for the sake of her husband, she also felt the rejection of her faith from her children. She says the healing process took years.

In the Jewish community, the simple "solution" to intermarriage--and the one we promote--is for couples to decide to raise their children Jewish. But we should never forget the enormous sacrifices that non-Jewish parents, especially mothers, have to make for this to happen.

How to Be a Good Jewish Grandparent

Julie Wiener's new column focuses on the Jewish Outreach Institute's new book, Twenty Things for Grandparents of Interfaith Grandchildren to Do (And Not to Do) to Nurture Jewish Identity in Their Grandchildren. One of the book's main points is that grandparents can be a powerful model of Jewish identity for their interfaith grandchildren, but they must respect their children's boundaries.

The book is an answer to the many people who call the Institute when an adult child intermarries, eager for future grandchildren to be raised Jewish yet nervous about appearing meddlesome. My friend “Leah” whose brother recently married a Buddhist woman, tells me that her mother feels so awkward that she frequently tries (to her daughter’s annoyance) to make Leah a go-between, asking her to “remind him that Rosh HaShanah is coming.”

“There’s a general sense of not knowing what to do and feeling paralyzed,” Rabbi Olitzky says, noting that the new book offers “optimism,” as well as concrete suggestions. Those include throwing “the best holiday parties ever”; fostering a positive relationship with your grandchild’s parents and, if possible, offering to help pay for things like Jewish summer camp or other Jewish activities.

Children--and their parents--will respond best to organic activities, ones that don't feel forced upon them. If you weren't Jewishly engaged before your intermarried child had children and then all of a sudden start nagging your kids about holidays and Hebrew school, you probably won't get anywhere. But if Judaism is an important part of your life, and people know it, your grandchildren are more likely to respond. Wiener says:

The book’s best advice, I think, is to “be the best Jew you can be.” You can’t share a passion you don’t actually have, and the more you immerse yourself in Jewish life — whether lighting Shabbat candles, studying Talmud or volunteering for the local federation — the more substantive and meaningful your Jewish identity is going to be. Plus, even if it doesn’t influence your grandchildren, it just might enrich your own life. I will never share my grandmother’s enthusiasm for Yiddish jokes or whitefish salad, but I’m glad she gets pleasure from them.

Laurel Snyder, author of Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes, looks at the issue from a slightly different angle in a recent posting on her blog, Faithhacker. She points out how it's important for intermarried people to explain their boundaries to their parents:

Because (in the best cases of intermarriage) our generation may be creating new models for the Jewish family. We may be sitting in therapy, learning to communicate, and finding new expressions of shared ground to bridge the religious gap. We may be setting clear boundaries.

But our parents are... well, old. And they're used to things being done a certain way. And most of the time, they really do just want to help and support us... but they don't understand the lives we're constructing. And they don't want to "intrude" a lot of the time. But they don't know what crosses the line.

How can they, if we don't tell them?

I expect in the coming years that we'll see significant growth in outreach programming directed to the parents of intermarried children.

Thoughts from Outreach Workshop on Death and Mourning

Post by Ronnie Friedland, Web Magazine Editor:

I attended a fascinating conference, Comforting the Bereaved: Issues of Loss and Mourning in the Interfaith Family, an Outreach Training Institute program led by The Union for Reform Judaism, Northeast Council, which was organized and run by Paula Brody on Wednesday, March 28. The conference had varied interesting speakers who spoke about nuances of interfaith mourning I'd never considered before.

An intermarried woman spoke of two funerals she had attended recently, one for her grandfather, the other for her Jewish husband’s grandmother. The speaker, a non-Jew, mentioned that her family is not comfortable expressing their emotions, unlike her husband’s family, which is. These differences were manifest in the different mourning rituals for these funerals she attended. Her family was very comfortable with gathering for a family dinner the night before her grandfather’s funeral, then attending the funeral and then returning to their normal lives the day after the funeral. The long shiva period for her husband’s grandmother, and all the emotions expressed, made her uncomfortable, and she felt overwhelmed.

Jews-by-choice spoke of the emotional complexities of arranging funerals for loved ones from their non-Jewish family, how feelings they had had of ambiguous loss are amplified at the time of bereavement. In addition, one mentioned how a member of his congregation left a basin of water and towels outside his home for when he returned from the Christian funeral, and how affirming this was for him of his Jewish identity. Another mentioned the loneliness of loss for Jews-by-choice, who don’t have Jewish family members to attend shiva with them. One spoke of the comfort of having Jewish mourning rituals a requirement for him.

A Jewish grandmother spoke of the funeral for her non-Jewish step-granddaughter, and how painful it was for her not to be allowed to see the casket lowered into the ground, not to have that finality.

Rabbis spoke of difficult mourning situations they have been faced with--such as being asked to perform a funeral for someone who had converted to Judaism for 40 years and then returned to their Christian origins but wanted a Jewish presence at their funeral, and other comparable dilemmas.

One rabbi had sent out a survey to members of his congregation asking what they want in their eulogies, but realizes now that he didn’t take into account the complex needs of interfaith families and now needs to send another survey. In our packet was a very helpful survey for taking into account the needs of interfaith families.

A rabbi mentioned that at the time of death people need faith connections, and the responses they get from clergy can draw them into the religion or push them away.

A director of a Jewish funeral home spoke of trying to meet all the needs of her clients, but that these needs had changed dramatically over the last 20 years. One example was planning a funeral for the parent of a Jew and a Buddhist, and the Buddhist wanted Buddhist priests coming in with drums and bells... the director found a way in one instance to allow this in the service in the chapel, but not at the graveside service. In another similar instance, the director found a non-Jewish funeral home for the service with the Buddhist instruments so as not to disturb another Orthodox Jewish funeral.
Meeting the needs of traditional Jews, as well as the varied interfaith family needs, can be a challenge.

Stanley Kaplan, executive director of the Jewish Cemetery Association of Massachusetts, spoke about the enormous demand for burial space for intermarried families. Land that had been set aside to meet the needs of these families for 35 years was sold in four years... Much more land is needed. His conclusion: When Judaism is made accessible for the 50% of unaffiliated Jews, they will utilize it.

Father Walter Cuenin, former pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians, in Newton, Mass., addressed the conference and mentioned something important for interfaith families to know: a new prayer has been added to the last rites given to Catholics--it is a prayer for those who had not been baptized and shows that anyone can get into heaven--they need not have been baptized first.

Fr. Cuenin also spoke of similarities between Jewish and Christian rituals: All Souls’ or Saints’ Day is an annual remembrance of the dead, on Nov. 1 and 2. Catholic family members also light candles for the deceased on the anniversary of their death, as do Jews.

Finally, vignettes were discussed, including:

1. A Jew-by-choice is in your congregation. When his father dies, how will your congregation support him? Will it allow him to purchase a memorial plaque in the synagogue? What if the deceased was his cousin or sibling, as opposed to his father?
2. What if a Jewish congregant dies and her non-Jewish husband is left to mourn her? How will the congregation help him? Will the husband be counted in the shiva minyan? Will the husband still be considered part of the congregation?
3. If an intermarried couple, new members of the congregation, lose a child, would the rabbi co-officiate at the funeral with an Episcopalian priest?
4. What if the family of a single Jew-by-choice wants a non-Jewish funeral for that person? What can the rabbi do if there is no Jewish family? What if there is a Jewish child?
5. What if a Jewish child wants to mourn Jewishly for his non-Jewish grandfather?

April Aggravation? The Spring Situation?

Sue Fishkoff calls it "April aggravation." We call it the "spring situation." Whatever you call it, there's something to it. It's the annual conflict between Easter and Passover in interfaith families, and the JTA's Fishkoff has written a story about our survey of interfaith families juggling the two holidays.

The survey specifically looked at interfaith families raising their children exclusively in Judaism, and we found results both familiar and surprising. Generally, they negotiated the holidays in the same way they negotiated the December holidays: they celebrated more Jewish rituals, kept the holidays separate and saw the Jewish holiday as more religious than the Christian one. But once we started slicing up the population, we found some interesting results. There was no difference in Passover behaviors between families where the woman is Jewish vs. families where the woman isn't Jewish, but there were significant differences in the Easter behaviors, especially "secular" rituals like decorating Easter eggs and participating in an Easter egg hunt. There were also significant differences between Jewish and Christian respondents on their level of comfort with, and anticipation of, Easter.

Not the Sunday School You Remember

The Washington Jewish Week had a very interesting article yesterday about a new, non-traditional Sunday school starting at a synagogue in Maryland.

It's interesting for a number of reasons: first off, the impetus for the new school came from a woman whose daughter is married to a Catholic man and has two children. The fact that a grandmother was looking for ways to communicate Jewish heritage to her interfaith grandchildren highlights a phenomenon that we expect to see more of in the coming years. We expect to see grandparents take an increasing role in the Jewish education of their grandchildren as the grandparents are often the population most concerned about passing on Jewish heritage.

Second, the Sunday school, called The Country Cheder, truly is off the beaten path. It's located at a synagogue, the Am Kolel Sanctuary and Renewal Center in Beallsville, that's out in the country and doubles as a spiritual retreat. The program of the Sunday school will be radically different than most: parents will go to school at the same time as the kids, at times learning together with their children. The rabbi, David Shneyer, hopes to use the synagogue's natural setting as an educational tool.

This approach could be very appealing to intermarried parents, many of whom are wary of traditional Hebrew school. By combining education of the parents with education of the kids, the school is providing an opportunity for non-Jewish parents to learn about Judaism in a structured setting. The Country Cheder has something to offer to both the Jewish partner and non-Jewish partner in an interfaith marriage.

The Entire Lifecycle, in Three Articles

Three interesting articles today, each focusing on a different stage in the lifecycle of an interfaith family:

Steven Cohen Talks

The coverage of Steven Cohen's A Tale of Two Jewries continues, with an audio interview with Cohen by JTA editor Lisa Hostein and an op-ed on outreach and intermarriage from Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research.

Responding to a question about what the most "frightening impact" of intermarriage is, Cohen says, "The most frightening impact is that we haven't yet figured out a way to keep the children... and grandchildren of intermarriage Jewish." He says the communal response to the problem should have two prongs: persuading Jews to marry Jews, and persuading intermarried couples to raise their children exclusively Jewish. He says he has a mixed opinion on outreach. Some outreach, he says, is great because it brings intermarried couples closer to Judaism, but some he says, "advocates a type of lifestyle that blends Judaism and Christianity." But he also says, "It's hard to attribute anything, for well or for good, to outreach." He says there is no evidence that outreach has helped bring intermarried couples closer to Judaism.

Finally, when asked what's new about his recommendations, he says he's advocating for three new ideas: one, getting Jews who are already receiving Jewish education to receive more (which he characterizes as different than getting unaffiliated Jews who receive no Jewish education to receive some); two, financially supporting young adults who are pioneering creative expressions of Judaism in culture, spirituality and social justice, specifically suggesting the creation of a World Jewish Peace Corps; and three, experimenting with community-funded rabbis whose sole job is to respond to the "pent-up demand" for people who want to convert.

It's important to be clear that there is much in what he says that is positive. None of his three specific recommendations for strengthening the Jewish community are in conflict with our goals. All would contribute positively to the inclusion of more intermarried families in Judaism.

With respect to conversion, Cohen, like Gary Tobin in his op-ed, wants the Jewish community to reconsider its traditional resistance to conversion and be much friendlier to anyone who expresses even some interest in converting. I don't disagree. In modern America, where religion is just one more lifestyle choice in a consumer marketplace, the most successful religions are those that market themselves, and make themselves readily available to new adherents (think Scientology and evangelical Christianity). Judaism needs to follow suit. I'm not sure there really is "pent-up demand" for conversion among intermarried couples, and I'm not opposed to having community-based rabbinic counselors available to work with prospective converts--although I think it would be more effective to have those counselors available to work with and be welcoming to interfaith couples whether or not the non-Jewish partner is interested in converting.

However, Cohen's characterization of outreach is way off-base. Contrary to his statement, no Jewish-oriented outreach group advocates the blending of religions. Moreover, his statement that there isn't "any evidence" that outreach is effective disregards every one of the handful of evaluations that have been done of outreach programs that target interfaith families, all of which show significantly increased Jewish behaviors and attitudes after program participation; and it disregards the fact that in Boston, a city with the best-funded, best-organized collection of outreach programs in the country, 60% of intermarried couples are raising their children Jewish. While the preliminiary findings of the 2005 Boston Jewish Community Survey did not make a direct connection between outreach programs and intermarried couples raising their children Jewish, there is potential for that data to be extracted from the study.

I do agree with Cohen's statement that outreach initiatives have been "miniscule" making it hard to attribute impact to them. But the worst thing about the interview is his statement that "we haven't figured out ways to get the intermarried to raise their children as Jews." Cohen takes a "heads I win, tails you lose" approach to outreach that targets interfaith families. He takes false pot-shots at it as advocating blending of religions; admits that outreach initiatives have been "miniscule," but says there is no indication that outreach works; and concludes that outreach programs that target interfaith families are not worth supporting. That approach amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy that the intermarried will not be encouraged to raise their children as Jews.

Finally, Cohen's tone in A Tale of Two Jewries. One sure way to NOT encourage intermarried families to raise their children as Jews is to talk about intermarriage as the "single greatest threat to Jewish continuity" and to measure the success of Jewish education programs by the number of percentage points they reduce the likelihood of intermarriage. As we've said elsewhere, people won't join a group that they feel demeans them.

Non-Jewish Moms in Atlanta, Interfaith Couples in Cali

Next Monday, participants in the first Mothers Circle program in the country will be speaking at the Jewish Federation North Metro Campus in Alpharetta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. The Mothers Circle is a nine-week course for non-Jewish mothers raising Jewish children started by the New York-based Jewish Outreach Institute. In the Atlanta Jewish Times, one of the early participants, Abi Auer, eloquently explains the value of the Mothers Circle: "Everyone who is involved in the Mothers Circle has made a sacrifice to give up some of those things we were raised with," she says. "You don't know what you don't know when you are raising Jewish children and weren't raised Jewish yourself."

The JTA had a recent story on how Federations are becoming more sophisticated in how they allocate funding. One example of what the article calls "priority-based" funding is the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties, which put money towards interfaith sensitivity training after finding that 75 percent of the couples in Sonoma and Marin counties were intermarried.

To Bris or Not to Bris?

While everyone in an interfaith relationships knows--and plans--in advance for the issue of what kind of wedding ceremony to have and how to raise the kids, circumcision often creeps up unexpectedly on an unsuspecting interfaith couple, usually one that assumed they were secular. Circumcision is perhaps the only cultural ritual that is almost as common among secular Jews as it is among the Orthodox. The strong desire of the Jewish partner to circumcise their sons can of course be a bit of a shock to the non-Jewish partner.

On Salon.com, Neal Pollack, a terrific writer and author of the forthcoming book Alternadad, writes about his and his wife's decision to circumcise their son. He's Jewish, she is not. She felt circumcision was barbaric and detrimental to their child's health and sexual enjoyment; his parents said they would betray 6,000 years of tradition by not circumcising their grandson. Pollack discusses in an amusing and poignant way how he and his wife came to their decision, and how the procedure went.

The December Holidays Survey in the News

For the first time in the three-year history of doing our December holidays survey, JTA has done an entire story about the survey! Frankly, I can't say enough about what a terrific piece of reporting Sue Fishkoff did. It presents the survey results in a balanced, nuanced, contextual light, and is clear about the survey's limits and its strengths. Fishkoff was also careful to make clear that we don't encourage interfaith families to have Christmas trees, but we do say that the simple existence of a Christmas tree in a house does not prevent children from being raised Jewish.

In addition to Julie Wiener's discussion of the survey in her column last week, there have been stories on the survey in the Tulsa World and the Portland Press-Herald and the Detroit Free Press article was reprinted in the News-Democrat (Belleville, Ill.), the Reading Eagle (Penn.), Providence Journal, the Florida Ledger (Lakeland), the Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tenn.), the Centre Daily Times (Pa.), the Bradenton Herald (Fla.) and the Monterey County Herald. And there may be more press coming in Philadelphia and Atlanta.

In addition, President and Publisher Ed Case was recently interviewed for "Your Morning" on CN8, the Comcast Network, and "Busted Halo with Father Dave Dwyer" on Sirius Radio. We also got a nice shout-out from Miss Conduct in her column in the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine. (She called InterfaithFamily.com a "terrific site"--thanks, Miss C.!)

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...)

The Critics Respond to the Boston Survey

Steven M. Cohen, one of the leading critics of outreach, has an op-ed on the results of the recent demographic study of Boston's Jewish community in the current issue of the Forward, co-signed by demographers Jack Ukeles and Ron Miller.

Cohen et al first question whether the 60% figure for interfaith families raising their children as Jews reported in the 2005 Greater Boston Jewish Community Study is accurate, based on the way that the question was asked. They acknowledge that the Boston survey was conducted by "distinguished social scientists" who are "first-rate researchers." We have to leave the technical aspects of the survey's accuracy to the its authors, Leonard Saxe and his colleagues, but we are confident they are fully prepared to defend their methodology.

Cohen et al next challenge the survey author's assertion that the 60% rate is "exceptional," citing studies of six other cities, including Cleveland, St. Louis, Miami, Baltimore, Bergen County, N.J., and Hartford, as finding rates of between 59% and 66% of interfaith families raising their children as Jews.

It is a statistical fact that if more than 50% of interfaith families raise their children as Jews, then the Jewish community will increase in size, not decrease. The Boston survey authors emphasized that contrary to the general presumption that intermarriage decreases the size of the Jewish community, in Boston it appeared to be increasing its size.

If studies of single cities--and, by the way, most Jews live in urban areas--are showing that more than a majority of interfaith families are raising their children as Jews, that is great news. It knocks out one of the major underpinnings of the opponents of intermarriage and outreach, that intermarriage decreases the size of the community. Sadly, Cohen et al don't make that point in their essay.

Cohen et al next acknowlege that while not "exceptional," the Boston rate is "unusually high," "indeed in the high range." But they say that this can not be attributed "primarily to targeting intermarried families." Instead, they contend that Boston's Jewish community is "special" with impressive institutions and "exciting opportunities for engagement" including in Jewish education of all sorts. They conclude that the Boston survey "makes no instrumental case for outreach."

We are extraordinarily disappointed that Cohen et al are unwilling to include Boston's targeting of intermarried families as even partially responsible for the 60% figure. It is a simple, undeniable fact that Boston relative to every other city in the country has the most coordinated, extensive and well-funded programs of outreach to interfaith families, and that the Boston federation, CJP, has made outreach to the intermarried a priority more than any other local federation, to the extent of saying so on every invitation to every CJP event. We believe that is what makes Boston special--or certainly at least part of what makes Boston special.

Cohen et al note that the most recent survey of New York city found that only 30% of interfaith families there were raising their children as Jews. Certainly New York city is "special" with impressive institutions and opportunities for education and other engagement. What New York city lacks is any coordinated, extensive and well-funded programs of outreach.

What really matters in all of this is the response of Jewish leaders who are in a position to make funding decisions--the lay and professional leadership of the federations, and the principals and staff of Jewish family foundations. I was frustrated recently when a leading federation executive, when I urged him to try to reach a 60% level of interfaith families raising their children as Jews in his community, said, "if only we knew what to do." I was frustrated recently when the executive director of a major foundation said "we like to fund programs that work" with the unmistakeable implication that he did not belive that outreach programs do. I was frustrated on two separate occasions recently when staff of a major federation and a major foundation said they wanted to do research before funding any outreach programming.

Research is fine. Every study of the impact of outreach programs has shown that a significant increase in Jewish engagement after participation in the programs. We are confident additional evaluations of outreach programs would show the same result, and welcome them. But in the meantime, while waiting for more research, the Boston survey results should be regarded as compelling evidence justifying an investment in the same kind of outreach programs that CJP has funded. We say to Jewish funders: what are you waiting for?

Israel, Philadelphia, Detroit

The Nativity Story, about the events leading up to Jesus' birth, is coming out on Friday. We're doing something new with this movie and hopefully others with religious content. We are sending an interfaith couple to see the movie to record their impressions of the movie, in the hope of illuminating how pop culture can mean different things to people of different religious and cultural backgrounds. Look for the review in our web magazine next week.

A Leaky Tent

If you read The Jewish Week, you've seen Marvin Schick's ads before. Tucked towards the back, they occupy a horizontal half-page and are all-text (small type) editorials on matters of import in the Jewish community. I rarely read them, but his ad from last week--which is also online on his blog--caught my attention.

Titled "As We Continue to Widen My Tent," it is a simultaneous attack on the intermarried and non-traditional notions of Jewish identity. It begins with a lament over the intermarriage statistics first revealed by the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey. He actually is a bit charitable to the intermarried, saying "a great number continued to be involved in a Jewish life," but he cleverly damns the intermarried by guilt of association:

The forces that compelled the acceptance of intermarriage could not escape the impact of changes in American society or Jewish life, changes that impelled most American Jews further away from the moorings of Jewish tradition. An additional pull away from what had been our sense of Jewishness resulted from Jewish identity being determined less by communal norms than by what can be referred to as self-definition.

This he calls "anything goes Judaism," which essentially means practices that don't fit his definition of what "authentic" Judaism is. As an example, he uses the most extreme, bizarre case of an event involving cross-dressers, haiku and booze titled "Golem Gets Married."

Further guilty by association are "some demographers [who] have been hard at work expanding the boundaries of Jewish identity to include persons who do not regard themselves as Jewish, the goal being to increase our numbers and also to promote the legitimacy of ultra-secular experiences that are somehow labeled Jewish." I'm not sure any demographer would agree with him, but then again, they are subject to the same mysterious "forces that compelled the acceptance of intermarriage" that he discussed earlier.

He goes on:

The anything goes mindset is not the final leg in the journey away from even a minimalistic sense of traditional Jewish identity. The pervasiveness of social change and the maintenance of a critical mass who are comfortable with a definition of Jewishness that conforms to their life-style mandates a further enlargement of the tent. Intermarriage is now welcomed in certain quarters and there is the corollary urging that communal resources be directed at those who are most distant, including at persons who are not Jewish.

He then makes the completely bogus claim that "we are told that efforts to promote Jewish continuity should not favor day school education or conventional religious activity," and that "we are told" that the spiritual needs of "at-risk Jews" should be be ignored and that "we should concentrate on those who are distant and unlikely to pay attention to our messages." I'm not sure who the "we" is, nor who it is doing the telling, and the best he can say is "this argument was made at a recent conference on the future of North American Jewry."

The question of funding outreach has never been an either/or proposition. As it is, less than one-tenth of one percent of all Jewish communal funding goes to outreach to the intermarried--does he really think that upping that, even ten-fold, would exclude day school education or the spiritual needs of at-risk Jews? If anything, recent events have shown that support for day school education among big funders is thriving--a whole series of communities have seen massive donations come in in an attempt to subsidize Jewish day school education.

In his final two paragraphs, Schick makes clear what his real game is: deligitimizing the results of the 2005 Boston Jewish Community Study.

Advocates of outreach to non-Jews who are married to Jews have just gotten a boost, perhaps inadvertent, from a report out of Boston claiming that such activity by the local Federation has resulted in sixty percent of the children of intermarried couples being raised as Jews, a figure that is about twice as high as that indicated by NJPS and research in other communities. In all likelihood, the Boston statistic is exaggerated because of the inability of researchers to survey the intermarried who are not involved in Jewish life and/or those who do not have recognizable Jewish names. An added factor that points in the same direction is that Jews who no longer regard themselves as Jewish invariably do not respond to our demographers.

It sounds persuasive... if there were a speck of truth to anything he says.

First, advocates of outreach are not only looking to engage "non-Jews who are married to Jews," they're looking to engage Jews married to non-Jews. But his clever switching of the targets makes it seem like Jewish organizations are spending their time trying to reach people who aren't even Jewish at all and have no interest in Judaism (who he earlier refers to as "peoples who are entirely bereft of a scintilla of Jewish identity.")

Second, he claims that the report from Boston claims outreach activity by the local Federation has resulted in the 60 percent figure. Nowhere does the report make such a claim; as the various articles make clear, this is an explanation that various observers--such as our president, Ed Case--have offered.

Third, his charge that the demographers were unable to survey intermarried who are not involved in Jewish life is baseless. The survey is based on a combination of interviews with 1,400 people from a compilation of lists from Jewish organizations in Boston and 400 people identified from a random digit dialing of 3,000 households in the Boston area. The first group was weighted against the second so as not to provide a disproportionate picture of Jewish behaviors. The random dialing had nothing to do with recognizably Jewish names and in no way favored intermarried people who are involved in Jewish life. Indeed, as the survey showed, the overwhelming majority of Jewish women in intermarriages with non-Jewish men were raising their children Jewish--how many of these women does he think had recognizably Jewish surnames?

Moreover, I should clarify that the authors of the 2005 Boston Jewish Community Study did not engage in any kind of hanky-panky involving the definition of Jewish. In their own words, they say "Jewish adults (ages 18 and above) were defined as individuals who identified as Jews (religious, ethically, or culturally) or who were raised as Jews and did not identify with any religion" and "Jewish children (ages 0 to 17) were defined as such if a parent reported that they were being raised as Jews." This definition is not particularly different from the National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01, which defined Jews as "a person whose religion is Jewish, or whose religion is Jewish and something else, or who has no religion and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing, or who has a a non-monotheistic religion, and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing."

Indeed, the reason for the debate over intermarriage rates that he alludes to early on in his essay is that the authors of the 1990 NJPS deliberately used a more expansive definition of Jewish when calculating intermarriage rates than when authoring the rest of the 1990 report. The intermarriage rate initially reported for the 1990 report was 52 percent because it included as Jewish people with one Jewish parent who were raised in a non-Jewish upbringing. If anything, the demographers were guilty of exaggerating the intermarriage rate in an attempt to demonstrate there was a crisis, rather than the other way around, as Schick suggests.

Here's Schick's conclusion:

We are not now capable of preventing our tent from being enlarged, albeit bogusly, nor can we prevent critical resources from being diverted to meaningless pursuits. We must, however, insist that that which is authentic be supported.

Nowhere in his essay does he prove or even suggest how outreach is a "meaningless pursuit." The best he can do is make totally bogus claims about why the best proof of their success--the recent Boston Jewish Community Study--is producing exaggerated results. If this is the best opponents of outreach to the intermarried can do, then Paul Golin is right: the battle over intermarriage is over.

Our Op-Ed in the Forward

An editorial co-authored by our president and publisher, Ed Case, will be in tomorrow's issue of the Forward and is now available online.

Co-authored by Kathy Kahn, director of the Union for Reform Judaism's Department of Outreach and Synagogue Community, "Engaging the Intermarried" offers a blueprint to other communities who are looking to engage intermarried families and encourage them to raise their children Jewish. It's not noted in the editorial, but the previous demographic study of Boston's Jewish community, done in 1995, showed that 33 percent of the area's interfaith households were raising their children Jewish; only 10 years later, that percentage had nearly doubled, to 60 percent.

Why? Because more so than any other community, with the possible exception of San Francisco, Boston has made outreach to interfaith families a priority, both in terms of attitude and financial support. As the editorial says:

The community has put its money where its mouth is. [Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Boston's federation] has a dedicated line item in its budget expressly for “Services to the Intermarried.” CJP’s funding for this area — just over $300,000 for the current year — is the highest in the country, yet it represents just 1% of CJP’s total annual allocations. Nationally, even as the Jewish community federations spend $800 million a year and Jewish family foundations spend $2.5 billion a year; the amount spent on programs of outreach to interfaith families is below $3 million — only one-tenth of 1%. By spending just 1% of its allocations — a relatively small investment by any measure — CJP has achieved dramatic results.

As the op-ed explains, it's also about an overarching approach that focuses on good programming (Boston has a rich variety), working through the religious movements (the CJP directly funds the Reform and Conservative movements), use of welcoming language (which is incorporated into invitations for every CJP event), marketing (especially online) and evaluation.

Both the Forward and the New York Jewish Week did stories about the news. The Forward article, by Nathaniel Popper, followed a similar tenor as the JTA article, connecting the results to Boston's outreach efforts, and makes the important point: "The findings from Boston could fuel and shift the long-standing national debates over Jewish demographic trends, a seemingly obscure but perennially divisive topic in Jewish philanthropic and religious circles."

The New York Jewish Week article, however, focuses on critiques from opponents of outreach:

But sociologist Steven Cohen said his understanding of the study leads him to conclude that its results were not so unusual.

“The real issue is how you define a Jewish child,” he said. “There are narrow definitions and broad definitions; both are valid. The Boston study chose to use a broad definition, thereby including children who have no religion and … whose families undertake Jewish behavior. … The National Jewish Population Survey got pretty much the same numbers [when using the same definition].”

[Study author Leonard] Saxe disputed that, saying the study found that 30 percent of the children were raised with no religion but that about 60 percent were being raised as Jews.

“When we asked [intermarried parents] what they were doing to raise their kids as Jews, we found that just as many were getting a Hebrew school education as the inmarried families,” Saxe said.

But Steven Bayme, national director of the Contemporary Jewish Life Department at the American Jewish Committee, said he would like to know the seriousness of the children of intermarried couples regarding their “Jewish connection” and whether that connection is “sustainable and will last them in terms of molding a Jewish identity.”

“I’m concerned that the success of outreach activities to ensure Jewish grandchildren can only be measured over time,” he said. “We have to see what happens to them as adults.”

If those complaints aren't weak enough, in the Forward article, Cohen, pointing to the study's finding that Jewish women in intermarriages raise their children Jewish much more often than their male counterparts, says: "For those who believe that welcoming has made the difference, they have to answer why Jewish women feel much more welcomed than Jewish men ... If there is a difference, it’s probably attributable to Boston’s superb efforts in Jewish culture." For a sociologist, he should know better: women almost always take the lead role in child-rearing, so of course they're going to more often dictate their child's religious upbringing. But the fact that they make a Jewish choice isn't a given; that choice can be encouraged by the local Jewish community through outreach programs.

Meanwhile, the authors of the Boston study, Leonard Saxe, Charles Kadushin and Benjamin Phillips, wrote an op-ed for the Forward that discusses the 60 percent news, but from a slightly different angle. They focus more on the "the broad range of Jewish insitutions that serve religious, cultural and educational needs."

JTA on the News Out of Boston

On late Friday, JTA, the Jewish newswire, did its story on the extraordinary news out of Boston: 60% of intermarried families there are raising their children Jewish.

Unlike the Boston Globe story, the JTA story, by Sue Fishkoff, more explicitly makes the connection between outreach and intermarried families raising their children Jewish, starting with the title "Investment in outreach is paying dividends in Boston, study suggests":

“CJP is the only federation that has made a serious commitment for over 10 years to fund [outreach to interfaith families],” said Paula Brody, outreach director of the Northeast Council of the Union for Reform Judaism, whose organization receives $140,000 a year from the Combined Jewish Philanthropies for a wide variety of adult-education seminars and workshops aimed at interfaith couples and individuals considering conversion. “We offered these programs before the CJP funding, but it has enabled us to expand our offerings and advertise them in the secular press, so we can reach the unaffiliated.”

Our own Ed Case is quoted in the article, also arguing the case for the connection between outreach and interfaith families making Jewish choices.

The JTA story goes into detail how San Francisco, another city with a well-funded, well-organized collection of outreach programs, has also had higher-than-average rates of intermarried families raising their children Jewish:

San Francisco’s Jewish federation experienced similar results, according to planning director Karen Bluestone. That federation was one of the first in the nation to fund interfaith programming, she notes, following a 1986 Jewish communal study that revealed large numbers of intermarried families.

In the 20 years since, the Jewish population has more than doubled in the San Francisco Bay Area and intermarriage has increased, but increasing numbers of those interfaith households are identifying with the Jewish community.

A 2004 communal study showed that 40 percent of the children in interfaith households are receiving formal Jewish education, and 40 percent of the adults indicated that their interest in Judaism has increased in the past five years. The numbers are about the same for Jews and non-Jews, she said.

While Bluestone admits that “there’s no causality in the data,” she said she sees a correlation between increased outreach and increased Jewish identification.

“Due to the investments we’ve made since 1986 in outreach and training to be more welcoming to interfaith families, we’ve seen a rise in the number of interfaith families identifying as Jews and raising their children Jewishly,” Bluestone said.

Brody also makes the important point how there is beginning to be a change in mindset. In the past, the Jewish community viewed those who intermarried as marrying out of the community; but, as Brody says of interfaith families making Jewish choices, "What’s remarkable is that these families see themselves not as where the Jewish partner has married out, but where the Christian partner has married in."

60% of Interfaith Families in Boston are Raising Children Jewish

There is extraordinary news this morning: according to a demographic study of Boston's Jewish community released today, 60 percent of intermarried households are raising their children Jewish.

Michaal Paulson of the Boston Globe did a front-page story on this remarkable development this morning, and the news is clearly striking a chord. As of 9:20 a.m. EST, "Jewish population in region rises" was the most e-mailed story on Boston.com--and rising.

The news is extraordinary for two reasons:
1) As our publisher and president, Ed Case, says in the article, "Boston has the most extensive and most well-funded and most well-organized outreach to interfaith families in the country." This development shows that for a relatively small investment--only 1 percent of Boston's Combined Jewish Philanthropies' annual allocations--outreach can produce tangible, measurable, powerful results.

2) For years leading voices in the Jewish community have been referring to intermarriage as a "threat." This shows it can be an opportunity, an opportunity to expand and enrich the Jewish community. Why is that? Because 50 intermarried Jews create 50 households, while 50 inmarried Jews form 25 households. If only 25 of the 50 intermarried households--50 percent, that is--raise their children Jewish, they are raising the same number of children as the 25 Jewish households. If more than 50 percent of intermarried households raise their children Jewish--as they are doing in Boston--they contribute to a net increase in the Jewish population, which is what Boston has seen in the last 10 years.

We will keep you regularly updated on press about this extraordinary development.

Interfaith Families at Day School

Not much time to write today, but one important link I forgot to share with you on Friday: the cover story of the Oct. 27 issue of the J., the Jewish news weekly of Northern California, was on interfaith families who send their kids to Jewish day school.

The piece is testament to the committed, powerful Jewish choices that interfaith families make, and makes the important point that in some cases, the non-Jewish parent is the driving force behind the children's Jewish education. (The story even includes the story of a non-Jewish single mother who adopted a child who was born Jewish and decided to send the child to Jewish day school.)

And there's also this great quote:

"Children are the main thing," says Dawn Kepler, director of interfaith resources at the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay. "Reasonable adults can make a lot of compromises, but when it comes to kids, it’s the King Solomon thing. In any parenting situation you have to make sacrifices."

Trigger-Happy?

We recently received a video from the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, based in Boston's North Shore. We've talked about the Lappin Foundation before; they fund and manage some great programs for interfaith families, but their spokespeople never miss an opportunity to denigrate intermarriage. This new video is no different. Called "Journey of Faith," it's meant to be a "trigger for discussion" on intermarriage and conversion to Judaism. It's being distributed for free, and intended for "conversion classes, interfaith outreach programs, Introduction to Judaism courses, adult education courses, teen dialogue about dating, marriage and family, pre-marital counseling and training for clergy and Jewish communal workers."

A little more than 10 minutes long, "Journey of Faith" features Doug and Jodi Smith of Marblehead, Mass. Doug was born Catholic and Jodi was born Jewish, but after almost 10 years of marriage, Doug decided to convert to Judaism in 2005. His reason for converting is pretty simple: he wanted to feel a "full" member of his family's Conservative synagogue. He says he was especially struck at the 2005 High Holidays, when he saw his daughter on the bima and knew he couldn't join her.

The video works admirably as a "trigger" to discuss the challenges facing an intermarried couple or an interfaith couple contemplating intermarriage. Before Jodi and Doug were engaged, they agreed to raise the children Jewish. Jodi asked Doug to take a conversion course, which he said was very helpful in understanding what raising children Jewish means (it's not clear whether Jodi was trying to push Doug to convert then or not). He says conversion wasn't the "right thing for me at the time." They went into the business of parenting clear-eyed, anticipating the "bumps" ahead, and decided to raise their children in one religion before they got engaged. They compare that to several of their intermarried friends who have avoided the issue altogether. They are quite persuasive in arguing for the importance of deciding how one will raise the children early-on.

But as a "trigger" to discuss the value of conversion, the video is a failure. While the discussion questions that accompany the video speak of "the tensions that arise from inter-dating and intermarriage" and how being in an interfaith family "wasn't working for Douglas anymore," the Smiths themselves give little indication that there were any problems being an intermarried family raising Jewish children. The only two challenges they mention are Jodi's parents--who didn't originally approve of a non-Jewish mate--and what Doug calls the "biggest challenge," telling his parents about his plans to convert.

So let's get this straight: this video is about the "tensions" of intermarriage and the appeal of conversion, and the only challenges the couple faced were from their parents? If the "biggest challenge" for Doug was telling his parents about his conversion plans, isn't the video then arguing that conversion is a bigger problem than intermarriage? If anything, Doug is getting at one of the major reasons why many non-Jewish partners in intermarriages choose not to convert: they don't want to upset their parents.

While the Lappin Foundation explicitly endorses Jews marrying Jews and non-Jewish partners in intermarriages converting, the video makes living in an intermarriage seem like no big deal. Once the Smiths decided how to raise the children, they didn't suffer through any major tensions or crises. They don't discuss conflicts arising from differing cultural traditions, value systems or politics, or any of the other practical reasons some Jews offer as proof that intermarriages don't work. If anything, "Journey to Faith" proves that intermarriage can work--and conversion is not a necessary step to family peace and happiness.

Outreach, from Reform to Orthodox

There seems to be a real uptick in attention to outreach programs lately.

Last week's issue of the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles had a story from Adam Wills about a community scan that the Jewish Outreach Institute did in the West San Fernando and Conejo Valleys. A community scan works like this: workers from the New York-based JOI anonymously call and email synagogues and community agencies in a particular area pretending they're unaffiliated and Jewishly unknowledgeable to determine how welcoming a particular community is. They also look at websites of local community institutions and interview local Jewish communal professionals. According to the Jewish Journal story, the West Valley/Conejo Valley area was the second most-welcoming community JOI has scanned, with a 77 percent favorable response rate.

Meanwhile, the Jewish Standard, one of the most Orthodox-leaning mainstream Jewish pubs in the country, recently had an article on the formation of a program for non-Jewish mothers raising Jewish children at Temple Emeth in Teaneck, New Jersey. The program is called Mother's Circle, and it's one of numerous new Mother's Circle programs popping up around the country.

The chair of the outreach committee at Temple Emeth, David Zatz, grew up in an Orthodox synagogue but nonetheless married a Presbyterian woman 15 years ago.

"Rejection has not stemmed intermarriage," noted Zatz, expressing support for the Reform movement's commitment to outreach to the intermarried as a way to draw in such families "so that we don't lose as many as we used to [by rejecting them]."

Speaking of the Orthodox, Eternal Jewish Family is sponsoring a conference in Boston Oct. 29-31 on "adopting standards for universally accepted conversion in intermarriage." The conference will include discussions by numerous noted rabbis, including, according to the ads, the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv and the Head of the Yeshiva at Yeshiva University.

I don't expect the Orthodox will ever come around to IFF's way of thinking on intermarriage, but it's encouraging that the Orthodox are creaking open the door just a little bit to the intermarried.

In the past Orthodox rabbis wouldn't convert non-Jewish spouses married to Jews because they didn't consider accomodating one's partner as a serious enough reason to convert to Judaism. But in the last year or so, Eternal Jewish Family has been holding events in the Orthodox community that are aimed at finding some small opening for intermarried families. To get into that opening, the non-Jewish spouse has to be willing to undergo a rigorous Orthodox conversion and show a commitment to living a religious Orthodox lifestyle, but it's better than nothing.

Why Jewish Life?

My Yom Kippur experience was especially meaningful this year--I hope yours was too. It's a wonderful opportunity to reflect on and evaluate my life, and consider what I can do better. I feel I have an entire clean slate of a New Year to fill, and the prospect is very exciting.

I think my main motivation in founding InterfaithFamily.com, Inc. was my belief, based on my own experience and that of many friends, that participating in Jewish life can be a great source of meaning and fulfillment, not just for Jews, but in particular for interfaith couples. The Yom Kippur opportunity to reflect and evaluate is one example of that. Coincidentally or not, a wonderful article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine is another great example.

So the Torah is a Parenting Guide by Emily Bazelon tells the story of Wendy Mogel, a child psychologist who wrote a book, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children. As the book's title indicates, Mogel finds relevance in ancient Jewish texts to the most current of issues, in her case, raising children in our modern world. The book has become something of a best-seller--and not just to Jewish parents.

For many years I was privileged to take an early morning Talmud class taught by a wonderful Orthodox rabbi, Reuven Cohn. I was repeatedly struck then by the relevance of Jewish texts to modern issues. When I went back to school as part of my career change, I wrote a paper for Robert Reich's class on social policy that applied lessons from the Talmud tractate on Pe'ah (about leaving the corners of the fields for the poor to harvest) to current welfare policy.

I have often felt that the Jewish community does not do nearly a good enough job in "marketing" the appealing aspects of Jewish life, again, not just to Jewish couples, but in particular to interfaith couples. Doing a better job of that continues to be one of InterfaithFamily.com's most important goals, as this bright New Year begins.

Interfaith Couples During the High Holidays and More

A lot of relevant articles today: