The Sopranos and Entourage

Last night, both of HBO's buzziest shows, The Sopranos and Entourage, included interfaith relationships as part of their storylines. And both were chock full of stereotypes.

One of the plotlines on last night's ep of The Sopranos concerns Hesch (Jerry Adler), a retired Jewish record producer who has loaned money to Tony Soprano and his late father for decades. In the new episode, Tony forgets that he owes Hesch $200,000 for gambling losses; when Hesch demurely asks for the money, Tony starts resenting one of his oldest friends, calling him "Shylock" and making cracks about his Jewish obsession with money--as opposed to Tony himself, who instead of politely asking for repayment of loans, beats you up and steals your stuff to remind you that you're in arrears.

For the first time in the show's storied run, we get a glimpse into Hesch's personal life. His son, Eli, is apparently a religious Jew, and Hesch's girlfriend is a much younger black woman. To its credit, the show treats Hesch and his girlfriend's relationship matter-of-factly. No one even notes the racial or age difference between the two. And as much as Tony unfairly stereotypes Hesch, Hesch does the same with Tony--he says that most of the time, Italians are alright, but when you get on their bad side, they're like animals.

Last night's episode of Entourage explored an interfaith relationship more extensively, albeit in a more stereotypical way. Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven), the Jewish Hollywood super-agent who is one of the stars of the show, gets excited about a visit from an old college friend played by Artie Lang, one of Howard Stern's sidekicks. In college, Gold was Lang's elder frat brother, and was accustomed to being the successful suave alpha-male to Lang's overweight, undersexed clown. But when Lang visits Gold for the first time in 10 years, he's still overweight, but he's now worth $65 million and has a gorgeous blonde non-Jewish fiance on his arm--and she's converting.

The storyline blatantly exploits familiar stereotypes about relationships between unattractive, rich Jews and beautiful non-Jewish women. And I have to somewhat sheepishly admit, these storylines amuse me everytime. Lang corrects his fiance when she pronounces Hanukkah without the gutteral H. She also eagerly explains to Ari and his wife--who are both proudly Jewish and totally secular--that glaat kosher means "totally clean."

The episode also contrasts the explosive, passionate and constantly fighting Jewish Golds with the polite, lovey-dovey, overly sensitive Lang and his fiance. In contrast to the Golds, who fight and make love with equal intensity, Lang's relationship with his fiance is nice but sterile. While Gold's wife appreciates Lang's overly familiar references to her beauty, Lang's fiance is offended when Ari makes a crack about her beautiful figure.

Neither show says anything insightful about interfaith relationships, but it's interesting to see the way one show treats the relationship as a scarcely notable fact of life while the other treats it as a source of humor.

A Jew and a Nazi Fall in Love...

Some random articles I've collected over the last week or two:

• Black Book, Paul Verhoeven's (Basic Instinct, Total Recall) new film about the Dutch Resistance during World War II, premieres today in limited release. An interfaith relationship is actually at the center of the story--although I doubt many readers would be able to relate to this particular romance between a tough-minded Jewish spy and a gentle Nazi officer. Judging from his previous films, that premise will probably come off as even more offensive on screen, which is to say, I am looking forward to seeing this movie. I don't expect, however, to be in the slightest bit enlightened about the dynamics of real interfaith relationships.
• The ongoing fracas over conversion standards in Israel continues, according to The (New York) Jewish Week. The latest development is that the main pluralist conversion school has stopped sending converts to the official Orthodox conversion courts as a protests against the courts' unreasonable standards. The head of the school, Benny Ish-Shalom, is calling for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to change the conversion system, but I'm guessing he has other issues on his mind at that moment (and given his political vulnerability, I doubt he'd be willing to take on the Orthodox establishment that runs the conversion courts). The loser, as it always seems to be in these disputes, is not the courts or the school, but potential converts.
• ADL's national education director, Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, recently gave a very interesting talk at the St. Agnes Spiritual Life Center in San Francisco. He talked about Jesus' Jewish roots and how much of the Christian Bible is laced with details intended to resonate with Jews from the era, details that were lost on the rising Church, which was composed mostly of converted pagans. The rabbi even suggests that the notion of Jesus' divinity in the Christian Bible is overblown, pointing to the example of a story of a woman in the Christian Bible who was "hemorrhaging blood for 12 years." She stopped bleeding after touching the hem of Jesus' garment. Jesus tells her that her faith has healed her. Later scholars took the touching of Jesus' garment as a demonstration that Jesus saved her, but the rabbi suggests that the "hem" was actually Jesus' tzit-tzit. And the text does not say that Jesus saved her, but that "her faith" saved her, her faith, not in Jesus, but in the God of the Jewish tradition.


• A strange new play about a romance between a terminally ill Jewish businesswoman and a black televangelist is playing at Urban Stages in Manhattan through May 6. Apostasy explores the differing Jewish and Christian conceptions of the afterlife as well as the potentially suspicious motives of the televangelist: Is he in love with the woman? Is he just trying to get her to give her money to his church? It also deals with the charismatic (read: sexual) power of true believers like the televangelist.

Judaism Your Way, and "Seventh Heaven"

The Intermountain Jewish News has a great article on Rabbi Brian Field, who leads Judaism Your Way, an innovative "synagogue without walls" based in Denver, Colo.

Judaism Your Way targets unaffiliated Jews, but it's clear that Field's passion is engaging the intermarried. He officiates at interfaith weddings without making any demands that the non-Jewish partner convert. It's not a radical stance, but it is in opposition to the position of the local rabbinical association. Judaism Your Way's services include wedding ceremonies between Jews and non-Jews, baby namings, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs or “alternative coming of age celebrations,” Shabbat services, regular holiday observances, and High Holiday services.

Judaism Your Way functions as an entryway toward Jewish practice, learning and community — if that’s what participants desire.

“One of the things we like to say is that wherever you are along your Jewish journey, we’ll meet you there and help you figure out the next step,” Rabbi Field says.

It’s an accommodating philosophy that sounds eerily similar to the approach used by Chabad.

But Rabbi Field stresses that unlike Chabad or other Jewish outreach groups, Judaism Your Way does not have a Jewish agenda that pulls participants toward more traditional forms of Judaism.

“We have a mutually referring relationship with other synagogues and organizations,” he says. “Congregations refer people to us if the programming members want is unavailable. Similarly, if someone in our group is looking for a deeper sense of community, I refer them to different synagogues, rabbis and Jewish organizations. I’m happy to do that.

“But we’re also aware that there’s a lot more that needs to be done Jewishly to engage all the folks out there. Is there another way of teaching Judaism, studying Torah, praying, and celebrating the holidays and Shabbat that can engage those people whose needs are not being met in existing models?”

I like Rabbi Field's approach a lot. He knows that synagogues aren't reaching some Jews but also recognizes that they offer a sense of community that no alternative community or outreach organization can provide on its own. Contrary to the opinions of some critics, synagogues are not hopeless, but they just need a little help from bridge organizations, like Judaism Your Way and InterfaithFamily.com.

On a random note: in the article, Rabbi Field talks about why he doesn't push the non-Jewish partner to convert. His opinion is that it's a major personal decision and no one should be pressured into it. His explanation echoed a rerun episode of "Seventh Heaven" I happened to catch while I was at the gym last night (which is really my snobby way of pointing out that I don't watch the show regularly).

In this episode, the son of Eric Camden (Stephen Collins), a Christian pastor and the star of the show, is set to marry a Jewish woman who is the daughter of a rabbi played by Richard Lewis. Apparently, the son has been attending synagogue with his Jewish fiance for several months and has been taking a conversion class. In an attempt to sabotage the wedding, Lewis' rabbi suggests that the boy convert immediately prior to the wedding--knowing full well that he'll be scared and Pastor Camden will be pissed. When his son tells him that he plans to convert, Camden gets so upset that he cancels the wedding, arguing that conversion should be a matter of "personal conviction" not parental pressure. The episode is actually a pretty interesting dissection of the whole issue of conversion before intermarriage. It points out one of the pitfalls of pushing conversion. While for Jews, being Jewish often has much more to do with cultural identity than religious belief, for people raised in Christian households, religion is solely a matter of belief. Asking someone to convert who doesn't truly believe--or fully understand--the faith they're adopting is hypocritical at best. Conversion is a powerful, life-changing choice and should never be undertaken lightly, or with a conflicted heart.

The Link Sink

I know you're supposed to clean house before Passover, but here are some interesting links that have piled up in the last week or two:

• Tamara Podemski is an unknown in the U.S. but she's starred on a handful of Canadian TV shows and recorded three albums. Her father is Israeli and her mother is Ojibwa (a native Canadian tribe). She proudly refers to herself as a "fully functional half-breed," and appears to take great pride in her mixed heritage--which, incidentally, produced a gorgeous woman. For more on here, read this profile in the Canadian Jewish News.
• An educational publisher agreed to withdraw and destroy the remaining copies of a reference book on Israel after a major Orthodox organization objected to the book's characterization of Orthodox Jews, according to The (New York) Jewish Week. Agudath Israel of America was upset over a passage in the book that said that "some ultra-Orthodox Jews" want to limit Israel's Law of Return to exclude Reform and Conservative Jews because "they are not really at all because they are not strict in their observance of all the religious laws." There's no question the passage is wrong, but it contains a kernel of truth. It is not uncommon for ultra-Orthodox Jews to ridicule and denigrate more progressive streams of Judaism, especially Reform, because they doesn't fit their strict definitions of what Judaism is. It also taps into the larger issue over conversions and the fact that Israel's acceptance of converted Jews is hamstrung by bureaucracy, corruption and political subservience to the Orthodox.
• Building Jewish Bridges, one of the country's best outreach programs, located in San Francisco's East Bay, recently started a blog. Keep up the good work.


• After they vigorously clean their house of all chametz--non-kosher-for-Passover food, meaning bread, pasta and the like--traditional households "sell" their chametz to a non-Jew and then buy it back after Passover is over. The tradition requires that the buyer be a non-Jew. The Jerusalem Post has an interesting article about the issue, and what happens if you sell your hametz to a non-Jew who is actually Jewish by traditional definitions? The article notes that it is preferable to sell hametz to Arabs in Israel because there has been so little Arab-Jewish intermarriage that one can feel quite secure that the buyer is not "actually" Jewish. It's not remotely the writer's intent, but I found that the piece highlights the silliness of basing Jewish definition on descent rather than practice or self-identification. Under traditional rules, it would be OK to sell hametz to a committed Reform Jew whose mother wasn't Jewish but not OK to sell it to an evangelical Christian whose mother's maternal grandmother was Jewish! Oy.

Bears in Space

To pay tribute to his late father's Jewish heritage, an astronaut from an interfaith home brought a teddy bear into space. The bear was a replica of Refugee, a teddy bear donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by Holocaust survivor Sophie Turner-Zaretsky.

Astronaut Mark Polansky, whose mother is a native Hawaiian, asked the museum for some mementoes that would simultaneously pay tribute to his father Irving, who died in 2001, and bring awareness to the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. The museum also gave him a photo of a child refugee from Darfur. The bear made its 5.3-million-mile journey on the Discovery mission in December, and Turner-Zaretsky, now 80 and living in New York, followed the shuttle's progress every step of the way.

The Chutzpah of Hummus

In case you didn't realize it, an interfaith love story between an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian won an Oscar for best short film on Sunday.

Called West Bank Story, the 21-minute spoof of West Side Story is focused on two competing falafel stands in the West Bank, one run by a Jewish family, one run by a Palestinian family. But the children of each families--David, a handsome Israeli soldier, and Fatima, an Arab beauty--fall in love. After each stand is burned down, the two lovers persuade each side to join hands and sing together.

Certainly not the most realistic story, but it does demonstrate the way interfaith relationships can be fraught with political complications--and the way interfaith relationships can help open people's minds to unfamiliar cultures. For more on the making of the film, see this JTA story.

In other news, our own Ed Case will be presenting a seminar at the Interfaith Family Weekend and Conference in Philadelphia. The conference runs from Friday, March 23 to Sunday, March 25, and Case will be presenting a workshop on "Family Dynamics: Parenting in an Interfaith Home." The weekend and conference is being presented by Faithways, the interfaith family support network of Jewish Family and Children's Service of Greater Philadelphia. Most impressively, 42 (!) synagogues in the Philadelphia area are participating in the event. For more on the conference, see http://www.jfcsphil.org/events.asp.

The Life Cycle, cont.

We put out a new issue today on Differences in Interfaith Issues Through the Life Cycle. There's a great piece by Rosalyn Shafter about why she and her husband decided not to tell his 95-year-old mother that he converted to Judaism; a nice little article from Paula Yablonsky, a Jew-by-choice, on how a driving lesson with her daughter seemed like the perfect opportunity to say a Hebrew blessing; an interesting analysis of the stages of marital development by family and marriage therapist Wendy Weltman Palmer; a superb--albeit slightly long--profile of Jorma Kaukonen, the founding guitarist for Jefferson Airplane, who was born Jewish but didn't have anything to do with the religion until he married a non-Jewish woman; and, just because we know what you like, an Interfaith Celebrities column with goodies about Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Ben Stiller and Scarlett Johansson.

Black Jews, including Karen from The Office

We talked about Lacey Schwartz and David Matthews, two children of black-Jewish relationships, a couple weeks ago, but I only just realized that both were featured as part of an entire issue on black Jews in American Jewish Life magazine. Six of the 10 black Jews featured are children of interfaith relationships, including: Rashida Jones, who plays Karen on The Office, and is the daughter of musical legend Quincy Jones; Rain Pryor, the daughter of Richard Pryor and a moderately successful stand-up comedian herself; Raymond Roker, the editor of the hip alternative magazine URB; and Mischa Van Schet, a Dutch soap opera star who is now living as an Orthodox Jew in New York.

While their stories are unquestionably fascinating, they also serve as confirmation of the observation that mothers have a much stronger influence over their child's religious upbringing than fathers. In all of the aforementioned features, the mother was Jewish and the child now identifies as Jewish. The only exception is Matthews, whose mother was Jewish but left her father at a young age; today being Jewish is only a small piece of his identity.

Compare their experiences to that of Alexandra Rosenfeld, who was crowned Miss Europe in October. A Frenchwoman, she was raised by a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. While she supports some Jewish causes, she does not practice Judaism.

There's no denying that Jewish moms in interfaith relationships raise their children Jewish more frequently than non-Jewish moms. But IFF supports any parent--mom or dad--in an interfaith relationship who wants to raise their child Jewish, and we support more programming targeting both non-Jewish mothers AND non-Jewish fathers.

You Can Actually Learn Something From Reality TV

I was told recently that I'm a reality TV junkie, and while contrary to popular belief, I don't profess to love so called reality shows--I'm finding myself into the History Channel and PBS lately! BUT I can't seem to help getting sucked into the "Celebreality" type shows on channels like VH1. My newest indulgence has been the truly silly "I Love New York", which for those of you as sucked in as I am, have followed this spin-off from the equally silly Flavor of Love series starring the rapper Flavor Flav. For those of you with better things to do with your time, I'll give a re-cap: the show is based around an African-American woman named Tiffany, better known to the world as "Miss New York" and it follows her in a dating-like game of suitors who live in a house with her and compete for her love, with each week an elimination round and 2 men getting the boot. Final goal - to be the last man standing and win New York's heart. Of course the cast of characters is perfectly scripted, with men pushing their own agendas (like passing out their mix tapes!) and others looking for their 15 minutes of fame while having nervous breakdowns. The contestants range from the ones you find yourself oddly rooting for to the ones you know the producers just keep on the show to make good TV--and overwhelmingly the cast of men is African-American as well--with one notable exception: My new favorite character, Mr. Boston.

Why is he my new favorite character you're wondering? Well, this week's episode featured the men going to church with Miss New York and her mother (a fixture on the show and a real lay down the law kind of lady!). New York considers herself a religious woman and felt it was important that the men experience a church service with her. I'll be honest, I was half-paying attention at this point (didn't want to lose too many brain cells watching this show!) - until I hear New York say how nice it was of Mr. Boston to come to church with her anyway even though it wasn't his tradition. Now THAT caught my attention! Next thing I know, they do the little "interview" with Mr. Boston where he tells viewers that he feels a little strange going to church because, well, he's Jewish, but since he grew up in an interfaith family, he thought they'd be ok with it and he wanted to show Miss New York that he was willing to be supportive of her. Now of all things I expected to see on this show, THAT was not one of them! So of course the rest of the show was spent in speculation that Mr. Boston was going to get the old heave-ho at the end of the episode, because let's face it, how much do the two of them really have in common? But much to everyone's surprise (and Miss New York's mother!) - Mr. Boston was the last contestant chosen to remain in house and compete for New York's love.

I was stunned by this new development, and of course now I feel like I have to continue to tune in and see how far Mr. Boston is going to make it! It made me wonder if the producers are going to push the idea of this interfaith issue - or if anything else is going to happen with it on this show; I guess we'll have to wait and see what they do with it. Of course now I'm intrigued, and yesterday when I told Micah about the episode (and promised him I'd blog about it today), we started doing some research, and Micah in his infinite wisdom, managed to find Mr. Boston, live in person, and he's going to be interviewing him very, very soon - so stay tuned! Of course he's not allowed to tell us if and when he gets kicked off the show, so we'll just have to tune in and see.

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:

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.

MTV's True Life: I'm in an Interfaith Relationship

MTV gets a lot of flak for its socially irresponsible reality series like "The Hills," "The Real World," "Laguna Beach" and whatever name the Real World-Road Rules Challenge goes by these days.

But quietly, MTV also produces some of the most thoughtful, balanced documentaries on issues facing young people. One series that is usually quite good is called "True Life." Each half-hour episode of "True Life" focuses on two or three subjects who are all grappling with a difficult issue: coming out, eating disorders, mental illness, internet addiction--if there's a problem teenagers and 20-somethings have in this country, "True Life" has covered it. Last night's episode focuses on two young married couples in interfaith relationships.

One couple was Ira and Sasha, who live in Longwood, Fla. Ira is a non-observant, although somewhat knowledgeable, Jew, and Sasha is a devout Christian whose church celebrates the Jewish holidays. The other couple was Travis and Jasmin, who live in Hollywood, Fla. Travis is a non-practicing Lutheran, and Jasmin is a very spiritual woman who is strongly leaning to becoming a Jehovah's Witness. Sasha is pregnant while Jasmin has two children, so both couples are dealing not only with interfaith issues with their partners, but also grappling with how to teach religion to their children.

True to form, "True Life" gives an honest, sometimes painful look into the two couple's lives. Ira wants to raise the child Jewish, but Sasha chides Ira for not being religious himself; during Yom Kippur, she's more interested in fasting than he is. When the interviewer asks them how they would handle the issue of Jesus with their future child, Ira says, "I would tell him I don't believe Jesus was the messiah based on my reading of the Bible." Sasha retorts, "I would tell him to read it again." In the other couple, Jasmin attends services at a non-denominational church in an attempt to learn more about Travis' religion, while Travis says of Jehovah's Witnesses, "I hate those people." In both cases, the woman is the more religious partner in the couple.

I wish I could say that each couple comes to a mature, well-thought-out decision over how to raise their children, but I can't. I don't know which is worse, Travis and Jasmin, who admit that they've made no decision, or Ira and Sasha, who've made a decision--and their decision is to invent a new religion called "Jewstian." Travis and Jasmin sound like they're going to teach their children conflicting religious narratives, while Ira and Sasha say they're going to look for a place where the child can participate in Jewish rituals but still believe in Jesus. Unsurprisingly, the epilogue notes that Ira and Sasha are unable to find a church that will accomodate them. Neither couple realizes one of the unfortunate truths about teaching religion to your children: you have to make a choice, and that choice will inevitably favor one parent's religion.

The show casts in bold relief the dangers posed by doing "both" or not making a religious decision at all. Both Travis and Jasmin say that when asked about religion by their children, they'll teach them that their own religion is the truth. In essence, they plan to compete for their children's hearts, a recipe for religious confusion, if not divorce.

Ira and Sasha's solution sounds better on paper, a compromise, but it's both unworkable and dishonest. Religion is too complicated and sophisticated a matter to assume that any two people can invent a religion that their children will find persuasive. Moreover, the community of worship is one of the essential elements of religious affiliation and feeling; Ira and Sasha want their child to be a religious community of one.

Ira is also delusional if he thinks that his child can be raised Jewish and believe in Jesus. Once he accepts Jesus, he is a Christian, regardless of whether he fasts on Yom Kippur and lights the menorah on Hanukkah or not. There's nothing wrong with the couple making the choice to raise their child Christian, but they should be honest about it. Further, even if they can successfully raise their child in their hybrid religion, the likelihood that he will identify as Jewish as an adult--or that his children will identify as Jewish--is poor.

Sometimes the truth hurts.

Chabad on Intermarriage, etc.

Chabad has a story on its website arguing that despite the recent studies showing the American Jewish population has grown, Steven Cohen's recent study on intermarriage demonstrates that Jews should do everything they can to prevent intermarriage.

While many people in the organized Jewish community are suspicious of Chabad, I am quite sympathetic to their approach, if not their aims. Decades before federations and synagogues got wise to the power of outreach, they were actively seeking out and welcoming unaffiliated Jews. But there has always been a tension between their methods and their goals: on the one hand, they'll welcome anyone into their Chabad centers, including secular Jews, intermarried Jews and children of intermarriage; on the other hand, they are firmly against intermarriage and abide by the strictest definition of Jewish identity, so that children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers are not considered Jewish. I wouldn't argue that a deeply religious movement with a powerful reverence for the Torah should change its stripes, but I just wonder how much stronger a Jewish community we could have if there were a national movement that combined Chabad's zeal for outreach with the Reform movement's tolerance and open-mindedness?

In other news, our letter to the editor regarding their story on Conservative day schools liberalizing their admission policies toward the children of non-Jewish mothers was printed in The Jewish Chronicle (Pittsburgh) as well as the (New Jersey) Jewish Standard.

And there's a nice piece in the j. about a new opera based on the Book of Ruth written by Steve Richards, a retired cantor, and performed last summer by the Israel Philharmonic:

The Book of Ruth, like Richard’s opera, is a plea for welcoming the convert into the Jewish fold.

“The book was a protest against the edict against intermarriage,” says Richards. “It was written after the Babylonian exile, when the Persians permitted the Jews to go back to Israel. A lot of intermarriage had gone on, because the Jews were in Babylon 75 years, so some of the prophets and priests put out these edicts. This book was written to show not only that intermarriage was a good thing, but that Ruth was the great-grandmother of King David.”

There'll Be No Chrismukkah This Year

CNN.com reports that Fox has canceled "The O.C.," a show that only a few years ago was one of the most popular and trend-setting shows among young adults. "The O.C." featured an interfaith family at its center, with Peter Gallagher as Jewish lawyer Sandy Cohen, Kelly Rowan as his non-Jewish wife Kirsten and Adam Brody as their neurotic son Seth. Addictively entertaining in its first season and a half, the quality of the show has suffered precipitously in recent years as they've resorted to ever more outlandish plot twists (Ryan's part of a fight club? Marissa has a lesbian affair?) to juice the ratings.

From IFF's perspective, the show's creator, Josh Schwartz, missed a golden opportunity to depict an interfaith family sensitively and intelligently; instead, Seth invented "Chrismukkah," a blended mock-holiday that diluted and distorted both Judaism and Christianity. Ever since the December 2004 episode that unveiled Chrismukkah, the secular media has had a field day with the notion that people are increasingly celebrating a blended version of the holidays, but Schwartz's portrayal of the Cohens was not a reflection of reality. There is little evidence that interfaith families are blending the two holidays. Even among those families that practice little or no religion, there is no evidence that they're celebrating some mishmash of Hanukkah and Christmas. Indeed, if you read the voluminous number of stories on Chrismukkah that come out every year, you'll find that most reporters were unable to find even a single family that was blending the two holidays.

So we're happy to say that there'll be no Chrismukkah this year.

A Tale of Three Families

Cokie Roberts, the NPR and ABC telejournalist, and her husband Steve Roberts, also a journalist, form one of the most visible interfaith couples in the country. They often speak sensitively to the problems, needs and opportunities of interfaith families. Unfortunately, raised their children in both Judaism and Catholicism, a choice we don't endorse.

One of the unfortunate byproducts of raising children in two religions can be a collapsing of the differences between religions, to the point that they form a sort of amorphous, universal religion that shares more in common with Christianity than it does with Judaism. Case in point: in a recent column about their holiday celebrations, the Roberts speak of their Hanukkah party, which was attended by a number of mixed-religion couples:

Some are raising their kids Jewish, others Christian, and a few as both. But they share a belief that Chanukah and Christmas reflect the same elemental human yearning: for hope and redemption, peace and goodwill.

The statement betrays an ignorance over what Hanukkah is really about. In celebrating the Maccabees' resistance against the assimilationist tendences of their Hellenicized Jewish neighbors, Hanukkah is more about asserting one's identity than it is "peace and goodwill." And they would cringe at anyone's attempts to synthesize their message with that of another religious tradition. Interestingly, the column makes no mention of what religious tradition the Roberts' grown children follow, or how they're raising their own children.

A more serious examination of interfaith issues can be found at the Galleria 324 theater in Cleveland (one show remaining). A new play titled "Both Sides of the Family" interweaves two monologues: one from a non-Jewish woman who raised her children Jewish, one from a secular Jew who is raising the child of his second marriage as a Christian. As this Cleveland Jewish News article reveals, the monologues are based on the autobiographical experiences of the author and her classmates from a playwriting program.

Michael Richards, Yossi Beilin and Who's Jewish?

There's been an interesting confluence of events over the past several weeks that raise the question, "Who's Jewish?"

First there was the media firestorm about comedian Michael Richards, the beloved Kramer from the TV show Seinfeld, having made racist comments at an LA comedy club. Other than being horrified as I assume most others were, I didn't pay much attention to that news blitz, until reports started coming out that Richards' publicist was saying that Richards considered himself to be Jewish. As reported in the Houston Chronicle, for example, Richards, though not born of Jewish parents and not having converted to Judaism, "believes in the tenets of Judaism and considers himself Jewish." Other than a first reaction questioning whether it would be a good thing if Richards were Jewish, I didn't pay much attention to that issue either, until a bloggers' blitz started up arguing that Richards could not be Jewish if his parents weren't and he hadn't converted.

That reminded me that at InterfaithFamily.com we hear many comments, usually from non-Jewish parents who are raising their children as Jews, along the lines of "I feel a little bit Jewish" or "I feel more and more Jewish as time goes by" or "I'm sort-of Jewish, aren't I?" Rabbi Kerry Olitzky wrote a wonderful article for our Web Magazine, Doing the Conversion "Two-Step", also included in our book, explaining how many people experience a "conversion of the heart" long before they formally convert, if indeed they ever do.

It doesn't serve the Jewish community's interests, in my opinion, to jump to a conclusion that a person can't be Jewish if his parents weren't and he or she hasn't converted. In fact I wrote an essay, Redefine Jewish Peoplehood, for the Spring 2000 issue of Reform Judaism Magazine, arguing that "we should adopt a policy of 'total inclusion' of the intermarried by broadening the definition of Jewish peoplehood to include both Jews and their non-Jewish partners."

That brings me to Yossi Beilin. Years ago we reprinted his Thoughts on Secular Conversion: An Important Alternative to Religious Conversion. A few days ago, Ha'aretz reported that Beilin, a member of Israel's Knesset, has introduced a bill to recognize as Jewish those in Israel with a Jewish father (traditionally, only children of a Jewish mother are recognized as Jews) and to establish a process of secular conversion. As reported in Ha'aretz, someone would be considered Jewish who "has joined the Jewish people in a non-religious process and has linked his or her fate with the Jewish people, and is not a member of another religion." Beilin is quoted as saying, "If people see themselves as Jewish... why should the state define them as not Jewish." The article continues,

Beilin's idea of secular conversion, which he first raised in 1999, involves joining the Jewish people by means of activities in the Jewish community and maintaining a Jewish lifestyle. Committees would be established to determine what demands would be made of those who wished to join the Jewish people, Beilin proposes, "such as elementary knowledge of Hebrew and checking there are no extraneous interests."

Beilin said the central consideration in accepting people to Judaism by means of secular conversion would be a family tie to Jews.

So while I can't comment on the sincerity of Michael Richards' feelings, maybe his publicist's argument isn't so far-fetched. Maybe he should be considered Jewish, after all.

Some interfaith celebs

I was talking with Nate Bloom, the world's premier expert on Jewish celebrities (no joke), the other day, about a new column he will be writing for us on intermarried celebrities and celebrities from interfaith backgrounds, and he tipped me off on two good stories about celebrities with interfaith heritage.

One is Miriam Schor, the Jewishly knowledgeable star of ABC's new comedy Big Day, which uses the real-time format of 24 to look at the final day before the wedding. Check out this excerpt from a story in the Sept. 2006 issue of the San Diego Jewish Journal (my old employer):

The actress was raised Jewish by the insistence of her non-Jewish mother who had married her Jewish father. “That was odd, but nice. I would not be considered Jewish by some, but I have a different take on religion,” Shor said. “The history of my relatives is as much a part of my belief system as much as someone who sits in a church or synagogue and tells me what I am.”

The other is Jorma Kaukonen, the lead guitarist for Jefferson Airplane, who was born to a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father. His story is a fascinating one; he wasn't raised with much religion, but when he met a spiritually seeking Catholic woman--and married her--they both began researching Judaism. It eventually led to her conversion and his increased observance. Jacob Berkman's terrific profile of Kaukonen appeared in the March 9, 2006, issue of the New Jersey Jewish Standard.

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.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

A number of good links came our way over the Thanksgiving holiday:

Seven out of 50

Every year, the Forward, the national Jewish newspaper, compiles a list called the Forward 50, a list of the 50 most notable Jewish figures from the previous year. "Each year's compilation is a journalistic effort to record some of the key trends and events in American Jewish life in the year just ended, and to illuminate some of the individuals likely to shape the news in the year ahead," says this year's introduction. "... We've chosen [the 50] because they are doing and saying things that are making a difference in the way American Jews, for better or worse, view the world and themselves."

In 2001, our president and publisher, Ed Case was chosen for the list. This year, arguably seven of the 50 have a connection to intermarriage or engaging the intermarried. They are:

While some on the list--notably George Allen--are children of intermarriages who completely repudiated their Jewish background, others on the list demonstrate that intermarried people and the children of intermarriage can still have strong Jewish identities. Thankfully philanthropists like Schusterman and Bronfman understand that.

Borat is Interdating

He's known best for pretending to be a virulently anti-Semitic Kazakh reporter, but Sacha Baron Cohen, the star of Borat, is the son of Orthodox Jews and is dating Isla Fisher, a non-Jewish Australian actress. You might remember Fisher as the crazy sister from Wedding Crashers.

According to this article and other sources, Cohen and Fisher are engaged and are planning a Jewish wedding, on the condition that Fisher convert.

Also, among the six new Jewish representatives to Congress elected on Tuesday, at least one of them is from an interfaith family. See this blurb from the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix article "Ms. Giffords Goes to Congress":

"My Jewish heritage has really instilled in me the importance of education and caring for the community," said Giffords, who has a Jewish father and a Protestant mother and said she grew up "with a mixture of my parents’ religions. After visiting Israel in 2001, I realized Judaism is a part of my life I hadn’t focused on before. I consider myself Jewish without any equivocation."

For the curious, there are now 30 Jews in the House (up from 26), and 13 in the Senate (up from 11).

What Makes a Celebrity Jewish

Around a year ago, the website Jewhoo.com went off-line. Created and maintained by Nate Bloom, an Oakland-based writer, Jewhoo was the definitive site to go to to find out which celebrities were Jewish--and which weren't. It was an amazing resource for Jewish journalists, and I'm sure I was not the only one who mourned its loss.

The site sort-of lives on in a different form in a series of columns that Bloom continues to write for the New Jersey Jewish Standard, j., the Jewish news weekly of Northern California and three other Jewish papers. Bloom's research is impeccable; he pores through every article on celebrities with Jewish-sounding names he can find to determine what their Jewish connection is. Are both parents Jewish? (Not that often.) Was the father Jewish? (Sometimes, but that can mean the celebrity practices some other religion.) Was the mother Jewish? What religion does the celebrity practice now?

It's tricky work, especially because so many celebrities are secular and are uncomfortable talking about religion. He's like an ethnic/religious detective, snooping out who's really Jewish--and who just has a -berg in their surname.

In a fascinating column recently published by the New Jersey Jewish Standard, Bloom explains how he defines Jewishness--and responds to his occasional critics.

I count as "Jewish" any famous person who has at least one Jewish parent, was not raised in a religion other than Judaism, and does not practice, as an adult, a faith other than Judaism.

Converts to Judaism are an exception. Quite rationally I count them as Jewish even if they did not have a Jewish parent or were raised in another faith.

Interestingly, these standards are very close to the definition of Jewish that the National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01 used, with the slight clarification that those with one Jewish parent who practice a non-monotheistic religion (e.g., Buddhism or paganism) would be counted as Jews, and those who practice a monotheistic religion other than Judaism (i.e., Christianity and Islam) would not be counted. Nate actually addresses this issue in his column:

There is no perfect way to do a column like this or to satisfy everyone. Some celebrities don't fit into neat categories--like Jews who claim to practice Buddhism but say they are still Jewish. Buddhism has no deity, and when you look into what these so-called Jewish Buddhists practice of Buddhism, sometimes it is no more than a few meditation techniques that are not much different from those taught in secular classes. I still don't know exactly how to deal with this situation.

While he doesn't reveal his own feelings on the debate over matrilineal vs. patrilineal descent (Bloom will voice his opinion on any TV show or movie, including ones he hasn't seen, but is notoriously reticent about any details about his personal life or his Jewishness), he does take a fair approach to the whole issue. He says:

In the case of someone who has one Jewish parent, I try to note in the column which parent is Jewish. This allows readers to make up their minds as how they want to view that person--Jewish, not Jewish, whatever.

That's reasonable, considering his readership runs the gamut from the liberal Bay Area to the heavily Orthodox Teaneck, New Jersey.

Despite his attempts at even-handedness, Bloom still says he gets criticized when "some readers... use the detailed information that I provide and turn around and accuse me of labeling as 'Jewish' people who aren't--because they are not children of a Jewish mother or for some other reason." He says:

Part of the criticism I get is based on what I call "head-in-the-sand syndrome." During the 1920s through the 1960s, when intermarriage was rare among "ordinary Jews," it was very common in most sectors of the entertainment world.

But it wasn't talked about much in the Jewish press or in profiles of Jewish celebrities in the Jewish press...

You cannot blame these journalists of prior generations. Did their readers want to hear that the Jewish George Burns, a beloved figure, was married to a Catholic (Gracie Allen) and that his children were raised in her faith? No.

Did they want to hear that the Jewish Lauren Bacall agreed to raise her children with the non-Jewish Humphrey Bogart as Episcopalian? No...

I am almost surprised these days when I find out that a famous Jewish person is marrying another Jew. I would say that almost half of the famous "Jewish" celebrities in entertainment under the age of 30 are not the children of two Jewish parents.

But he clearly struggles with the whole intermarriage issue, saying "intermarriage represents a real demographic problem for the relatively small American Jewish population--a demographic problem that can translate, in a generation or so, into a host of serious consequences for American Jewry." Because he is constantly writing about celebrities who don't have a serious Jewish commitment, he is clearly sensitive to the accusation that doing what he does promotes intermarriage, or promotes a notion of Jewish identity devoid of religious content. He asks himself: "So what, you may ask, is the value of the column?" and answers:

I think the column has value in promoting Jewish continuity by letting people know how many famous people are Jewish and, I hope, they will realize that that somewhat hard-to-define thing, "Jewish culture" is an engine--an engine of certain valuable cultural traits--that constantly produces accomplished people incredibly out of proportion to Jewish numbers. I hope readers will be influenced to believe it is a culture worth preserving.

I've always taken an interest in Jewish celebrities--as both a writer and reader of Jewish press--but I've never been able to fully justify it. It can often seem like a cheap, shallow way to connect to Judaism, but Bloom's rationale is the most persuasive, eloquent explanation of the value of highlighting Jewish celebrities I've yet seen.

Some Personal Business, and Some Plain Old Business

I would like to share a little news with our faithful readers. Last week while on a vacation in Hawaii, I got engaged to a wonderful non-Jewish woman! We've been dating longer than two people of our age should, and you can probably blame me for that. So the whole debate on intermarriage has just gotten a bit more personally meaningful for me, and I'm sure issues in our relationship will occasionally surface on the blog (although I'm not planning on turning this into a play-by-play of our wedding planning. IFF's wedding blog, which will be coming soon, will be a forum for that.).

In other news...

InterfaithFamily.com is a non-profit but it appears that some entrepreneurs are getting savvy to the profit potential from interfaith couples. Along with the apparently endless number of rabbis and other officiants advertising their services online, two new business ventures that hope to tap the intermarried market recently came to our attention:

Esther: A Hero for Christians?

Whatever its other faults, the success of the The Passion of the Christ last year demonstrated a powerful fact: religious movie-goers have massive buying power. In the wake of The Passion, numerous movies have tried to tap the potential of the religious market: Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Medea's Family Reunion; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; The Nativity Story, coming out in December, about the events leading up to the birth of Jesus. But the common thread to all these movies is their appeal to the Christian movie-goer. Which leads to the question: are there any movies for the religious Jewish movie-goer?

The answer is yes, sort of. Coming out October 13, One Night with the King tells the story of Purim: how Esther, the Jewish wife of the Persian king, prevented Haman, the king's advisor, from executing a plot to kill all the Jews. The story of Purim is a particular touchstone for intermarried families, as its heroine is in an interfaith relationship but still deeply connected to the Jewish community. In some ways the story of Purim celebrates the political benefits of Jews marrying into the dominant culture.

But there's a catch.

One Night with the King is a product of Gener8Xion Entertainment Inc., a Christian media company based in Los Angeles. The head of Gener8Xion is Matthew Crouch, son of Paul and Jan Crouch, founders of the largest Christian television company, Trinity Broadcasting Network. More concerning is the fact that One Night with the King is based on a novel by a Christian pastor, Tommy Tenney.

It's hard to know what to expect from the movie. Like The Passion and Chronicles of Narnia before it, it's being prescreened to churches. Unlike those movies, it's also being prescreened to Jewish audiences. One Night with the King could be a powerful, inspiring story for interfaith families exploring Jewish life--let's just hope it's not also a tool for covert Christian proselytizing as well.