Rosh Hashanah Round-Up

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

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

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

Michelle Citrin, an up-and-coming songstress, for one, is excited about the upcoming High Holidays... or at least that's what she claims in her amusing video "I Gotta Love You Rosh Hashanah," a Jewish take-off on the YouTube hit "I Got a Crush... on Obama."

Lastly, let's settle one High Holidays non-debate once and for all. Contrary to what is reported in this silly JTA article, there is no mystery over whether Milwaukee Brewers third baseman Ryan Braun will play on Yom Kippur. Despite his pride in his Jewish background, this child of an Israeli father and non-Jewish mother is not religious. Not to mention the fact that the Brewers have a razor-thin lead in the National League Central and are fighting for the playoff lives, and one game off from the team's second best player could be the difference between making the postseason or not. The only mystery surrounding the end of Braun's regular season is whether his election as the first Jewish Rookie of the Year will be unanimous or not.

Breaking Down Walls

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

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

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

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

We wish him the best of luck.

A Powerful Partnership

Two innovative national Jewish organizations are teaming up to create a program that will help 18 synagogues become more welcoming towards interfaith families. The program, "Call Synagogue Home," is the product of a partnership between the Jewish Outreach Institute and STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal), a group that helps synagogue improve and strengthen their services.

The program will take place at synagogues in three different communities. According to the release:

Call Synagogue Home's pilot program will provide participating synagogues with tools and communications to reach out to interfaith families during key life-cycle events and ritual celebrations, including beginning a Jewish pre-school or religious school, brit milah and baby namings, divorce and death.

I can't say enough about how promising this program sounds. Even though many synagogues have become quite adept at welcoming and involving interfaith families, numerous synagogues could use the help. Further, by focusing on life-cycle events, this will help the participating synagogues recruit interfaith families who might not otherwise consider joining a synagogue.

Kudos to all involved.

One-Quarter of American Jewish Youth are Orthodox, Says Study

There are more young Orthodox Jews than either young Reform or young Conservative Jews, says a study coming out this week, according to a Nathaniel Popper article in the Forward. Says the article:

While the Reform and Conservative religious movements have long jockeyed for the title of the largest Jewish denomination in America, a new study finds that when it comes to the next generation, the Orthodox movement has the most children affiliated with its synagogues, setting the stage for a future shift in the balance of American Jewish power.

...The new report puts particular emphasis on the figures relating to Jewish children. While only 43% of adults are affiliated with a synagogue, the number is 68% when it comes to Jews under the age of 18, according to Cohen’s computations. Of those young affiliated Jews, 37%, or 224,000, are with Orthodox synagogues. The number is 195,000 for the Reform and 147,000 for the Conservatives.

The article goes on to explain the demographic picture in the Reform and Conservative movements. The Reform movement, it says, "is made up mostly of middle-aged parents with children, while the Conservative movement is dominated by an aging population with fewer children."

When it comes to the numbers of Orthodox children, there's no getting around the fact that that is unfortunate news for champions of outreach to interfaith families. Orthodox Judaism is openly hostile to intermarriage, and the stronger the Orthodox presence in the organized Jewish community, the harder it will be to argue for engagement of interfaith families.

However, I wonder if the the study's approach may have resulted in an overestimation of the Orthodox population. Unlike previous population studies, which only looked at respondents' self-identification as Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, etc., this study, authored by Steven M. Cohen of Hebrew Union College-Institute of Relgion, looked directly at synagogue membership rolls. As Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, says in the article, "You're better off comparing what people do than what they say."

I agree with Tobin's statement, but the article makes no mention of the curious case of Chabad. While Chabad houses are Orthodox, they make a point of inviting and engaging Jews of all backgrounds. So while Chabad houses promote and encourage Orthodox Jewish practice, many--if not most--of their members are not Orthodox. We haven't seen the study yet, so I don't have any way of knowing whether this is a legitimate issue or not.

I also think the picture the study paints of the Reform movement is encouraging. There was a time when the Conservative movement was the largest Jewish movement in the U.S., but Reform has been larger than Conservative for a number of years. Most observers agree that Reform's growth is in a large part due to the movement's proactive welcoming and engagement of interfaith families. This study provides further substance to the argument that interfaith families can contribute to the vibrancy and growth of the Jewish community. And it may also help prod the Conservative movement to liberalizing its stance towards the intermarried (for example, the Conservative movement currently forbids rabbis from officiating at intermarriages, does not allow non-Jewish spouses to take leadership roles in synagogues and has all kinds of restrictions on the participation of non-Jewish spouses in worship).

When the study comes out this week, we will take a look at it and let you know our thoughts.

Should High Holiday tickets be free?

Sue Fishkoff, the JTA correspondent who focuses on Jewish identity and affiliation, has just launched a new blog. Her first entry raises the question whether High Holiday tickets should be free. I posted this response:

I understand both sides of this issue. As a former synagogue president, I know what it costs to run a synagogue, that synagogues depend on member to pay dues to cover those costs, and that many members, for better or worse, attend primarily on the High Holy Days.

On the other hand, as president of InterfaithFamily.com, I know that the high cost of synagogue membership is a serious obstacle to the goal of having interfaith couples raise their children as Jews which synagogue membership definitely fosters.

I am in favor of free tickets a first year, free initial memberships, gradual dues increases, fair share dues systems, and other strategies to encourage synagogue membership. And it may take seating non-members later or "in the back" as a reasonable compromise that lets members enjoy a benefit of membership without excluding those who want to attend.

Yay for J.!

Part of my job is trawling through Jewish newspapers for stories of interest to interfaith families and those who work with them. Most papers have items of interest every few weeks, but there is one paper that seems to always have intermarriage on its mind: the J., San Francisco's Jewish paper. (It's full and proper name is a doozy: J., the Jewish news weekly of northern California (formerly the JEWISH BULLETIN of Northern California)).

Part of this has to do with the community it serves. While San Francisco's intermarriage rate is actually lower than the national average, it is high for an established Jewish community of its size (228,000, according to a 2004 population survey, which makes it one of the 10 largest in the U.S.). But unlike some other cities with high intermarriage rates, San Francisco doesn't close its doors to interfaith families; indeed, the Bay Area is on the cutting-edge of outreach, and is home to numerous terrific outreach programs, including Building Jewish Bridges in Oakland and Interfaith Connection in San Francisco. This might partly explain why that same 2004 population study showed that interfaith families in the San Francisco area were more Jewishly engaged than interfaith families elsewhere.

Part of it also has to do with who works for the J.: Joanne Catz Hartman, a columnist, is intermarried; Dan Pine, an editor and writer, used to be married to a non-Jew; Rachel Sarah, a columnist and correspondent, is the child of an interfaith relationship; and Rachel Freedenberg, a copy writer, is in an interfaith relationship (which she blogs about for us).

Whatever the reasons for the J.'s continued focus on interfaith families, I would like to say "Mazel tov!" Jewish papers are a low-intensity way that interfaith families can explore Jewish identity; giving them stories they can relate to, and letting them know they're not alone, can help them on their Jewish journey. Keep up the good work.

This week's issue of the J. continues the trend.

There is a story on Rabbi David Booth, the new rabbi at Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto, who credits his non-Jewish college girlfriend (now his Jewish wife) for his decision to become a rabbi. His then-Presbyterian girlfriend's spirituality sparked his interest in his own religion, which was never high as a child. "My dad would sometimes drag me to shul, and I'd go only to please my dad, not to pray--God forbid," he says. "The comfort and meaning I derive from my faith in God is a gift from [my wife]."

Pine also wrote an interesting but flawed column about how he used to play down his Jewishness--act like John Q. Public, he says--around his ex-wife's born-again Christian in-laws. During barbecues in "places like Indianapolis and Yuma," he would talk about the weather or football. "In all those years, no one ever said anything rude to me," he says, but he says, "I imagine my in-laws saw me as some sort of freaky Jewish space alien." He finally gets his confirmation when he hears a secondhand account of a conversation between a relative and his former father-in-law: "'That Dan,' said the relative, 'he's pretty nice for a Jew.' Replied my father-in-law, 'Well, you can't have everything.'"

Pine says he was "stunned, hurt and mad them... It didn't matter how bland, boring and invisible I tried to make my Jewishness, the in-laws still saw me as a hell-bound Christ-killer."

I find his reaction very interesting, because I'm not sure there's anything anti-Semitic about what his father-in-law said (the unnamed relative is another story). Just like we don't consider it anti-Christian for a Jewish parent to want his child to marry a fellow Jew, it's not anti-Jewish for a Christian parent to want his child to marry a Christian. In most parts of the Jewish community, the attitude of "Well, you can't have everything" is actually considered a tolerant response to a child's intermarriage. I'm not quite sure where Pine picked up the idea that expressing disappointment in one's child's marriage to someone of another faith is the same as seeing the child's partner as "a hell-bound Christ-killer."

But, to his credit, Pine ends the story with how his former father-in-law came to his Jewish grandchild's bar mitzvah and sat in the front row, humming along to "the strange tunes of the Amidah, the Aleynu and the Chatzi Kaddish." To my mind, that action speaks a lot louder than the father-in-law's overheard, whispered word.

Honoring Non-Jews at Synagogue

JTA has a great, I mean just terrific, story today on how a number of synagogues are using the High Holidays as an opportunity to publicly thank non-Jews in interfaith families who are raising their children as Jews:

As intermarriage rates continue to rise, and more intermarried families join congregations, increasing numbers of non-Orthodox rabbis are looking for ways to acknowledge the non-Jews in their midst.

While Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis tend to be more low-key about it, Reform rabbis like [Rabbi Janet] Marder and [Rabbi Larry] Raphael have come up with a wide variety of ways to express gratitude ranging from festive meals to public ceremonies.

Many chose to do their honoring during Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur services, both because of the prestige conveyed by those special days, and because that’s when most of their congregation shows up. Marder did her first public blessing on Yom Kippur morning in 2004.

“I’d encountered so many families through the bar and bat mitzvah process where the non-Jewish partner had been so dedicated,” she says. “I thought it was important to make a public acknowledgment.”

She was concerned that some people would not want to be singled out. But the ceremony, which took place in front of thousands of people, turned out to be “a far more moving and powerful experience” than she’d expected.

These public expressions of gratitude are happening mostly at Reform synagogues, which is in large part due to a sermon by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the leader of the Reform movement, at their biennial last year. In that much-publicized speech, Rabbi Yoffie said that Reform synagogues should honor non-Jews who choose to raise their children as Jews but should also not forget to ask non-Jews to consider conversion. There was nothing wrong with the message, but in the publicity following the speech--including the Reform movement's own press releases--the second point eclipsed the first.

But now, in the first High Holidays following that speech, it appears that many rabbis are taking to heart Rabbi Yoffie's first point. First impressions are lasting, and for many Jews--intermarried or not--their first impression of the organized Jewish community is at synagogue on the High Holidays. To use these most public of holidays as an opportunity to honor non-Jewish partners is just wonderful. We've had our disagreements, but thank you, Rabbi Yoffie, and all the rabbis who've followed his suggestion, for offering such a warm welcome to interfaith families.

New Approaches to Officiation in D.C., S.F.

IFF is in the early stages of developing a resource for rabbis on the issue of officiation at interfaith weddings. It's a sticky issue for rabbis; the Conservative movement forbids its rabbis from officiating at interfaith weddings, but obviously there are a significant number of interfaith couples in their congregations. The Reform movement's position is more nuanced: the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the association for Reform rabbis, has a resolution on the books that disapproves of officiation but also leaves the decision up to individual rabbis.

Once a rabbi decides he will officiate, the situation often gets trickier: What are the conditions? How do you announce the decision to your congregation? The third-largest Reform congregation in the U.S., The Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, D.C., recently went through this process, as detailed in a Washington Jewish Week article. Judging from the article, it sounds like they've thought long and hard about the decision, and have come up with a carefully crafted policy that is fair to the needs of interfaith couples and respectful of individual rabbis' principles.

Meanwhile, a rabbi at a Conservative congregation near San Francisco, Congregation B'nai Shalom, has taken a unique approach to officiation at interfaith marriage, according to this article in the J., the Jewish news weekly of northern California. Rather than just saying no to interfaith couples who come to him asking to be married, Rabbi Gordon Freeman directs them to a group of retired judges who will perform civil ceremonies with some Jewish elements. His restrictions seem a bit severe:

...in working with [the judges], Freeman has been very clear about what is permissible and what is not at such a wedding.

For example, he won’t allow the breaking of the glass, since a non-Jew has no connection to the First Temple, of which the glass-breaking is symbolic. He won’t allow the statement that accompanies the ring exchange, consecrating the bride to the husband according to the laws of Moses and Israel. He will allow a ketubah, as long as they write it themselves.

But, nonetheless, his approach is a very good start, and we commend Rabbi Freeman for looking for innovative ways to keep interfaith couples Jewishly engaged. The J. apparently concurs with our view.