One
man's trash is another man's treasure—and sometimes, one man's trash is
another man's history. In her second novel, In the Courtyard of the
Kabbalist, Ruchama King Feuerman explores the ways two men—one Jewish,
one Arab—build an unlikely friendship despite Jerusalem's cultural and
political divisions.Isaac Markowitz, a Lower East Side haberdasher who makes aliyah to realize his unfulfilled potential, finds a job as an assistant to a Jerusalem rabbi who is part Talmudist, part psychoanalyst: Jews from all walks of life gather in his courtyard to seek his guidance on everything from romance to kashrut.
When Mustafa, a custodian at the Temple Mount/Al-Haram al-Sharif with a rare medical condition, arrives at the courtyard, Isaac is surprised by the intimate—and curiously volatile—friendship that arises between them. One day, Mustafa brings Isaac an ancient stone pomegranate from the Temple Mount, leading Isaac—and the police—to discover that such artifacts are being buried, broken, and cast aside. Occasionally, the men come dangerously close to archetypes: the old-fashioned Ashkenazi, the devout Muslim. But in Feuerman's hands, they are human: conciliatory, contradictory, and hoping their lives have meaning.
- Leah Falk for Jewniverse
As
grandparents, you want and need to tell your grandchild “who we are,”
and you have a right to do so. It’s the how of doing it that’s so
important and so difficult. In the real world you must be sensitive to
the feelings of your non-Jewish son/daughter-in-law. You want, after
all, to maintain the affection of your children as well as your
grandchildren. Of course, that’s true even in a single-faith marriage.
However, in some interfaith situations, you may have a bomb with a short
fuse that can be touched off with what often seems to be no
provocation. Remember, whether or not your son- or daughter-in-law has a
justifiable reason for acting resentful, he or she does have the upper
hand and can deprive you of seeing your grandchildren.
Almost
two weeks ago, the two of us proposed that Jewish communities consider
instituting an alternative pathway to joining the Jewish People. As the
Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011 demonstrated, thousands of
Americans – many married to Jews, many with Jewish children and
grandchildren, and many with Jewish friends – have already chosen to
identify as Jews without converting. Though not raised Jewish, these
people – amounting to 5% of the adult Jewish respondents in the New York
study – affirm their sense of Jewish belonging without necessarily
taking on a Jewish religious identity. In contrast, those who have
undergone conversion constitute barely 2% of the respondents in the
study.
For
example, the survey shows that the offspring of intermarriages – Jewish
adults who have only one Jewish parent – are much more likely than the
offspring of two Jewish parents to describe themselves, religiously, as
atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. In that sense, intermarriage
may be seen as weakening the religious identity of Jews in America.
My
husband comes from a Christian family and we have always gone to his
parents house for Christmas celebrations. I come from a Jewish family so
we have always celebrated Hanukkah at home. In the past it did not
bother me that the kids were being exposed to Christmas because they
were too little to understand the larger picture - it was mainly about
seeing family and celebrating another holiday. Now my oldest is 5 and is
beginning to ask about Santa (Does Santa bring the Hanukkah presents
too? Who is Jesus?). Our youngest is 3 and isn't quite there yet, but we
are wondering if it would be wise to continue celebrating Christmas.
My
family has always had a Thanksgivukkah tradition. Our local Whole Foods
usually makes a special purchase of vegan, kosher marshmallows to top
Thanksgiving sweet-potato casseroles. We always buy several bags—along
with fair-trade chocolate coins in bulk—to also make s’mores for
Hanukkah in our toaster oven. This year, as we celebrate both holidays
on the same day, we look forward to our holiday s’mores, as well as
preparing to make our usual Thanksgiving guests comfortable with
celebrating our Jewish holiday alongside us.
When
I search the internet for mentions of “interfaith,” I get news from two
separate worlds. One is the world of interfaith “dialogue” and
activism, in which people from different religions (or no religion) meet
to share their stories, or engage in community service together. This
movement has flourished since 9/11, through the important work of groups
such as the 
This
past week, my 85–year-old grandmother passed away rather suddenly. She
was the only grandparent I ever met, and for a couple of years when I
lived with her, she was more like a parent figure. My “Grams,” as we
called her, was tough as nails. She raised four kids after her husband
died at 45 years old, and she was left with nothing. She didn’t even
have a driver’s license.
“Oh
yeah, that’s a thing,” says [insert well-meaning person’s name here].
And you know, according to all sorts of sources–including the New York
Times–it does seem to be a thing. It appears I’m one half of a “marriage
trend” that’s sweeping the nation, or at least High Holiday Services.
(A professor once mentioned to me that her synagogue had Asian women
“sprouting up” all over the congregation.) People usually cite the most
popular examples, e.g., Mark Zuckerberg and “his Asian wife,” Maury
Povich and Connie Chung, Woody Allen and “his very young Asian wife.”
(Hmmm, Connie excluded, I’d say we Asian women are getting the shaft in
terms of name recognition. But this is all beside my point.)
Just
a few decades ago, it would have been unusual for a family to decorate a
Christmas tree and also have a Hanukkah menorah prominently displayed
in the same room. Known as the “December Dilemma,’’ it represented a
quandary that sometimes caused great anguish between interfaith couples
around how to celebrate their respective holidays.
Before my husband and I could get married, I had to mourn mashed potatoes and hamburger gravy.
Of
all the questions my daughter has about the two faiths we celebrate I
find this question to be the one that makes me the most nervous. How can
I possibly answer her without offending or discrediting our faiths?
In
my interfaith partnership, life has been filled with surprises. Family
visits are one of these surprises. Every year for six months, my Nepali
in-laws come to live with my husband, me and our two small children.
This arrangement can either highlight every detail that makes us
different or it can illuminate what makes us similar.
The
battle is over; or so we’re told. A half-century after the rate of
intermarriage began its rapid ascent in the United States, reaching just
under 50 percent by the late 1990s, many communal spokesmen appear to
have resigned themselves to the inevitable.
The
gathering had all the hallmarks of a typical pro-Israel event: Israel’s
national anthem was performed. Rabbis and other machers in attendance
were acknowledged from the stage. Light kosher refreshments were served
afterward. There was even a trio of black-hatted ultra-Orthodox Jews
from the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect protesting outside.
Symi Rom-Rymer, 32
Susan Katz-Miller, Blogger at OnBeingBoth.com
Dr. Kerry M. Olitzky, Executive Director of Jewish Outreach Institute
My
son, who is now two, doesn’t notice when his dad stumbles over the Hebrew words
in the PJ Library books they read together. And he hasn’t been to church with
Grams, so Isaac doesn’t know that when she takes communion he will stay seated.
Eventually, however, he is going to notice that his cousins don’t go to Hebrew
school, and that Daddy doesn’t come with us to High Holiday services. At some
point he will ask about these differences, and initially my husband and I will
have very straightforward answers for him: Along with Nona and Papa, and your
uncle and cousin in California, Mommy and Isaac are Jewish. Daddy, Grams and
your other cousins are Catholic. 
At the Farmer’s Market on Sunday, I bought Jonagold
apples to eat with honey, to celebrate the sweetness of the Jewish New Year this
week. Then, yesterday, a Washington Post reporter came by to photograph our
family with the apples, for a Rosh Hashanah story. 
Upon meeting me Jews of Ashkenazi decent like to ask
me a myriad of questions, from how are you Jewish, to when did you convert, to
don’t you have to be Jewish to go to rabbinical school? These questions never
happen in a context of wanting to know me, they are about the questioner’s own
curiosity and trying to see how I fit into Judaism as if by answering these
questions it will tell them everything they need to know about me. When people
ask me these questions, I never know how to respond, sometimes I will respond
“I’m just Jewish,” but often want to respond with something comical. I might
even remind them that Jews have always been a multi-racial-cultural people. And
I try to use my energy to educate other Jews about what it means to be Jewish in
today’s society, but sometimes it is really exhausting. 
I was born on Tisha B’Av—although I didn’t know that
for forty-some years. Growing up in a small Midwestern city in an entirely
agnostic home deliberately devoid of any religious influence, I’d never heard of
the holiday. And neither, I suspect, had my mother. 
We met during a youth music festival, flirting across
the wind section of a large symphony orchestra. If there was an obstacle to our
romance, it was not that he was Jewish and I wasn’t; it was that he played the
tuba and I played the violin. There’s a reason why there are no duets for these
two instruments. 
When Samuel Oliver turned 12, he asked his parents why
he wouldn’t have either a bar mitzvah or a confirmation. His Jewish mother,
whose family includes Holocaust survivors, and his father, who grew up in a
religious Christian home, at first brushed off his question. Then they decided
it required further investigation. 
I recently had the occasion to speak at a prayer
breakfast organized by the Philadelphia chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first
African American, inter-collegiate, Greek-letter fraternity, founded in 1906.
APA has become an important national organization, and this event was to honor
the memory of Reverend Canon Thomas Wilson Logan Sr. the oldest serving
African-American priest in the Episcopal Church, USA who died last year at the
age of 100. The brothers of the Rho chapter were establishing a scholarship fund
in honor of Father Logan, as APA has become a philanthropic, as well as service
and activism organization. 
NEW
YORK (JTA) – Over the past half century, intermarriage has become increasingly
common in the United States among all religions – but among Jews at the highest
rate.