Jewish on Their Own Terms

How Intermarried Couples are Changing American Judaism

From Rutgers University Press



Over half of all American Jewish children are being raised by intermarried parents. This demographic group will have a tremendous impact on American Judaism as it is lived and practiced in the coming decades. To date, however, in both academic studies about Judaism and in the popular imagination, such children and their parents remain marginal.

Jennifer A. Thompson takes a different approach. In Jewish on Their Own Terms, she tells the stories of intermarried couples, the rabbis and other Jewish educators who work with them, and the conflicting public conversations about intermarriage among American Jews. Thompson notes that in the dominant Jewish cultural narrative, intermarriage symbolizes individualism and assimilation. Talking about intermarriage allows American Jews to discuss their anxieties about remaining distinctively Jewish despite their success in assimilating into American culture.

In contrast, Thompson uses ethnography to describe the compelling concerns of all of these parties and places their anxieties firmly within the context of American religious culture and morality. She explains how American and traditional Jewish gender roles converge to put non-Jewish women in charge of raising Jewish children. Interfaith couples are like other Americans in often harboring contradictory notions of individual autonomy, universal religious truths, and obligations to family and history.

Focusing on the lived experiences of these families, Jewish on Their Own Terms provides a complex and insightful portrait of intermarried couples and the new forms of American Judaism that they are constructing.

 Continue reading.

Drew Barrymore, Shiksa Wife

By Anne Cohen for The Jewish Daily Forward

Want to add Drew Barrymore to your list of celebrity sightings? Try dropping in on services at New York’s Central Synagogue.

In an interview for the February 2014 cover Marie Claire, the actress talks about married life with Jewish hubby Will Kopelman, whose father, Arie Kopelman, was the former head of Chanel.

“I try to be a good shiksa wife,” explains Barrymore. “I go to Central Synagogue in New York.” She also attempted to prepare a Passover Seder when she and her husband were courting. “It was a disaster. I screwed everything up. And I got the date wrong. I ended up taking him to a really awesome Seder at [Working Title president and producer] Liza Chasin’s house.”

There’s more. When asked about her thoughts on religion, Barrymore added: “I thought about converting, but it takes a lot of work and time. I love the Jewish faith. I love the family values. I can get behind those.”

This new Drew Barrymore, or as sister-in-law Jill Kargman calls her, “Jew Barrymore,” has traded in her wild child leathers for comfy sweatpants and cookbooks — an the occasional ball gown or two. She and Kopelman have a 16-month-old daughter, Olive, and await their second child in March.

For more on Drew’s obsession with food (or in her words, “porn”), her pregnancy, and how she relates (read: cringes) to her early stardom see the February issue of Marie Claire.

Religion and Hybridity: Can someone be Jewish and Christian?

By David Levinsky

This piece, from the Zeek archive, originally ran in May 2011.

Hybrid Identities in the American Synagogue

There are a number of non-Jews in the Saturday morning Torah study which I lead at Chicago Sinai Congregation. This is not a big surprise. Reform congregations increasingly serve non-Jews, whether they are the partners of Jews or simply fellow travelers. We are a synagogue. We teach, practice, believe, and value Judaism. Anyone is welcome to do this with us.

What was a surprise was Moe. When she joined the class, she introduced herself as a Christian with a strong interest in Judaism. A few months later, she told me that she had decided that she was both Christian and Jewish. I pointed out to her that there is a basic contradiction in her statement: a Christian awaits the second coming of a definite messianic figure, while a Jew awaits the first coming of an unspecified messianic figure – or the coming of a messianic age.

Moe told me that didn’t bother her. She was happy to embrace the contradiction.

Moe is not alone. There are a number of people who participate in our congregation who consider themselves both Jewish and Christian. I don’t mean Messianic Jews or Jews for Jesus. Messianic Jews are supported by institutions which encourage Jews to convert to a variety of evangelical Christianity while maintaining an outward Jewish appearance, or encourage Christians to find a more authentic Christian experience by discovering Christianity’s Jewish roots. Nor am I talking about converts, people considering conversion, or children of interfaith marriages who are deciding as to which faith community they wish to affiliate.

I mean individuals seeking their own personal spirituality at the intersection of faith traditions . There’s an increase in what scholars call “hybrid identities” among searching individuals. But why is this increase is happening now, and what does it means for Jews, Jewish authorities, and Jewish institutions?

 Continue reading.

How Christmas Helped Me Discover—and Eventually Reclaim—My Jewish Roots

When I was a child, my family’s history was hidden from me. Now I’ve made sure that my own child will always know where she came from.

By Alison Pick for Tablet Magazine

I was born in the shadow of a secret.

My family was Christian. As a small girl, I loved to go into the cool church basement and make crosses out of Popsicle sticks and glue. I loved to hear my father in the pew beside me, loud and off key: Sons of God, here is Holy Word … He sang with more fervor than the rest of us, like he really believed. Or maybe like he had something to prove.

Like every Christian child, I especially loved—surprise!—Christmas. It wasn’t just the mountain of presents under the tree. I also thrilled to the more spiritual side of the season: the molten glow of Christmas lights under a soft dusting of snow; the tapestry of song weaved by the voices of the carolers who came to our front door. On Christmas Eve we bundled in our wood-paneled station wagon and went to midnight Mass. It was hours later than I was usually allowed to stay up, and I remember the long snowy drive through the darkness, my breath smoking in the cold, and the sense of anticipation, that something monumental was about to happen. In the morning I raced to the window to see my mother’s parents turning into the driveway, then teetering up our walk, their arms overburdened with packages. Less frequently, my father’s parents came. They spoke in thick European accents, and we treated them like royalty, bringing them breakfast in bed, tiptoeing around the house when they slept. They loved seeing my sister and me, but I knew that they didn’t love Christmas.

I couldn’t imagine why.

***

Ironically, I first stumbled on our family secret at Christmas. I was 8 or 9 years old. We were celebrating with Dad’s family that year: a shaggy pine tree in the corner bent under the weight of lights and candy canes. My Auntie Sheila was speaking to my mother, telling her something about a couple they both knew, the husband Jewish, the wife a gentile.

And me? I was cruising a plate of Black Magic chocolates, trying to guess which one would have a pink center.

Above me, I heard Auntie Sheila say, “So, their daughter isn’t Jewish. Because Judaism always comes from the mother.”

I bit into a chocolate and screwed up my face: marzipan.

Mum: “So, our girls aren’t … ?”

“Our girls aren’t Jewish, either,” Auntie Sheila said. “Family secret or no family secret.”

“Even though their fathers … ”

“Right. Because we aren’t,” my aunt said.

I remember this moment like they show it in cartoons, a little light bulb appearing in the air above my head, and the sound effect, the clear ting of a bell. My brain was working fast, trying to process this information. Who did Auntie Sheila mean by “our girls”? She meant my cousins, and my sister. And me.

I put my half-eaten marzipan back on the plate.

I was not Jewish because my mother was not Jewish. But my father, the implication seemed to be …

Continue reading.