Outreach to interfaith families strengthens the Jewish future

By Rick Jacobs in JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — All in favor of a strong Jewish future say “aye.” On that core question, there is resounding unanimity, but there have been some unnecessarily polarizing articles in the Jewish press suggesting that we have to select either endogamy or outreach.Nonsense! Such binary thinking reduces a multi-dimensional and complex reality to a false choice.

At the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial in San Diego a few weeks back, I challenged Jewish leaders to stop speaking “about intermarriage as if it were a disease. It is not.” I do not know how any serious observer of American Jewish life can believe that in the aftermath of the Pew Research Center’s study of Jewish Americans and other surveys, intermarriage is anything but a reality of Jewish life.

Many characterize intermarriage as the result of assimilation. There is some obvious truth in this view, but I believe that higher intermarriage rates are largely the result of the open society in which we are privileged to live.
The sociology is clear enough. Anti-Semitism is down. Jews feel welcome. We mix easily with others. So, of course, there are high intermarriage rates.

The pressing question is, how do we respond? High intermarriage rates require a thoughtful response. Delivering endless sermons about the importance of endogamy — or making apocalyptic arguments — is not going to dissuade young people from falling in love with someone who is not Jewish. If that were the case, we would not be where we are today.

Intensifying and deepening Jewish engagement for the next generation is an essential undertaking that forms the cornerstone of “Inspired Engagement,” our large-scale, new URJ response. Our new youth engagement strategies reflect our broadly inclusive definition of Jewish community that seeks to include, educate and embrace, among others, children of interfaith families.

Many in the “endogamy camp” argue that outreach to interfaith families is not an effective communal investment. At the heart of this debate is the allocation of communal resources. But the impact of outreach to interfaith families — when thoughtfully and effectively deployed — matters.


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Q&A for Interfaith Couples: Joining a Synagogue

Reprinted from ReformJudaism.org

I am Jewish; my partner is not. Are we welcome as a couple to attend worship services in the Jewish community?
Yes! The prophet Isaiah said: "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples." (Isaiah 56:7) We know from the Torah that from the very earliest days, there have been individuals who lived with the Jewish community but who were not themselves Jewish. Contact your local Reform synagogue to find out about times for Sabbath worship on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, as well as for information about holiday services.
Reprinted from ReformJudaism.org

I am not Jewish. Are there parts of the service reserved only for Jews?

You are welcome at all regular services in the synagogue and, of course, at any lifecycle events to which you are invited (for example, a wedding). Each congregation has its own specifications regarding who may lead services and perform certain roles, but you are welcome to participate in everything that is done or read by the whole congregation at a service. If you have questions or concerns, please feel free to ask the clergy or lay leaders.

I don't read Hebrew. How can I possibly follow the service?
Most Reform congregations in North America use both English and Hebrew in the services and provide English translations for many of the Hebrew prayers and readings. If you wish to participate in reading the Hebrew aloud, transliterations for common prayers in the service are often available. (A transliteration is a phonetically written version of a prayer.) Transliterations usually appear either on the same page or in the back of Reform prayer books and you can also ask if other transliterations of prayers are available. It is perfectly acceptable to read only the parts of the service with which you feel comfortable or to just sit and listen. If you need help finding the place in the prayer book, simply ask someone nearby. Temple members want visitors to feel welcome and at ease during services.

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Interfaith Marriages: Are We Moving from Surrender to Celebration?

by Shmuel Rosner for JewishJournal

A.

At the 2013 Biennial of the Union for Reform Judaism, the President of the Union, rabbi Rick Jacobs, devoted his keynote speech to a topic he called “the genesis of our future”. The speech, more than an hour long, actually addressed many topics. But there was a common theme to them all: “Big waves require more skill and courage to ride - but if ridden artfully, they enable us to go faster and further than ever before”. Rabbi Jacobs proposed to reimagine a Judaism that can ride the waves of the present to guarantee for a Jewish future.

He first mentioned the Pew study of American Jews about 20 minutes into the speech. The leaders of American Judaism cannot “ignore the facts”, Jacobs said. What facts? Of course, the Pew data contains many facts from which to choose. But the leader of Reform Judaism, as was natural for him to do in such a celebratory gathering, picked the ones suitable to his cause. Pew revealed that “we are not just the largest stream of American Jewry, but larger than all the other streams combined”. It also revealed that “in spite of the many Orthodox outreach efforts, including Chabad, to bring less observant Jews into greater observance, the data reveal no real success”.

Jacobs was not shy about his goal in highlighting these specific data – rather than talk about the fact that Orthodox Jews score higher on every measurement of active Jewish life. “The time is long overdue for us to stop using Orthodox Jewish practice as the baseline against which we define our own Jewish practice”, he said. A fair point. A point we should consider as we turn to look at Jacobs’ way of talking about interfaith marriages.

B.

The Pew data is pretty clear when it comes to interfaith marriages in the Jewish community. First – it is clear from the data that such marriages are very common, to the extent that most young Jews today (especially so if we discount the Orthodox) end up having non-Jewish spouses. Second – it is clear that intermarried families have weaker ties to organized Jewish life and are less prone to actively practice Judaism. Jacobs is naturally right to mention the “creativity, leadership, and service of hundreds of thousands of interfaith families… [that] enrich our congregational lives”. They obviously do. Yet when the numbers speak – rather than anecdotes – it is also obvious that the Jewish people lose the participation and engagement of many more hundreds and thousands of families in the course of the process of assimilation through marriage.

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Jew and Cardinal Both

By Allen Ellenzweig for The Jewish Daily Forward

French-German television network, Arté, “The Jewish Cardinal,” screening January 20 at the New York Jewish Film Festival, nevertheless has the scope and sobriety of a feature film.

Without much of the bloat of the standard biopic, its focus is the period of French prelate Jean-Marie Aron Lustiger’s elevation through Church ranks, from being named Archbishop of Orléans in 1979, to his elevation as Archbishop of Paris in 1981 and Cardinal in 1983, all under the guidance of the new Polish Pope, Jean Paul II. But the screenplay, co-written by director Ilan Duran Cohen and Chantal Derudder, has more than career chronology on its mind.

Lustiger was born a French Jew of Polish immigrant stock, willingly converted to Christianity in the shelter of a Christian family during the war, and was quoted at the time of his elevation to Archbishop: “I was born Jewish, and so I remain, even if that is unacceptable for many. For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That is my hope and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it.”

Duran Cohen and Derudder attempt the difficult task of presenting both the emotional toll his conversion had on his family — for this rely on several familial scenes and flashbacks — and the philosophical conundrum of maintaining a dual identity as Christian and Jew, relying here on several encounters with members of the Church hierarchy and the French Jewish community.

Lustiger’s refugee father never reconciled with his son’s conversion. While he was hardly a practicing Jew, the loss of his wife Gisèle — Aron’s mother — at Auschwitz, left him embittered. In the film, his son’s Catholicism is taken as repudiation, although the junior Lustiger denies any such motive. Within some Church circles, Jean-Marie’s avowed Jewish identity creates suspicion, and among the French Jewish communal hierarchy, suspicion and wariness are compounded by Lustiger’s seeming to want it both ways.

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