November is Interfaith Family Month

This article has been reprinted with permission from InterfaithFamily 

Interfaith Family Month is an opportunity for your synagogue or organization to join with other welcoming communities in a bold statement that we will continue to build an inclusive Jewish community in our local areas and across the country.

In 2014, over 150 synagogues and organizations in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area participated in this exciting program. This year, InterfaithFamily is expanding this program to Atlanta, Los Angeles, and the District of Columbia. You can see who is participating this year here.

Interfaith Family Month is your opportunity to show that you welcome interfaith families and to thank them for their contributions to the Jewish community. In the month of November, take some time during an existing service or program to offer a blessing or words of thanks to your interfaith participants, or you may choose to offer a special program, dinner or event.

Visit our resource page and FAQ  for sample blessings, readings, or other program ideas.

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Book Review: David Gregory’s How’s Your Faith?

From On Being Both

David Gregory and I are both children of Jewish fathers and Christian mothers, both of us raised Jewish. We both married mainline Protestants. We both have children with one Jewish grandparent, yet we are both passing on Judaism to our children. And we both tell our interfaith family stories in recent books. I am grateful for each interfaith family story that gets published, and especially for each adult interfaith child who speaks up about the complexities of interfaith life.

David Gregory, of course, is the former host of NBC’s Meet the Press. The arc of his memoir How’s Your Faith: An Unlikely Spiritual Journey traces his rise to television prominence, and his humbling fall when Meet the Press ratings sink and he loses his job at NBC. To be fair, his search for greater spiritual meaning started years before his career crisis, and this book is a disarmingly frank and raw accounting of how he has wrestled–with his difficult childhood, his own anger management, his career ambitions, and with how to raise Jewish children with a wife who is a church-going Methodist.

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Help! I Think My Mom Lied About Being Jewish

The Seesaw for The Jewish Daily Forward   

I am a Jewish woman who raised her family Jewish, or so I thought. I bar mitzvahed my son and recently sent him on Birthright, after which he became interested in our ancestry and began to do some digging around. He discovered that none of my mom’s ancestors seem to be Jewish. She says we should ignore this and that she, and therefore we, are Jewish, but I nevertheless have started to feel insecure about it. If my mom is lying, and neither my father nor husband are Jewish, are we still Jewish?

Conversion Might Be in Your Future

A friend once contemplated what he’d do if he woke up one morning and discovered he wasn’t Jewish. Because Judaism is central to his life, he believes he would do whatever it takes to become and remain unambiguously Jewish. In his case, that would mean an Orthodox conversion. But a cousin of mine, upon learning of my wife’s own Orthodox conversion, remarked that she’d have to think long and hard about converting if she suddenly learned she wasn’t Jewish.

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He Says He Wants To Be Christian and Bar Mitzvahed

The Seesaw for The Jewish Daily Forward

We are a Christian dad and a Jewish mom and have been raising our son with exposure to both religions. This summer my son went to a popular Christian camp because all his friends were going and we didn’t want him to feel like he is missing out. He is 11 and heading into middle school next year.

He just came back from camp and is expressing interest in becoming more Christian. However, he still says he wants to have his Bar Mitzvah. Now I am wondering, can he really be both Christian and Jewish? Also, how can I help him navigate this?

You Need to Figure Out Your Priorities First

You can’t begin to help him navigate this until you and your spouse know exactly what you are trying to accomplish. As an observant Jew, I have a clear goal to raise my Jewish children as Jews, with all the richness, beauty and meaning that Judaism can offer them.

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