A Letter to Chelsea For Her Second Pregnancy

This article has been reprinted with permission from InterfaithFamily 

By Rabbi Keara Stein

Dear Chelsea & Marc,

First I want to say B’sha’ah tovah and mazel tov on your pregnancy. Your pregnancy announcement was adorable and I hope Charlotte adjusts to your pregnancy and the new baby once it arrives. I glanced below the article I read including your announcement and saw several comments from people who, for whatever reason, think they know what’s best for your family. If you haven’t read them yet, don’t. If you have read them, or if you’ve heard them elsewhere—I’m sorry people are treating you as the role model for interfaith families. I’m especially sorry your daughter will grow up hearing these comments and constantly having to explain her family to others.

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What Should I Tell My Toddler About Santa?

The Seesaw for The Jewish Daily Forward    

We are heading up to my in-laws for Christmas this year. (My husband is half Jewish; his family isn’t religious and Christmas is Jesus-free for them.) This isn’t my son’s first Christmas with them, but it’s the first time he will really get what is going on. He is three.

I’ve been following the advice to present Christmas as something that Grandma and Grandpa celebrate and that we will be joining them for, like a birthday, and he seems to kind of get it. But I’ve found myself stuck on how to talk about Santa. My son has cousins, 4 and 6, and they believe in Santa. I don’t want him to ruin it for them and therefore don’t plan on telling him that there is no such thing, but I am also not comfortable with him getting all excited about Santa. What should I do?

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My Son Won't Let Me Talk to His Wife About Converting

The Seesaw for The Jewish Daily Forward   

My daughter-in-law is wonderful. We love her. She is not Jewish, though has been a happy and willing participant at our holidays and at our Conservative temple and has told me that she is growing a real affection for our faith.

Now she is pregnant with my grandson and my son says we shouldn’t make too big a deal about matrilineal descent, that it doesn’t matter to him if she converts and they would be welcome at a Reform synagogue in the future. But I feel like I should have the right to at least express my feelings about the benefits of conversion to her, while making it clear that even though I will be disappointed if she doesn’t do it, I will love her and her child no less and our relationship will not change. Is my son being an unfair censor? Or I am inserting myself where I don’t belong?

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How College Can Put the Jewish in Children of Intermarriage

Leonard Saxe, Fern Chertok and Theodore Sasson for The Jewish Daily Forward  
 
The late great baseball player and philosopher Yogi Berra once quipped, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” Our new study, “Millennial Children of Intermarriage: Touchpoints and Trajectories of Jewish Engagement,” attests to Berra’s wisdom. Despite decades of worry that American “children of intermarriage” would be lost to the community, a large-scale study of young adult applicants to Birthright Israel found that the story is more complicated, and more hopeful.

Not surprisingly, young adults raised by intermarried parents grow up with a more limited set of Jewish educational and social experiences. However, if these children of intermarriage become involved in Jewish experiences in college — through Birthright Israel, Jewish campus groups or courses — their Jewish identity and later engagement look in many respects very much like that of children of two Jewish parents.

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