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.

Continue reading.
 
Follow us on   

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?

Continue reading.

Follow us on   

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?

Continue reading.

Follow us on   

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.

Continue reading. 

Follow us on   

8 Reasons My Interfaith Family Celebrates Hanukkah and Christmas

Susan Katz Miller, The Blog, HuffPost   

At this time of year, a blizzard of articles about the so-called December Dilemma swirls up like snowflakes rising from the floor of a snowglobe. Every year, I take calls from journalists looking to, perhaps, shake things up: to dramatize what they are sure must be a conflict between Christmas and Hanukkah, and between interfaith parents. And yet, having chosen to fully educate our children about both family religions, the dilemma essentially disappears and December becomes primarily a delight. We celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, with all of the trimmings, and seek to help our children to understand the religious meanings of both holidays.           

Continue reading.

For more great Hanukkah ideas, check out our    page.

For even more great ideas, visit our Hanukkah Holiday Spotlight Kit

Guide to Hanukkah for Interfaith Families

This article has been reprinted with permission from InterfaithFamily

What is Hanukkah?

View a PDF of our Guide to Hanukkah for Interfaith Families

Hanukkah is a holiday that commemorates the Jewish recapture and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in 164 BCE. It's celebrated for eight days and usually falls in December. The traditional observances of Hanukkah are lighting a menorah, or ceremonial candelabra, spinning a top called a dreidel and eating fried foods. Though it is religiously minor, Hanukkah is a popular holiday. It's a happy festival in the winter, so it provides what seems to be a universally needed break from the dark and cold. It's a holiday about Jews winning a war, which is not the usual subject for a Jewish holiday. The third reason is obvious: for Jews in Christian culture, Hanukkah is the closest Jewish holiday to Christmas.

Continue reading.

For more great Hanukkah ideas, check out our    page.

For even more great ideas, visit our Hanukkah Holiday Spotlight Kit

My Mission to Welcome

by Rabbi Sarah Tasman for Rituallwell.org

One of my favorite parts of being a rabbi and the director of InterfaithFamily/DC is working with couples to prepare for their wedding. I meet with a lot of couples that come from diverse backgrounds and no two couples are the same. Each is a unique set of individuals bringing together their life experience, their families, and their hopes for the future.

Whatever kind of wedding they have in mind, I tell them that my goal is to create a ceremony together, a ritual which we can personalize so that their wedding reflects who they are as individuals and as a couple and their intentions for their life together. On the simplest level, a ritual helps us mark sacred time and helps us to be present in the moment. And no matter what the individuals’ backgrounds, I want their wedding to be one of many beautiful, meaningful, and accessible Jewish rituals in their lives.

Continue reading.

Follow us on