• Sue Fishkoff writes of Asian, African and non-Ashkenazi European Jewish groups seeking recognition from the larger culture.

African groups claim Jewish heritage, Spanish conversos whose families converted to Catholicism during the Inquisition want to return to their roots, and Asian-Americans are turning Jews-by-choice. How do these groups join with the larger, Jewish community? Several representatives met earlier this month to network at a conference sponsored by Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue.)

I have to say, I’m very intrigued! It would be great for Jewish pride to expand and tradition be enriched by more of the world’s population. I myself am Ashkenazi through my mother—the old stereotypes of the Yiddish shtetl and the American Borscht-belt comedy will always be part of my history. But we only need to look to Israel to realize how far Jewish culture has grown throughout the ages. In a time when we’re afraid of mass assimilation and dwindling numbers, these groups offer hope for our collective future.

And to be self-centered for a moment, as a Jewish blogger from an interfaith family, let me give kudos to this statement, attributed to Gary Tobin of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research.: “Instead of worrying about people being ‘lost’ to intermarriage… why aren’t we extending our ideological borders to include all these people who are so interested in joining us?”

Why, indeed.

• Fishkoff also profiles Alysa Stanton-Ogulnick, to be ordained in a year as the first African American female rabbi.

Stanton-Ogulnick, who converted 20 years ago from Christianity, will be ordained in the Reform denomination. A former psychotherapist with a daughter near bat mitzvah age, she studied both in Jerusalem and Cincinnati. She also took part in the conference listed above, and hopes to give inspiration to multi-ethnic Jews. A truly inspiring story. Mazel tov!


Related blog entry: The Marrano Jews.

The Shoah (Holocaust,) like so many momentous occasions throughout history, is not a static event. It changes and acquires new meaning as the years progress. I myself have always been interested in how Jews one or two generations removed (my mother, me,) relate and deal with this tragedy. In the face of Yom Hashoah, (Holocaust Memorial Day), various Jewish publications tackle this issue.

Rachel Shukert writes in Nextbook about her childhood obsession and related fear about the Shoah, and how a trip to Auschwitz began to turn her life around.

JTA’s Toby Axelrod writes of ex-Nazis who, in recent years, have begun to recount their experiences, and scholars attempt to understand the psychology of identifying with the Third Reich.

Jewcy.com writer, Eva Fogelman, analyzes how Jews two and three generations removed, living in both Israel and the U.S., identify with the Shoah, noting that time does seem erase most fears of antisemitism, and instill a broader sense of cultural pride and social activism.

Meanwhile, Shoah education moves with the times, and establishes a foothold in the Web 2.0 revolution. Specifically, I’ll point out two YouTube channels—from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem. Check them out for survivors’ testimonials and other useful information.

For more on a modern example, go to SaveDarfur.org. May peoples everywhere soon be free of the atrocity of genocide.

...and my Italian (Catholic) relatives.

A personal account by Ruth Ellen Gruber: At an informal Italian seder, tradition amid the din.

Chag sameach.

Fourth in a series of posts concerning recent data on intermarriage. Read my first entry here, my second here, and my third here.

The following is my analysis of the third and final of recent reports published on intermarriage in American Jewish life. This one comes from the Steinhardt Social Research Branch of Brandeis University and is entitled It’s Not Just Who Stands Under the Chuppah: Intermarriage and Engagement.

Below is a partial interview given by survey researcher, Leonard Saxe, to JTA.

With all of the reports and debates over intermarriage in the past two decades, some might think three more studies are overkill. Saxe disagrees.

“This is all a positive development,” he said. “The simple, end-of-the-world take on intermarriage that came out of a simplistic interpretation of the National Jewish Population Study data is now being better understood. It means people are paying attention to intermarriage in a more serious and thoughtful way.”

The “Chuppah” report, like the other two, goes beyond hand wringing to suggest policies aimed at greater Jewish engagement for both the intermarried and the underinvolved.

Relying both on national and internal Reform movement data, it shows that the Jewish behaviors and practices of intermarried families who are raising their children as Jews is almost identical to those of inmarried Reform Jews.

Saxe and his co-researcher, Fern Chertok, caused a stir when they presented that finding at the Reform movement’s biennial in December.

Their policy recommendations -- that Reform Jews in particular must participate more actively in Jewish life if they wish to model Judaism for their children, and that this is more important to the Jewish future than staving off intermarriage -- dovetailed with the initiative announced at the same convention by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union of Reform Judaism, urging greater Shabbat observance among Reform Jews.

Creating a home filled with Jewish rituals and Jewish learning, Saxe and Chertok conclude in their report, has more influence on Jewish continuity than whether or not one marries a Jew. Thus the Jewish community would do well to encourage the former rather than worrying overly about the latter.

The survey findings are divided into three parts. Two are based on age group; the report analyzes a group of adult Jews with the average age of 50, and young adult Jews with the average age of 21. The third grouping is statistics derived from Taglit-birthright Israel, the program from which all of the young adults were taken (the winter 2006-07 trips. The other adults came from The National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-01.) This report puts great emphasis on programs like birthright curbing general Reform indifference to religious practice regardless of in or intermarriage.

( Adult Sample: General indicators of Jewish practice (applied with and without controls) )

( Adult Sample: Frequency of lighting Shabbat candles during childhood. )

( Adult Sample: Attitudes Towards Torah Study )

( Adult Sample: Average Years of Jewish Education Received )

( Young Adult Sample: Average Years of Jewish Education Received )

( Young Adult Sample: Lighting Candles During High School )

( Young Adult Sample: Importance of Celebrating Shabbat Regularly )

( Young Adult Sample: Attendance at Jewish Summer Camp )

( Young Adult Sample: Attendance at Hillel Activities )

( Taglit Data: Lighting Shabbat Candles )

( Taglit Data: Special Meal for Shabbat )

( Taglit Data: Connection to Israel )

( Taglit Data: Importance of Raising Jewish Children )

( Taglit Data: Importance of Marrying a Jew )

To quote from the survey:

“It is engagement and not intermarriage that presents both the greatest challenge and the most promising arena for intervention for Reform Jews and Reform Judaism. To appreciate fully the contours of this problem, the public conversation needs to be expanded beyond intermarriage. The flawed narratives of intermarriage that have dominated discussion need to be replaced by an alternative account of engagement. The new debate should focus on understanding and influencing the factors that motivate individuals and families, both inmarried and intermarried households alike, to participate actively in Jewish life.”

Thank you for reading my series on the intermarriage reports. I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did!

Third in a series of posts concerning recent data on intermarriage. Read my first entry here and my second here.

Below is my analysis of the second of recent reports on intermarriage, this one courtesy of the National Center for Jewish Studies at Hebrew College.

Here is a snippet from an article written by JTA:

Researchers interviewed 149 intermarried couples, mostly Jews married to Christians, in four cities, asking about their Jewish behaviors, degree of involvement with their Jewish communities, and negative and positive experiences with those communities.

Titled "Intermarriage and Jewish Journeys in the United States," it was not a random study -- the respondents already were involved in Jewish or interfaith organizations from which researchers obtained their call lists. So with the Jewish partners having more Jewish background than the national samples used in other studies, the quantitative findings may not be widely applicable.

Still, researchers say it could prove useful to Jewish institutions and communal leaders seeking ways to engage the most Jewishly interested intermarried families in their midst, a good target audience in any case. The researchers plan to follow these families for years to see how their Jewish behaviors evolve.

Couples said their interest in Jewish participation was stymied in some cases by a less-than-welcoming community and the fact that a rabbi would not perform their wedding ceremony.

Perhaps the most interesting findings had to do with rabbinic officiation at interfaith wedding rites.

At a time when the Reform movement in particular is deeply divided between those rabbis and cantors who perform intermarriages and those who do not, the study found a statistically significant correlation between intermarriages performed by Jewish clergy and the later involvement of the couples in Jewish life.

It marked the first such study to do so explicitly, say researchers who worked on this and the other two studies.

It should be noted that NCJS strongly affirms that the correlation between rabbinic officiation and Jewish practice is more an indicator of the Jewish partner’s pre-disposition to his/her religion, rather than a cause and effect scenario on its own.

Below, I’ve recounted some interesting figures from the report, as well as personal commentary.

( Makeup of individuals and couples surveyed )

( Concerning non-Jewish partner converting to Judaism )

( Childhood Religious Experiences of Jews and non-Jews )

( On the dating and marriage scene… )

( Concerning the wedding ceremony )

( Post-marriage religious practice and raising kids )

( General statistics based on religion, geography and gender )

( General opinions about and suggestions for the organized Jewish community )

Stay tuned for my final post on the Steinhardt Social Research Center’s report, It’s Not Just Who Stands Under the Chuppah: Intermarriage and Engagement!

Second in a series of posts concerning recent data on intermarriage. Read my first entry here..

Shavua Tov!

Last week, I promised an analysis of the CJP survey on intermarriage in the greater Boston area.

Here is a snippet of an interview CJP Vice President Gil Preuss gave to JTA:

The newly released Combined Jewish Philanthropies report came about in part as a response to widespread criticism of its central finding that twice as many children in Boston’s intermarried households are being raised Jewish as was reported by the latest National Jewish Population Study.

“People asked, what did we mean by ‘raised Jewish?’ ” said Gil Preuss, vice president for strategy and planning at the CJP. “They said the way we asked the question led to a higher number of families saying they were raising their kids as Jews."

"So we looked at what that means in terms of real practice: day to day, week to week, what are these families doing?”

The result of that investigation not only confirmed the earlier findings, including the 60 percent figure, Preuss said, it also showed that a couple’s initial decision to raise their children as Jews is the critical factor in determining an intermarried family’s level of Jewish involvement.

Once a couple decides on a brit milah or baby naming for their newborn, he said, “the rest follows,” from synagogue membership to religious school to Shabbat observance.

Below, I’ve recounted some interesting figures from the report, as well as personal commentary.

( General percentages of marriage within Judaism )

( Wedding Officiants for Intermarried Couples )

( General Percentages of Children’s Religious Affiliation in Intermarried Homes )

( Home-Based Religious Practice )

( Synagogue Affiliation and Practice )

( Jewish Identity: Centrality of Various Issues )

( Jewish Education Among Intermarried Children )

( Interfaith Membership to Jewish Institutions and Relationship to Israel )

Stay tuned for my next post on The National Center for Jewish Studies report on intermarriage and Jewish journeys in the US!

First in a series of posts concerning recent data on intermarriage.

Earlier this week, JTA wrote a synopsis on three new reports, which urge understanding of interfaith families. A few days later, this news organization reported that Reform rabbis may reexamine their stance on officiating over dual-faith marriages.

To quote from the article:

“I realized that by not being present at certain marriages, I was not doing what I’d been doing for single-sex couples: Be there at the creation of a Jewish home,” Davidson said.

Now he is trying to get his Reform movement to support him.

Last year, Davidson brought a resolution to the annual convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the movement’s rabbinical arm. It would have replaced the group's current opposition to rabbinic officiation, in place since 1973, with a policy supporting those rabbis who choose to perform intermarriages in certain clearly defined circumstances.

The resolution never made it to the floor. Some rabbis, including Davidson, believed it was just too divisive an issue.

Instead, the rabbinic group created a task force on intermarriage, which will report on its work at this year’s convention March 30-April 2 in Cincinnati.

A focus on the hot-button issue comes as new research suggests a connection between rabbinic officiation and the level of Jewish commitment among intermarried families. [Emphasis mine]

Those involved say the task force will spend several more years interviewing rabbis and other experts, collecting stories and commissioning research, with the goal of bringing a proposal to the association’s 2010 convention.

“I really want my colleagues to consider my position,” says Davidson, who will only officiate when the non-Jewish spouse is not an adherent of another faith and if the couple commit to building a Jewish home.

I plan to record a personal analysis of the three reports, starting with the Combined Jewish Philanthropies Report on intermarried families in Boston. InterfaithFamily.com, which is headquartered in Massachusetts, gives its opinion here.

In the meantime, Israel also takes a look at how intermarriage effects American Jewish life. (Found thanks to JTA’s blog, The Telegraph.)

On March 6, 2008, an Arab gunman attacked Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, a center for religious Zionism in Jerusalem.

Eight students, all but one between the ages of 15 and 19, were killed. Several others remain hospitalized.

Below are the names of the victims:

Neira Cohen, 15, from Jerusalem.
Segev Pniel Avihail, 15, from Neve Daniel.
Avraham David Moses, 16, from Efrat.
Yehonatan Yitzhak Eldar, 16, from Shilo.
Ro'i Roth,, 18, from Elkana.
Yohai Lipshitz, 18, from Jerusalem.
Yehonadav Chaim Hirshfeld, 19, from Kokhav HaShahar.
Doron Mehereta, 26, from Ashdod.

Gilad Lotan and Maya Norton, of Global Voices Online, gather responses to the tragedy from the Israeli blogosphere.

Other Israel supporters have created Facebook groups to speak out against this terrorist attack. If you have a Facebook account, click here for a full list.

Wishing Jerusalem, Israel and Jews worldwide a speedy refuah shleima.

Happy March, everyone!

Here are a few interesting links I noticed on the Jewish blogs and sites I frequent.

Israeli-born actress, Natalie Portman, will star in a Mira Nair film about a Jewish woman and Hindu man falling in love. (As blogged by Jewcy.com)

Michael Fox, a journalist and film critic based in San Francisco, reveals his top ten movies about interfaith relationships. (As recorded at InterfaithFamily.com)

D.C. area native, Mark Berch, collects two batches of journalism links about Israel’s relationship to the Diaspora. (As posted to MyJewishLearning’s blog, Mixed Multitudes.)

Feel free to share your own!

Last Monday, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public life published a detailed survey, which documents the religious makeup of the United States of America. Based on interviews conducted between May 8 and Aug. 15 of last year, between 35,000 and 36,000 American adults over 18 were surveyed. 682 of those adults were Jewish.

Below, I’ve recounted some interesting figures from the report, as well as personal commentary.

( Religious Identity of Total American Population )

( Jewish Makeup )

( Leaving Faith or Birth and/or Professing No Faith )

( Retention from Childhood and Conversion to Faith )

( Intermarriage and Inner-marriage within Faiths )

( Children within Faiths )

( Education and Finance )

( Ethnic Diversity Within Faiths )

( Jewish Immigrants to the U.S. )

( Jewish Geography )

For more Jewish (and other) responses to this research:
--JTA article: Pew Offers Jewish Snapshot, sample size questioned
--Interfaith Family blog: First Look at Pew Forum US Religious Landscape Survey
--Jewcy.com blog: Upgrading Gd: Americans Big on Conversion
--Beliefnet Article: Study Finds Americans Fluid in their Religious Affiliation
--Beliefnet Community Forum: Faith Transitions

And a small tangent…recent JTA coverage of American Jewish/Israeli relations
--Feb. 24: Jewish leaders’ Mission Debates Diaspora Role on Jerusalem
--Feb 26: American Orthodox Rabbis Reach an Agreement with the Israeli Chief Rabbinate on Conversion
--Feb. 26: Can the Synagogue Help Bridge the Diaspora-Israel Gap?