JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

11/21/08 02:27 PM

Of course we should welcome intermarried Jews and their spouses with open arms!!  But at the same time, as Rabbi Alexander Schindler z’l, made clear in introducing the concept of Outreach to the Reform Jewish world in 1978, our difficult but necessary task is to welcome the intermarried but continue to resist intermarriage.  Over the years we have been very successful at welcoming, and we should always strive to do better.  But in our efforts to welcome, we have completely subverted what was a vital part of Schindler’s vision-- continuing to resist intermarriage and continuing to extol the virtue of Jewish inmarriage.  It is a tricky road ,but if we become the first Jewish generation to effectively say:  Intermarriage is a not something we discourage, then we imperil our future.  Rabbis like me all over the country report that attendance at Introduction to Judaism classes, and more importantly numbers of Jews by Choice are way down because we have become mute about discouraging intermarriage and reticent for fear of gving offense about eagerly inviting non-Jewish partners to become Jews by Choice.  For the sake of our future, let us continue to embrace —and step up our efforts to embrace—the intermarried, but let us never fail to recognize that intermarriage does endanger the Jewish future, and we must continue to actively encourage endogamy.  We must also make clear to non-Jewish spouses that the doorway to becoming a Jew is wide open, and we actively welcome them to walk through it.  Of course it is difficult to—at the same time—embrace the intermarried but discourage intermarriage, but I believe that the quality of our Jewish future depends on our willingness and our ability to accept that daunting challenge.
Rabbi Stephen Fuchs
West Hartford, CT

11/21/08 02:32 PM

There is no pure culture or genetics anyway.  The only thing that really matters is having some smarts.

11/22/08 02:43 PM

It is true that Reform synagogues are way more open to non-Jews than the traditional ones. However, it is also true that most Jews raised in the Reform movement end up intermarrying and having non-Jewish children and grandchildren. This is nothing new and dates back to the assimilationist days of 19th-century German Jewry which gave birth to the Reform movement.

Intermarriage as such is not the problem. The problem is the distancing from Jewish tradition that is practiced by the Reform movement, which has been causing the shrinking of the Jewish population all over the West.

Other than that, the only reason why Adam Bronfman is heard on this subject is the boldness of his family. The AJC has never been an open, democratic institution. Therefore, it has never been really representative of American Jewry - not to mention its twin WJC, which has never represented world Jewry (the very idea is an absurdity).

11/25/08 08:41 AM

Alexandre J. Eisenberg appears to assume that Jews are choosing Reform Judaism over Orthodoxy, whereas I believe that in many cases they are choosing between Reform Judaism and no affiliation to Judaism whatsoever.  We should therefore be grateful to Reform for keeping people within the fold, instead of denigrating it as a halfway house on the way to the baptismal font (although outright conversion is no longer a real issue).

I totally agree that intermarriage (inter-faith relationships) is not the problem, but a symptom of the problem.  The real underlying problem (challenge) is the question of “Why be Jewish when are no longer compelled to be?” Orthodoxy is no better at answering this question than are the Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform streams within Judaism; otherwise they would pretty much cease to exist.

The Orthodox world is much better at producing offspring and keeping them Jewish.  I will be the first to admit that the rest of the Jewish spectrum has a lot to learn from Orthodoxy in this regard.