Dear Derek,

> I would like to know what you mean by "[treating intermarried couples]
> with honor?"

"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor." That's a good
start for how to treat all member families and couples with honor in
your kehillah.

I have to say that I'm put off by the rather aggressive tone of your
post. Replace the word "non-Jewish" in it with some other adjective
indicating something less than your halakhic ideal: non-shomer-shabbes,
non-kashrus-observant, not-liturgically-knowledgeable. Are they what
you want? No. Are they a reason to shun, shame, or exclude someone? I
would hope not. A non-Jew has no halakhic standing to take certain
roles or fulfill certain obligations--but nothing you've mentioned
other than being given an aliyah falls in that category.

I keep shabbat, keep kosher, lead services, read Torah and haftarah,
study, teach others, and try to serve the needs of my community. I was
raised in a Conservative household & synagogue, though not with my
current level of halakhic observance (that came later, with the help of
friends in the Oxford Masorti community, mostly expat North American
grad students like my husband & myself). And my father is not Jewish.

He was not Jewish when a Reform rabbi married him and my mother in
1967. He is not Jewish today, though he's in shul a darn sight more
often than many a Jewish congregant. He does not practice any other
religion. Judaism is the only religion of the household in which I
grew up, where I and my two brothers were raised. It's a good
Conservative Jewish household. It just happens to have one Jewish
parent in it--but two good parents in it, who _both_ contributed to
making me the person, Jew, woman I am today. (If it's not strange to
say that my father helped make me the woman I am today, why should it
be strange to say that he helped make me the Jew I am today, though he
is neither a woman nor a Jew?) And though it's not statistically in the
majority, it's far from the only one of its type.*

But there aren't going to get to be more of them producing committed
Conservative Jews if people like you don't start to realize that people
like me are 1) listening and 2) part of your conversation already, part
of the community. I'm not sitting outside asking for your permission to
come in, and I'm not particularly happy for you to be talking about me
and my family as though we're not here, not listening, not among those
who get to speak for or in Conservative Judaism. We're not some
external problem to be dealt with. For those who care about
revitalizing the Jewish community and even about such bugaboos as
demographics**, we may well be a powerful element in the solution(s).

I look forward to seeing the booklet Dr. Braitman mentions and to
continuing the conversation on this topic, including re: the kinds of
specifics you mention, which I'm happy to take up. (And not all of them
are "changes": much is already being done, sensibly, by many
congregations.) But you have to realize that the language that you use
in entering the conversation goes a long way toward determining who's
going to want to talk with you. (As when David Kay decides to "
decline to remain engaged in a discussion on homosexuality if the
conversation gets stuck on linking it or comparing it to obviously
immoral acts such as incest, rape, or pedophilia"-- I'm going to
decline to remain engaged in discussions of intermarriage that treat it
as a second Holocaust***, a disease, a sign of weakness and wickedness
in our fallen Jewish community... I won't say more here; if you're
interested you can look at, say, my Comment #19 at
http://joi.org/blog/index.php?p=52#comments ...)

B'shalom,

Becca

* One of my friends in the Jewish community here is more punctilious
about various areas of traditional halakha than I am. And her
background is very much the same as mine: non-Jewish father, brought up
in Jewish household. And her future, with her non-Jewish fiance, looks
ready to carry it into the next generation, creating an observant
Jewish household in which she is the sole Jewish parent. If he should
decide to convert to Judaism (as my fiance did, to our mutual surprise:
we'd been a couple for nearly 7 years at that point and I was fine with
replicating my parents' pattern for my Jewish household), that's his
business. As is WHEN it happens, before or after the wedding (though
obviously such choices do affect what kind of ceremony it would be in
terms of who could officiate, etc.) What difference does it make to YOU?
No difference in the halakhic status of her children. No difference in
her plan to send the kids to day school. No necessary difference in the
level of observance of others in the household. (Again: her observance
must put her among the most observant 2% of Conservative Jews. You want
to tell me she's not a good enough Jew? And the other 98% are as long
as their partners are Jews even if they don't do anything Jewish?) One
Jew more or fewer in the house, what's it to you? Why use intermarriage
as the stalking horse for the real issues of Jewish content and Jewish
continuity in our communities?
There may well also be gender issues tied up in this business--perhaps
when you think "intermarriage" you don't think of Jewish women marrying
non-Jewish men and having halakhically Jewish children (like me, like
my friend). Maybe you just think of Jewish guys and non-Jewish
women--and there all the status issues re: conversion _are_ different,
but not insurmountable in terms of having a Jewish household & Jewish
children, even if the non-Jewish spouse does not convert beforehand.
Mikvah works just dandy for producing Jews, baby or adult--so why get
hung up on a Jewish womb?

**See JOI's report "The Coming Majority: Suggested Action on
Intermarried Households," which concludes:

Myth: We can grow the community without dealing with intermarriage.
Fact: Intermarried families hold the key to growth of the Jewish
community.

Even if intermarriage came to a complete stop today, it would not stem
the decline of the American Jewish population, according to renowned
Jewish demographer Sergio DellaPergola. After running a series of
calculations, he found that if factors identified in the 1990 National
Jewish Population Survey continue status quo, our population is
projected to decline to just 2.3 million Jews in 2080. If the
intermarriage rate dropped to zero starting today, the U.S. Jewish
population would still decline to 3.4 million by the year 2080. In
other words, the best possible result of an anti-intermarriage movement
is for the American Jewish population to shrink by only two million
instead of three million over the next 80 years!

Professor DellaPergola’s calculations did illustrate one means by which
the American Jewish population could actually rise in the coming
decades. Surprisingly, it is not affected by the rate of
intermarriage, but by the rate at which the intermarried raise their
children as Jews. In fact, any scenario in which more than 50% of the
intermarried raise their children as Jews would mean an increase in the
Jewish population. The simple fact is that intermarriage is not what
ends Jewish continuity: not raising Jewish children is what ends Jewish
continuity. The only way to grow the Jewish population is to help both
in-married and intermarried Jews alike to raise Jewish children.

Now, I myself don't put much stock in thinking More Jews = Inherently
Better. But I do think that More Jewish Life & Culture = Better, which
includes More Jewish Families...and if one of the ways you get there is
More Total Jewish Households produced out of Some Jewish Background,
then good!

***A friend's recent e-mail:
"You have found an exception in your warm and welcoming kehillah. The
other
side of the coin is what happened to my good friend, the last time
either of
us attended the Conservative synagogue we grew up in: He had just
married
his wife, a non-religious non-Jew from France. He thought it would be a
good idea to introduce her to his heritage, so brought her to Rosh
Hashannah
services, only to have the rabbi give his sermon on how intermarriage
is a
second Holocaust. Needless to say, it was not the most wonderful
introduction to the Jewish community for my friend's wife! We'd all
like to
think those kind of things no longer happen. Unfortunately, it's the
welcoming places that are the exception to the rule, not vice versa."

I'd like to be able to convince him that CJ trashing the intermarried
IS exceptional. Are you going to help me? Or are you going to join his
rabbi in throwing stones at us? Because that's what I hear behind your
language, with its questions of whether my father should be
"acknowledged" or is simply a problem to be "reduced." He's a person.
I'm a person. I'm a Jew, he's not: but we're both part of the
community, that of Israel and the strangers who dwell among us. (Now
that the language of the Biblical _ger_ applies to the contemporary
convert/Jew by choice, we need a new term for what my father is: _A
Place in the Tent: Intermarriage and Conservative Judaism_ suggests
"k'rov Yisrael"****) Those like him have said, with Ruth, "Where you
go, I go" and, in the lives they live, "your people shall be my
people." But treating them as a problem to be "reduced" isn't going to
bring most of them any closer to saying "your God shall be my God" and
becoming Jews themselves.

**** "In order more easily to identify those whom the authors would
encourage Conservative shuls (congregations) to recognize, welcome and
embrace, and because "[w]ithout a name, [an] individual is rendered
invisible within the larger social order," (p.14) the authors urge
congregations to give such individuals an identity. In the book, they
present their own choice: "k'rov Yisrael"--plural, "k'rovei
Yisrael"--meaning "a relative or a friend of Israel" or "close to the
Jews" (p.13). By giving supportive non-Jewish partners/spouses/parents
a Hebrew title, they are providing them with an identity within the
context of the Jewish community. The authors are thus asserting that
such a person is not just a "non-Jew,"--i.e., not just not a member of
the group, not eligible for honors--he/she is also someone to be taken
seriously and treated respectfully. Not just as a potential Jew (which
he/she may be), but for who he/she is today."
--from
http://www.interfaithfamily.com/site/apps/nl/
content2.asp?c=ekLSK5MLIrG&b=297410&ct=556339

On Thursday, June 2, 2005, at 03:45 PM, Derek Fields wrote:

> Dr. Braitman -
>
> I would like to know what you mean by "[treating intermarried couples]
> with honor?" Do you mean that a Conservative congregation should
> celebrate intermarriage? Do you mean that the non-Jewish spouse
> should have membership privileges? Do you mean that the non-Jewish
> spouse should be able to ascend the bimah or be given an aliyah or
> otherwise acknowledged during prayer services? I would find it
> difficult to have a conversation without understanding what you
> suggest the appropriate changes should be.
>
> I would think that a Conservative Jewish activist concerned about this
> issue would work to reduce intermarriage and strive to convince the
> non-Jewish member to convert. But I'm not sure that is what you mean.
>
> Derek Fields
> derek@...
>
>
>
>
>
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