RACHEL COWAN
RACHEL COWAN Is an interfaith marriage better than singlehood? How can we promote the continuity of Jewish peoplehood in a radically new environment? Acouple in their 30s—one partner Jewish and...
...The task for federations and other Jewish communal organizations is to stop considering whether outreach makes the problem better or worse and debate how to make outreach effective...
...The need is too great...
...The Jewish federations must expand funding for outreach programs in their communities...
...If we give them concerned attention, they may choose to remain or become part of the Jewish community, whether or not we officiate at their wedding...
...We bear the brunt of criticism, whether we do or do not perform interfaith marriages...
...Perhaps they will then join a workshop with other couples to discuss these issues or they will enroll in an "Introduction to Judaism" class...
...They are saying that they alone cannot ensure Jewish continuity for their grandchildren...
...the Jewish Converts Network in Philadelphia...
...Many couples, when they can find no rabbi to marry them, turn to a Jewish judge, who at least will be a culturally comfortable figure...
...Or if they decide not to convert, we will have created enough confidence for them to create their own wedding, representing who they each are, working with a judge or justice of the peace...
...Our congregations want us to do too many other things...
...the outreach task forces set up by federations in Los Angeles, Hartford, New Orleans and MetroWest in New Jersey...
...With her late husband, Paul, she -wrote Mixed Blessings: Marriages between Jews and Christians (Doubleday, 1987...
...They need help from the larger community...
...3* Reform rabbi Rachel Cowan is director of Jewish affairs for the Nathan Cummings Foundation...
...come back to learn more about Judaism...
...It is much more the product of the extraordinary success that American Jews have experienced in assimilating into America's economy and society than of the inadequacies of Jewish parenting...
...The results of Mayer's recent study do not shock me at all—they only confirm what some of us have been saying for several years...
...Jews want and need their community to help them promote the continuity of the Jewish people and of Judaism in this radically new American environment...
...What help do they want...
...We cannot, according to our conscience, agree to do the wedding...
...But few of us have the time to meet with all, or even most, of the couples who call...
...Those who want to come in don't care as much about the theology or ideology of the sponsoring movement as they do about a knowledgable, sensitive, nonjudgmental teacher who opens windows on the richness of Jewish life...
...Yet only 5 percent of Conservative rabbis and 40 percent of Reform rabbis surveyed would agree to do so...
...Acouple in their 30s—one partner Jewish and one not— are deeply in love...
...Rabbis could make sure that their teaching was interesting and their discussions relevant...
...Should they tie the knot...
...Or surrender love to the demands of Jewish tradition...
...We must each make our own policy...
...People may quibble with Egon Mayer's study—noting for instance that if the couple had been in their 20s, fewer respondents would have approved of the interfaith marriage...
...Egon Mayer for the Jewish Outreach Institute found that three quarters of the respondents felt that the couple should marry...
...But something like this should be created...
...These programs all demonstrate that when sympathetic people open doors to Jewish learning, interfaith married couples and families will walk in...
...On the one hand, many of us feel bound by halachah (Jewish law) or by an unwillingness either to depart from the integrity of the traditional ceremony or to impose it on the non-Jewish partner whom it does not represent...
...These judges may know little about Judaism or Jewish tradition...
...Maybe now we, as a community, will listen to the voices of thousands of individual Jews who have long felt isolated with the problem of their own interfaith marriage or of their children's...
...On the other hand, it is horrible to say no to people who look to you for help and guidance...
...They want the nonjews whom their children marry to become Jewish, but they don't know how to make that happen...
...If we take the time, we can sometimes encourage them to take the issues raised by the nature of an interfaith relationship seriously...
...This study makes publicly visible the challenge to the current funding priorities of major Jewish organizations and to crucial decisions that rabbis must make in their approach to interfaith marriage...
...They want to get married and have not found partners from their own religious background...
...So we lose many of them...
...Jews would learn more about their traditions at an important time and could take more responsibility for bringing Judaism or Jewishness into their relationship...
...interfaith marriage is here to stay...
...Although many believe that most of these couples just want a rabbi to appease the Jewish parents, actually many of them truly want their wedding to have a sacred dimension or to feel the blessing of tradition...
...There are wonderful models to learn from: the Reform movement's 'Times and Seasons" workshops and "Introduction to Judaism" classes...
...Futhermore, 70 percent of the Conservative Jews in the survey felt that rabbis should perform interfaith marriages, and 90 percent of the Reform Jews felt that way...
...If educated paraprofessionals worked with them, they and the couples could find a transcendent dimension to their civil ceremony...
...They want their rabbis to change their wedding policies and to consider their grandchildren Jewish, even if their daughter-in-law is not Jewish, and they want their communal agencies to offer more programs...
...A recent study of representative American Jewish leaders, rabbis and laity conducted by Dr...
...But they can't dispute the reality that it evidences: Interfaith marriage is a fact of American Jewish life...
...We should develop communal centers where couples can go for marriage counseling that would include study of the wedding traditions, resource materials to help them prepare the wedding and workshops to empower them or their friends and relatives to bring a spiritual Jewish presence into their weddings...
...Many rabbis will dislike this idea because it seems to condone interfaith marriage and because it seems to diminish the role of the rabbi...
...Perhaps we will then be able to officiate at their Jewish wedding...
...the Derekh Torah Introduction to Judaism program of the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan...
...For me, a rabbi, it is easier to imagine the community's response to this challenge than rabbis' responses...
...the Denver family education project called "Stepping Stones to a Jewish Me...
...Later they may...
...Just as most couples and parents can't solve this problem on their own, neither can rabbis...
...For rabbis, the decision is harder...
Vol. 15 • December 1990 • No. 6
