To get to Camp Ramah Darom in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, you drive up Interstate 85, North, out of Atlanta, the nearest big city, for almost an hour. Just a little past Peachtree Corners, you turn onto old U.S. Route 23. From there it’s 35 minutes or so, deep into the mountains,…
(JTA) — A year ago, when several dozen Washington-area Jewish and Muslim religious and lay leaders jostled for spots in a group picture, the mood was convivial. The most novel item on the agenda for that November 2015 confab was bringing in non-Middle Eastern Muslims into the Jewish-Muslim dialogue. The meeting and the venue —…
I am a Jew by choice, I was raised a Muslim, and my mother is an ordained Baptist minister. One might think that I would encounter religious conflict with my family on all fronts. In fact, people are often incredulous at the ease with which I can navigate through these three Abrahamic faiths. Perhaps, because…
The term “intermarriage” is confusing, vague, archaic and, well, creepy. It’s time for Jewish communities to move away from using this language when writing or talking about families. As the child of interfaith parents, and as the parent of grown interfaith children, and as someone who works full-time on interfaith family issues, I can give…
Never before has it been so urgent for American Jews and Muslims to unite as it is now that Donald Trump has won the presidency. Ever since November 9, Jews and Muslims have been experiencing an uptick in targeted hate crimes, with the Southern Poverty Law Center reporting hundreds of incidents of intimidation and harassment…
In late October, I flew to Philadelphia because my employer, InterfaithFamily, had decided to host an Interfaith Opportunity Summit there. Honestly, I didn’t really know what to expect from the summit. I’d never been to a summit before. And attending this one wasn’t just a professional duty; for me — the daughter of an intermarried…
Every so often there’s a brief event, a flash of light in a darkened public square, that helps illuminate the mysterious insider-yet-outsider status of the Jew in American society — and the even greater mystery of how the half-Jew fits into Jewish life. The triggering event can be something as large as volunteering to serve…
Twenty-five years after studies noted unprecedentedly high rates of interfaith marriage for American Jews, noted scholar Steven M. Cohen wrote an article asking how Jews were doing in protecting Jewish continuity in light of intermarriage. His answer, in short, was “Not well.” Dr. Cohen argues interfaith marriage is bad for Jews because it results in…
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