“Interfaith.” It’s so early aughts. For decades, the label connoted a family with one Jewish spouse and one of a different background. In 2001, an entire organization called “InterfaithFamily” was created. Now many such families are done with using a single label to describe themselves, so the group has followed suit and renamed itself “18Doors.”…
It was a Sunday morning, the third or fourth time I slept over. I woke up to the feeling of his hands running through my hair, like a novice hairdresser procrastinating making the first cut. “Hey,” he whispered. “Ggghhh” I mumbled. “Can I ask you something?” He sounded nervous. I opened my eyes and saw…
I’m reading Tzivia a book about Rosh Hashanah, about a community pitching in to help a little girl experience her favorite holiday tradition. “Max told Abby, who told their teacher, who told the principal, who told the rabbi — ” “Wait, what’s a rabbi?” My Jewish five-year-old doesn’t know what a rabbi is? “Oh, you know…” Her…
Last week, it was widely reported that Israel’s new minister of education likened Jewish intermarriage to the Holocaust. Like many, I felt gut-punched when I read his hateful words. Once again, interfaith families are being used as a proxy and scapegoat for disengagement with Jewish life and Israel. Once again, we hear a Jewish leader…
NEW YORK (JTA) — A majority of Jewish Americans have positive feelings about Muslims – and the feelings are mutual — according to a survey released Wednesday. The 2019 American Muslim Poll, conducted in January, found that 53 percent of Jewish Americans reported having positive views of Muslims — the highest of any non-Muslim faith group surveyed —…
Once you’re a rabbi, you’re good for life — unlike a law or medical license, no central professional body can take the title away. And while you can get the title from a Jewish seminary, such as Hebrew Union College (Reform), Yeshiva University (Orthodox) or the Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative), there are thousands of rabbis…
This month, many interfaith families are celebrating Christmas. Unfortunately, there won’t be many expressions of “Happy Holidays” coming from the Jewish world. Recently, Gil Troy described the very existence of intermarriage as “the great unspoken yet perennial source of anguish haunting the Jewish world…American Jewry’s great divider,” and said that “no Jewish community could ever…
A synagogue in Virginia has issued a statement in favor of Conservative clergy presiding at interfaith weddings even though the movement still officially bans the practice. In a Facebook post, the synagogue’s rabbi said that its board had voted to allow its clergy to marry a Jewish person to a non-Jewish person, but only when…
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