Julie Wiener's blog

I’m late to the party here, but how could I not weigh in on Mitt Romney having dated a Jewish girl?

My oldest daughter is not yet 9, and her bat mitzvah has already become a topic of discussion in our house.

Don’t get the wrong idea: I’m not one of those super-organized-plan-everything-in-advance-type people, and I’m certainly not that kind of mom (which you would know if you saw the backlog of forms and permission slips piling up on my desk.)

But my niece’s bat mitzvah is coming up next month, and her older sister’s bat mitzvah, two years ago, is still fresh in our memories.

A few items of interest on the intermarriage beat:

How do you tell your kid his or her teacher has been busted for possessing child porn?

That’s the unpleasant task parents, teachers and administrators at Yeshivat Noam, a Modern Orthodox day school in Paramus, N.J., have had to take on this week.

My colleague Helen Chernikoff, perhaps sensing my delinquency of late when it comes to “In the Mix,” has written a thoughtful post for “The Yad,” our new staff blog.

I must confess that when Jewish articles appear in mainstream papers like The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, I feel a bit ambivalent, in a way that’s similar to how Jews often feel upon seeing a member of the Tribe marry into a prominent gentile family.

One of the fun things about writing a blog is balancing the dueling pressure between Must Post Often and Must Say Something Compelling.

Generally I try to err on the Say Something Compelling, or At Least Moderately Interesting side. However, sometimes that, particularly when combined with competing demands on my time and brain, means being a completely delinquent blogger. For which, I apologize. I’m going to try to be a bit better in the coming weeks.

Yesterday I had the privilege of wandering around four Jewish cemeteries. It was a perfect spring day: sunny, clear and temperate, with blossoms, flowers and other (blessedly not-too-allergenic) new life everywhere.

When it comes to reaching unaffiliated Jewish parents of young kids, hip and attractive web portals aren’t just a good idea. They actually seem to work.

That’s the take-away from two recent reports: an evaluation of Denver’s MazelTot and an “audience profile & satisfaction survey” for Kveller, the New York-based (but national) Jewish parenting blog.

Forgot those 50 rabbis Newsweek has been fussing over.

Journalist/author Peter Beinart may well be the most famous American Jew these days, at least among the New York Times-New York Review of Books-New Yorker-reading intelligentsia.