Intermarriage: How Jewish Outreach Helps

by Edmund Case
Special To The Jewish Week

A remarkable new report on the children of intermarriage crystallizes the challenge that intermarriage poses for the Jewish community. The report is drawn from the results of the 2005 Boston Jewish Community Study, which showed that the number of intermarried households in Boston doubled between 1995 and 2005; soon the percentage of children in Boston’s Jewish households who are in intermarried households will increase from 42 percent to over half.
But the new analysis by Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Boston federation, and a forthcoming report on intermarriage from the National Center for Jewish Policy Studies, show Jewish communities how to turn that challenge into an opportunity to increase their size and strength.
When the 2005 Boston study first appeared, with the startling news that

60 percent of interfaith families were raising their children as Jews, skeptics questioned whether they were “really” Jewish. The new analysis reports that while there are differences in behavior from in-married families, and while their identity is more nuanced, intermarried families raising Jewish children “do so fully.” They join synagogues, provide their children with Jewish education, and their children become b’nai mitzvah at rates comparable to in-married Reform families.
Communities interested in engaging interfaith families can learn much about their behaviors from the reports.
In Boston, in comparison to families in which both parents are Jewish, fewer intermarried families have a bris or naming ceremony, and they start religious education later, but they narrow the gap in time for bar/bat mitzvah preparation. The lesson: couples make decisions over time, and those who do not choose a Jewish birth ceremony may choose to participate at a later stage.
On several measures — lighting Shabbat candles, service attendance, even kashrut — Boston intermarried families raising Jewish children “score” higher than in-married Reform families. The lesson: many intermarried families take Jewish involvement more seriously, and try harder, than in-married families who may take their Judaism for granted.
In Boston, 70 percent of intermarried families raising Jewish children have Christmas trees in their homes all the time or usually, compared to 94 percent of in-married Reform families who never do so. In the National Center sample, 58 percent have Christmas trees in their homes, and 74 percent exchange Christmas gifts, but low percentages of these families attend church services on Christmas or Easter, confirming that their Christmas and Easter celebrations are not religious in nature. The community needs to understand that interfaith families raising Jewish children can successfully do so while having a Christmas tree that for them has no religious meaning.
What can Jewish communities do to encourage intermarried couples to raise Jewish children? The reports shed important new light on the impact of two controversial interventions: rabbinic officiation at interfaith weddings and participation in outreach programs.
Both studies find a strong correlation between Jewish officiation at the weddings of intermarried couples, and those couples raising their children as Jews
Many participants in the National Center study related how positive their experience was when rabbis officiated at their weddings. Feeling accepted is critically important: 77 percent of Jewish partners and 64 percent of non-Jewish partners wanted to feel more accepted by the Jewish community, and 67 percent said their spouse feeling comfortable would lead them to join a synagogue.
In contrast, when rabbis declined to officiate, 91 percent of Jewish partners and 80 percent of non-Jewish partners were somewhat or very upset; one-third said the refusal distanced them from any form of institutionalized Judaism. For those rabbis whose decision whether or not to officiate is based not on their view of Jewish law but on whether doing so will serve Jewish continuity, these first studies to examine the impact of officiation should be very persuasive.
When the National Center asked interfaith couples how the Jewish community could attract more of them, the couples “unanimously suggested that classes, discussion groups and support services be offered for interfaith couples.”
When the 2005 Boston study first appeared, critics dismissed the assertion that the 60 percent rate of interfaith families raising their children as Jews was the result of CJP devoting 1 percent of its annual spending to fund outreach programs. The authors of both new reports take pains not to assert any cause and effect relationship between officiation or program participation and later Jewish engagement. But given both the strong correlations reported, and the qualitative explanations provided by the respondents’ comments, there can be no real doubt as to the powerful positive impact of these interventions.
CJP did not have proof of causation when it decided more than 10 years ago to explicitly welcome interfaith families and to back that welcome with funded outreach programs, in parallel with literacy, social justice and numerous other vibrancy efforts. CJP does not assert causation in the new report, but rather affirms its strong and eminently reasonable belief that its decision and the path it has taken have had demonstrably positive results.
The recent Pew Forum Religious Landscape Survey describes a highly competitive religious marketplace in which people are switching affiliations in search of a community of values and meaning. Many searchers are “up for grabs,” and that is particularly true of many in interfaith relationships. It is open to some rabbis in every community to show their welcome of interfaith families by officiating at their weddings. And it is open to every Jewish community to decide to welcome interfaith families and offer outreach programs for them. n
Edmund Case is president of InterfaithFamily.com, a nonprofit that provides resources and services for interfaith couples exploring Jewish life.