Is interfaith new norm?

SEAN SAVAGE JNS.ORG

Since 2005, nearly six in 10 American Jews have married a non-Jew, up from 46 percent in 1990 and 17 percent before 1970. This statistic rocked the Jewish world last fall when it was revealed in the Pew Research Centre’s A Portrait of Jewish Americans survey. But is intermarriage the new norm for American Judaism?

Edmund Case, chief executive officer of Interfaith Family – a Boston-based national organization that provides assistance for couples planning Jewish interfaith marriages and other events – said that most interfaith weddings the group has seen have features of a traditional Jewish wedding.

“The weddings we are most familiar with look like Jewish weddings – ketubah (in non-traditional wording), chuppah, Seven Blessings (in non-traditional wording), circling, glass breaking, a Hebrew formula (not usually the traditional ‘haray aht’ verse),” Case said.

While not meeting the criteria of a “traditional” interfaith wedding, Jordan Samuel of Washington, D.C., had a gay interfaith wedding with his husband Claudio Volonte shortly after gay marriage became legal in D.C. in 2009. For Samuel, who is Jewish, and Volonte, who is from a Catholic family but was raised secular, the decision to have a Jewish wedding was an easy one. “Claudio was not raised in any religious denomination. We identified more Jewish from my side and upbringing,” said Samuel.

Their biggest challenge wasn’t finding a rabbi to perform the gay marriage, but finding a rabbi to officiate an interfaith ceremony. “Our initial thought was to go to the rabbi of a local LGBT temple. However, when I called and spoke to the female rabbi, she told me she would not do the wedding because Claudio was not Jewish. I was, to say the least, taken aback.” Samuel said.

The couple eventually found a rabbi to officiate the wedding through a friend at the local Jewish federation. And, while it proved difficult for Samuel and Volonte, Case said he has seen an increase in rabbis willing to conduct interfaith marriages. However, he added, most rabbis will only agree to officiate if the couple agrees to certain conditions. For example, Rabbi Natan Margalit – a non-denominational rabbi who is from Hawaii but now lives in Israel and runs the organization Organic Torah – has been officiating interfaith weddings for 14 years. He said he generally only officiates such ceremonies when the couple agrees to have a Jewish household or to raise their children Jewish. “I do this because I feel that the people in front of me want to be involved in Judaism and are choosing a Jewish wedding as a statement of that intention,” he said.

That was the case with Paul Mauriello from Port Washington, N.Y.

“We agreed, on our second date, that the kids could be raised Jewish, as long as I was never expected to hold back sharing what I believe, to convert, etc. We wanted them to have a foundation and they can decide what they believe as an adult, just as I did,” Mauriello explained.

Born Catholic, Mauriello married his wife Stacy, who is Jewish, in 2002. He said the couple chose a rabbi to officiate their wedding, but kept the ceremony non-denominational.

Interfaith affairs, where both religious traditions are honored but reinterpreted to fit the modern world, are becoming more common. “Young adults tend to be universalistic and not particularistic, and [are] accepting of people from other religious and cultural and racial backgrounds, and young Jews [in America] don’t encounter antisemitism to any significant degree for the most part,” said Case.

Complicating matters is that the different denominations have different views on who is a Jew and thus what constitutes an interfaith marriage. For example, traditional halachah says Jewish faith is determined by the mother, but Reform Judaism accepts patrilineal descent. Reform will allow its rabbis to officiate interfaith ceremonies, but draws the line at officiating weddings on Shabbat or co-officiating them with clergy from other religions, according to the guidelines of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Often, however, such decisions are made by individual rabbis.

Other Jewish denominations have increasingly stricter guidelines. The Reconstructionist movement allows its rabbis to officiate interfaith weddings, but not to co-officiate with clergy from other faiths, and Conservative rabbis are not allowed to officiate interfaith weddings, but are open to engaging interfaith Jewish couples and encouraging non-Jewish spouses to convert. Orthodox rabbis consider intermarriage a rejection of Judaism, though some liberal strands of the movement do reach out to interfaith couples.

For decades, Jewish leaders across the denominational spectrum have believed that intermarriage was an existential threat to Judaism. But, while intermarriage increases, there are also signs that more children of interfaith couples are being raised Jewish. And, Margalit believes it is important for the Jewish community to embrace interfaith couples. “Refusing to perform weddings between Jews and non-Jews does not stop anyone from marrying the person they have fallen in love with,” he said, “but only pushes them out of the Jewish community, when, in many cases, they are in fact very interested in remaining in, or coming closer to, the Jewish community.”

A longer version of this article can be found at jns.org.

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