intermarriage

We Jews are a people of destiny

It was heartbreaking to read Rabbi Denise Handlarski’s op-ed titled “Harris-Emhoff’s significance.” [Jewish Independent, Nov. 27] Heartbreaking, yes. Shocking, unfortunately, not at all. Almost every single Jewish family, including my own, has a relative or close friend who has intermarried or has seriously contemplated intermarriage were the opportunity to present itself. A 2017 Jewish People Policy Institute study shows that, in the United States, 60% of non-Orthodox Jews, aged 40-44, are intermarried. In the 35-39 age bracket, 73% are intermarried; the percentage rises to 75% when dealing with those between 30 and 34. We are clearly witnessing a dramatic upward trend.

Rabbi Handlarski, ordained by the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, an institution that focuses on living a life with a cultural Jewish identity through a “non-theistic philosophy of life,” expresses her excitement over this popular trend and its prevalence among families of our global leaders. She writes, “Jewish communities have spent the past several decades trying to stop intermarriage. These efforts have failed…. It’s time we embrace our pluralistic and diverse families….”

It is true: we have failed. We have failed as a people to teach about the centrality of Judaism in our lives, the impact we, as a small nation, have made upon the entire world, the destiny of our future and the need to secure our traditions, beliefs and values within our families.

However, as a believer in God and the mission that we, the Jewish People, were charged with more than 3,000 years ago, the embracement of a non-Jewish spouse is: 1) an option that is simply not on the table and 2) even if it were on the table, the acceptance of such marriages is a recipe for failure for anyone with an interest to preserve Judaism.

Why is intermarriage off the table?

There is a well-known atheist, European author and philosopher Alain De Betton, who speaks about Atheism 2.0, a version of atheism that also incorporates our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence. He believes that religion adds a great deal to the world, but he just doesn’t believe in God.

De Betton articulates a defence of the halachic system that is both true and profound. He states: “The starting point of religion is that we are children and we need guidance. The secular world often gets offended by this. It assumes that all adults are mature – and, therefore, it hates didacticism, it hates the idea of moral instruction. But, of course, we are children, big children who need guidance and reminders of how to live. And yet the modern education system denies this. It treats us all as far too rational, reasonable, in control. We are far more desperate than secular modernity recognizes. All of us are on the edge of panic and terror, pretty much all the time – and religions recognize this.”

I once heard an insightful comment from a rabbinic teacher of mine: the word “mitzvah” has two very different connotations – a good deed and an obligation. For an action to be a good deed, it just needs to embed an inherent goodness. To fulfil a commandment means that there is a Commander. As soon as I acknowledge that I am doing a mitzvah, I am metzuvah – I am commanded and there is a Commander. Therefore, God’s word comes before mine.

Even if my rationale leads me to the conclusion that intermarriage expresses the positive values of acceptance and diversity, God has already decided that other values, perhaps unbeknownst to humankind, outweigh it. Maimonides, the 12th-century leading philosopher and codifier of Jewish law, writes in his code of law: “There is a biblical prohibition when a Jew engages in relations with a woman from other nations, [taking her] as his wife or a Jewess engages in relations with a non-Jew as his wife. As [Deuteronomy 7:3] states: ‘You shall not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughter to his son, and do not take his daughter for your son.’”

In truth, the conversation should stop here; it is a law from God and there is nothing more to discuss.

Why is intermarriage destined to fail?

However, not all of us find the word of God a compelling argument, or believe in His existence to begin with. To that group, the statistics should speak for themselves.

Rabbi Handlarski admits that there are very real grounds to fear assimilation, but, she argues, Jewish pride and identity can and does exist within many intermarried families. However, a 2013 Pew Research study showed that more than one in five Americans identify themselves as without a religion, more than two-thirds do not have any affiliation with any synagogue, and more than a third believe that Jesus being the Messiah is compatible with Judaism. The average Jew in North America knows who Jesus and his mother were, but they cannot name our forefathers, foremothers and who was married to whom. The average Jew knows more about Christmas carols than they do about Jewish liturgy.

Doron Kornbluth, author of Why Marry Jewish, writes that even among intermarried families who raise their children as “Jews only,” a mere 11% of those children would be very upset if their own kids did not view themselves as Jewish. The fears of assimilation are very real indeed, and there is an undeniable and direct causal link between intermarriage and assimilation.

Former British chief rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, in his book The Dignity of Difference, writes that the prohibition to intermarry is not racist or intolerant; just the opposite! Without diminishing our love and concern for any fellow Jew, irrespective of her choices, Rabbi Sacks explains that, in our day, global cultural homogenization threatens to

destroy all minority groups and their culture. When we have a bit of everything, we represent nothing. This global phenomenon impacts many minority cultures and limits their impact on the broader world. In order for the Jewish people to continue to spread their values and be a light onto the nations, we must secure and safeguard our tradition from the threat of homogenization. We must first ignite a light before it can shine on others. To choose “romantic” love over faith is to set the trajectory for all future descendants towards a path of Jewish annihilation.

Finally, a few years ago, a guest rabbi lecturer was speaking here in Vancouver. He told the following story. A few years back, he was speaking to university-aged students and, a few minutes into the talk, a young woman raised her hand and said: “Rabbi, we are in attendance today for you to

answer just one question: Why should we marry Jewish?” He responded, “The question is not, Why marry Jewish? The question is, Why isn’t Judaism the central and integral part of your life such that ‘Why marry Jewish?’ is not even entertained as a question?”

The real question we must ask ourselves is, What does it mean to be a Jew? Are we culturally Jewish? Are we socially Jewish? Is our Judaism the same thing as Zionism? History has proven that none of these defines Judaism. Judaism has existed for thousands of years, and the state of Israel is but 70 years old. A Jew from Eastern Europe lived a drastically different cultural life from the Iranian Jew. Judaism is a charge that we were given at Mount Sinai to live a life in service of God, to better the world, and to pass the commandments and values down from generation to generation. It is a heavy responsibility, but history has proven that we can persevere with great pride and fulfilment.

Today, Dec. 18, is the last day of Chanukah. Ironically, if we saw any beauty in intermarriage as Rabbi Handlarski views it, then there would be no holiday, no celebration. The essence of Chanukah is about strong-willed Jews and their ability to withstand the pressure of Greek culture and to retain their identity. “Maoz Tzur,” the song that we sing when lighting the menorah, is all about the survival of the Jew throughout the centuries and our ability to maintain not just some of our values and traditions, but all of them. The solution is not to accept defeat. The solution is to become more aware of our history, understand what it means to be a Jew – today and every day – and live towards a viable future.

Rabbi Ari Federgrun is associate rabbi at Congregation Schara Tzedeck.

Harris-Emhoff’s significance

After the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, many Jews were quick to celebrate that Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff is Jewish. Indeed, it is a win given the sharp rise in antisemitic expression and white supremacy we’ve seen in the United States, and which is bleeding over into Canada.

Jews often celebrate when someone like us makes it into a position of some influence. This time, it isn’t any particular achievement of Emhoff’s but, rather, his proximity to someone powerful.

Harris represents so many firsts: the first woman, the first person of South Asian and of Black heritage, and the first person married to a Jew to reach the vice-presidency. Her family is a positive representation of the dream of the United States, where anyone can become anything and where, crucially, diversity is a strength.

In open and free democracies, intermarriage is inevitable. If we are to live and work alongside each other, we will fall in love with each other. This isn’t a bad thing. Given how many people seem to hate Jews, it is nice that some people actually love us. I realize intermarriage is a perceived threat to Judaism; fears of assimilation are very real. And yet, Emhoff is proudly Jewish. His identity is not threatened by the multiple identities of his partner – they celebrate the many elements of who they are and where they come from.

Since the election, there have been many pieces published about how nice it is to see one’s intermarried family represented in the White House. Jewish communities have spent the past several decades trying to stop intermarriage. These efforts have failed and have even driven some Jews and their loved ones away from Judaism.

If we care about Jews and Judaism, including challenging the multiple threats we face, this kind of infighting really needs to stop. It’s time we embrace our pluralistic and diverse families, celebrate all those who wish to be and do Jewish, and recognize that there is so much in Judaism that is beautiful and meaningful, joys that can be experienced by all who are part of the wide web of Jewish families.

Rabbi Denise Handlarski lives in Toronto. She is the author of The A-Z of Intermarriage, published by New Jewish Press, and the leader of the online community Secular Synagogue.

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Editor’s Note: For a response to Rabbi Denise Handlarski’s opinion piece, see “We Jews Are a People of Destiny” by Rabbi Ari Federgrun.

Figuring out family holidays

Adam Brody played Seth Cohen in the show The O.C. and celebrated “Chrismukkah.” (photo from cookiesandsangria.files.wordpress.com)

If nothing else, The O.C., the popular 2003-07 American television show that featured the overblown dramas of hyper-privileged Orange County teens and their self-obsessed parents, can be credited with making a household name of “Chrismukkah” – the handy portmanteau that character Seth Cohen used to describe his interfaith family’s fusing of Christmas and Chanukah.

With intermarriage on the rise, many Jews in Canada and the United States are partnered or raising children with spouses of Christian backgrounds. Jewish Federations of Canada-United Israel Appeal’s 2011 National Household Survey found that the intermarriage rate in this country is 25%, about half the rate in the United States.

With Christmas being the centrepiece of the Christian calendar in the West – even for the increasing number of North Americans who celebrate Jesus’ birthday only culturally – many intermarried Jews find themselves in a quandary: should they embrace “Chrismukkah,” observe Christmas and Chanukah separately, or focus on creating an exclusively Jewish home by just celebrating the Festival of Lights.

While every family’s situation is different, it seems that many interfaith couples are finding ways to mark both holidays, but with the emphasis on each one’s cultural value.

This lines up with findings from the Pew Research Centre’s 2013 study A Portrait of Jewish Americans, which notes that younger generations of American Jews – 32% among Jewish millennials – often identify themselves as Jewish on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture rather than religion. This matched the broader U.S. public’s shift away from religious affiliation, which is particularly prevalent among those in the 18-to-29 age range.

As for “Chrismukkah,” the Pew report found that about one-third of Jews surveyed said they’d had a Christmas tree in their home the year prior. Among those married to non-Jews, that number was 71%.

Tyler Irving isn’t Jewish, but his wife is, and the couple had their first child last year.

“So far, I’ve found it pretty easy to celebrate both sets of holidays,” he said. “We’ve been thinking about holidays as chances to reflect on culture, spend time with family and build strong bonds, and putting less emphasis on the religious aspects.”

Because Christmas is when they visit Irving’s parents, who live in the country, he expects that his own kids will view Christmas as a time to “be with Grandma and Grandpa,” while Chanukah will be “the chance to go to spend time with Bubbie and Zaide.”

Arielle Piat-Sauvé grew up in Quebec with a Jewish mother and a Catholic father.

“We always celebrated both holidays,” she said. “We went to my dad’s family for Christmas, though we did have a tree and did gifts at our own home. On Chanukah, we’d light the candles and do something with my [maternal] grandma and cousins. When I was younger, I’d get a gift for each night, but that wore off.”

If the two holidays coincided, her family would first light the Chanukah candles and then go to her grandparents’ for Christmas dinner. She stressed that neither holiday celebration focused on their religious components, but tradition and family time.

“Often, it’s easier for families to add than subtract,” said Rabbi Jordan Helfman of Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple, a Reform synagogue that has among its members quite a few interfaith couples.

Interfaith families with children enrolled in Holy Blossom’s supplementary religious school are asked not to celebrate Christmas in their own homes, but going to a non-Jewish relative’s place for Christmas is OK, Helfman explained.

“My experience is it’s not hard for children to make that distinction, especially when the parents are clear about, ‘This is what we do in our house, and this is what Grandma does in her house.’ Kids are smarter than we give them credit for,” he said.

Rabbi Tina Grimberg of Congregation Darchei Noam, Toronto’s Reconstructionist synagogue, said her congregation has a number of interfaith families, many of whom get involved in the shul’s Chanukah festivities, or who light candles in their own homes.

“Do I go into people’s homes and see Christmas trees? Not often at all. Do trees come up in [interfaith congregants’] homes on Dec. 24? Most likely not … though if people do celebrate both Christmas and Chanukah, they don’t tell me,” she said.

Just because a non-Jewish partner hasn’t converted doesn’t mean Christmas is central in their life, she emphasized. And, ultimately, when addressing interfaith families’ practice of Judaism, there’s a larger conversation at play.

“It’s about how to live life in a Jewish context when you have deep roots in another reality. It’s not about, ‘I’m Jewish because I don’t celebrate Christmas.’ It’s ‘How many Jewish things do I do … do I do Shabbat, go to synagogue, have a seder, do mitzvot, say Shema in the morning?’” she said. “Some people will still have a tree, because it honors their grandma, while others feel they have enough of a rich Jewish life that they no longer need it.”

Rabbi Jillian Cameron is director of the Boston chapter of InterfaithFamily, a U.S. organization that supports interfaith couples exploring Jewish life. It provides families with educational materials and connections to inclusive organizations, programs and local clergy.

She stressed that, while she doesn’t see a single trend with regard to how families led by intermarried couples approach the holidays, at this time of year, many of them are focused on figuring out how to be respectful of both Chanukah and Christmas, whether they celebrate the holidays in their own home or that of an extended family member.

While Christmas can be tough to give up for many who are raised with it, Cameron said, the religious element is secondary to “the family connections, the music, the smells, the tree … there’s a big pull to the sensory nature of Christmas.”

She added that this speaks to the wider trend of younger people finding value in tradition, but focusing on things outside of the theological realm.

While families with one Jewish and one Christian parent observe the holidays at this time of year in all sorts of incarnations, it’s clear that many, as in the general population, are most concerned about preserving tradition and a sense of family togetherness.

– For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com

Mixing of cultures, religions

Helen Kim and Noah Leavitt, authors of JewAsian, will be at the Jewish Book Festival on Nov. 28. (photo by Matthew Zimmerman Banderas)

The recently published book JewAsian: Race, Religion and Identity for America’s Newest Jews by Helen Kim and Noah Leavitt was crafted out of a seven-year study of 39 mixed couples, as well as their own successful marriage. The couple will be in Vancouver later this month to share their findings at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival.

For Kim, who was born a few years after her parents moved from Korea to the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s, finding a Korean guy to date was a virtual mission impossible, so looking outside the community was accepted.

“My mother was totally fine with it, in large part because she’d thrown away her expectations that I marry somebody Korean a long, long time ago,” said Kim of her marriage with Leavitt. “I think, in part, because I grew up in a community that was predominantly white with very few people of color, I think she quickly realized that, demographically speaking, it was probably going to be unlikely I’d meet, date and eventually marry someone of the same ethnic background as me.”

Leavitt, who is of American Jewish origin, said, “My mom was super-excited about the fact I had met somebody I was so smitten with. She and Helen, early on, established a great rapport that has continued ever since. I think my mom just had an expectation that I’d settle down with somebody I really loved, who I was challenged and inspired by, and saw that in Helen … so she was excited.”

Leavitt grew up in a household that was somewhere between the Reform and Conservative denominations. He went to a Jewish community Sunday school growing up that was housed at Cornell University and he had his bar mitzvah at Ithaca College through their Hillel.

Kim and Leavitt met in 1997 and both were drawn to the complexity of their Jewish-Asian mix, an interest that increased with the births of their children.

“This was the era where, I think, we started to see a lot of interracial pairings, dating and marriages,” said Kim. “And it was also right before the U.S. census gave multiracial individuals the option of choosing more than one race on the census … really, an interesting time, demographically speaking, where the context around us was contributing to our thinking about how common are pairings like ours and maybe other interracial or Jewish-not Jewish pairings.”

Leavitt and Kim contacted a number of universities that were repositories of large-scale demographic studies. They were aware that the study of intermarriage to that time had been focused on interfaith marriage, but had not delved into how interracial marriage factored into the larger picture.

The couple reached out to the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. Through this connection, they were able to do an initial recruiting of couples with whom to speak for their book. In the end, their study included 39 couples from the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and Orange County, and from the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas.

“We focused there, in part, because of the high percentages of individuals who identified as Jewish and Asian,” said Kim. “Then, there was the likelihood and demographic reality that interracial marriages are taking place predominantly in those areas … with the West Coast having, by far, the highest rates of interracial marriages.”

“We had a lot of people volunteer to be part of the survey and what we made a decision to do was to try to find the most expansive look at Jewish-Asian combination that we could,” said Leavitt.

Within the 39 couples, one was gay and three were lesbian, with the remainder being heterosexual. The study also included a second set of interviewees who were young adults that were children of Jewish-Asian households.

“The first thing by far that I think was quite surprising that we found was that, for the couples as well as the adult kids, they are definitely Jewish – not just in terms of the self-identification perspective, but in terms of some strikingly traditional religious practices,” said Kim. “So, the couples we interviewed were in the midst of or had created homes where there was a lot of traditional Jewish religious practice – everything from observing Shabbat consistently, to consistent synagogue attendance, to kids becoming bar or bat mitzvah, to children going to Jewish day schools.

“Then, for the adult kids we interviewed, they affirmatively claimed they were Jewish. But, they also talked about having been raised in traditionally religious households and communities that, to a great extent, mirrored what we were finding with the couples we interviewed.”

While only six of the racially Asian individuals had converted to Judaism, the overwhelming majority of couples celebrated Jewish religious events and cultural tradition alongside Asian ethnic traditions.

“There was neither a conflict of religion nor a blending of religions,” said Kim. “It was more of a cultural hybrid, but steeped in Judaism as the religion of the household.”

“I would go broader and say that, for the most part … we didn’t really hear too many stories about conflicts related to religion overall,” added Leavitt. “There were a few examples where the non-Jewish partner had a religious or spiritual practice that they adhered to, but it was something they did on their own and didn’t bring into the household.”

Both Kim and Leavitt said the findings were representative of their own Jewish-Asian mix. “Judaism, for me, is a religion and a cultural tradition that is easier for me to instil in my family,” said Kim. “I, as a second-generation child of an immigrant family, did not grow up with a lot of Korean ethnic and cultural traditions.

“Through the adult kids [in the study], it was reinforced repeatedly that you have to expose [them to the culture], no matter what your comfort level as a parent, no matter your knowledge as a parent. The kids really appreciated when the parents went all out in terms of trying to expose them to a particular culture or ethnicity, though they themselves as parents were afraid they might not do it right.

“So, I think just hearing from the kids and imagining my own kids in 10 to 15 years was kind of affirming to me, [that I just need to] try as much as I possibly can. The kids will end up picking up things here and there and will then, on their own, become curious and want to learn on their own. That was reassuring for me.”

“I had a lot of the same reactions,” said Leavitt. “For me, when Helen and I decided to make a commitment to this project, it was fairly close in time to when we were also starting to think about having our own family. When we got this investigation underway, our son Ari arrived. As a first-time parent, I had a lot of worry and anxiety about a household that seemed to combine so many different kinds of traditions, cultural heritage markers and, to some extent, religious differences. I think I had a lot of worry about the ability of all those things to be in a household together … in part, because I didn’t have an upbringing where there were lots of differences within the household. So, I had a lot of fear about that.

“One of the things I’ve been liberated by, in working on this project and having two children arrive, is there is a lot of flexibility and resilience in households. Where even something may seem like a long list of differences, the people inside that household are able to find ways where things can come from different directions, but meet at the same point.”

Kim is excited about coming to Vancouver, especially to have the opportunity to speak with a non-American audience, “to understand how it is that they think about these different dimensions of identity, tradition, culture and religion, as a way of getting out of our predominantly U.S.-focused lens. I’m really looking forward to that comparative perspective.”

Leavitt said, “I think the chance to be in as diverse, global and multicultural a city as Vancouver … maybe there are lots of households coming together with this mix of Jewish-Asian backgrounds in Vancouver. I think this may propel us to continue researching more in this international comparative way.

“Helen and I feel very fortunate to have been working on this project at a time in the U.S. when the exploration about the diversity of the Jewish community in our country is really something that is front of mind for so many congregations, synagogues. We aren’t the same people we were years ago.”

“If we are acknowledging that this is what American Judaism looks like,” added Kim, “what then is the responsibility we have in regards to action based on the changes in the demographic and how do we act based on how we’ve changed?”

Kim and Leavitt are on a panel with Daniel Kalla on Nov. 28, 6 p.m., at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. For more information, visit jccgv.com/content/jewish-book-fest.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.