I have long felt that JCC’s are a prime location for welcoming interfaith families and engaging them in Jewish life. Unfortunately, with some exceptions, most notably the Pathways program at the Atlanta JCC, most JCC’s do not offer programming aimed specifically for people in interfaith relationships.

I was reminded of all of this by a noteworthy article in the New York Jewish Week, JCC, Synagogues In Holy War In Boca, by Stewart Ain. I’ve seen indications before that some JCC’s want to get more into the “Jewish life” business, which I think is a great development, and I was very pleased to see that Allen Finkelstein, the executive director of the JCC Association, is leading that effort:

“In the last year and a half, I’ve been pushing JCCs to get into conversations about what is happening in Jewish life,” he said.

Finkelstein said he asked the JCCs “what we need to be doing going forward, and what energized us was a remembrance of our Jewish core.

“Not everyone wants to daven [pray],” he added. “We want to find ways to go to primarily young families and say to them that we want to make Jewish engagement easier for you.”

I hope that will lead to more programming for interfaith families. I hope the JCC’s don’t buy the argument that people in interfaith relationships want general programs, not programs just for them; both kinds are needed.

The article reports that the Boca Raton JCC has hired a charismatic rabbi, Michael Stern, who meets people in their homes and asks them what they want and are looking for in Judaism, and who is now offering Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur programs. There are many references in the article to the JCC’s programming being particularly attractive to intermarried couples.

According to Marty Schneer, the JCC’s executive director, “We are targeting the unaffiliated and marginally affiliated who are not experiencing the holidays elsewhere.” The article reports that only 12% of the more than 120,000 Jews in the area are affiliated with a synagogue. Rabbi Stern, who will conduct the High Holiday programs, said that they would:

include “five or six pieces of the traditional service, stories that illustrate insight about the prayers, an explanation about the function of prayer and what we are trying to get out of prayer.” “My goal is to build a vibrant JCC community with the emphasis on the Jewish part of the JCC,” he said. “We are the frontline agency that touches more Jews than any other institution, particularly the intermarried. What should our response be?”

The “Holy War” in the article title reflects that the local rabbis apparently don’t like the JCC’s High Holiday programming one bit. One referred to Rabbi Stern as “an outside rabbi” and called it “usurpation” and “invasion” and said the JCC had stepped over the line and was acting as a synagogue. Another said “we will have a duplication of effort at a time when synagogues are also thinking of how best to serve the Jewish community.”

It is trite to say that there are way too many turf battles in the Jewish world. I was a large synagogue president and I sympathize with synagogues’ needs to attract members with their High Holiday services because they need members to pay dues to support their staff and buildings and program offerings. But synagogues have a real problem with the high cost of belonging, and some have a real problem with services and programming that is not compelling to young families. It is important that young families in particular have Jewish programming that they are attracted to and comfortable participating in, and if they find that at a JCC, that is a good thing.

Moreover, it should be possible for JCC’s and synagogues in a community to collaborate and coordinate their offerings. Wouldn’t it be smarter for the Boca Raton synagogues to view the JCC’s High Holiday programming as a potential “feeder” of people to the synagogues? If the JCC does a good job and turns young families on to Jewish life, won’t they naturally want to find the deeper programming and community that synagogues ideally should offer? There are too many communities in the country where alternatives to synagogues are viewed, not as feeders, but as competitors. I think that’s a shame.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Reform movement (Union for Reform Judaism), announced on June 10 that he would retire in two years. You can find the text of his prepared remarks on eJewish Philanthropy and articles with more analysis by Josh Nathan-Kazis in The Forward and by Jonathan Sarna also in The Forward.

I have to confess to having very mixed feelings about Rabbi Yoffie. He exercised leadership on many matters that I personally applaud greatly. I personally agree with positions he has taken on Israel, on domestic social policy and justice issues, on interfaith dialogue, on efforts to re-invigorate Reform Jewish worship services, on emphasizing text study, and more.

My problem relates to what I care about most both professionally and personally — engaging interfaith families in Jewish life. I find it somewhat telling that in his prepared remarks — which admittedly are not his final comments, those will come at and after the next URJ biennial in 2011 — that in discussing some of the future challenges facing the Reform movement, and some of the specific work that needs to be done in the next two years — there is no mention of engaging interfaith families.

The Reform movement’s record on outreach to interfaith families under Rabbi Yoffie’s leadership is disappointing. Prior to 2003, the movement had an outreach department with some headquarters staff and a half-time regional outreach director in each of its fourteen regions; all of these people were outstanding dedicated professionals who did amazing work helping congregations welcome interfaith families and attract them to Jewish life. In 2003, the movement eliminated most of the positions, reportedly because of financial pressures. InterfaithFamily.com initiated a campaign that helped to preserve some of the positions.

Then in 2009, the URJ did away with its regions and the remaining regional outreach positions, to be replaced by four outreach specialists who, as talented and dedicated as they are, are stretched awfully thin to serve all 900 Reform congregations. The Reform movement’s outreach department and initiative, once truly a jewel among the movement’s many programs, is in a sadly reduced state.

To be fair, we publicized excerpts from Rabbi Yoffie’s 2005 biennial speech — and those speeches are where the movement’s most important efforts are announced — highlighting two parallel initiatives, which the URJ still supports,  to welcome non-Jewish spouses on the one hand, and to respectfully encourage conversion on the other. But program materials are one thing; staff whose job it is to promote and help with use of the materials is much more significant. I believe that the outreach department was a very “sellable” program – that funding could have been attracted for it – and that the movement’s leadership under Rabbi Yoffie’s direction did not give it the priority it deserved.

The URJ’s leadership may think that the Reform movement doesn’t need to do any thing more to attract interfaith couples and families. In the New York Jewish Week, Gary Rosenblatt reported that Rabbi Yoffie said that “his movement is the largest Jewish denomination because it has an “open door, inclusive” policy. ‘We are the place for the intermarried, gay or lesbian, and disabled to explore Judaism.’” I would argue that the Reform movement and Reform synagogues could do a great deal more to attract and welcome people in interfaith relationships – and that if they did, they would see membership increases that would help to alleviate the financial pressures that apparently continue to plague the movement and its synagogues.

Josh Nathan-Kazis reported on his interview with Rabbi Yoffie the following:

As for the growing impact of intermarriage among American Jews, Yoffie said that his movement is handling the challenge well. He said that the movement has “not an ounce of regret” for its 1983 decision to consider the children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers to be Jewish, which represented a break with Jewish tradition.

Regarding studies that have found a lack of affiliation on the part of many children of intermarried couples, Yoffie said, “We’d like to point out that what that means is at a time when there’s an enormous amount of intermarriage, we’re getting a third of these people into synagogues… Imagine if we didn’t have the [patrilineal descent] decision and how many of them would be in any Jewish framework. I suggest it would be far lower.”

I’m glad to see Rabbi Yoffie re-affirm the patrilineal descent decision — and want to respectfully suggest that the number of intermarried couples that would be in a Jewish framework would be far, far greater if the Reform movement gave engaging them the priority it deserves.