Posted in December holidays on Jan 4th, 2008
After a month of publishing almost exclusively “December Dilemma”-driven content, I promised myself that there would be no more. But then a friend sent me this essay on Salon.com, where Christopher Noxon explains the unique solution he and his Jewish wife found for their holiday hangups: Irving the Snowchicken.
Noxon relates how they came to hatch Irving:
Eventually, we arrived […]
Posted in December holidays, Outreach, Popular culture, Conversion on Dec 28th, 2007
It’s a little late, but I need to pass along this amusing story of the Jewish daughter of a Jewish mom and a Christian dad named Sarah Christmas.
The Forward has a wonderful story about a group of 55 African-Americans who converted to Judaism in Cairo, Ill.–home to 40 churches and only 4,000 people.
Also in The […]
Posted in December holidays, Synagogues, Other religions, Marketing Judaism on Dec 21st, 2007
At its recent biennial convention in San Diego, the Reform movement apparently borrowed a few chapters from the modern evangelical handbook:
In a darkened room at the San Diego Convention Center last week, nearly 1,000 people clapped, sang and danced to evening prayers, with the words projected on two large screens against a bucolic backdrop of […]
Posted in December holidays, IFF in the news, Friends of IFF on Dec 6th, 2007
It’s the first week of December which means only one thing: TV shows and newspapers are flooded with stories on the “December dilemma.”
Yesterday morning, the Today Show had a segment featuring Jewish-Christian couples and advice from Rev. Sherri Hauser, of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, and Rabbi Irwin Kula, best known for his recent book Yearnings: […]
Posted in December holidays on Dec 4th, 2007
In today’s The Virginian-Pilot, Steven G. Vegh has a smart little article about converts to Judaism who miss Christmas.
Interestingly, though, our recent 2007 December Holidays Survey showed that 63 percent of conversionary families plan on participating in Christmas celebrations in some way, although only six percent plan on celebrating in their own home. Half plan to […]
Posted in December holidays, Interfaith identity on Oct 30th, 2007
Jessica Ravitz of the St. Lake Tribune wrote an entertaining, insightful essay on the wonders and worries of being a child of an interfaith household late last month–and all in under 800 words.
When my Jewish parents split up, I was at an age when I would have sooner shoved tinsel in my mouth than throw […]
Posted in December holidays on Dec 20th, 2006
Trying to keep up with the deluge of interfaith family-related stories during the holiday season:
The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles has a fun story about “MeshugaNutcracker: A New Chanukah Musical!”
The Canadian Jewish News has a fine story on our Third Annual December Holidays Survey.
The News and Observer (N.C.) has an article about the Jewish […]
Posted in December holidays, Parenting/raising children, IFF in the news on Dec 19th, 2006
For the first time in the three-year history of doing our December holidays survey, JTA has done an entire story about the survey! Frankly, I can’t say enough about what a terrific piece of reporting Sue Fishkoff did. It presents the survey results in a balanced, nuanced, contextual light, and is clear about the survey’s […]
Posted in Parenting/raising children, December holidays, Outreach, IFF in the news, Statistics, Friends of IFF, Intermarriage on Dec 14th, 2006
As we had hoped, the authors of the 2005 Greater Boston Jewish Community Study responded to the op-ed by Steven Cohen, Jack Ukeles and Ron Miller questioning the findings of the Boston study. Their letter in today’s Forward is short and sweet but makes an essential point: unlike the demographic studies of Ukeles and Miller, […]
Posted in December holidays on Dec 13th, 2006
The Solomon Schechter Day School Association made no decision on whether to change their admission policies to allow the children of non-Jewish mothers, according to Sue Fishkoff’s update of last Thursday’s JTA story. Instead, Fishkoff says, the association’s board of directors “will continue the discussion” after the conference.
That’s not surprising; these kinds of decisions often […]
