Posted in Intermarriage, Uncategorized on May 6th, 2008
Mildred Loving died this past Friday of pneumonia. An obituary in the Washington Post tells the story of how Loving, an African-American woman, defied Virginia law by marrying her white husband in 1958, and wound up with her name on the 1967 Supreme Court case, Loving vs. Virginia that ended miscegenation laws in the United […]
Posted in Musings, Uncategorized on Mar 24th, 2008
I started here at InterfaithFamily.com at the end of February, and learned as part of my orientation here that I was going to be responsible for finding images to include with our stories and with my posts here on the blog. I’m not a creator of visual art myself; I can just about draw a […]
Posted in Rabbinic officiation, Uncategorized on Feb 26th, 2008
A New York Times article on the new president of the New York Board of Rabbis had us shaking our heads here in the InterfaithFamily.com office. It’s kind of funny that the Orthodox and Conservative rabbis can handle female or gay rabbis on the 700-rabbi board, but heaven forbid they should include anyone who would […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 9th, 2008
Yesterday, the Jewish Outreach Institute launched its first discussion group for grandparents looking to share their Jewish heritage with their interfaith grandchildren. The first Grandparents Circle was held at Temple Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Calif. A second is hatching in Atlanta Jan. 25.
Modeled on JOI’s successful Mothers’ Circle program, Grandparents Circle is a five-week guided discussion course […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 10th, 2007
I’m a little late on noting this, but a few weeks ago Scripps News published a thought-provoking column by Rabbi Arthur Blecher on intermarriage, the High Holidays and the Jewish future. Attentive readers of this blog will recognize his name as the author of the recently published New American Judaism, which argues that widely held […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 21st, 2007
Some links to sink your teeth into:
Two high-profile conversions: Mare Winningham, best known for playing Wendy Beamish in St. Elmo’s Fire, is starring in a new off-Broadway play, “10 Million Miles” and has just released a new country album of Jewish songs, titled “Refuge Rock Sublime.” She tells The Jewish Week of her enthusiasm for […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 8th, 2007
Mandy Katz of Moment magazine has written a fascinating, occasionally repulsive, story about anti-Semites who fell in love with Jews.
The big names are Hitler and Mussolini, although Hitler gets off on a technicality. The flirtatious girl he fantasized about marrying, as well as killing, was not Jewish, as he thought. Mussolini, however, was a […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Apr 24th, 2007
We occasionally get indignant over the way traditional Jewish leaders and organizations respond to intermarriage in their midst, but a recent headline put the civility of the debate in perspective: “Interfaith love sparks 23 deaths.”
The recent attack in Iraq where Islamist fundamentalists stopped a bus, separated out members of a tiny religious sect called Yazidi […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Apr 19th, 2007
The umbrella organization for North American Jewish federations is undergoing a massive reorganization, dropping a major policy initiative that was created in the wake of the surprisingly high intermarriage rates announced in the early ’90s. What this will mean in practical terms is anybody’s guess.
Since 1999, the United Jewish Communities, which links federations that have […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Apr 17th, 2007
Britain’s The Independent has a truly astonishing article on a Jewish day school in Birmingham where half the students are Muslim–and everyone gets along. It’s not about the kind of interfaith relationships we focus on, but it demonstrates the salutary effects that interfaith connections can have on people’s worldviews. We’re not naive enough to suggest […]
