Reprinted with permission from the Washington Jewish Week. Visit www.washingtonjewishweek.com.
Special to WJW
A woman studying to become a Jew once told me how concerned she was about telling some of her friends that she was about to convert.
These were friends whom she and her husband had met in a support group for intermarried couples.
"The couples in the support group have become our closest friends," she told me. "But even though we've been at each others' homes for dinner, and we go out to movies, and socialize with them all the time, I've been hesitant to tell them that I've decided to convert, because then we won't really feel part of the group any more."
Plus, she could hear the Jewish men and women in the group telling their partners, " 'Look, she's doing it. Why won't you?' So I've hidden what I'm doing from them."
Her story illustrates the problems with gearing programming specifically to intermarried families.
In the laudable effort to make intermarried couples feel comfortable, we inadvertently reinforce the group norm of being intermarried, leaving someone who has made the decision to convert feeling uncomfortable sharing this decision with the group.
Within the Conservative movement, the approach to the challenge of intermarriage has been three-tiered. The first is to emphasize the mitzvah of inmarriage. When an intermarriage seems likely to occur, then we promote the option of conversion. Finally, if conversion does not occur, we reach out to the intermarried couple and their family. We hope to draw them closer to us, while managing to preserve our Jewish traditions.
Although we reserve membership, governance and ritual honors for Jews, non-Jewish spouses can and do participate in many aspects of synagogue life, such as classes and programs, social action and religious services.
Conservative synagogues refer to outreach as keruv, which literally means bringing close. The Hebrew term was introduced by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, a past president of the Rabbinical Assembly, in early efforts toward keruv, made some two decades ago. Since then, we have learned from experience how to attract and integrate our growing numbers of intermarried families.
Rather than holding programs specifically for interfaith couples, it's best to offer educational ones, in which the intermarried are integrated with others in the community in a learning setting, to increase Jewish knowledge and competence. Groups or classes may be led by rabbis or other teachers, or may even be self led.
Adas Israel's Jewish Literacy program, for example, bills itself as being for the following groups: those who never went to Hebrew school, and those who've forgotten everything they ever learned there; intermarried couples committed to creating a Jewish home and raising a Jewish family; those with Jewish ancestry who want to explore their Jewish heritage; non-Jews with Jews in their family; and, finally, those considering conversion.
Jewish Literacy is not a conversion class, but rather, an attempt to introduce, or reintroduce, aspects of Jewish belief, ethics, life cycle and holiday cycle, considered from an adult perspective and, most important, with no strings attached.
Questions about Jewish life and practice are invited, even urged, and answered with thoughtfulness and respect. Learners' Minyan and Hebrew literacy classes are other examples of this model, in which non-Jewish spouses can and do enthusiastically participate.
Educating both Jewish and non-Jewish partners, and integrating the intermarried family into the community, such programs are more effective than ones that separate intermarrieds.
To quote the Leadership Council of Conservative Judaism's Statement on Intermarriage, which has been endorsed by every arm of the Conservative movement: "Segregation of intermarried families in our midst may function to reinforce and perpetuate that status, and undermine efforts at conversion and the goal of an exclusively Jewish home and family."
There is hardly a Jewish family in the United States that is untouched by intermarriage. As individuals and as a community, we want, and we need, to reclaim our own children and grandchildren, to share with them the beauty and meaning of the Jewish way of life. In this endeavor, keruv--bringing the non-Jews closer to us--can be both effective and loving.
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