I thank Ms. Berkenwald for her thoughtful response to my thinking on welcoming and engaging the intermarried. She has contributed to this important discourse, for which we should all be grateful.
That said with all sincerity, I do wish to clarify a few points where I believe I am misunderstood. To be clear, I am NOT in any way opposed to welcoming, of ANY Jews, to ANY Jewish community. Rather, I have simply raised the tentative hypothesis that welcoming is an over-played rhetorical strategy to engage those mixed married and other Jews who are now distant from Jewish life. We need other ways to characterize our efforts to engage the mixed married (and others) in Jewish life. Whatever we're doing right, it is not primarily about, "welcoming," at least as we commonly understand the term.
There are no signs that the Jewishly unengaged mixed married feel much more unwelcome and unincluded than other Jewishly unengaged people, be they single, partnered or in-married. To take a compelling statistic: Reform temples' new members who are married are roughly evenly divided between in-married and mixed married couples. Under such circumstances, and with the very scant data we have pointing to equal levels of discomfort between in- and mixed married, how can we put so much of our effort into a "welcoming" strategy?
Indeed, I believe the efforts of advocates of welcoming actually go well beyond welcoming. Their productive work includes engagement, education, public relations, diversifying programming, one-on-one relational organizing, and other methods that fall well outside the rubric of "welcoming." Hence, "welcoming" is not enough: It doesn't encompass what we should do, and it doesn't encompass what we do do.
Last, efforts to engage the mixed married need to be seen not only/merely as acting with warmth and integrity to an important segment of the population. They are not only/merely about bringing Jewish meaning to those who don't experience it. They are also about ensuring the perpetuation of a culturally diverse Jewish People in the United States and the world.
Somehow, for reasons which elude me, some advocates of outreach disdain efforts to ensure Jewish demographic continuity and cultural diversity. Thus, we need not only/merely to engage the mixed married in Jewish life, we also need to re-emphasize efforts to maximize the chances that Jews will marry Jews -- in part because we have a better chance of sustainig the Jewish future, and, frankly, because in-marriage remains one of those things that Jews should do -- just like studying Torah, working for a better world, acting kindly to others, celebrating our holidays, engaging with the State and people of Israel, and all the other "shoulds" of Jewish life and community.
Now most of us, including myself (!), often fall short of all these desirable and cherished ideals and behaviors (I won't list all my Jewish 'failings,' but I have a LOT of them. But, just because I personally fall short of the highest expectations of my history and People, that doesn't mean that I want my People and my learned leaders to change their message. I DO NOT seek for them to abandon preaching and teaching the ideals, principles, and norms that make Judaism not just an beautiful and attractive culture, but a system of ethical, moral, historic, and powerful precepts with which we struggle and adapt and diversify with our changing times and different insights.
In-marriage, Jewish learning, Tikkun Olam, cultural engagement, Zionism, Jewish morality, are all Jewishly good things. Not all of us accept these ideals, and hardly any of us live by them. We need to make room for those who differ -- in belief and practice -- even as we hold on to those ideals which make our People great, our tradition meaningful, and our community sustainable.
I thank Ms. Berkenwald for her thoughtful response to my thinking on welcoming and engaging the intermarried. She has contributed to this important discourse, for which we should all be grateful.
That said with all sincerity, I do wish to clarify a few points where I believe I am misunderstood. To be clear, I am NOT in any way opposed to welcoming, of ANY Jews, to ANY Jewish community. Rather, I have simply raised the tentative hypothesis that welcoming is an over-played rhetorical strategy to engage those mixed married and other Jews who are now distant from Jewish life. We need other ways to characterize our efforts to engage the mixed married (and others) in Jewish life. Whatever we're doing right, it is not primarily about, "welcoming," at least as we commonly understand the term.
There are no signs that the Jewishly unengaged mixed married feel much more unwelcome and unincluded than other Jewishly unengaged people, be they single, partnered or in-married. To take a compelling statistic: Reform temples' new members who are married are roughly evenly divided between in-married and mixed married couples. Under such circumstances, and with the very scant data we have pointing to equal levels of discomfort between in- and mixed married, how can we put so much of our effort into a "welcoming" strategy?
Indeed, I believe the efforts of advocates of welcoming actually go well beyond welcoming. Their productive work includes engagement, education, public relations, diversifying programming, one-on-one relational organizing, and other methods that fall well outside the rubric of "welcoming." Hence, "welcoming" is not enough: It doesn't encompass what we should do, and it doesn't encompass what we do do.
Last, efforts to engage the mixed married need to be seen not only/merely as acting with warmth and integrity to an important segment of the population. They are not only/merely about bringing Jewish meaning to those who don't experience it. They are also about ensuring the perpetuation of a culturally diverse Jewish People in the United States and the world.
Somehow, for reasons which elude me, some advocates of outreach disdain efforts to ensure Jewish demographic continuity and cultural diversity. Thus, we need not only/merely to engage the mixed married in Jewish life, we also need to re-emphasize efforts to maximize the chances that Jews will marry Jews -- in part because we have a better chance of sustainig the Jewish future, and, frankly, because in-marriage remains one of those things that Jews should do -- just like studying Torah, working for a better world, acting kindly to others, celebrating our holidays, engaging with the State and people of Israel, and all the other "shoulds" of Jewish life and community.
Now most of us, including myself (!), often fall short of all these desirable and cherished ideals and behaviors (I won't list all my Jewish 'failings,' but I have a LOT of them. But, just because I personally fall short of the highest expectations of my history and People, that doesn't mean that I want my People and my learned leaders to change their message. I DO NOT seek for them to abandon preaching and teaching the ideals, principles, and norms that make Judaism not just an beautiful and attractive culture, but a system of ethical, moral, historic, and powerful precepts with which we struggle and adapt and diversify with our changing times and different insights.
In-marriage, Jewish learning, Tikkun Olam, cultural engagement, Zionism, Jewish morality, are all Jewishly good things. Not all of us accept these ideals, and hardly any of us live by them. We need to make room for those who differ -- in belief and practice -- even as we hold on to those ideals which make our People great, our tradition meaningful, and our community sustainable.