We are pleased to announce that JOI has been selected by the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York (JWFNY) as one of their 2008-09 grant recipients. The grants are awarded to organizations that are spearheading programs to address issues that affect Jewish women of all ages and denominations.

JOI was singled out for an event titled “Summit on a More Welcoming Jewish Community.” This is a conference to educate 75 female professionals and lay leaders in the Jewish community about the critical need to serve all Jewish households, particularly those which do not participate in Jewish communal life. Participants will be trained in outreach, with an emphasis placed on identifying and fulfilling the needs of the unengaged and underserved Jewish populations. The conference will also focus on the diversity of today’s Jewish households.

We want to thank the JWFNY for recognizing our efforts, and we look forward to working together to help create a welcoming atmosphere that will strengthen Jewish life and further enrich the North American Jewish community.

Imagine putting together a group of 50 people to work together over a 24-hour period to create a comprehensive plan for a Jewish community to reach those on its periphery. Imagine this group working with “big ideas” that they have created, shaped and refined using the lens of outreach and the field’s best practices as developed by the staff of the Jewish Outreach Institute. Imagine this as the culmination of a year-long process of salon conversations with some of the Jewish community’s most prominent thought leaders and a visioning process for the community to determine its priorities.

That is the formula for an Outreach Boot Camp^SM. Over the next few days, my colleagues and I will be leading a series of intensive discussions with members of the Northern New Jersey Jewish community, giving them an opportunity to provide feedback to thought leaders and Jewish communal professionals on the challenges facing the organized Jewish community.

The event, sponsored by the Russell Berrie Foundation in cooperation with the UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey, will hopefully lead to not just a broader discussion about inclusiveness, but also solutions on how to help navigate the future of the Northern New Jersey Jewish community, one in which we believe diversity is the key to its continuity and future.

Are you looking for innovative programming for both the summer and high holidays to engage unaffiliated and intermarried families with young children in Jewish life?

Join us on Tuesday, May 27th at 3:00 pm (EDT) for a free conference call to learn about a number of creative programs and techniques to enhance your already existing programs. We’ll discuss program design, potential for community collaboration, and innovative techniques to build relationships to attract and engage unaffiliated and intermarried families with young children. We will also hear from professionals who have successfully brought these programs and techniques into their communities!

Among the programs we will highlight are:

To RSVP, or with any questions, please contact me at estern@joi.org by Thursday, May 22nd with your *name, *organization, *daytime telephone number, *mailing address, *email address, *how you heard about the call, and *any particular questions you would like us to try to address on the call. I will then send you instructions to dial into the conference call.

As always, we would like to offer all call participants the opportunity to ask questions and share their thoughts. Thus, we will happily set up another call in the near future if the number of participant reservations grows too large for a meaningful exchange.
We look forward to having you join us!

Yesterday, we wrote about the Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue) conference in San Francisco which brought together a large number of racially and ethnically diverse Jews. Many of the attendees had very interesting personal stories, but one woman’s story proved to be particularly inspirational.

The JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) recently published an article about the ordination of the first black female rabbi—who also happens to be a Jew-by-choice. “Reform Student on Track to Become the First Black Female Rabbi” profiles Alysa Stanton-Ogulnick who will be ordained at Hebrew Union College next May. Stanton-Ogulnick’s uplifting story demonstrates how women continue to break down barriers in the Jewish community.

Of her reception in the Jewish community, Stanton-Ogulnick recounts:

“People look at me and ask if I was born Jewish. . . .I say yes, but not to a Jewish womb. I believe I was at Sinai. It’s not as if one day I scratched my head and said, hmm, now how can I make my life more difficult? I know — I’ll become Jewish!”

This is an exciting time for anyone who has chosen to become a part of the Jewish community, and we would like to congratulate Stanton-Ogulnick on her accomplishments. Through our program Empowering Ruth, we often hear of the personal and emotional struggles that come with becoming a Jew-by-choice – from both within the Jewish community and from without. Stanton-Ogulnick’s story encapsulates many of the same difficulties people face on their Jewish journey, but it also shows how rewarding that journey can be.

While JOI’s focus is mainly on engaging and encouraging interfaith families and unaffiliated Jews to become more involved in Jewish life, we also promote a welcoming atmosphere for anyone who wants to be involved in the Jewish community. That’s why we were happy to read about a recent conference in San Francisco sponsored by Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue), a project of Gary Tobin’s Institute for Jewish and Community Research.

Be’chol Lashon sponsored the event to bring together African, Asian and Latin American Jews. Writing in the JTA, Sue Fishkoff described the event as three days of “networking and sharing information about their struggles to join the global Jewish family, a family that is not always eager to embrace them.”

The conference was held in part to shed light on groups outside the Jewish mainstream who struggle to find a foothold in the wider Jewish community. These are people with “Jewish heritage, spiritual seekers, Jewish communities of historical significance,” Tobin said, yet they are still shunned by many in the Jewish mainstream. Rather than focus on intermarriage, he wonders “why aren’t we extending our ideological borders to include all these people who are so interested in joining us?”

At issue for many of those in attendance is conversion. While some, like the Abayudaya of Uganda, have been formally converted, others feel their ancestry gives them ample claim to the Jewish community. The anusim of Spain, Portugal, and Latin America believe that because their ancestors were forced to convert to Catholicism under the Inquisition, they should now be allowed to reclaim their Jewish status without a formal conversion.

These groups raise some excellent questions about who is and isn’t Jewish – if your ancestors were Jewish, should you have to convert? Or in the case of the Lemba of South Africa, who “point to the Jewish cultural practices they have maintained for centuries,” do they need to undergo a formal conversion?

But more importantly, why does there seem to be such an effort to keep these Jewish groups on the periphery? This isn’t an issue of demography – these groups aren’t interested in the number of Jews worldwide. This is an issue of people who identify as Jews, who’s ancestors lived as Jews, being pushed to the side by the Jewish mainstream.

At JOI, we often talk about barriers to Judaism – whether it’s language, money, or ideology. We work to make the Jewish community more accessible through low barrier entry points to Jewish engagement, for both intermarried families and unaffiliated Jews. We applaud our friends at Be’chol Lashon for taking the lead in giving these other groups on the periphery access to the Jewish community. Diane Tobin, director of Be’chol Lashon, sums it up nicely when she says “We will work with anyone who wants to move forward toward being part of the Jewish community.”

Maybe it is the fact that this seems to be one of the most powerful weeks in the contemporary Jewish calendar (the transition from Israel Memorial Day to Israel Independence Day, preceded a week ago by Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day.) Or maybe it is the fact that I am overly sensitive at this time of year, but it drives me crazy that this is when the Chief Rabbinate in Israel decides once again to deal with the conversion issues. Now they are talking about revoking a conversion that is 15 years old!

While we are trying to build bridges to those on the periphery of the community, while we are trying to celebrate the miracle of Israel reborn in the midst of the worst tragedy that the Jewish community ever experienced, those who should understand what it is like to be a stranger are making it nearly impossible to enter the Jewish community—even as a convert to Judaism.

Simultaneously, it is the right time to celebrate the first non-Orthodox synagogue whose building was supported by the Ministry of Housing in Israel. The fact that it is a Reform synagogue is an affirmation for the pluralism that we seek in Israel and throughout the Jewish community worldwide, including America.

These two developments show us the dynamic of what it is to be a Jew in the 21st century - we are constantly pulled in various directions, with exhilaration and sadness mixed together.

While Passover is a few weeks behind us, a recent article in Haaretz caught my attention and I wanted to share it. While I think that the author admits that it is not your typical Passover celebration and might even be “over the top” to use her words, it does offer us a glimpse into who is now sitting around our Seder tables—and our Shabbat dinner tables and other holiday events, as well—when our families are inclusive to all our relatives.

Well, Caryn Aviv’s table might win the prize for being among the most inclusive. And she is sensitive to what a newcomer to the table might experience as a result. Her enthusiasm—and that of her gay co-parents (which she explains in a prior column as the gay couple for whom she carried, delivered, and is now raising a child with)—ended up extending 27 invitations for Seder. So no one really knew how many to expect. (My wife is the same way. She extends invitations to lots of people, never wanting them to be alone for the holidays, and then neglects to keep a count of who said yes.) But that enthusiasm and the diversity of the table is really what Seder is all about: welcoming the strangers among us. Here is what Caryn had to say—and I agree:

What I think this seder demonstrated was the both/and complexity and richness of contemporary Jewish life in America today. Most American Jews are now part of multicultural, hybrid, interfaith extended families. And for those who have had their heads buried in the sand the past twenty years, the reality is this level of family diversity is fast becoming the norm almost everywhere in the United States.

A recent article in the Boston Globe tells a touching story of how Carolyn Hastings, herself an Episcopalian, is raising her granddaughter Jewish. Carolyn’s daughter was a Jew-By-Choice who died of leukemia, leaving behind a one-year old daughter named Meg. To honor her daughter’s memory, Carolyn is committed to raising her granddaughter Meg Jewish.

It is Hastings, 63, who usually prepares the Friday Sabbath meal and ritual for Meg, and who has devoted an evening a week recently to attend a class for non-Jews on raising Jewish children.

Carolyn participates in the Boston area Mothers Circle course and in the Mothers Circle National Listserve for women of other religious backgrounds raising Jewish children. She’s different than most Mothers Circle participants in that she’s a grandmother, but we at the Jewish Outreach Institute are happy that, in partnership with Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Greater Boston and the Boston Jewish Community Women’s Fund, we’ve been able to provide Carolyn with the necessary education and support to honor her deceased daughter and raise Meg Jewish.

With Mother’s Day quickly approaching, we at the Jewish Outreach Institute want to thank all the mothers out there who are raising Jewish children! From Hebrew school to Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, matzah ball soup to potato latkes, mezuzahs to menorahs, and everything in between, we appreciate all you do!

We know that raising children in a religious tradition that is not your own can be particularly challenging, and we especially thank mothers of other religious backgrounds for their willingness to take on the challenge!

Like most Jewish organizations, we receive all kinds of calls and inquiries from across the United States—and from all over the world. Last year, we even had three members of the Australian Jewish community travel to the U.S. specifically to attend our conference.

This came to mind because we recently received an inquiry from the F.S.U. (Former Soviet Union) about our Mothers Circle program. Not surprisingly, with a high rate of intermarriage, there are many Russian women in the F.S.U. raising Jewish children without the support of the Jewish community. I suspect that this is the case in many countries formally hidden behind the Iron Curtain. We will provide whatever assistance we can since such programs are free to anyone who wants to implement them—it is all part of our easy access ideology, and I will be meeting with various community representatives at the upcoming Jewish Community Centers Association conference. It really would be nice to take JOI’s successful program models and best practices and share them on a worldwide level. Unfortunately, we are only able to deal with the U.S. and that is a big enough challenge.

Anyone interested in a JOI franchise in the F.S.U? Or in the Czech Republic? Or in Hungary…?

I am making a presentation at the upcoming JCCA (Jewish Community Center Association) Conference in Miami in a few days. I have one goal in mind: to help all member JCCs become “big tent” institutions and join our Big Tent Judaism coalition. I would think it would be an easy sell. After all, of all the Jewish communal institutions in the organized Jewish community, the JCC professes to be more inclusive than any other. Thus, it makes sense for them to concretely affirm their ideological stance in this way. And, as part of our commitment to members of the coalition, we offer free support to these institutions to help make them as inclusive as possible.

This is a trying time for Jewish communal institutions, and JCCs are not immune. Costs are up; membership is down. Perhaps Big Tent Judaism is one way that we can be helpful in resolving some of the challenges facing many institutions in the Jewish community. Fifteen JCCs are already members of the Big Tent Coalition, but that means we have yet to partner with the majority of JCCs nationwide. So if your community has a JCC and it is not a member of the Big Tent Coalition, send them our way. Your community will be better—and more inclusive—for it.

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. As the numbers of Holocaust survivors diminish, the event becomes relegated to the historical memory of the Jewish people. Such memory is difficult to access for those on the periphery of the Jewish community, especially those who aren’t Jewish but are intermarried, and who are now living within the orbit of the Jewish community.

This may not be the case for their children. In our study of adult children of intermarriage (aged 22-30 in Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco), we learned some interesting things about the determinants of their religious identity. Since the majority of them did not have an education within our Jewish communal institutions, much what they learned about Judaism came from secular sources: reading Anne Frank in High School; seeing Schindler’s List in college. And much of what is in the public realm emerges from sources related to the Holocaust. Thus, much of their Jewish identity is shaped in this regard.

This stands in sharp contrast to what is taking place inside Jewish educational institutions, where there is less emphasis on the Holocaust and the survival of the state of Israel, and more on celebrating the joys of Judaism. A lachrymose approach to the study of Judaism has been eclipsed. (By the way, these two identities may clash when these two student groups find each other on college campuses.)

So while the Holocaust and Yom Hashoah may not be the way to approach the majority of children inside the Jewish community, I wonder what the implications of these findings are with regard to education and the public observance of Yom Hashoah—especially as the numbers of adult children of intermarriage continue to grow.

We learned that the Beckhams of Soccer and Spice fame have
made the decision to send their child to a Jewish preschool in Los Angeles.

Some people might say, “So what does that mean?” Well, if we believe that Jewish preschools are an important first step toward developing and nurturing a Jewish identity, then the Beckham’s decision will indeed grow our community. Others see the benefits of Jewish preschool as well. Is that not why the Jewish Federation in Chicago has initiated its Right Start program? Is that not why philanthropist Michael Steinhardt has been pushing for the funding of Jewish preschools in much the same way he has been the incipient force behind Birthright Israel?

And if young Beckham and parents are to remain in the orbit of the Jewish community, then it is up to the school—and the local Jewish community—to do all they can do to make them feel welcome. Then we can all decide if Jewish preschool was an important decision for this interfaith family and for every other interfaith family in the Jewish community.

Last month, JOI’s Associate executive director Paul Golin and I were invited make a presentation at a very special event hosted by the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (JRF). Their New York/New Jersey region was recently awarded a grant form the UJA federation to help provide support to outreach efforts among local congregations. To inaugurate this initiative, the JRF hosted a regional kick off event, entitled “Building Sacred Community,” or “Kehillah Kedoshah.”

At the conference, a variety of presenters shared their experiences in outreach and revitalizing congregational life with a number of professionals from within the Reconstructionist movement. The JRF’s goal of brining in Paul and me from JOI was to learn best practices for outreach from the field and draw upon the successes of our work with other congregations. As such, I spoke on the key barriers that keep unaffiliated Jews on the outside of synagogue life, and what rabbis, professionals, and lay leaders can do to transform those barriers into opportunities for engagement and create a more welcoming community. Paul presented a “Tutorial” in marketing strategy, helping the folks present not only identify their goals and messages, but also tailor their marketing to maximize their outreach effectiveness. JOI is continuing to consult with a number of these congregations, and we look forward to working together to create a more welcoming Jewish community!

We often use holidays to show how various aspects of Judaism can be used to promote a welcoming and inclusive Jewish community, and Passover has been no exception. The holiday may be over, but the themes that have come out of our conversation about the meaning of Passover will continue. We focused on how Passover is about more than remembering our exodus from ancient Egypt – it’s about remembering what it was like to be a stranger when we were scattered across the globe, wandering with no sense of belonging. Therefore, Passover is a holiday to “welcome the stranger,” and for us that includes interfaith families and unaffiliated Jews.

Recently, Shmuel Rosner, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha’Aretz, also used Passover and the Seder to frame a debate on the larger issues of interfaith marriage in the US. Rosner, who a few weeks ago featured our own Paul Golin in “Rosners Domain” on the Ha’Aretz website, volley’s back and forth between what he calls the “intermarriage optimist” and the “intermarriage pessimist.” As fuel for the fires on both sides, he cites a variety of scholarly studies that deal with Jewish continuity within intermarried households. For example, Rosner writes:

Arnold Dashefsky, the University of Connecticut professor who authored “Intermarriage and Jewish Journeys in the United States,” found that couples who have already made the decision to join the Jewish community attend the Passover Seder in even greater numbers than the “average” Jew. Cause for “optimism.” But yet another study—one that might be more optimistic because Dashefsky started with a group of already committed intermarried couples—found that “40 percent to 45 percent of young Jews with one Jewish parent attended a Passover Seder compared with nearly 80 percent of those with two Jewish parents.” Good reason for the “pessimist” to raise his hand to ask some tough questions.

We, of course, are optimists. Despite studies that come up with data to support both sides of the issue, our personal experience with interfaith families has been a resounding success. Our Mothers Circle program, an education and support group for non-Jewish mothers raising Jewish children, continues to grow, as does our Grandparents Circle program, for Jewish grandparents of interfaith grandchildren. Empirical evidence has proven over and over that it’s up to us on the inside of the Jewish community to be proactive, to go out and meet people on their terms in order to engage and facilitate relationships with intermarried and unaffiliated Jews.

And that’s the challenge. Rosner’s article was recently written about in the Forward’s Bintel Blog by Daniel Treiman. He thought Rosner “hit the nail on the head” when he ends the article by saying that it’s Jewish people-hood, not necessarily our religion that “will be the one most challenged by the influx of people from other religions into the Jewish community.” Rosner might be right – we just think that with a policy of acceptance and inclusion, that’s a challenge we are destined to overcome.

We were delighted to hear about the special Mothers Circle Shabbat recently held at Congregation Ner Tamid, a Conservative synagogue in the South Bay of Los Angeles. Rabbi Isaac Jeret of Ner Tamid wrote in an email to us, “I celebrated with my synagogue our successful completion of our first year of the Mothers Circle, one of the great blessings that our synagogue has ever enjoyed!” You can listen to Rabbi Jeret’s Friday night sermon “A Charge To Jewish Outreach” here.

He emphasized the importance of supporting intermarried families and highlighted the dedication of the non-Jewish women raising Jewish children, with the last five minutes of the sermon focused exclusively on the women who participated in this years Mothers Circle course. Lesley Silverstone, the Jewish educator who facilitated the course at Ner Tamid, reported, “It was a really nice evening and I know that the women felt good about it.”

We at the Jewish Outreach Institute are happy to have allies like Rabbi Jeret and Lesley Silverstone who, like us, are committed to welcoming in intermarried families and providing them with education and support to help them successfully raise Jewish children.

Today’s blog comes to us from our friend Rabbi Samuel N. Gordon of Congregation Sukkat Shalom in Wilmette, IL. He has over 25 years of experience as a rabbi in the Chicago area, and has devoted himself to outreach and unity among the interfaith population in his community and beyond. We feel the thoughts he shared with his congregation in this sermon about Passover speak to a lot of the same themes we have brought up over the past couple of weeks regarding the inclusive message of the holiday. Enjoy.

In just a few days we will celebrate Passover. Many of us will bring to our Seders the memories of Passovers we celebrated as children with all the familiar food, Jewish relatives seated around the table, and personal family traditions. But for many of our Seder guests, they are somewhat newer entrants into the Jewish family and people. Many have arrived at these ceremonies as adults without all the same memories as their spouses and families for whom this is part of their history. How do manage to make all feel at home at this most important holiday in the Jewish calendar?

The family therapist and author, Esther Perel, has used the metaphor of the immigration experience to better help us understand the cultural dynamic of marrying someone of a different faith. Imagine that instead of marrying a person of another religion, yours was a marriage to a person of another country and culture. In this exercise, imagine that instead of marrying a Jew, pretend you are marrying someone from France. You decide that it will be fine to move to France and raise a family there. France is a nice place. It is civilized, cultured, and the food is good. You study French language and become proficient. You read all the books you can about French culture, literature, and art. You begin to feel comfortable living in France, though you may never choose to become a citizen and give up your American background.

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I recently spent almost an entire week in Chicago working with various aspects of the Jewish community, on behalf of its Jewish Federation (called the Jewish United Fund). It was a wonderful, if exhausting, week. The message to all of the groups with whom I met was the same, even if the nature of my presentations was different since I was teaching specific sets of skills to different audiences: open the gates of your Jewish community so that people can enter and enjoy its resources. But don’t simply wait inside of the gates for people to enter - go out and find them. Embrace them. Welcome them in. Provide them with meaningful, life-transforming experiences.

While JOI has been working in numerous communities and our many programs have found footing across North America, we have yet to succeed in placing the wide array of our programs in the Chicago community. That was our goal in traveling there, and with the help and support of various friends in the area, we hope to find the same success we have encountered elsewhere across the United States.

Imagine a community where there are Mothers Circles, Grandparents Circles, and groups of Empowering Ruth throughout; a community that pilots newly developed programs designed specifically for men. Imagine a group of synagogues that have not only taken on our Call Synagogue Home program, which aims to reach interfaith families through life cycle events, but also made systemic changes to welcome all those on the periphery of the community. Imagine a Federation that coordinates Public Space Judaism programs throughout the region, running programs such as Passover in the Matzah Aisles or Sunday in the Park with Bagels.

This is what we imagine for Chicago and this is what we are working toward. For in the end what we will have produced is a warmer, friendlier, more welcoming Jewish community—one in which we will all want to live and actively participate, no matter our background.

Over the last couple of days, we have seen a lot written about how to make a Passover Seder welcoming and inclusive for everyone sitting around the table. This came up so much because there are more interfaith families than ever before, which means there are more people every year who are probably attending their first Seders.

So for all of these husbands and wives, children and grandparents, friends and extended family, Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael, writing in The Jewish Exponent, came up with a list of “five readings that interfaith families may want to include in their Passover seder.”

For example, many families over the last few years have started displaying additional items on their Seder plate – most notably an orange, to represent “women’s leadership roles and full empowerment in Jewish life,” Rabbi Raphael says. But she offers another unique item for the Seder: an artichoke. It has “many petals, with thistle and a heart,” she says, and that represents the Jewish people.

“Like the artichoke, which has thistles protecting its heart, the Jewish people have been thorny about this question of interfaith marriage. Let this artichoke on the seder plate tonight stand for the wisdom of God’s creation in making the Jewish people a population able to absorb many elements and cultures throughout the centuries — yet still remain Jewish. Let the thistles protecting our hearts soften so that we may notice the petals around us.”

Although most families only hold Seders the first two nights, her ideas shouldn’t be constricted to the Seder table – or just Passover. Any family gathering, whether it’s Thanksgiving or Shabbat, is a good opportunity to, as we like to say at JOI, open your tent and welcome in all who approach.

Tonight, families around the world will gather around their Seder table to remember our time as slaves in Egypt and celebrate our liberation. The themes of the holiday are universal, and we have been posting blogs over the past couple of weeks offering ideas on how to make the Seder, which is knows for having particularly stringent dietary restrictions, more inclusive for those who might be experiencing Passover for the first time.

Our good friend Julie Wiener, writing in her monthly New York Jewish Week column “In the Mix,” relates some of her own thoughts on how a Seder can be truly welcoming for all who attend. Since “virtually every Jewish family is touched by intermarriage,” she writes, there will be more Seders this year populated by those who were raised in another faith.

“Unless we have especially dysfunctional families or are, like my daughter Ellie this year, the child asking the Four Questions for the first time, Jews don’t usually find attending Passover Seders all that nerve wracking. (As opposed to the notoriously stressful experience of hosting a Seder, especially for those who first make their homes fully kosher for Passover.)

But for gentile guests who’ve never before donned a kipa or opened a Haggadah, the holiday – with its numerous rituals and lengthy list of forbidden foods – can be intimidating.”

Julie spoke with people who gave her some wonderfully inventive tips on how to make the Seder feel more inclusive. One of the families assigned each guest a part of the Exodus story to research, and at the Seder each person shared what they had learned. Another woman actually wrote her own Haggadah with quotes from American history “so that people who are not Jewish can understand the universality of it.”

We think these are all great ideas because they speak to the common theme of the holiday - togetherness. While “welcoming the stranger” is a touchstone for essential Jewish behavior, it is also a universal behavior we all can aspire too this Passover season. Happy Passover.