Reflections on the URJ Biennial & the Coming Study

From the Biennial
Some of us were at the presentation in San Diego at the URJ Biennial in Dec. 2007 by Fern Chertoff and Leonard Saxe on interfaith families. They presented a Powerpoint on their latest study "It's Not Just Who Stands Under the Chuppah." The core message of the study was that when you control for Jewish education level, interfaith families look pretty much like non-Orthodox Jewish inmarried families. (The study itself is due out this month.)

Now there are a LOT of questions that this brings up that I will save for another moment. AND it adds to the data that Bruce Phillips shared with me a couple years ago (and I shared with all of you) about the importance of Jewish education in the perpetuation of Judaism. Like everything else in life, if you don't know how to do it or why to do it, eventually, you don't do it anymore.

There was a point during the workshop in San Diego at which Debbie Antonoff of Pathways Atlanta wondered if what was being presented was saying that Outreach to interfaith couples is irrelevant? Is our work without merit if everything depends on the Jewish educational level of the Jew in the interfaith marriage? I would say firmly, No. I believe that we are like the high school counselors, if you don't know you can get an education, don't know how to get an education, don't think you can afford an education, or think that time for one has passed you by, then you won't even try. We are the high school and college counselors, the college recruiters that go out and tell people, you can, you have access, it's not too expensive, you have a right to it, you can do it whether you're married to a Jew or not -that is- you can become Jewishly educated and so can your children.

I was discussing this question with Rabbi Menachem Creditor (he used to be in Boston and is now at Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, CA). The metaphor we discussed was the individual who is the first in their family to seek a college education. That individual does not know how to navigate the system and needs help in finding their way through it. Additionally, there may be students who don't even know that a college education is a possibility and unless someone reaches out to them with information, support and encouragement, they will never attempt college.


Wisdom from another study/talk
I recently went to the Brandeis site and read a brief article by Saxe titled:

Connecting Diaspora Young Adult to Israel: Lessons from Taglit-Birthright Israel

He sums up his findings with these four points:

1. Young adult Jews want to be connected
2. people-to-people connections are essential
3. education has to involve all of the senses
4. institutions must change and adapt.
These lessons—and others that each of you could draw—are as important as the individual changes that the program has wrought.

These four statements can be said of our work in outreach to the interfaith. They want to be connected, the people-to-people connection is essential -- this goes back to Bruce Phillips' quote, "The most powerful influence on an interfaith couple’s decision to raise their children Jewish is one person reaching out and inviting them to participate in Jewish life." Education must engage the senses and our institutions must adapt.

I think the institutions are adapting, the ones that are not will die and be replaced by new ones. In the bay area Jewish Gateways is an experiential new program that is a working!
Take a look at Rabbi Bridget Wynne's Jewish Gateways site at www.jewishgateways.org

For those organizations that are actually educating the couples and their children, look to Stepping Stones, Phyllis Adler's program in Denver. For information on such programs, you can talk to Lynne Wolfe who ran Pathways in New Jersey for 13 years. I bet when this study comes out the MetroWest Federation will be kicking themselves.

More thoughts to come.