Our plan for the gathering was to spend one day in creating a foundation of common knowledge on the topic of INTERFAITH MARRIAGE in the Jewish community and to move from that into our communal, programmatic, and personal responses from around the country. To create this overview of all current research we invited Dr. Bruce Phillips, sociologist, demographer, and author of many Jewish communal studies.
Our first night together we went out to dinner and established the comraderie that flavored the entire gathering.
From the left are: Natalie Rose, Rockville, MD; Dawn Kepler, Oakland/Berkeley; CA, Elana Perkins, Boston, MA; Bridget Wynne, El Cerrito, CA; at the head of the table, Bob Bernbaum a local friend who drove Bruce from the airport; Eve Coulson, Princeton, NJ; Dr. Bruce Phillips, our scholar for the Think Tank; Debbie Antonoff, Atlanta, GA; and Lynne Wolfe, New Jersey (office in New York).
We began our first morning with a thorough overview of all the current studies covering interfaith relationships in the American Jewish community. Quite fortuitously, Dr. Phillips had been retained to survey this same material and he came with a 23 page outline to share with us!
From the left: Dawn Kepler, Dr. Bruce Phillips, Marjorie Schnyder, Seattle, WA.
It was a round table dialog led by Dr. Phillips.
Participants from the left: Karen Kushner, San Francisco; Helena McMahon, San Francisco; Adam Halpern, Seattle, WA; Rosanne Levitt, San Mateo; Elana Perkins, Boston, MA.
The conversation never stopped.
Dinner with Natalie Rose, Rockville, MD; Bridget Wynne, El Cerrito; Phyllis Adler, Denver, CO.
The second day was an intensive discuss of on the ground experiences. Our reactions and thoughts on the data presented the previous day, programmatic approaches, current challenges from funding to marketing. There was a presentation of an extremely successful program with the opportunity to ask detailed questions.
We brainstormed about creating a "general" plan for community outreach but after extensive discussion we agreed that there was no such thing. Each community would have its own challenges, assets, boundaries and needs. Instead we developed an outline of how funders could support extending outreach in their own community and as a national agenda.
We agreed that we would mentor and assist any professional or community seeking to create or build outreach in their own community.
Before dinner we gathered for the requisite group photo.
Front row from the left: Natalie Rose, Debbie Antonoff, Karen Kushner, Elana Perkins, Margorie Schnyder, Dawn Kepler. Back row from the left: Lynne Wolfe, Rosanne Levitt, Eve Coulson, Bridget Wynne, Adam Halpern, Phyllis Adler.
One of the most powerful things to come out of the conference was the question in the afternoon of the second day: How can we tell the funders how important this experience was for all of us and encourage them to do this again? Participants decided that they would each write a letter of thanks to be included with the grant report articulating how the Think Tank had helped them. It is our hope that the funders will understand the value of bringing together veteran professionals and will do this again.
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