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Reaching
interfaith families
BY: MARGI HERWALD ZITELLI
City Editor
Jewish communities and
organizations across the United States have struggled for
years with how to approach the growing number of Jews marrying
outside the faith.
In 2006, the Jewish Community
Federation of Cleveland commissioned a study of Cleveland-area
intermarried families in an effort to improve its outreach to
this group and to include them in the community and Jewish
life.
The study, “Addressing the
needs of intermarried families in Cleveland: An exploration of
decision-making among parents of school-age children,”
recently was presented to community leaders by researcher
Pearl Beck, Ph.D. Beck is a member of Ukeles Associates Inc.
research and consulting firm, and she focuses on Jewish
identity formation.
Objectives of the study, conducted
over the past two years, include gaining a better
understanding of how interfaith families make decisions about
raising children and involving them in Jewish education;
determining which programs and experiences have been
successful in attracting these families and what barriers
impede them from participating in Jewish life; and
recommending strategies to increase intermarrieds’
involvement.
It is nearly impossible to estimate a
national average intermarriage rate, Beck notes, since
demographers differ substantially on their findings.
Nonetheless, she asserts that Cleveland has one of the lowest
intermarriage rates among major U.S. cities n 23%.
To place her study in
context, Beck notes that 57% of Cleveland Jews are native to
the area, a higher percentage than most other U.S. cities
boasting a significant Jewish population. (Only New York City
has a higher percentage of natives.)
“That statistic
implies a rather dense social network,” Beck says. It also
reflects a community more likely to have a high rate of Jewish
affiliation and involvement. The research shows that “many
Jewish partners who intermarry do maintain a level of Jewish
identification and involvement,” she adds. “This reinforces
the notion that intermarriage is not a rejection of the Jewish
spouse’s Jewish identity.”
Methodology
Fifty-one
intermarried couples with school-age children were interviewed
for the study. The families are not a random sampling, Beck
stresses; thus, the results are “descriptive and illustrative
rather than representative.” To do a proper sampling of a
small sub-group of a minority population would be difficult,
expensive, and far more time-consuming, she
notes.
Since researchers and the Federation recruited
couples that met specific criteria (all families had at least
one child around the age of 6.5) through advertising in such
venues as the JCC, Jewish preschools, and the Cleveland Jewish
News, “the sample may have a bias toward families more
integrated in Judaism,” she adds.
Requests for study
participants were also placed on Craig’s List, posted in ice
cream and pizza parlors, and in pediatricians’
offices.
In all 51 cases, the non-Jewish half of the
couple is Christian. Researchers did not inquire about
specific denomination.
“In-depth” interviews were
conducted individually over the phone with each person. The
102 subjects were then asked to complete online surveys. Both
the qualitative data from the interviews and the quantitative
data from the surveys were coded and analyzed.
A
Beachwood woman married nearly 12 years to a non-Jewish man
(name withheld to maintain the anonymity guaranteed by the
study) chose to participate in the study after years of
“negatve feedback” from people critical of her choice to
intermarry. “People need to know that if you go ‘off the
beaten path,’ it can still work,” she says. “It’s not about
religion, it’s about the relationship between two
people.”
This participant hopes the
study’s findings will lead to “a better respect” for
intermarried families within the
community.
Findings
The majority n 59% n of
Jewish parents in intermarried families are mothers, Beck
says. “Cultural norms” throughout American society indicate
that decisions regarding children’s education are made far
more often by mothers. “That has huge implications” for
Cleveland intermarried families, she notes.
Beck
determined that 80% of her sample families have Jewish
grandparents living in Cleveland. An equal percentage has
non-Jewish grandparents in town as well. “These families are
buffeted on both sides by two sets of grandparents pulling in
two different directions.”
In addition to push and pull
from grandparents, Beck found intermarried couples dealt with
a lot of stress within their own relationships stemming from
unresolved issues about how to raise children. In her sample,
60% of couples interviewed separately agreed that they were
raising their children Jewish. Eighteen percent of couples
gave conflicting answers as to whether they were raising
children as Jewish, Christian, both or neither.
Of
those who agree they are raising Jewish children, 65% live in
“central Jewish areas,” 75% belong to a synagogue, and 54%
send (or sent) children to Jewish preschools. The remaining
couples n those who either agreed they were raising children
as non-Jews or in a mixed faith environment and those who did
not agree on their children’s upbringing n were far more
likely to live in peripheral areas, with 60% residing on the
West Side or the far eastern or southern suburbs. Only 30% of
the latter group belongs to synagogues.
Families
raising their children Jewish cited two primary reasons for
that choice: the belief that there should be one religion in
the family or a leaning toward Judaism and/or antipathy to
Christianity on the part of the non-Jewish spouse. Those not
raising their children Jewish (or exclusively Jewish) noted
that they believed children should have choices, felt that
both religions were similar, or had negative feelings toward
Judaism. All families indicated a preference for familial and
cultural Jewish involvement over religious
involvement.
The families interviewed cited several
common barriers to their participation in Jewish life. These
are the high cost of membership in Jewish institutions,
feelings of inadequacy over their lack of Jewish knowledge,
and a lack of intimacy within Jewish communal life. Both
non-Jewish and Jewish partners feel this way, Beck
says.
Despite pre-marriage discussions about child
raising, many of the couples n even those in agreement about
raising Jewish children n were dealing with ongoing issues and
“negotiations.” Unanticipated issues that cropped up for these
families included increased identification with Christianity
developed post-marriage by the non-Jewish spouse, increasing
pressure from grandparents on both sides as to how to raise
children, and “protracted states of uncertainty experienced by
both parents.”
Recommendations
Beck and her
researchers made several recommendations to Federation
leadership as to how to better engage both the 60% of
intermarried families raising exclusively Jewish children and
the 40% who were not.
These suggestions
include:
• Open more Jewish agency satellites on the
West Side and other “peripheral” suburbs.
• Encourage
“public space” Judaism, which can be as complex as building
succot in public, secular locales, or as simple as ensuring
Parma supermarkets carry Chanukah cards.
• Provide
“community-building experiences.” Create social networking for
parents and support groups for interfaith families centered
around child-raising issues. However, Beck stresses, these
must be “non-therapeutic” support groups. “These families do
not appreciate being viewed as having a problem that needs to
be solved.” They simply need help moving from discussing their
issues to making decisions in a “supportive,
non-conversion-oriented environment.”
• Provide better
support for intermarried families’ lifecycle events n from
synagogues being more flexible about allowing non-Jewish
parents on the bimah at b’nai mitzvah ceremonies, to training
mohelim (ritual circumcisers) to be more explanatory and
inclusive when performing a bris in front of both sides of the
family.
• Create targeted educational experiences in
settings outside of synagogues.
Federation’s goal is to
take Beck’s recommendations and develop them into workable
programs with volunteer and professional Jewish community
leaders, explains Jessica Semel, chair of the sub-committee of
Federation’s Community Planning Committee that commissioned
the study.
“There’s nothing concrete yet,” Semel says.
“Our hope is that between the lay and professional leaders, we
can come up with some excellent ideas for engaging interfaith
families. They need to be accessible and appealing. Conversion
can’t be the goal we put out as a community.”
mherwald@cjn.org
judy s wrote on Jul 19, 2008 12:00 AM:
" very important work was done
here. I will take this to my temple pres and Rabbi "
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