Forward.com

INTERMARRIEDS, THEIR CHILDREN AND GRANDPARENTS FIND A HOME IN JUDAISM, THANKS TO THE JEWISH OUTREACH INSTITUTE

“I cried when three of my Jewish friends went off to Camp Ramah,” Judaism-convert Mare Winningham said during a private chat at the October 27 Jewish Outreach Institute’s “Two Decades of Inclusion” celebration, held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Singer-musician Winningham, with “my two buddies from Arkansas [who play] Jew-grass music,” provided the evening’s entertainment. Winningham said she left the Catholic faith when she was a teenager: “I was looking for answers to the big questions.” She said she found these “in Judaism’s emphasis on how to behave toward one’s fellow man” and in the religion’s “beautiful sense of home.” Winningham is one of America’s highly regarded artists. Her work on stage and screen and in more than 60 TV movies has earned her two Emmys and Peabody Award for Excellence in Television, plus Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations.

Adam Bronfman, the evening’s honoree, admitted that he “had not been taught the concepts of Judaism as a child.… Growing up in New York in the 1960s and ’70s,” he did not “find meaning in Judaism.” Now his Judaic portfolio includes Samuel Bronfman Foundation vice chair, member of the Hillel International Board of Governors and membership in Temple Har Sholom in Park City, Utah, where he established the Saidye Rosner Bronfman Rabbinic Chair. The Bronfman clan was represented by Edgar Bronfman, Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Samuel Bronfman II. (In the goody bag there was a copy of “Hope Not Fear,” a new book by Edgar M. Bronfman and Beth Zasloff (St. Martin’s Press), in which the former president of the World Jewish Congress and current president of Board of Governors of Hillel urges North American Jewry “to build, not fight.…We need to celebrate the joy in Judaism as we recognize our responsibility to alleviate suffering and to help heal a broken world.”

Founded in 1988, JOI has helped foster scores of Jewish outreach imperatives coast to coast. Its programs encompass opportunities for the intermarried in the Jewish community. Funded by The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, theses programs include Public Space Judaism; the Mothers Circle, an umbrella of free, educational programs and resources for non-Jewish women raising Jewish children; Empowering Ruth, a free program that supports female Jews-by-Choice; the Grandparents Circle, an education and networking program for Jewish grandparents whose adult children have intermarried, and Big Tent Judaism, which, according to promotional literature, is an “approach to the Jewish community that takes its lead from the values and vision of our Biblical forbears, Abraham and Sarah’s tent — which was open on four sides to welcome all who approach.”