Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove
May 5, 2007

 

For a people that comprise less than 2% of the North American population, Jews spend a whole lot of time studying themselves.  Every year there is a new survey characterizing the composition of our people, our challenges and opportunities, and inevitably filled with prescriptive measures promising to ensure the continued vitality for North American Jewish life.  The most recent survey came out a few months ago from Steven Cohen, titled “A Tale of Two Jewries:  The Inconvenient Truth for American Jews.”  Aside from Cohen’s sin of including two cultural referents in a single title, by all accounts there is much merit to his survey.  In brief, Cohen describes the emergence of two Jewries, the dividing line marked by the presence of intermarriage.  The individual rate of intermarriage amounts to 47%, which means, just to spell it out, that “almost half of the Jews who married in the late 1990’s married non-Jews who had not converted at the time of the survey.” (p. 6)   There are thus two groups the “endogamists” - those who marry in, and “exogamists” - those who marry out.  Cohen’s survey goes on to characterize the practices of the two groups.  By all measures, religious observance, ethnic cohesion, travel to Israel, Jewish summer camp, synagogue membership, those “marrying in” have much higher rates of engagement than those “marrying out.”  There is no single greater determinant, Cohen explains, to tracking Jewish commitment than the decision to marry Jewish.  Nobody, incidentally takes issue with Cohen’s findings, they are the sociological facts.

The discussion I would like to get into this morning, is the response, the questions of given these two Jewries, what is a Synagogue to do?  What is a Jewish educator to do?   What is a Jewish family to do?  Because on this issue, there is a quite a bit of debate - a debate that plays out in setting the national Jewish agenda, synagogue life or the matter of how a rabbi spends his or her day.  Where should our focus be?  Which Jewry is our primary concern?  One side says that given the facts of intermarriage, we need to make a concerted effort to welcome those families on our periphery.  The other side sees such outreach efforts as a capitulation of our responsibilities to the committed Jewry.  With limited resources, the argument goes, the worst thing we can do is offer a bland, universal message, just to have a low bar of entry to those on the fringes.  Where should adult education classes be held? In a synagogue or at a Starbucks where the Jews are?  Can a rabbi stand up and preach the premier place endogamy has in the pantheon of Jewish values and not alienate the statistically overwhelming number of congregants with family members who aren’t Jewish?  On a deeply personal level, how should each of us welcome the non-Jewish members of our Jewish families?

There aren’t easy answers to these questions, but let me give you an example of how not to approach the issue.  This week’s Torah reading offers the first attempt by a Jewish community to deal with the test of intermarriage – and Israel fails…miserably.    Our Torah reading concludes with the story of an Israelite of mixed parentage, half-Israelite and half-Egyptian.  It is worth noting, that the truth of the Exodus from Egypt is that it wasn’t a homogenous people that was redeemed, but an “erev-rav” a “mixed-multitude” (Exodus 12:38).  The wilderness wandering was a time it would seem, not too dissimilar from our own moment.  The Israelite families, though called the children of Israel, were really children of all sorts of parentage; they were an amalgam of different backgrounds.  So this part-Jew, part-Egyptian “came out.” “Vayetze.” The medieval commentator Rashi notes the oddity of the phrasing, “Vayetze” came out from what, he asks.  And the answer, with eerily modern intonations, is that he came out not physically, but in terms of his identity, he stood open in all his mixed humanity.  And you know what happened?  The greater Israelite family wouldn’t accept him.  Rashi paints a narrative that he went from tribe to tribe seeking to be integrated and at every turn barriers were thrown up.  Not surprisingly a fight broke out between the half Israelite and a full Israelite, which could refer to two individuals, or with a bit of grammatical massaging, could also refer to a brawl between parties, an internecine battle between those claiming full Israelite status and those otherwise.  The two Jewries clashed.  The story ends horribly with the blaspheming of God’s name and the stoning of the blasphemer.  

As you can imagine, the rabbis had a field day with this brief narrative.  What was the source of the controversy?  What prompted the half-Israelite to curse God’s name.  And while explanations of the story abound, the only thing we know for sure from the Biblical text itself is that a fight broke out between a product of a mixed marriage and a full Israelite.   It is a horrible story, with no hero; the individuals and the collective people of Israel are held guilty for the shameful turn of events.  It is even more shocking when you realize that the story serves as a coda to Levitical holiness code filled with the message that we should love our neighbor as ourselves.  This is meant to be read as a cautionary tale on how not to treat others.  It is not surprising that this is the beginning of the end for the wilderness community, a community that is unable to recognize that Jewish families are made up of Jews, but they are also made up of non-Jews, and woe unto the community that does not recognize that fact and respond to it accordingly.

We live in a time that there is no shortage of programming opportunities for the mixed multitude of the contemporary Jewish world.  Just this past year, we have welcomed Rabbi Kerri Oltizky of the Jewish Outreach Institute into our midst who brainstormed with us as to how to reach out to intermarried families.  Rabbi Chuck Simon of the Federation of Jewish Mens Club came to us with a series of programming ideas that could galvanize our community.  Their “Keruv” or outreach programs help guide communities to be welcoming, not just in programs, but in the language used in synagogue publications, in board meetings and within our families themselves.  These are wonderful opportunities of which we should be taking advantage.   This fall, Anshe Emet plans to host a series of programs addressing interfaith relationships and their impact on members of our community - those involved directly in interfaith relationships as well as their family and friends.  If you would like to be involved in producing the event or guiding the program's focus, please make a member of the clergy aware of your interest.

But the truth is that here at Anshe Emet we are already doing quite a bit right when it comes to our two Jewries.  On any given Sunday morning there will be someone teaching the “alef bet” to those with little background, at the same time as a video conference session of sophisticated learning from the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.  On any given Shabbat morning there are services aimed at the initiate and at the Jew entrenched in tradition.  There is a Jews by Choice program and there is a rigorous lay led torah study class.  It makes for a busy staff and laity and a complex budgeting process, but it is happening every day.  While the rest of the Jewish world may be debating the tactic by which to move forward, our community has not let the paralysis of analysis to set in.  And the best part of it, we have discovered, is that it is not an either/or proposition.  One will often observe people seamlessly floating from one mode of Jewish life and learning to the other.  Let the surveys say what they want, but here at Anshe Emet, we are not two Jewries, but one Jewry.  And let me tell you, we do this not just through programming, but because there is a thread of respect to our community conversation, a tacit understanding that while our God and Torah are one, each of has arrived at this spiritual address by way of a multitude of experiences.

I am well aware that it is exactly this issue that will color my rabbinical career.  The institutions and debates of American Jewry for the next fifty years will inevitably converge on the question of how we do or don’t extend Jewish communal resources to the complex demographic that is called American Jewry.   And, while I am confident, I am nervous. I am concerned about formulating a coherent approach to mixed marriages. What do I say to the regular stream of Jews who walk into my office to get married, and one of them, though not halakhically Jewish understands themselves and seeks to be understood as a full participant in the Jewish community.  What do I say to them?  I am anxiety ridden over whether American Jewry is at all able to understand endogamy being preached as a Jewish value, or is it heard as some parochial, outdated and even offensive to the modern ear.  In no small way, I think the challenge of the next fifty years of American Jewry is how to be secure in your own Jewishness, validate the humanity of others, all the while ensuring Jewish community and continuity.  Everything else as they say, is commentary.

I am nervous and I am confident, and, just because I know the questions, doesn’t mean I have the answers.  At least the parasha teaches me what not to do.  Don’t alienate the non-Jew in your Jewish family.  We have been, are, and will continue to be a mixed multitude.

Next week, my wife will be going to Ethiopia.  She is part of a contingent through the Jewish Federation working to make the final push to bring the last of Ethiopian Jewry to Israel.  There are a few families left, and not all of those coming are necessarily families that are Jewish, but the family members of Jewish families, non-Jews who are seeking to be reunited with their families now long settled in Israel.  I can think of no nobler act, no more Jewish act, than this contingent spending a week of their lives volunteering to help bring together families to the Jewish state.  And so too, in less dramatic fashion, we here in North America, we here at Anshe Emet can bring our Jewish family together.  In our programs, in our language, in our culture, we can choose to include - not exclude, we can integrate - not alienate, we can be a living breathing example that no matter what the surveys may say, we are not two - but one Jewish people.