A quick glance at the newest studies coming from the Pew Research Center seem to be confirming what all of our Jewish grandmothers have bemoaned for longer than we can remember: the Millennial generation is perpetuating the death of the Jewish people.

Okay, so that's not what the studies say. It's a really loose interpretation. Here are the facts:

The Millennial Generation (18-29) overwhelmingly supports interracial dating and marriage. In fact, 85 percent of all groups asked say they would be fine with a family member's marriage to somebody of another ethnic group. Meanwhile, among the parents of the Millennials, the 50-64 age bracket, that number drops to 55 percent. And forget about our grandparents--they're at 38 percent. Granted, this study refers to ethnicity and race, not religion, but I think it's fair to say that it speaks to a general trend of acceptance within the young adult generation. Read the rest of the study, published last week, here.

This week, there's even more devastating news for Bubbe. Apparently, American Millennials are considerably less active in religious institutions than our older counterparts. Currently, 26 percent of those 18-29 claim they do not affiliate with any religion (or consider themselves "atheist" or "agnostic"), up from 20 percent of those 30-45. So we're all a bunch of heathens, right?

Actually, no. Just because more than half of us approve of the Supreme Court ban on prayer in public schools doesn't mean we're less spiritual or against prayer. Apparently, nearly half of all Millennials still claim to pray on a daily basis, and claim a roughly consistent rate of absolute belief in God as did previous generations--64 percent. Also, two percent of the total population of those 18-29 identify religiously as Jewish, (Yes, I know, this doesn't sound like a lot. Stay with me.) whereas only 1 percent of those 30-49 claim to be Jews. So hey, look at us, young Jews are still coming out on top!

Thirty-seven percent of religiously-affiliated Millennials consider themselves strong members of their religious groups, which is consistent with Generation X, the 30-45 crowd. Though the report doesn't specify how many of these "strong members" identify as Jewish, I would venture to say institutions like Hillel, the Jewish Federation Young Leadership, and other national and regional organizations are still churning out the next Jewish leaders, not to mention rabbinical and cantorial schools across the country. Though many of them are looking for new ways to get young Jews involved, and young Jews are engaging in the Jewish dialogue differently than they did in the past, strong members of the Jewish community in its various forms have yet to go extinct.

Not surprisingly, nearly three-quarters of Milennials believe that there is more than one true way to interpret their own religion. This might even be more predominant in the Jewish world. Think Bu-Jews. Um, or maybe Jews for Jesus, but we're pretty sure they don't actually count. But they think they do, and that's all that really matters, right? Even within Jews for Judaism, there are obviously different accepted traditions, not limited to just the Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist movements. Independent minyans are popping up places, like Brooklyn's Altshul, and there are places like Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the traditionally LGBT synagogue of New York City. (Millennials also tend, across the board, to be more accepting of homosexuality, as well as abortion, evolution and pornography. They also support bigger government, because clearly that is related to religious beliefs.)

Oddly, the only specific reported beliefs that are stronger in the 18-29 crowd than in 30+ is that of life after death and, more notably, in Hell. Sixty-two percent of Millennials believe in Hell; only 59 percent of Generation Xers share that belief.

So Bubbe might be kvetching that us crazy young kids are okay with intermarriage and we don't go to shul every Friday night and Saturday morning, but you can tell her to rest assured, because the Nonnas and Lolas and Yayas and Abuelas are facing the same issues. Don't worry, just because we're eating cheeseburgers and dating Catholics doesn't mean Judaism is dying. We're just taking it upon ourselves as a generation to redefine our religious and cultural affiliations, and deciding what matters most for Millennials.

For more analysis the study, click here, or download the full report here. 

I was reading Virginia Heffernan's article for Tablet about her encounter as a young woman with J.D. Salinger in Cornish, NH.  Salinger died at age 91 on January 28th, 2010.  Heffernan, who is a convert,  reflected nicely on his half-Jewish identity and his troubled family life, but much to my astonishment, she was met with a barrage of comments that Salinger wasn't Jewish because he had a Jewish father, and that he had deserted Judaism as an adult, etc., etc.  Here is my reply:

Dear Commenters:

I never thought in a million years that I’d have to defend J.D. Salinger’s claim to Jewish roots.

I’m the Coordinator of the Half-Jewish Network, the largest international organization for adult children and other descendants of intermarriage (www.half-jewish.net). As a member of Jewish outreach, I was recently informed that one of Salinger’s descendants currently lives as a Jew.

If this information is true, I sure hope that his descendant does not see your thread, filled with ethnocentric attacks on Salinger’s connection to the Jewish people and negative comments implying that the author of the article, Mrs. Heffernan, is unworthy to comment on Jewish topics because she is Jew by choice.  Your negative remarks would likely cause Salinger’s descendant to question the wisdom of affiliating with the Jewish people.  Moreover, you display a profound ignorance of the situation in which many children of intermarriage find themselves, and of Mr. Salinger’s tragic personal history in particular.

Salinger Was Raised Jewish

Mr. Salinger was Jewish as defined by both the Reform and Reconstructionist movements. Both denominations require that the child of either a Jewish mother or a Jewish father be brought up as a Jew from birth, and given life cycle rituals like a bar or bat mitzvah.

Even though no Jewish outreach to interfaith families existed when Mr. Salinger was born in 1919, he was raised as a Jew and had a bar mitzvah.  Shortly after his bar mitzvah, he was told that his mother — coerced by her Jewish in-laws — had been hiding her Christian identity.  Can you imagine the impact of this discovery on a 13 year old? No wonder the heroes of his fiction display a contempt for adult “phonies” and a suspicion towards all conventional appearances.

Why Didn't He Live As A Jew?

You also resent that he sought spirituality in other religions.  Given your unwelcoming attitudes can you blame him?...and this is the year 2010. Imagine the icy reception Salinger would have received from other Jews, in say, 1936, if as an unknown writer  he had expressed any interest in conversion or living as a Jew.

I know from interviewing adult children of intermarriage who grew up in that era, that the American Jewish community often rejected them, which is in stark contrast with the German Jewish community of the 1930s.  There was no organized interfaith family outreach in American Judaism until the early 1980s, when Salinger was in his sixties. And even today, as evidenced by your negative comments, adult childen and grandchildren of intermarriage are routinely snubbed and rebuffed when attempting to gain entry to the Jewish community.  There is outreach for interfaith couples and Jews by choice, but almost none for half-Jewish people

His Experiences In World War II, The Holocaust

Now, about Mr. Salinger’s personal history with the Holocaust.

With regard to the comment that Salinger, as a trainee in his father’s business, was in no danger in 1938 Vienna, because he had an American passport, please consult any history of the Holocaust, and see report after report of people being killed or injured in the streets everywhere in the Nazi empire from 1934 onward because they “looked Jewish.”  How quickly you forget.  You think that the Nazi thugs asked for paperwork categorically?

None of your hostile comments present any awareness that Salinger spent World War II as a staff sergeant in the Army, suffering through bloody campaigns in Europe against the Nazis, helping liberate a concentration camp, and then serving because of his fluent French and German as an interpreter to American officials rounding up German prisoners of war.  Salinger’s experiences in WWII were so bad that he had a nervous breakdown. I would say that those are substantial services to Judaism and humanity and should be treated with more respect.

Jews By Choice Get A Voice

Now, with regard to your comment that Heffernan is a convert and therefore apparently has no right to discuss Jewish topics: have you read any Jewish texts?  As a convert Ms. Heffernan is considered a Jew and has every right to discuss Jewish topics.

Her perception of Mr. Salinger as a kvetching New York Jew in the utterly non-Jewish setting of Cornish, NH and his momentary kindness to her, is in keeping with what is known of his character and behavior. Irregardless of his adult spiritual beliefs, his early New York Jewish upbringing was marked in his behavior and outlook throughout his life.  Overall, her article is a tiny and precious snapshot which will be greatly appreciated by future Salinger biographers and scholars.

Double Bind Experiences in Jewish Community

In conclusion, I would like to state that your negative comments on Salinger’s connections to Judaism epitomize the double bind experiences that many half-Jewish people find themselves in today when they encounter the Jewish community.  We are often told that we are “not Jewish” and if we attempt to live as Jews, obstacles are put in the way of our converting or entering Jewish communities. Then we are berated, subtly or openly, by some Jews with two Jewish parents, for having explored other spiritualities.

It my earnest hope, as the leader of the Half-Jewish Network and of the Inclusivist Judaism Coalition that I will live to see a Judaism that is multicultural and multiracial, and where the number and gender of one’s Jewish ancestors will not be as important as one’s spiritual or secular culture ties to them, and that all persons connected to the Jewish people by family ties will see those ties honored.

High school girls in the Israeli town of Kiryat Gat are being warned not to become romantically involved with Bedouins, via a program run by a social worker named Chaim Shalom. A 10-minute film called Sleeping With the Enemy cautions girls that Bedouins may shower them with gifts and then leave them pregnant and alone, or refuse to allow them to return to their families after ending the relationship. Single Bedouin Men: like kyrptonite for Jewish girls?

Despite a message that smacks of racism, Bedouins seem happy to have the Jewish girls stay away. Bedouin mayor Talal al-Krenawi had this to say:

"It hurts our families just like it hurts the Jews. It causes a lot of difficult problems and internal conflicts which often end in violence…If there are children as a result of these relationships, it becomes a burden on our society. The difference is that we oppose this just like the Jews, but we never used racist expressions...a person is allowed to live with whomever he wants. In any case, one can oppose something without presenting racist opinions."

Classic case of bad spin? The Jews and Bedouins actually seem to agree on the issue, but somehow the Jews haven't been able to present their case in inoffensive terms. Here's an idea: Teach girls about unhealthy relationships in general, and offer them good skills for dealing with men and dating, instead of just saying, “don’t date Bedouins.” Need I remind people that not all Bedouins seduce girls and then leave them alone and pregnant?

Learn more about Bedouins in Israel here. 

This awesome article first appeared on July 1, 2008 and has been republished as part of the series JEWCYEST WEEK EVER.

The following email was sent to Noah, a secular Jew about to marry his non-Jewish fiancee Sheila, by Noah's baal teshuvah cousin Moishe. By an odd and fortuitous chain of events, the email found its way to Jewcy HQ. The people in this exchange are all real but have had their names changed to protect the innocent - and the guilty. In other words, we could not have made this shit up if we tried. That includes the spelling and grammar errors.

Subject: hi noah

So I have some very bad news that EVERY Torah observant Jew shares (not just Moishe) Regarding your plans: You may already know that you Childen will not be Jewish, but I think you are not really aware of what that really means... That means that while biologically you will have children, spiritually you will not. Furthermore, besides it being a punishable (in heaven) prohibition to marry a non-jew, you will not be married spiritually (under heaven.) In other words, you will have a secular marriage, or an invalid fradulent 'religious' marriage, but in any case you will not have a wife, therefore you will not fulfill the commandment to take a wife and as well you will not fulfill the comandment to have children.  Furthermore you will not be able to cook for your goyishe wife or children on Shabbos or on Festival days.

If your goyishe children convert, then they will still not be your children as they will receive new souls, not connected to you.

If you were to lend her money (for even a day, or even an hour) you must charge her interest.
As first and foremost she is a non-Jew, second she will never be your wife in heaven, never.

You will be pretendng to married and it will be to a stranger, ultimately as your souls are truly incompatable in ways you do not experience, because you are distracted by where you have compatability, namely your acting like a King who is enjoying the company of a peasant, which is obviously a very lowly king and so your compatability as the opposite of holy and extraordinary.

Furthermore by going through with this you are thus sending not only yourself but your true Jewish soulmate into Alone-ness

And you will feel it, eventually, mark my words, and when you do, if you disregard everything I am writing and go through with it than G-d help you realize before you ave children, for then you will begin to see what you have done, as they reject you and your mother.  It is said that anti-semintism goes through Mothers Milk, so I pray these Goyishe children, G-d willing that you never have, but if you do that she'll feed them formula for your sake.

Not for the worlds, because they will be weak.

First generation goyishe children off of a Jewish father are always weak.

They are psychologically strong as the Mind goes by father and their ideas can corrupt whole cultures, due to the inherent distortions in their composition, nevertheless they are weak.
Your wife will eventuallly hate you also, or should Moshiach come, as he will very soon please G-d, she may be one of your Goyish slaves and when she is on all fours, not allowed to walk as a human you will see the animal you married.

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As the leader of the Half-Jewish Network, I always assume that I have all the answers on what half-Jewish people need. Why should I be any different from the all-knowing leaders of any other Jewish organization? The Half-Jewish Network may be "half-Jewish," but we faithfully follow the Jewish template in that respect!

But one of my group members brought me to a halt the other day. She asked: "What would acceptance of half-Jewish people by the Jewish community [in the Diaspora] actually look like?" I paused. I didn't have an immediate, glib answer -- yikes! Warning! Red alert! Loss of Jewish leadership position credibility imminent!

The phrase "a fate worse than death" suddenly leaped into my mind. I told her, "you'll miss being discriminated against."

Because when the Jewish community finally accepts us -- it will be a gradual process over the next thirty years -- it will be a fate worse than death. Here is a satirical, tongue-in-cheek description of our likely fate, based on how interfaith couples and Jews by Choice (converts) program attendees are currently treated:

1. Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism will finally -- finally! -- assemble committees to address our issues, instead of claiming that the "raising Jewish children" programs for interfaith couples and half-Jewish kids under the age of 18 address the problems of fully-grown half-Jewish adults, most of whom weren't raised Jewish.

The committees -- chaired by born Jews who are not children of intermarriage, of course -- what do we know about our own problems? surely a much-older born Jewish rabbi or social worker with two Jewish parents, married to a similar Jew, knows what is best for us -- will produce pink or mauve pamphlets for us, entitled something icky like, "New Roads Into Judaism For Grown Offspring of Intermarriage." The Hebrew quoted in the pamphlets will be poorly translated into politically correct language. Yech.

The pamphlets will mostly be directed to the Reform and Reconstructionist hierarchies' fears about us rather than the needs and issues of half-Jewish people. There will be sections in the pamphlets explaining to the Reform and Reconstructionist shul leaders that the two-thirds of us raised outside of Judaism are not feral half-Jews raised by the Borg on the planet Zembarth, and that our meek requests for "adult children of intermarriage discussion groups" might actually be good for shul growth.

The pamphlets will be available to Reform and Reconstructionist shuls and organizations for about $13.15 per twenty copies.

Finally, years after the first pamphlets are produced, it will dawn on the committees that they need to produce PDF copies and an online, media-linked version of the pamphlets on a denominational website, as the younger Jews, including the half-Jewish folks, live online. Eventually input will be invited from half-Jewish Reform and Reconstructionist people on the content of the pamphlets.

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I grew up in the first small, significant wave of American children born to intermarried Jewish and Christian parents. Many of us have Jewish fathers who joined the service during World War II, came back home with radically expanded horizons, and married Christian women. My father, who was stationed in the South Pacific as a teenager during that war, was the first in his family to marry a non-Jew. In the previous generation, there had been family members who died single rather than brave the social consequences of intermarrying.

Growing up, I didn't know any other interfaith children except my own siblings, and we quietly passed as Jews in suburban Boston. Our Reform synagogue accepted my family-many synagogues did so, even prior to the official ruling on "patrilineal descent" by the Reform rabbinate in 1983. In 1976, I was even allowed to "have a Bat Mitzvah" as we said in those days. Because intermarriage was still relatively rare, no assimilation alarm bells were going off yet, and my family did not cause any real controversy.

Then I went off to college and met Reform, Orthodox and Conservative students, including Chabad proselytizers, who told me I wasn't Jewish at all. A Conservative Jew I dated told me his parents would "rather have him marry a falasha." Jewish institutions, facing the increase in intermarriage, began to panic and push furniture up against the doors that wouldn't stay shut, alienating interfaith couples and children. As my religious identity shattered, I groped for a way to put it back together into a new mosaic. Since there were no blogs or websites yet, no books yet written on interfaith children, I cast about for guidance or models. And I found that guidance in the mixed race movement.

In 2000, the US Census allowed Americans to check more than one race box for the first time. In making this historic change, they cited the work of psychologist Maria P. P. Root. Root is perhaps best-know for her "Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Race," a powerful manifesto. The first time I came across this Bill of Rights, I felt an electric current run through me. As my mind translated each line from "mixed race" to "interfaith," I realized that Root had unwittingly articulated exactly what I wanted to say about my own interfaith identity.

Recently, I wrote to Root and asked for her permission to publish my adaptation of her Bill of Rights. I put in italics the only words I changed. She immediately responded in the affirmative, writing, "You are right. It works beautifully."

 

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Many Jewish groups are tired of listening to me badger them -- by email, listserv, message board, phone, and carrier pigeon -- for specific outreach to adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage. Some of them wish I and the Half-Jewish Network would just (expletive deleted) off.

Others have asked me, with the exasperation of an adult who has been relentlessly nagged by a three year old for an entire Shabbat weekend, "So what do half-Jewish people really want, anyway?"

That's an easy question for me to answer -- we want the same resources and help that are given to interfaith couples and Jews by Choice (converts). Now. Yesterday would have been nice, too. So why don't these programs exist?

Ghosts In The Communal Attic

Once of my biggest problems in advocating for adult children and other descendants of intermarriage is convincing Jewish outreach organizations and Jewish communal groups to admit that we actually exist.  Now, you'd think the documented existence of over 300,000 of us in the United States, and thousands more elsewhere in the Diaspora and Israel would be proof that we exist. We are estimated to be 48% of all Jewish-identified college students in the United States.

But officially, for many Jewish organizations, we don't exist. Over twenty years ago, in the late 1980s, American Jewish outreach professionals -- at that time a tiny network of a few rabbis, Jewish social workers, sociologists, and interfaith couples -- adopted a "raising Jewish children" strategy for interfaith family outreach. Ironically, this outreach strategy helped continue our exclusion from many Jewish communities. This requires some explanation.

The Origins Of The "Raising Jewish Children" Policy

The "raising Jewish children" advocates saw only two outcomes for us: either our interfaith parents must raise us as a "real Jews," in a very draconian manner -- no Christmas trees or Rastafari posters! Every trace of our "non-Jewish" parent's heritage to be banished from the house! -- or if we were not raised as Jews in a very strict manner, we were to be treated as "non-Jews" who must convert as adults through the "Jews by Choice" programs.

And whether we were raised as "real Jews," or became adult "non-Jews" to be placed in "Jews by Choice" programs as adults, we would never need any special outreach programs, unlike interfaith couples and Jews by Choice.  At least that's what the tiny outreach network of the late 1980s thought.  Children of intermarriage who were already teens and adults in the late 1980s were to be written off as a "lost generation," in the words of one rabbi. No resources were to be provided for outreaching them. This decision meant that thousands of potential adult Jews were simply abandoned in the 1980s and 1990s, and many could not find ways into the hostile Jewish community of that era.

As a much younger adult in that era, and often the only adult child of intermarriage present at these outreach policy discussions, I vigorously protested the policy of abandoning the Baby Boomer and early Gen X teen and adult children of intermarriage as a "lost generation" and the harsh "raising Jewish children" policies that scrubbed every vestige of the other parent's culture out of the house. I was frequently told that Jewish outreach needn't concern itself with people like me -- because interfaith family programs would ramp up so quickly that most young children of intermarriage then existing in the late 1980s -- the late Gen X and the early Gen Y Millenials -- would be raised as "real Jews." People like myself -- already teens and adults -- were to be regarded as expendable. But how has this worked in actual practice?

Raising "Jewish Children"

It must be understood that the great "ramp up" of interfaith family outreach programs has never taken place. Despite all of the Jewish communal complaints about intermarriage, they've never been willing to put their money where their mouths were. Pennies out of every federation budget were allotted to a few overworked outreach professionals, who could contact only a small number of interfaith couples. So most of the adult children of intermarriage around today were raised outside of Judaism.  How did the "raising Jewish children" policy work for the minority of children of intermarriage who were "raised Jewish"?

Under the draconian "raising Jewish children" of twenty years ago, all vestiges of our non-Jewish parent's heritage were to be banished from the house. The policy intended that we would grow up to be "real Jews" -- clones of the middle class Ashkenazi Jews of today -- with no input from our "non-Jewish" parent -- you know, the Swedish Lutheran or Afro-Jamaican who gave birth to us or sired us? Made our school lunches? Drove to us to Hebrew school? Who bequeathed us her blonde hair and that miserable asthma or his Jamaican dreadlocks and sense of humor?

This policy hasn't worked well. Even the children raised as "real Jews" are aware that the other parent is, well -- Swedish, or African-American or Korean -- and, if they forget it, some other Jews with more curiosity than tact are plenty willing to remind them: "You look kinda Swedish. Are you black? Hey, are you an Asian convert?"

The "raising Jewish children" policy of twenty years ago has left some young adult half-Jewish people ashamed of their other heritage, which they then try to play down, referring to their other heritage as "my non-Jewish relatives." Sometimes the ethnicity and religion of their "other" relatives are never discussed, as if their other heritage was a sordid family secret involving criminal activity.  Some "raised Jewish" young adults won't date other half-Jewish people or make friends with them, focusing on filling up their social circles only with born Jews with two Jewish parents. They sometimes advocate for Jewish communal policies that discriminate against other half-Jewish people -- a Stockholm Syndrome reaction.

I have listened with dismay and incredulity to adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage defend and make excuses for many Jewish communal policies that harm us, such as our exclusion from a teen Jewish summer camp, Israel's increasingly harsh "who is a Jew" policies directed against us, and the failure of Jewish institutions to set up outreach programs for us.

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I sometimes think if I receive one more email inviting me to send half-Jewish people to Israel on trips or special tours for interfaith families, I'm going to have a neural meltdown. It's not the kindly trip invitations that get to me, though: it's the viewpoint. Here's their collective message:

Robin, why doesn't your group for adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage sponsor trips to Israel? They are the new silver bullet for identity problems among interfaith family members!

 

And some of them have actually used the phrase "silver bullet." The terminology is dreadful -- "silver bullets" are ordinarily used on werewolves and, in the 1950s, the Lone Ranger fired them at the Bad Guys on black-and-white TV shows. What is the subtext here: that identity problems among half-Jewish people can be resolved by killing them?

The implied message for members of my group, the Half-Jewish Network, is that we're apparently the Bad Guys for -- having been born. Well, then excuse me for living. Anyway, some Jewish organizations -- well-meaning to be sure -- have decided that the best way to deal with us having been born with one non-Jewish parent or grandparent is to ship us to Israel, where we will thus be overcome by the allure of Jewish identity. Ideally, we will then return home wanting to be completely Jewish, supporting Israel's government without question, donating to our local Federations, and not asking awkward questions. There's just one big problem with these trips. A huge pink elephant in the room. It's so pink, it's probably magenta.

The outreach officials organizing these trips -- the rabbis and tour guides and Jewish communal professionals conducting them -- almost none of them tell the members of interfaith families that Israel has legal and social policies in place discriminating harshly against interfaith couples and adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage. That's the real silver bullet -- straight to the heart. These policies are no secret. Israeli newspapers -- free, available online, and often in English -- discuss them endlessly.

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As the Coordinator of the Half-Jewish Network, the largest international organization for adult children and other descendants of intermarriage, I sit through endless debates on outreach listservs and message boards about the future of Judaism, while keeping one eye on the intermarriage and Jewish population statistics worldwide.

Hop onto my time machine, I told my colleagues on one listserve. Welcome to Temple Beth Erev Rav (Temple House of Mixed Rabble), in Anywhere America in the year 2040.

 
American Jewish Leaders In The Year 2040

Because 48% of all Jewish-identified college students in the year 2009 were children of intermarriage -- Temple Beth Erev Rav in the year 2040 is composed mostly of adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage and interfaith couples.

The senior rabbi is an elderly Gen X Jew, married to a middle-aged Millennial Jew. The young associate rabbi -- a member of the post-Millennial generation -- is an adult child of intermarriage and intermarried. She and her Catholic husband are raising the kids as Jews. They celebrate Christmas at her Catholic mother-in-law's home.

The cantor is the grandchild of an intermarriage, and half-African-American. The president of the shul is a Chinese Jew By Choice. The congregation is very comfortable with the shul's leadership -- after all, it reflects them. The temple's denominational affiliations and beliefs are unclear - it is Reform/Reconstructionist/Renewal and other "isms" not yet invented.

 

What Are The Year 2040 American Jews Like?

The Holocaust and the Jewish immigration to America and the founding of Israel are now a century away. The congregants of Temple Beth Erev Rav have the same emotional relationship to those events that the Jews of 2009 have to World War I -- it's ancient history!

The Jews of Temple Beth Erev Rav have poor Hebrew skills. They know no Yiddish or Ladino. They don't cook "Jewish foods" anymore.  But they are tenacious -- they read -- in Hebrew-English texts with transliterations and translations -- the Tanach, study the siddur, pray and donate to the shul. Only a few of them study Talmud or midrash.

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Toward the end of the first season of Weeds, an episode begins in a rather extraordinary manner: With a close-up of an Orthodox rabbi chanting a Hebrew prayer. The camera quickly moves to the gravestone, engraved with a Magen David.

The body in the grave is Judah Botwin, late husband of Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), the pot-dealing, mildly psychotic mom around whom the show revolves. She stands alongside the grave, with sons Shane and Silas, and her brother-in-law, Andy, all of them looking mildly uncomfortable in the crystalline California sunshine and inappropriately dressed for a religious ritual. Judah died-a heart attack during his morning run-sometime in the nebulous past, before the start of the show. His death sent the family into financial ruin and Nancy into her new, er, career path-so this clearly isn't his funeral, but, as any Jewish viewer instantly realizes, his unveiling. The other 98 percent of the population, well, who knows what they made of this scene, because-and here's what makes the scene and Weeds, in general, so brilliant-the writers refrain from explicating it until midway through the episode, when Nancy meets Peter Scottson, the DEA agent whom she eventually marries, at a karate tournament in which Shane is competing. Their 'meet cute' is Nancy explaining why Shane went crazy and bit Peter's son while screaming the sh'ma. "We just came from his father's unveiling," she rambles, in classic Mary-Louise Parker intonations. "Do you know what that is? It's where they unveil the gravestone. It's a Jewish thing. I know you're thinking, ‘She doesn't look Jewish.' I come from Welsh stock...I'm not Jewish. My husband. He's dead now. He was Jewish. "

Though the show is over-the-top and even cartoonish in its coverage of topics from evangelical Christianity to casual sex, when it comes to things Jewish, Weeds tends toward the subtlety, irreverence, and occasional iconoclasm of real life. Rather than over-explaining-or apologizing for-the inclusion of a not-immediately-recognizable religious ritual, Jenji Kohan and her team of smart writers allow the story to unfold as if unveilings-and, later, rabbinical school, the IDF, circumcision, Yiddish, Jeffrey Goldberg, and a host of other Jewish ideas and references-are as much a part of mainstream American life as, well, watching television. And that in and of itself-the lovely casualness with which the Botwin's Jewishness (or lack of it) is simply a part of the texture of their lives-makes Weeds unusual in the deracinated world of the cathode ray tube.

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This is the third installment in the saga of Noah, a secular Jew who is happily engaged to a non-Jewish woman, and his baal teshuvah cousin Moishe. Moishe emailed Noah to express his displeasure with Noah's choice of a bride, and Noah wrote back basically telling his cousin to go play in traffic.. Now, Moishe has emailed his own mother ("Mother") and Noah's mom Rachel, hoping to pull them into his battle for Noah's eternal soul.As before, not a single word or misspelled word has been changed.

Subject: hi HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

This is a special birthday message to you to give you a very great present- namely coaching on this very important matter to give it the proper focus and energy and intention it deserves!!

I have timed things perfectly as I have now successfully 'tilled the soil' sufficient enough for you each to share your true feelings with Noah.

The truth is before one sews seeds one must take a perfectly goo dpeice of land and rip it up quite a bit and so now the ground is soft for you to plant our delicate seed Rachel, please do so with care.

Rachel,
I recommend, especially after seeing his having written that you could care less and you don't believe in G-d, that you tell him the truth about how it saddens you, and weakens you, and that you don't feel good at all about supporting the endeavor in any way and that you were only merely resigned to having to say 'what can I do'

Mother, I recommend you tell Noah the truth about your loss, my lack of a Father, your lack of a husband and that you admit that had your parents or grandparents been clear to you about not supporting you to go through with it, that you likely would not have as you respected your parents and what they told you.

Furthermore, I recommend you get clarification as to what Noah meant when he made the claim as to the 'crazy women that raised me' what he meant by that.

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So I married a goy. It's fashionable these days, right?  And anyway, it hardly matters, 'cause I'm a terrible Jew in most respects: I don't speak any Hebrew, I was never Bat Mitzvahed, I don't know my high holidays from my Lohmann's, and I never met a lobster I didn't eat.

I am, however, quite a respectable bargainer.  When I go to a street fair, bazaar or market anywhere in the world, when I enter a store or a gallery, whether I'm browsing for earrings, a toaster, a carpet, or a new car, I don't expect the price to be, you know... the price.  I expect a little leeway.  If I don't get it, so be it, but at least I tried.  I've been known to gasp theatrically in sticker shock at an inflated price tag, make horrified comments under my breath, etc.  (Equally in hopes of receiving a counter-offer or shaming the merchant; I don't really care which.)  In the end, I sometimes save as much as 30-50%, but I don't always look like an angel doing it. 

This embarrasses my blond, blue-eyed, strapping Alaskan husband. 

Oh, boy, does it.

The other day we're walking through the Union Square Farmer's Market, trying to get some greens and be all healthy 'n' stuff.  We see a vendor who's got these amazing-looking organic microgreens in every variety.  They're glistening with nutrients, practically glinting with vitamins, laid out in vibrant rows of fresh-picked goodness.  So I drift over to poke through the merchandise.  Then I notice the prices.   Instinctively, I screech (sotto voce), "Twelve Dollars for a QUARTER POUND of DANDELIONS???? Are they out of their MINDS?"

Hubby turns bright red and drags me from the stall.  "I am so embarrassed," he mutters.  "Guess we'll never be able to shop there."

Like I ever would.  Paying $12 for a fistful of weeds would send the angry ghosts of every ancestor I ever had shrieking from out of their graves. 

The truth is, I'm not so sorry he pulled me out of there.  My hondle-radar told me I wouldn't have been able to bargain with those dudes; their pricing chutzpah simply out-chutzpahed my haggling chutzpah.  Still, I enjoyed getting in my little dig.

My beloved goy-boy doesn't get it.  He may gamely try to pronounce 'mensch' or use 'farkackte' in a sentence, but he'd rather pay through the nose than make a stink.  Must be those WASP genes.

Last week, we posted an email sent to "Noah," a Jewish guy about to marry his non-Jewish girlfriend "Sheila," by his ultra-Orthodox cousin "Moishe." Moishe vehemently - and inarticulately - disapproved of Noah's choice and sent him an email encouraging him to break off the engagement. Here is Noah's response.

Moishe,

While I was saddened by this email, sadly I was not surprised. I'm going to let you in on a little secret.  You've always sort of been a family joke.  That wacky cousin, who could never keep a job and kept looking for meaning in his life, bouncing from false hope to false hope (think about how much time you wasted on EST, seriously, how stupid do you have to be to believe in that crap.)   Everyone sort of humored you and thought it was funny, while wondering when you would actually grow up and start acting like a man.  I understand it was difficult without having your father involved daily in your life.

Let me be perfectly clear, I don't believe in god.  I'm culturally Jewish, I honor and appreciate the traditions, but I am not religious in any sense of the word.   So you can continue being the family joke as long as you want.  As a relative I wish you nothing but happiness.  As a man I shake my head in disgust at your utter lack of substance and accomplishment. 

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Here are two stories about intermarriage from my own family:

One of my nephews became engaged to a non-Jew. He was born a Jew but knew little about Judaism. When his fiancée decided to convert, he decided to join her in study. Before their marriage there was one uneducated Jew; now there are two who are knowledgeable.

My son Adam, who works alongside me in furthering the Jewish renaissance at The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, married "out" some twenty years ago. Cindy, his wonderful wife, was born Catholic. While she did not convert at the time of their marriage, they decided together to raise their children in a Jewish home. They observe Shabbat every week and have given their four children a strong foundation of Jewish knowledge. After years of active participation in a welcoming Jewish community, Cindy chose to convert to Judaism in 2006. It was a choice she made from the heart, when she was ready. Now they are a family of six engaged Jews.

The Jewish communal fear attached to intermarriage is all about the numbers. The first wave of alarm was set off by the report, in the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, that over half of Jews were marrying non-Jews, and that in only a third of these cases would the children be raised as Jews. I well remember my own shock at these figures, which suggested that the American Jewish population could be loved out of existence.

But as I began to work in Jewish education at Hillel and elsewhere, I came to see the situation differently. In an open society, people from diverse backgrounds will fall in love. The real numbers problem is not that Jews are falling in love with non-Jews, but that they aren't falling in love with Judaism.

In the two stories I began with, the numbers work. There is also a common denominator, and that is education. In my book, Hope, Not Fear: A Path to Jewish Renaissance, I argue that trying to prevent intermarriage will only alienate young Jews. If we increase the quantity and depth of Jewish education, we will see an increase in the numbers and commitment of Jews, no matter whom they marry.

One might argue that statistics are more convincing than stories, and that while there are exceptions to the rule, the basic math still applies. My response is that I don't want to see statistics about intermarried families until I see Jewish communities that welcome them with open hearts and without conditions. If these communities offer a Jewish life that is rich in substance and full of joy, both disengaged Jews and their non-Jewish family members will see the value in making Judaism part of their lives.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on Jewcy about my Jewish identity - more specifically, about not knowing Hebrew and wondering if that made me less of a Jew. I also referenced the fact that my mother is not Jewish, which isn't some big secret or anything, but was tangential to the main topic of the post. The blogger Luke Ford linked to the post on his blog, and mentioned he liked my writing. In response, he got this email from "Chaim Amalek," which he published the next day:

We all know about the Shiksa Menace, V1.0 - the blonde with boobs and bearing who turned the heads of many a yid one or two generations removed from the shtetl, and who continues to lure Jewish men to the doom of happiness. Then came Shiksa Menace 2.0 in the form of the Yellow Peril - Asian women morphing themselves into good “jewish” wives while still eating dog meat. Now comes Shiksa Menace 3.0, possibly the most pernicious and effective of all because, well, they know Jewish men through their fathers, and have the good looks of the gentile mothers. This Lilit person is an example of that. She may think of herself as Jewish, but in terms of rabbinical law she simply is not. How many Jewish men will be lured to their communal doom by this new breed of shiksa?

Sadly, I believe this email was intended to be humorous. The bottom line is, I'm well aware of what Orthodox Jews think of my Jewish identity and, if I cared, I wouldn't go to shul, observe holidays, or edit a blog about Judaism. But I do all of those things and then some, and the people at my egalitarian, open-minded, non-judgmental Reform synagogue couldn't care less who my mother is or what she believes in. For the record, she was raised a Presbyterian - and perhaps the Protestant half of me believes that it's faith, just faith, that makes me a Jew. The rest is noise.

Luckily, I have some pretty rad, smart, and observant friends who thought "Chaim"'s email was ridiculous. Jewcy blogger Zachary Thacher noted:

For those who want to marry a Jewish woman who has a non-Jewish mom, there are many simple remedies for the halachic question it poses. Being a racist asshole isn't one of them.

If wanting to marry a Jewish man and raise Jewish children makes me a shiksa menace, then so be it.

Oh, and for the record, "this Lilit person" looks like her father. You know, the Jewish one.

Ah, there's nothing like a delicious amalgam of celebrity gossip and religious fervor. Tweak the details of the story to make the celebrities beautiful wealthy socialites who inherited their good fortune from their famous parents and make the religion Judaism and you find yourself with a story ripe for feature in the New York Observer, the Manhattan-centric publication that proclaims, "Everything is about style for New Yorkers, from what they wear to where they eat to how they entertain." Fittingly, The Observer is owned by Jared Kushner, who has entered the tabloid spotlight with his recent engagement to Ivanka Trump and subsequent insistence that she convert to Judaism before the nuptials are to take place.

Kushner and Trump are both the recipients of vast inheritance of real estate fortunes and have each landed in the public consciousness due to their affluent lifestyles: Kushner became the owner of The Observer while still in grad school in 2006, while Trump spends her days working as Vice President of Real Estate Development and Acquisitions at the Trump Organization. Both pretty standard-issue jobs for 26-year-olds, right?

With the overbearing coverage that accompanies any wedding of the glitterati comes word that Kushner had asked Trump to convert before they wed and that she was going through with it. Unlike Christianity and Islam, the other members of God's Big Three, Judaism does not generally lend itself to proselytizing. However, the 1981 book, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, states about intermarriage:

If the non-Jewish spouse truly shares the same values as the Jewish spouse, then the non-Jew is welcome to convert to Judaism, and if the non-Jew does not share the same values, then the couple should not be marrying in the first place.

Partially due to Judaism's lack of any sort of central dogmatic governing body, reliable statistics on conversion are hard to come by, but spousal conversion is not uncommon. Other famous converts-upon-marriage include Tom Arnold, Connie Chung, Kate Capshaw, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and recently, Sacha Baron Cohen's fiancee, Isla Fisher.

We were a group of Jews that had come on an organized tour of Berlin with an organization funded by remnants of the Marshall Plan; the official goal was to brush up on our German and German-Jewish history, but most of us came with the loftier objective of attempting to reconcile the conflicting information that we'd received from our grandparents and the questions that the passage of time forces us to ask regarding the relationship between contemporary Jews and Modern Germany. On one of many beautiful, rainy days in Berlin, we stood on Rosenstrasse (Rose Street, if you must) with Dr. Dagmar Pruin, the program's director and German academic specializing in Hebrew Bible studies; she told us a rather fantastic story.

In early 1943, somewhere between 1700 and 2000 Jewish men were taken to a welfare office on Rosenstrasse. The men were to be brought to the Auschwitz death camp, but because their wives were non-Jewish Germans from prominent families, the SS brought the men here first in order to try and trick their families into believing that they were receiving special treatment and that they would likely be taken to labor camps rather than death camps. Eventually, the wives and other members of their families caught on. Although they were without leadership, unarmed, and completely unorganized, they staged a protest. Throughout the entire week that these men were being held on Rosenstrasse, somewhere around 6,000 Germans peacefully protested by standing in the streets and screaming "let our husbands go!" Although Goebbels, Gauletier of Berlin, was on a mission to racially cleanse the city, he was also responsible for the nation's public morale and thus the protesters were of great concern to him. For that reason, they didn't shoot into the crowd like they did when Jews had attempted to protest. Both Goebbels and Hitler agreed to free the men on Rosenstrasse-- and they even ordered the return of 25 men that were already on their way to Auschwitz-- making the assumption that this would only delay their inevitable fate, which was to be murdered. They were wrong, however-- the large majority of these men survived the war, rendering the Rosenstrasse Protest the most successful civilian protest during the Holocaust.

How could it be that a group of Jews who have been learning about the Holocaust from a very young age were first hearing about Rosenstrasse now? How could it be that if not for this trip, this professor, and this unremarkable memorial, that we may have never learned of such triumph? Apparently, a documentary about Rosenstrasse entitled Resistance of the Heart (Pierre Sauvage, 2003) was marketed to English speaking Jewish schools and organizations abroad and according to Dr. Pruin, the director of the film had no luck. Jewish communities didn't take a liking to it due to the fact that it could potentially promote intermarriage. The Germans aren't too keen on discussing the protest either, mainly because it begs the obvious question that Jews and non-Jews alike have been asking for years-- could the Germans have stopped the Nazis in their tracks? Surely if one non-violent protest saved over 1,000 lives, more lives could have been saved if more prominent Germans had committed to staging protests.

The German reluctance to tell this story, while cowardly and generally inexcusable, makes sense. The Jewish communal reaction to the film and their refusal to talk about Rosenstrasse is not only disgraceful, but based on faulty logic.

Yes, the Jews of the world are a people bound by history and for some, statehood, values, and/or religious beliefs-- but despite this fact, it may be worth restating the obvious fact that we share the world with gentiles. Jewish history is a complicated sequence of events that cannot be explained or understood thoroughly without true examination of our interactions with others, in addition to the fact that oversimplifying our narrative underestimates our ability to understand its complexities and frankly, it's insulting.

Attempting to shelter young people from the idea and reality of intermarriage simply does not help secure the future of the Jewish people and Jewish educators, professionals, and parents need to rethink their priorities and their approach. The only way to instill the value of people hood is to create Jewish communities that educate a generation of young Jews who intimately understand both their history and the potential merits and challenges of being a Jew. People who assimilate or essentially leave their Jewish communities do so because they've run out of good reasons to associate themselves with that community. It's plainly ridiculous to assume that learning about something such as the Rosenstrasse Protest would cause anyone to question an already established commitment to marry Jewish. If the older generation of American Jews is worried about assimilation and intermarriage among younger generations of Jews, they need to give young people real reasons for feeling an attachment to their Jewish identities while still maintaining the ability to understand, accept, and celebrate the relationship between Jews and the rest of the world. Judaism and Jewish life have enough to offer such that this could be accomplished without force-feeding ideas and manipulating the understanding of our history. It's dishonest, short-sighted, and shows little to no faith in the ability for our story, in its complete form, to inspire.

Today I thought it would be fun to interview my husband about the joys (the joys!) of being married to someone who was born in Israel and moved to the U.S. when she was ten.

Danit: How is it being married to me?
Bill: I’d give it a seven.
Danit: That’s only a C. What the hell??

Well, I guess that’s enough of that.

The truth is, my husband is a lapsed Catholic from Minnesota. That makes him nicer than just about everyone except Canadians. On snowy days, he drives around the neighborhood trolling for people digging their cars out, and then he stops to help them. If their car needs a jump, it makes his whole day.

I met my husband in graduate school back in 2001. I had spent the previous four years in Israel, and the one useful skill I’d picked up was the ability to yell at people—preferably from the services sector—without even breaking a sweat. “This soup is cold!” I’d yell. Or, “What do you mean my deposit is non-refundable?!”

You can imagine the wacky sitcom potential here, if we weren’t both so fundamentally dull. It also led me to expect that when we had children, my aggressive dark genes would beat the crap out of his wussy blond ones. Instead, we ended up with this:

The Exorcist

(Obviously, my older son is already casting out demons.)

I guess it’s too soon to tell about the little one, but the big one is all peaches and cream and, at least according to my parents, who aren’t at all bitter, he looks exactly like my mother-in-law. Plus, except when he’s screaming that his food is too hot, he tends to be kind and helpful and even-tempered.

The reason I’m sharing this is because I’m surprised. I’d honestly believed that the survival of the Jews in the face of millennia of adversity would translate into genetic dominance, if not necessarily athletic prowess.

One final story:

I had my second baby six and a half weeks ago. When the first one was born two years earlier, the nurses at the hospital fell all over themselves to tell me how handsome he was. "Oh, you say that to everyone, don't you?" my husband fake-protested modestly.

"Actually, we don't," said the nurse. "If the baby's ugly, we say something like, 'Boy, what a lot of hair!'"

With the birth of boy #2, we discovered that this nurse had been telling the truth. This time around, not one person complimented our new baby's looks. And it wasn't just that these nurses happened to be reticent: I had to share a room with two other women, and I could hear these very same nurses exclaiming, "So sweet! So beautiful!" once they reached the other side of the privacy curtain. (Like my parents, I'm not bitter.)

Is it a coincidence, then, that #2 is the one who supposedly looks like me? (I’m not bitter about that either.)

But back to my husband, who’s so nice that he’s fetching me a Popsicle from the kitchen as we ready ourselves to watch CSI Miami (no, we don’t have cable).

Danit: Any other tips for marrying semi-Israelis?
Bill: Learn to like gefilte fish. And never, ever make them angry

A custody battle is brewing in Indiana, and it hinges on whether or not Satanism is a real religion. Jamie Meyer, a 30-year-old factory worker, is the divorced father of three young girls, and a member of the Church of Satan. Meyer’s ex-wife is suing to restrict his visitation time to allow his girls to attend Christian church. She also argues that the Church of Satan isn’t a real religion, that Meyer’s beliefs embarrass the children, and that Meyer’s may not really believe in Satanism.
Satanic pentagram: tres creepy
But the Satanism being practiced by Meyer isn’t what you might think. It’s nothing like what you saw in Rosemary’s Baby. Instead, Satanism is a “carnal religion.” Its members are atheists, anti-spiritualists, and proponents of pride, liberty, and individualism. That’s according to the current high Priest of the Church of Satan, Peter Gilmore. Doesn’t sound so bad, right?

A trip to the Church of Satan website (definitely not safe for work) proves otherwise. Here are the slightly creepy Nine Satanic Statements: 

1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9. Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!

There are also Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth, including, “Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.” And my favorite: “Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.”

But what’s at stake in this case has little to do with mating rituals or magic. Meyer’s ex-wife is suing on grounds that raising the kids with two conflicting faiths in their lives could be emotionally damaging, in addition to her discomfort with the Church of Satan in general. In a time when more and more people are intermarrying, the core issue of whether two religions can cause emotional damage to a kid is fascinating and tricky. The Church of Satan is a particularly potent example of how things can conflict, but a kid with a Jewish father and Christian mother can be plenty confused, too (see: Half/Life). Or he can be totally well-adjusted. It may have more to do with the parents than the religion, right?

I never thought I’d feel a little defensive about the Church of Satan, but in this case, I don’t want an anti-interfaith precedent to be set. 

Fleet Week in NYC: tattoos, booze, and...jews?My mother recently learned how to text-message. She’s addicted now, and several weeks ago, I received the following message: “JUST RAN INTO SUSIE FEINSTEIN @ SUPER-MARKET. JACOB ENGAGED TO GENTILE! OY VEY!”

Mr. and Mrs. Feinstein are a couple of conservative Jews, long-time friends of my parents, and Jacob is their oldest son. I met Jacob when I was five, so now—almost twenty-five years later—I know a lot about him: I know he’s got a taste for buxom blonds with Southern accents; I know he likes a lady with a tiny gum-drop of a nose. I also know his parents would rather lose a limb than watch him date a gentile.

It’s a familiar situation: Jewish parents spend a lifetime configuring Marriage To Another Jew as the end all be all accomplishment, all the while counter-productively setting the stage for their child’s Shiksa-rebellion. They station us Jewish gals up on the pedestal of proper dating and, in so doing, nuzzle the rest of the female world into the seductive corner. If I had a quarter for every time I’ve had a Jewish boyfriend parade me around at some Briss or Bat Mitzvah and then later, behind closed doors, ask if I wouldn’t mind a little Catholic school girl role-playing action, I’d have, well, a dollar. It’s happened with disconcerting frequency, and I’m getting exhausted.

We Got Married in a Fever, Hotter Than a Pepper Sprout: we've been talking 'bout Jackson, ever since the fire went outI want to be the manifestation of rebellion for once! But for whom is a Jew Gal a novelty? Is such a thing possible if you live in New York City?

Well, it is if it’s Fleet Week. Which it was in New York, just two weeks ago.

In humiliating and unrestrained anticipation of the ‘Sex and the City’ movie, and in pathetic homage to the T.V. episode wherein the four characters celebrate fleet week by attending a sailors’ party off Chelsea Piers, I decided to celebrate two weeks ago by trolling for sailors myself. I met one, goy-lifically named Jackson, in a West Village bar. Jackson was 6'3", from West Virginia—“they might both have ‘west’ in ‘em,” he’d drawled in reference to both the village and his native state, “but they ‘sho different!”—and in an effort to keep our belabored conversation afloat—HA!—I tossed off this numb-skulled hypothetical: “Alright Jackson, so let’s say this. Let’s say you’re on your ship and it’s sinking—God forbid!—and you end up stranded on a desert island and you can only take three items with you. What would they be?”

Jackson didn’t seem bothered by my insensitive mention of a sinking ship; it was the equivalent, I later decided, of someone saying to me, “Alright Sara, so let’s say this: you’ve just been diagnosed with Melanoma. Who do you tell first: your mom or your dad?” Jackson considered my question for a moment, then answered, “Well, there’re only two things I’d need, really: a twelve-pack of cold beer, and a good woman.”

“Interesting,” I replied. “And what constitutes ‘good’?”

“Well if I had my pick,” he said, “I guess I’d like a lady with tattoos.”

Sinking Ship: vs melanomaI have no tattoos, of course: I want at least the option of a Jewish burial. (Also, tattoo parlors instill in me an unmatched sense of fear – I can’t handle the idea of people strapped in chairs or the voluntary puncturing of human skin. The by-product is fine—even sexy, as Jackson suggested—but when I see the reality of where the magic happens, I get queasy.) Jackson praised tattoos and all they tend to connote, and I felt disappointed. West Virginian Sailor struck me as being one of the more exotically attractive types I’d ever get the chance to meet (Eskimos or Tibetan monks notwithstanding), and I’d banked on the feeling being mutual, but apparently not.

Or so I thought. See, I told Jackson I was sans tattoo, offered up the aforementioned reasons as to why, and he said, “Jewish, huh? That’s cool. I never met no Jewish gal before.” Then he inched in closer and put his hand atop my knee. I’m not sure this meant I was his forbidden fruit per se; and frankly, I didn’t care to probe lest I unearth some genuine strain of anti-Semitism on behalf of his parents. Instead, I reveled in the moment, this chance to act as someone else’s novelty.

An hour later, Jackson invited me back to his ship, but I declined. I mean, I’d won my Rare Bird status and shouldn’t that suffice? Did I want to chase after the prize of middle-bunk sex in addition? Didn’t that seem greedy? I thought it did. I felt reinvigorated, after all, and so decided: quit while you’re ahead.

This way, when I get Jacob Feinstein’s notice telling me to Save the Date, I’ll have the strength to listen.

Please don't look under the veil, mom and dad: Why having a secret non-Jewish significant other is, um, impracticalThis week, the advice column Dear Prudence takes on a problem familiar to anyone whose parents expect them to marry within their own religion and/or ethnic group: The secret significant other. Writes a 25-year-old Indian-American guy:

I started dating a Caucasian classmate four and a half years ago in college…. I see us together for the rest of our lives. There is only one problem: My parents are very traditional Indians and have told me since I was a young boy that they wanted me to have an arranged marriage, and if I did "bring home an American girl" that they would disown me. After two years, I told them about the relationship, and they were rightfully hurt and upset I'd kept it a secret. They say now that they were "joking" about disowning me and that I should have come to them. But it is close to three years later, and my girlfriend has still never met my parents.

Obviously, there are some Jewish resonances here, as well as Persian resonances, and Vietnamese resonances, and Italian-last-century resonances, ad infinitum. My evidence is, of course, totally anecdotal, but among the people I know with strictly tribal parents—Jewish and otherwise—there’s a distressingly large number with long-term “study partners,” and even more whose parents think they’re asexual because they’ve never brought home a date. It’s kind of like being gay before the seventies, except for one major, major difference: The parents don’t approve, but the rest of America truly does not care. So the kids wind up keeping a secret from their family that’s open knowledge in every other part of their lives.

Witness the reactions in Slate’s online forum, all variants on the general sentiment of “Dude, by the time you’re 25 you ought to be able to date whoever you want.” As for Prudence, she sensibly suggests bringing the girlfriend home for the holidays and insisting that everyone get along. Because duh, this is America, and all that Romeo and Juliet stuff is so old-world. Jewcy contributor Neal Pollack got a similar reaction in the comments section of a Salon article he wrote about his choice not to circumcise his son: Nobody seemed to understand how parents could threaten to disown a grown man.

Ultimately, this is one of the toughest things about the lingering taboo against intermarriage in certain cultures within America. It’s nice when the whole world agrees that your parents are crazy, but isn't it also kind of horrible?

Two old friends from Hebrew School: OK, I don't know that for a fact, but they COULD beStuffWhitePeopleLike.com gets the Nerve treatment:

I drink too much bottled water (#76). I wear overpriced vintage t-shirts (#84), loved studying abroad (#72) and stand completely still at concerts (#67). I'm a fan of Michel Gondry (#68), Apple products (#40) and Stephen Colbert (#35). I've threatened to move to Canada on more than one occasion (#75). And I don't mind that StuffWhitePeopleLike.com — a blog that lampoons the over-educated yuppies and hipsters who populate the nation's trendy urban centers and mixed-use development zones — pinpoints me with such eerie accuracy, assessing my predilections like a gifted psychic reader. The site is a fairly amusing send-up of the slightly embarrassing, clearly predictable culture I'm a part of.

But the fact that it also describes virtually my entire dating history — that really unnerves me. When I moved to New York, I imagined my dating repertoire would reflect the diversity of a Barack Obama rally (#8). But this doesn't happen, or at least, it didn't for me. I ended up dating exactly the people StuffWhitePeopleLike.com depicts: other white people who'd come to New York lusting after authenticity, ponying up their ample disposable income to purchase something that feels like "the real thing." People like me who moved here to drink from some mystical font of urban cultural capital, then just kept on dating within the tight-jean pool.

This strikes me as incredibly central to all the hand-wringing about intermarriage. Because while the Jewish community at large is busy panicking about young Jews marrying out, the truth is that “out” is a lot more complicated than anyone is willing to admit, at least if you’re not going by strict Halachic law.

The most modern argument against intermarriage goes like this: “But honey, you’ll just be so much happier with someone who shares your culture.” Certainly this is a lot easier to digest than “But honey, God doesn’t like his people as much as He likes our people.” And in a less secular country, maybe it would make sense.

The truth is, though, that unless you’re fairly observant, “your culture” probably doesn’t have that much to do with your Judaism. In fact, for many Jews, “your culture” is just the culture of all privileged, college-educated creative types—the white people of StuffWhitePeopleLike. And if what you want is someone who shares your love of sushi, indie rock, and Michel Gondry, there’s no reason to hang out at Jewish singles events. All you really need to do is go stand in front of Whole Foods.

Don't be fooled by his innocuous nickname: Schwarztie This week in J-media:

• Did you know that the gays cause earthquakes? The ultra-Orthodox Israeli political party Shas just suggested that instead of reinforcing buildings, the government should spend more money discouraging homosexuality. Insert obligatory San Francisco joke here, and then bang your head against the wall while wondering how you’ve managed to get stuck in the same religio-ethic group as these people. [Jewschool via Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post.]
• At JSpot, Hannah Farber asks the world’s rabbis to please stop insisting that she (and every other Jewish professional woman) pop out some babies right this very minute. Jewschool responds. [JSpot, Jewschool]
  
• This writer is really, really angry at Jerry Seinfeld, and not because of Bee Movie. [San Diego Jewish Journal]
• From the department of How Not to Grow the Jewish People: Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz, who runs the Chai Center in California, just can’t stop sending angry text-message-speak e-mails to women who appeal to him for Jewish knowledge. A steller example: “Shame on U 4 yr disgusting unpaid whoring ways 2 try & take Jewish men away from Jewish women. Hitler murdered Jews & U R also trying 2 exterminate Jews." [LA Jewish Journal]
• An Orange County task force says antisemitism is so rampant at UC Irvine that Jewish students should stay away. [JTA]
  
• Heeb gets at the biggest issue facing young Jews today: Beefy men playing strip dreidel. [Heeb Magazine]

Ronna and Beverly are loud, opinionated, and wear too much lipstick. Watch as they harass an innocent bookstore employee while publicizing their new book for Jewish singles, "You'll Do a Little Better Next Time." Yes, these yentas are fictional (yet eerily reminiscent of my mom's friends), and if you love them as much as I do, there are many more chapters in the Ronna and Beverly saga to enjoy. Here is one of the best.

There was a time when a Fat Old Jew (FOJ) like Harvey Weinstein marrying a Skinny Young Gentile (SYG) like Georgina Chapman would have caused a perfect storm of cultural anxieties around sex, power, and religion. Today, it's just another small gossip item.

The nuptials of the conniving, overeating, materialistic Hollywood mogul – the flesh-and-blood quintessence of the kind of crudely drawn stereotypical Jewish male who equates acceptance into the broader American culture with the acquisition of a hot shiksa – passed without so much of a media peep. More interestingly, the Jewish chattering class (a wild generalization referring to my friends) barely found it worthy of cocktail prattle.

Beatles Wrong: Money Buys Love: Beauty and the beast Such a high-profile FOJ triumph would once have tweaked all sorts of anxieties. Some Jews would have worried what it meant for the future of the people; others would have been scared at what gentiles thought about it. Jewish and non-Jewish feminists alike would have been horrified at the way a prominent man was so shamelessly using power and wealth to win such a “yummy mummy,” to use a phrase wielded by Maureen Dowd.

Chattering away about this curiosity with my friends, editors at Jewcy, and others, I realized that none of them interpreted the union as a suppressed lust for inclusion, but instead that less psycho-dramatic, nonsectarian lust…for a hot piece of ass.

 

What’s interesting is how that particular lust is no longer the sole province of the male beast. The enfranchisement of males at the expense of females (particularly Jewish males and Jewish females) is coming to an end. Firmly ensconced in the middle and upper classes, our generation of Jewish women find power, and its application (sexual, or otherwise), far less problematic than their predecessors.

Hot Piece of Ass: She loves this gentleman for his mind

Unlike the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd -- who came of age in the late 1960s in male-dominated universities and workplaces, and has become known for bemoaning a perceived return to 1950s courtship rituals -- our generation of women are achieving unlike any other. They’re used to female-dominated universities, and, soon, workplaces too. And with that equality, they’re becoming a bit beastly themselves.

Edith Wharton's single woman's ambivalence toward marriage has given way to fearless casual sex (with only a smidgen of ambivalence about getting herpes). Women are marrying later. They’re marrying twice, sometimes three times. And like Harvey, their second and third marriages are occurring from a place of greater social stability and financial prosperity.

That particular place – successful women of an advanced age reveling in their single-dom – has been fertile fodder for pop culture, with TV and film glorifying its wonderful lusty freedoms. There’s Sex and the City, The L Word, Cashmere Mafia, The Real Housewives of Orange Country, and on and on.

Get the Get: If at first you don't succeed... Being a “pig” no longer has a gender, or for that matter an age. It’s hard to condemn Weinstein for being shallow after watching A Shot of Love with Tila Tequila, in which 16 men and 16 women competing for the right to “love” Tequila, who is known mainly for having 2 million “friends” listed on MySpace.

Tila first entertains the men, interviewing some of them and making out with others. Then she does the same with the women. That’s the show. It might not have the novelistic complexity of The Wire, but it does prove you can be young, female, and utterly unaccomplished and still get a place at the trough.

Maybe I’m just a cynic. Maybe Harvey swoons over the way Georgina thinks. Maybe Georgina just loves portly men with prominent noses, liberal attitudes, and discerning taste in films. Maybe it’s not “love” Tila is looking for but love. Or maybe, when it comes to relationships and sex these days -- casual, matrimonial, queer, straight, and everything in between -- we’re all allowed to be pigs.

(While Tamar's at Jewish learning conference Limmud, she'll be bringing us regular updates.)

This morning at Limmud I went to shacharit (one of about four women at the egal service, and the only chick under forty, which again makes my blood boil) and then saw another amazing movie, “Out of Faith” about a Holocaust survivor, and her struggle to deal with her grandchildren marrying non-Jews. Weirdly, I know the grandmother and one of the grandchildren in question and much of the film was shot in the neighborhood where I grew up. It was a fascinating and gut wrenching film, and I of course got all teary at the end (deep down, I’m a total marshmellow). Definitely a must watch for anyone with survivor grandparents.
Elaine Welbel: of 'Out of Faith'

After lunch I went to Niles Goldstein’s session about “Gonzo” Judaism. I was all excited about this session, because it was billed as a look at how to return to the counter-cultural, rebel roots of Judaism, but honestly, I walked away fairly disappointed. As far as I can tell Goldstein doesn’t have much of a concrete message or instructions for people who sign on to his thinking. The one thing he told us to do was to turn Judaism back into an
“open tent” religion, so that when we see new people in our community we welcome them, encourage them to participate more and feel like they’re a part of the group. I’m all for welcoming people (inviting people over for Shabbat meals is one of my favorite pastimes) but I just don’t think that’s enough. We need more than just hospitality, and Goldstein didn’t seem willing to call out specific organizations or groups that are causing problems and need to be given some punk attitude. I agree with his general ideals, but I’d like a little more specificity, I think.

In addition to going to sessions I’ve done plenty of schmoozing and networking (the check-in table is the best place to pick up guys and Shabbat lunch invitations, in case you were wondering), and last night did some whiskey drinking with my friends from Yeshivat Hadar. Shabbat promises to be more of the same. Have a Shabbat shalom!

Whoa ... JDate! Since 1997, the Jewish singles site has given the world tons of Times wedding announcements, inspired plenty of trend pieces, and spawned a bunch of similar dating sites aimed at members of ethnic groups whose parents will disown them if they find love outside the tribe. Personally, I’ve never used it, being both categorically opposed to the idea of socializing only with other Jews and fanatical about proofreading. (Speaking of which, Ml3302, if you’re reading this, you might want to reconsider using the tagline “Disover me.”)

Like a lot of secular Jews, though, I’m kind of fascinated by the way JDate blends Craigslist’s obsessive focus on the bottom line with Nerve’s desperate posturing. So starting today, every Tuesday I’m going to feature a JDate profile of the week.

This can't be a real person...can it?: The JDater known as Babypackwell It was hard to pick just one when confronted with:

• The gay man in giant sunglasses who said “I have a rabbit, she’s a Jew too”
• A woman named Babypackwell (pictured), who I’m 99% sure co-starred with Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl
• The guy who listed one of his interests, unironically, as “discovering new soy products”
• The profile that ended “PLEASE DO NOT BE INTIMATED ... I AM NOT HIGH MAINTANCE !!!!!!!”

But my favorite was CreativeandFun6417, a surprisingly cute 40-year-old music-business entrepreneur from Chicago who described himself as follows:

I'm a perfect cross between Jerry Seinfeld, Ansel Adams, James Bond and a little George Castanza [sic].

In other words, he’s a nebbishy superspy who takes meditative black-and-white pictures of the American West. Ladies, the line forms on the right.

A recent report to the UN by Doudou Diène addressed the problem of the legitimization of racism at the highest intellectual and political levels in democratic societies. He cited French President Sarkozy’s Dakar speech, which stated that the African “man never launched himself towards the future. The idea never came to him to get out of this repetition and to invent his own destiny,” and the recent comments of James Watson, of stolen DNA fame, claiming that Africans are less intelligent than ‘us’, i.e. white males.

Sarkozy’s speech has been criticized in France, most notably by Bernard-Henri Lévy, whom nevertheless laid the blame squarely on the speech-writer’s shoulders (generating a mini-internet feud). The French diplomat at the UN, however, was shocked:

The representative of France said the Special Rapporteur had referred to his country twice in an unacceptable way.  Public statements by the highest authorities of France could be debated, of course, but it was unacceptable to say that they sought to legitimize racism.  President Sarkozy had reaffirmed several times that the fight against racism and xenophobia was among his priorities…

Notwithstanding the habitual racism of French presidents, it seems that France’s fascination with its own way of doing things does lead it to believe that xenophobia is fought off successfully in a very ‘Republican’ way, which can be summed up as the rejection of all differences in the public sphere. It seems the heirs of the Enlightenment -and of the Terror- have scarce asked themselves about the norm from which the different could be deduced. For all the acculturation talk, the norm is clear: if you’re not a visibly white, Catholic man, things are not so great.

Watson’s asininity, on the other hand, is nothing new. One can find it baffling that he got to direct Cold Spring Harbor lab for so long. But his cronies abound. A review of his latest book published last month in Nature demonstrates the ambient blindness:

We learn who and what has earned Watson's respect, affection and tenderness: his father, his wife Liz, the University of Chicago, former Chicago president Robert Hutchins, teaching, Harvard students, art, and those he injudiciously refers to as 'girls'.

Injudiciously? Girls? Wait one. Oh, yeah:

Watson is highly critical of science at Harvard, while expressing sympathy for the demise of former Harvard president Larry Summers. These events would seem to be largely irrelevant to the rest of the book, had Watson not been in hot water in the mid-1970s over 'girls' in science, and had he not been curious about the role of the genome in shaping human intellectual ability and in predisposing to such 'developmental failures' as autism, schizophrenia and Asperger's syndrome. He tellingly concludes: "If Summers' tactlessness does, in fact, have a genetic basis, much of the anger toward him should rightly yield to sympathy." In genome, veritas.

“Been in hot water in the mid-70’s” is what I call a sympathetic assessment of a deeply bigoted man. Discounting the obvious stupidity of assuming intelligence is somehow tied to the white man’s Y chromosome (and yes I do believe that any special case for “Jewish intelligence” would have to be exclusively cultural), would you not find it disturbing in the least that the claims of a supposed foremost scientist sound exactly like the centuries-old pseudo-science of racism?

The most fervent hope I have against all forms of xenophobia is in the increasing rate at which people of different backgrounds (ethnic, religious and atheistic, national) get together. This seems to happen everywhere, from the American continent to Old Europe, and with a bit of luck –and whatever the mechanism– it will spell the downfall of racism before we have time to get married with robots.