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.

Jewish outreach professionals complain constantly that younger Jews with two Jewish parents are bored with Judaism and are constantly wandering off to join Buddhist zendos and Hindu ashrams, conjuring up an image of disobedient and insolent young lambs scattering defiantly in all directions, proudly wearing nose rings, tattoos, and baaing defiantly at very expensive programs designed to lure them back into the Jewish communal sheep fold.

I have assured Jewish outreach workers that many adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage would be "cheap dates." We could be coaxed into the communal fold.  Many half-Jewish people would like to join the Jewish community. I have suggested that the Jewish outreach workers do simple brochures for us and start small monthly discussion groups, just as they currently do for interfaith couples and Jews By Choice (converts).

But both I and other half-Jewish people have noticed that these modest suggestions are largely ignored.  At the present time I do not know of a single Jewish institution that has created a pamphlet for us or is currently holding a discussion group for us that directly addresses our needs.  Most Jewish outreach workers have even been unwilling to include the words "adult children of intermarriage" in website welcoming statements that comprehensively welcome every other Jewish minority on the planet, including interfaith couples and Jewish gay frogs (just kidding about the rainbow-colored, Star of David-bespangled frogs, OK?).

Now, in a previous post, I discussed how some of this rejection and neglect is partially rooted in a disastrous "lost generation" policy instituted by the tiny Jewish outreach networks of the 1980s, in which a tacit policy decision was made to abandon all teen and adult children of intermarriage raised outside of Judaism and focus on the much smaller group of half-Jewish people "raised" as Jews by interfaith couples who were able to find welcoming Jewish groups.

But it is 2010 - can't we drop the failed policies of the past? Short answer: apparently not yet. The members of the Half-Jewish Network (www.half-jewish.net) complain to me in large numbers that they are repeatedly rebuffed or ignored by Jewish outreach workers. Why? We brush our teeth regularly and are often employed. We don't even bite!

Why Are Jewish Outreach Workers Ignoring Half-Jewish People?

Last year, I realized that I was operating from logic -- Judaism needs more Jews, therefore, we should welcome half-Jewish people -- but Jewish opposition to reaching out to half-Jewish people is tenacious, deeply-rooted, and emotional -- even among some Jewish outreach professionals!

These feelings that many Jewish outreach workers have about us are deeply buried and often confided to me privately.  

Jewish outreach workers are frequently overworked and underpaid, charged with outreaching not only to interfaith families, but all kinds of Jewish groups that need special outreach, including disaffiliated Jews with two Jewish parents.

Jewish outreach workers are generally very nice people -- they care about interfaith couples and Jews by Choice -- they often go an extra mile to help an interfaith couple find a rabbi to marry them -- or locate a conversion class for a potential Jew by Choice.

Here is what is preventing some of them from showing the same kindnesses to half-Jewish people, in a list of reasons confided to me over the last two decades:

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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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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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