Intermarriage — A Sermon by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis
This recording is protected by United States copyright 2005. All rights are
reserved to Valley Beth Shalom, a California non-profit corporation.
Rabbi Schulweis: Most of you who have been following the newspapers
know that there's a great methodological debate among demographers and
Jewish sociologists and sociologists of the Jews revealed in the national
Jewish population studies regarding how many Jews are there in America.
Some demographers maintain that Jews in America are 5.6 million, another
group of demographers who maintain that the Jewish population of the
United States is 5.2 million, very difficult for me to understand how a very
expensive study should have such a disparity until I began to think about
my relationship with the president.
If you ask Avery, "Look out at the lecture hall and what the -- how many
people do you think there are there?" he will usually say, "About 300." and I
will characteristically say, "600." And the question is, what is the
difference?
The difference is that Avery counts the heads and I count the feet. That's
the difference between an accountant and a rabbi. And by those who
count heads alone are more pessimistic than those who count the feet. But
it seems to me that people vote with their feet.
But whether you count heads or whether you count feet, all the reports of
the demographers point out that we Jews are a shriveling, contracting
people. They note our low fertility, the age of our community, the raise of
intermarriage, and the diminution of synagogue attendants.
One out of three married Jews is married to a non-Jew. There are 1 million
interfaith couples in the United States. By the year 2005, it is estimated
that about two-thirds of recent marriages will involve a non-Jew. Closer to
home, in San Francisco, the rate of marrying out of one's faith is 80
percent.
Professor Sergio Della Pergola of the Hebrew University in Israel tells us
that the internal dangers of interfaith marriage are not limited to the United
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States. The same trend extends to France, Germany, Eastern Europe and
Latin America.
Dr. Sallai Meridor of the Jewish Agency claims that Jews are disappearing
from the world at a rate of 50,000 a year. In another place, a sociologist
puts the rate of 50 Jews lost to us per day.
We have lost more than a quarter of a million Jews since the last survey
which is 10 years ago, this despite the large immigration of Jews from the
former Soviet Union and the overall growth in the United States population.
The children of intermarried households number 750,000, less than onethird are raised as Jews, a full half of them learn nothing of their Jewish
legacy. We're losing our children.
I am by nature an optimist but I must tell you that I am frightened and that I
fear the hemorrhaging of our people before us. And don't be deceived by
the congregation on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur of the synagogue
they represent an infinitesimally small percentage of American Jew.
You are but summered to my heart and not the full four seasons of the
year. We are losing our critical mass and I am -- I know you well enough to
tell you that I am frightened to death. And my rabbinic conscience bothers
me because I was not ordained to preside over the dissolution of the
Jewish people.
But from my point of view the demographers, they'd be right, but if you take
them seriously you got it all wrong. The issue was not intermarriage. To
focus on intermarriage is to see the symptom and not the cause. The
symptom is not the cause and if you treat the symptom in isolation you will
mask the root of the malaise that eats away at the core of Jewish
existence.
If you stop all intermarriage you would not even touch the lethal malaise
that is tearing us to pieces. Now, I'm not a demographer but I'm a rabbi.
The rabbis ask different questions and they listen for different answers. So
I want you to listen in to a conversation. I want you to comment on my
study. That's where the real really happens.
Two people come to the study, one is Jack and one is Mary. These are
fictitious names but otherwise everything that I tell you hear is not
hyperbolic. They've come to ask me to officiate their wedding and one of
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them is not Jewish. I don't know which one is not Jewish. They look alike,
they sound alike, you can't tell by names.
Her name is Mary, I take a guess that she's a Christian, so I say to her,
"Are you Catholic or Protestant?" and she doesn't know. I say, "Catholic or
Protestant?" and she says, "Maybe Protestant." Then I say, "Presbyterian,
Episcopalian, Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist, Churches of Christ?" She
doesn't know and she tells me that her parents don't know either.
Jack also doesn't know what kind of Jew he is, Reform, Orthodox,
Conservative or confused. He had a Bar Mitzvah but like the famous
Gershwin song he doesn't remember where or when.
So we are dealing now with a new phenomenon. It's a phenomenon. I'm
dealing with two people, this is an interfaithless couple. And that is defined
as a hybrid between a rabbit and a hen, Mishtahim, Mishtaher. Revealing
that this is -- I didn't mean this for the joke.
I meant it to point out that you're not dealing now with a question of
Judaism versus Christianity, that's not the issue. That used to be the issue,
that's not the issue today. Rabbis are fooling themselves. From a
theological issue you're dealing with the assimilation into mass commercial
culture.
So I begin with Mary. We speak about many things. We speak about
4,000 years of Jewish history. Mary's eyes are widened, she is fascinated.
But I watch Jack, and Jack is unhappy. He is sitting in obvious impatience.
His eyes are squinting. He's not a happy person so I ask him ever so
rabbinically politely if he would wait for us in the wedding room, and along
with Mary I'm doing much better.
Mary has a general notion about Judaism. She's picked it up. She has an
inkling of a notion that it's a tradition which venerates the home, the warmth
of the family, and it's free of doctrines and dogmas, and that it encourages
questions. I asked her if Jack ever talked to her about Judaism or the
possibility of her embracing it and she said, "No, he never has."
And then Jack returns to the study and he is very upset with me. He had
not come here for me to talk to her about taking sixteen-week course in
Judaism at the University of Judaism. He didn't bargain for that. He is after
all as he tells me over and over again a cultural Jew. Now, a cultural Jew
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means that he's not religious but a cultural Jew that he knows expressions
like schlep, kibbutz and knish.
All he wants is to have me stand under the chuppah for the sake of his
parents and because he is an ecumenical figure he would even like to have
Mary's priest or minister co-officiate with me. He's an ecumenical figure
and I'm too provincial.
I recognize immediately that I've met my match and after an hour of
discussion I say to him, "I tell you what, I can do it both. I can do the priest
part, I can do the rabbi's part."
I have -- I don't know why you're laughing. I was ordained -- I never
ordained but I received a Doctor in Theology from the Pacific School of
Religion which is a non-denominational Christian institution and I know how
to do that kind of the service and the ceremony and I certainly know how to
do the Sheva Brachot for the Jewish part.
And Jack looks at me with great consternation and he blurts out, "You're
crazy." Then he -- before himself he said, "That's crazy." Why is it crazy?
And he began to understand.
I think he got the point that marriage and that marriage vows have serious
religious and social implications, that Judaism and Christianity are unique
religions and that they have to be respected, and that if they have children
and should they be blessed with a male child, and on the eighth day they
would have to choose either circumcision or baptism.
And borrowing Jack's phrase I told him that shrimp, hot cross buns and
Challah is a crazy mixed up menu, and that you cannot out of respect for a
religion of such importance dump Judaism and Christianity into a Cuisinart.
Mary enlisted, of course, at the University of Judaism. Jack went along, I
was a participant and the three rabbis back then, and I officiated by myself
at their wedding as a rabbinic solo.
But if you think that the problem is prenuptial, if you think that the whole
problem has to do with a question of the wedding, you don't understand
what the real problem is. The real problem is postnuptial because Mary
came to me. And as I live and breathe and as this is first day of Rosh
Hashanah, nothing that I say is hyperbolic.
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She said to me, "I am a deeply spiritual person. I became Jewish because
I am convinced in the ethics and in the religious philosophy of Judaism.
God means something important to me. The synagogue and ritual have
come to mean a lot to me. But Jack will have nothing to do with it. I don't
know whether he's ashamed or ignorant but he's an absent Jew."
Mary is the Jewishly observant one. It's Mary who comes to school. And
it's Mary who has registered the children into the day school. It's a scene
from out of Sex and the City. I know many of you don't know what I'm
talking about and I didn't know about it myself because I wouldn't expose
myself to such programs.
But out of love for this congregation and my sociological interest I watched
Sex and the City religiously. But I take notes. And you may remember that
one of those scenes was taken from out of my study, as God is my witness
when Charlotte -- I think that's her name -- has a -- oh, I have here people
who really know -- says to -- the other guy's name is Harry. Harry was a
Jewish guy.
When she is benching lift and she has the veil over her, Harry is looking to
the side at the television set. And I believe that he tells her at one
particular -- I missed that particular program but people promised me the
copy. But he says, "I can't marry you because you are not Jewish." He's
eating a ham sandwich.
So the problem in a very serious way is not Mary's problem. The problem,
and there are a lot sociological studies which indicate that I'm right, has to
do with Jack. You remember the last national Jewish population study 10
years ago. There was a revealing figure, that 1.5 million born Jews when
asked, "What is your religion?" answered, "Not Christian." answered,
"None."
Jack is not a Jew and Mary wasn't a Christian. Mary became a Jew by
choice but Jack remains a choice-less Jew, no God, no literacy, and no
ritual. He is a biological Jew wedded to nothing.
A number of years ago -- many of you remember about three or four years
ago we introduced a Kavum program for the unchurched and the
unsynagogued. And here I came across a phenomenon that was new to
me, and that phenomenon was that of the Gentiles searchers who came to
a series of lectures on Wednesday night.
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He had 400 people, unsynagogued, unchurched.
But the Gentile
searchers were not interested in matrimony. They were interested in
patrimony. They were not interested in marrying our sons and our
daughters. They were searching for rootedness, for ancestry. They
yearned for the death of history and destiny, something that Jack can't
understand until this day.
He scratches his head, he says, "There is such a sane, intelligent American
woman. What in the world can she possibly see in Judaism?" Mary's in
school and she comes quite often as I mentioned to you.
And she said to me once, "You won't believe it, Rabbi, but Jacks relatives
who don't attend the synagogue and are not members of any synagogue
looked down at me and I have heard them whisper over again, 'It'll never
work. You can't make a non-Jew Jewish because Jewishness comes with
chicken soup and gefilte fish.'"
And as I lived and breathed and if you watched, if you read my letter to you
on bibliographies, there is a distinguished rabbi by the name of Michael
Wishembaum and his body of faith who believes that Jews have it in their
carnality, in their physiognomy, and in their natural predilection for salty
foods like gefilte fish, lox and bagels, and you can't convert taste.
Now, it's humiliating, I must tell you, because some of my own children and
some of my grandchildren don't like gefilte fish. So where did Michael go
wrong?
But what is more distressing to me is to hear Mary tell me, "I hear them
whisper something in Yiddish. I don't know what it is." "You know what it
is. It's the expression, A shiksa blayp a shiksa, una goy blayp a goy." A
shiksa remains a shiksa, and a goy remains a goy.
And I am embarrassed because I wonder how many people know what the
word shiksa and shaguts comes from. It comes from a Hebrew word
shekkets, plural shkartsim, and it means vermin, abomination, unclean
creature, and loathsome.
Someone said to me, "Well, what's wrong with goy? Goy after all means
nation." Well, I said to him, "Look, if somebody says he has a goyish cup it
doesn't mean he's the head of a nation."
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Shaguts and shiksa are Yiddish terms but they're not Jewish. And I put it
to you that it is your moral obligation to stop Jews from using that kind of
language. It's widespread and I can show you letters and reveal to you
conversations of people who are very frightened of us, very fearful.
Listen to the testimony of the Executive Director of the conservative
Rabbinical Assembly, that's my union, Rabbi Elliot Schoenberg. He writes
that, "Conservative movements and the conservative synagogue are
perceived as places that fail to welcome the intermarried. Need I mention
what they would feel about those people who are even thinking about
becoming Jews by choice? It is the overall consensus about conservative
Judaism."
Where do we get this? Where did Jews pick up this racism? Where did
they pick up this notion, this xenophobia? Who are we after all? You know
what Pesach is about. On Passover, you are told over and again who you
are and who your parents are and who your ancestors are. And the
emphasis is our ancestors were pagans and slaves.
Abraham and Sarah, our ancestors, were the first Jews by choice, in
rabbinic tradition Avraham Avinu. Abraham is called Avi Ha Gerin, Father
of the Proselytes. Our rabbis boasted of the conversion, according to their
reading became a Jew by choice. So did Batia, the daughter of the
pharaoh, become Jewish. So did the Egyptian midwives, Shifra and Puah.
So did Shmaya and Aftalion.
Jews always embrace people who came in. The only time that Jews
couldn't embrace people, couldn't even try to speak about the possibility of
proselytization, was from the time of Constantine's sword when to convert a
pagan to Judaism -- and this was widespread and we were very, very
successful in that -- when the punishment for attempting to persuade a
pagan to become Jewish would be met with a threat of decapitation.
But we have to fight against the hijacking of Judaism. I want our people to
know we are a compassionate people. We are a people that emphasizes
according to the Talmud: Baba Mezia in a verse that is repeated more than
any other verse in the Bible. Not "Love your father, love your mother," but
36 times it says, "Love the stranger." We are prohibited to wound the
stranger, to oppress the stranger.
And what did the rabbis do with that term 'ger'? They said that that
stranger refers to Jews by choice. Unlike Christianity and unlike Islam,
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Judaism was never motivated by the notion of extra Ecclesiam nulla sallus,
that outside of the synagogue there is no salvation. On the contrary,
Judaism is not a matter of biology, it is a matter of a sacred choice open to
all people. That's our pride.
You daven, right? You pray. Shacharit, Mincha, and Maariv. I challenge
you to open up that prayer book and to look at the thirteenth benediction
and you will see a special benediction introduced by the rabbanin, the
rabbis, and by the gohanin, which praises God for righteous Proselytes.
Where did we become so xenophobic, we of all people? Listen to the
Gemara, listen to a Midrash Tanchuma. I quote to you know, "Dear to God
is the Proselyte who has come to him of his own accord than all the
populous of Israelites who stood at Mount Sinai. For had the Israelites not
witnessed the thunders and lightnings, the quaking mountains and the
blaring trumpets, they would not have accepted the Torah, but the
Proselytes without having seen any of these things comes and takes upon
himself and herself the yolk of kingdom." , is there anything dearer to God?
There's the Gemara, the Talmud, and Yevamot which it says, "If in present
times a person comes to be converted, you must ask him this question, 'For
what reason have you come to be converted? Do you not know that in
present times Israel is afflicted, pushed aside, swept aside, displaced, and
subject to suffering?' And if he replies, 'I know. We'll immediately accept
him."
I tried that on John. I said, "John, do you know something about antiSemitism? Do you know something about the Holocaust? Do you know
something about the persecution of the Jews?" And this is exactly what he
said, "I have studied the Holocaust. Rabbi, I know. But I would rather be
numbered among the persecuted that among the persecutors that we
embraced."
I love these people. I love these people. As it is written in the Book of
Deuteronomy, “Love ye the Proselyte for you are strangers in the land of
Egypt.”
Please, don't take this as a sermon because if we don't do something about
this, if we simply say, "Did you hear the statistics that were read?" you will
be doing something that I think is a great, great mistake. There are
potential Jews out in this community and in all communities, in all stages of
life.
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The sociology is we put hundreds and thousands of interfaith couples who
say they wish to raise their children as Jewish. I have heard it from them.
They're noblest of intentions left alone will come to naught and they will
evaporate in the anonymity of mass culture.
If we in the synagogue, and I mean specifically Valley Beth Shalom, do
nothing, if we in the synagogue abandon these people, if we forsake these
children, these thousands of potential Jewish children, they will be lost to
not another religion but to the anonymity of mass culture.
It is a positive mitzvah on moral demographic and theological grounds to
embrace the potential Jews who are out there and who are going to all
kinds of places, Baha'i and Ashram, because they feel welcomed and
because they tell me they are afraid to walk into the synagogue.
So I ask you first of all stop ringing your hands, stop citing statistics. We
can turn this challenge into an opportunity to enlarge and enhance Jewish
life. And don't say what some rabbis even tell me. They say, "Why do you
want to deal with them?" and I tell them that the 'them' who come to us and
who embrace our tradition are not 'them', they're us.
Ruth is Jewish to the core. Help me. Help me. We are a major
congregation and we can make a dent in the thinking and behavior of
Jewish life. It starts at VBS and won’t end here.
You want to be part of the mitzvah? You want to make a resolution that's
going to change your life and the life of this synagogue and the life of the
Jewish people, and the enhancement of a different, more Jewish
understanding of the way one deals with potential Jews? You want to
make a change in the desperate demography?
I want you to do something and it's harder than the earlier thing. There I
asked you just we have a sticker. I don't want cash from you. I don't even
want a pledge from you. I don't want money from you. I want something
far more important.
I want you to join in an inreach, outreach program which we will beginning
after the holidays, and I want you to learn with a few of us. I have the more
than enthusiastic cooperation of Rabbi Feinstein and Rabbi Hoffman and
Cantor Fox and others.
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I want you to study but I don't want you to study for the sake of being
smart. I don't want you to study as another adult education program. I
want you to study in order to do what we are commanded to do, “To learn
in order to teach.” To teach so that you can persuade, to persuade so that
you can transmit the ethics and the spirit of 4,000 years of tradition.
I want you to become mentors and I'll tell you how it can be done. First of
all, I want you to become mentors because nobody can learn quicker,
better and deeper than those who teach. I want you to know enough and,
of course, we'll be directed towards a very simple proposition. I want you
to know enough, to feel enough, to be able to answer this question.
I believe that Judaism is of such super ordinate value that it makes all the
difference in the world whether or not your child is raised in a Jewish home.
I need a special cudry of Jewish mentors. I need your passion. I need
your sense of purpose. And I promise you that it will reinvigorate the
synagogue from a passive audience listening to others.
But I want more than that. I don't want you to be able to transmit Judaism
out of books, out of texts, but out of belonging. I want you to help potential
Jews find a sense of belonging in Jewish life. I want you to open up your
homes and your lives. I want you to take these searchers, these seekers,
these couples who want but are afraid.
Take them to Jewish lectures and to Jewish concerts, to Jewish plays, to
Jewish music, to Jewish religious services. Jews need Jews to be Jewish,
and potential Jews need Jews to become Jewish. The stranger is our
mirror. One of the great philosophers of our century, Herman Cone, said,
"In the stranger Judaism discovered the idea of humanity."
I want the ethos, the ethics, of Judaism to resonate in your life because I
see there, outside, seekers who want to discover our faith. There are
intermarried couples who stand outside the threshold of the synagogue
ambivalent and frightened to enter.
I'm not asking for a crusade. I'm not asking you to come with me with
drums and cymbals, and staying with me at the airport. This is not a
coerced conversion. This is -- it flows out of respect for people who are
created in the image of God and who are searching. And I must tell you,
from my personal account of it, they have gone through a great test in their
lives, and I wanted them to be treated.
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They are not here as surrogates for our low fertility rates. I'm not interested
in them as replacement for the millions who are decimated in the genocide.
I am here as a Jew because I believe that we have something to say to the
world, that the world really needs family values, real family values, real
ethical insights. And I want you to know that becoming a Jew is a mitzvah,
and helping someone become a Jew is a mitzvah.
It is but remembered. It's a process. It's a process. It's gradual. It doesn't
happen before the wedding, either the wedding or not, because I myself
have officiated at conversions after the secular marriage, after the secular
wedding, after the children were born, after even without the Brit. But they
become Jewish as a process and I want you to help.
First of all, what I want you to do is to speak. Don't deny, don't repress. I
want people to know that there is an address and there are rabbis who are
more than willing to embrace these seeking people. There is an address
and it's called Valley Beth Shalom. And there are rabbis who will not
chastise or denigrate but wish to help them and their children enter the
ambience of the Jewish community.
This is Rosh Hashanah. You make a resolution. It is the 'the' of decisionmaking. I want you to make a decision not only for yourself but for the
Jewish people. I need your help. There's a little card which doesn't have a
sticker. I think it's a grey card and I want you to take it with you.
And I don't want -- I want you to -- I don't want you to criticize my sermon
and I don't want you to praise the sermon. This is an interactive sermon. If
you want to respond to it I want you to take this home. It says, "Dear
Rabbi, I very much care about strengthening Jewish life here and now. I'm
interested in joining your inreach, outreach project. You can count on me."
I need that. The Jewish community will need that as well. This is a card of
care. It can transform your life and the lives of others, and it can be done.
And if not now, when? And if not you, who in the world can I talk to?
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