OTHER VIEWS

WE UNDERSTAND
THAT IT'S A WOMAN'S PREROGATIVE
TO CHANGE HER MIND.

CASE

from page 25

THAT'S WHY WE OFFER SO MANY CHOICES.,

of mixed-married families in
Christian holiday festivities amounts
to an affirmation of the divinity of
Jesus. She equates having Christmas
trees and Easter eggs in the home to
"bringing the ideas [and] beliefs of
the Christian church into Jewish
households.
This defies logic. When mixed-
married couples explicitly deny that
their conduct has religious signifi-
cance, as Fishman acknowledges that
at least some of her subjects did
emphatically," and when their chil-
dren say they expeiience these holi-
days in a secular, commercial, cul-
tural, non-religious way, how can
their behavior amount to an affirma-
tion of a religious belief?
Fishman's conclusion is inconsis-
tent with other available informa-
tion. In liberal American Jewish
communities, it is hard to miss
mixed-married families whose
behaviors look as — if not more —
"Jewish" than the average Jews, with
the added component of non-reli-
gious Christmas and Easter celebra-
tions. It is equally hard to miss the
many young adult children of such
families who strongly identify as
Jewish.
Last year, the InterfaithFamily.com
Network's Essay Contest, "We're
Interfaith Families Connecting with
Jewish Life," attracted 135 personal
statements from such individuals.
While contest entrants are not a
representative sample, the quantity
and consistency of their statements
— all of which are publicly available
for observers to draw their own con-
clusions — suggest a positive theory
that mixed-married families' partici-
pation in Christian holidays need
not compromise the Jewish identity
of their children:
• "We have a tree. That was all
[my husband] asked for. He wanted
our boys to appreciate the traditions
from both sides of the family with-
out necessarily identifying with any-
thing outright Christian."
• "I dyed eggs and hunted candy
on Easter Sunday. Mother never
tried to bring Jesus or Christian the-
ology into our house, only the fun
memories she had of her child-
hood."
• "The joy of Christmas for [my
mother] is being able to give her
children gifts she has purchased with
care. It has nothing to do with the
birth of the Christian savior and
everything to do with love, giving

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26

and sharing: That is the way I look
at the Christian holidays we cele-
brate now, as well as a way to show
respect for my father's faith."

More Research

Fishman clearly has moved beyond
the traditional equation that
Christmas is not Jewish so anyone
who has anything to do with
Christmas is not Jewish. She recog-
nizes the possibility that, short of
conversion, a mixed-married family
can be "unambiguously Jewish" —
if, in her view, their participation in
Christian holidays takes place only
outside their own home and is
accompanied with explicit state-
ments that the holidays are the rela-
tives' and not "ours."
While that is an excellent
approach for mixed-married families
to take, the boundary of acceptable
conduct could be drawn more
broadly to include families who say
that their participation, whether in
their own home or not, does not
have religious significance.
This is a high-stakes disagreement.
My fear is that we will now hear
Jewish leaders saying that the "latest
research" 'supports two destructive
policies: that mixed-married couples
trying to raise their children as Jews
shouldn't bother because they won't
succeed; and the Jewish community
shouldn't waste resources on out-
reach to mixed-married families,
since the vast majority are not "real-
ly" raising their children as Jews.
My hope is that any responsible
Jewish leader would insist on con-
clusive social science research on a
scale far beyond "Double or
Nothing" before writing off the new
families of the half of all young Jews
who are intermarrying, thereby
alienating their Jewish parents and
relatives as well.
Instead of arguing about whether
mixed-married families raising their
children as Jews should see a
Christmas tree in their own home or
only in their relatives', rejecting the
former but not the latter, everyone's
focus should be on increasing the
Jewish engagement of all liberal Jews
— including those in interfaith rela-
tionships.
The real question about the trans-
mission of Jewish identity in mixed-
married families is not what they do
around Christian holidays, but what
they do the rest of the year. Li