This article originally appeared at E Jewish Philanthropy.

At any given time, the majority of US Jewish households are not affiliated with Jewish institutions like synagogues or JCCs. There are many reasons why, perhaps the most important being that the organized community hasn’t made a strong enough case for the meaning and value of being affiliated. There’s a subset of the unaffiliated, however, who already understand the meaning and value – or who, like most affiliated households, simply want or need the services provided – but do not affiliate because of their own personal financial situations. And the size of this subset has likely grown during the recent Great Recession. What can the Jewish community do to make sure that a financial challenge is not the reason keeping an individual from affiliating?

During the past decade, we at the Jewish Outreach Institute have conducted “environmental scans” of over 500 Jewish institutions in more than a dozen Jewish communities of all sizes, to determine how each looks to potential newcomers. On the issue of financial accessibility, models vary widely but the most common remains a set membership or fee, usually dependent upon household structure, often with accommodations made for age or current lifecycle (for example, most institutions have come to recognize that young adults in their 20s can’t join at the same financial level as their parents).

For others with financial challenges, there is almost universal agreement among Jewish communal professionals that their organizations will make accommodations. However, how that actually works is in no way uniform and in fact represents a serious barrier to participation. In most organizations, those accommodations are not advertised in any way – the impetus is on the financially-challenged to ask for assistance. It is safe to assume that for every individual who does ask, there are many more that don’t, either out of shame or simply because they were unaware it was even an option.

This challenge is currently being addressed by the Big Tent Judaism Coalition, an advocacy initiative coordinated by the Jewish Outreach Institute of over 450 organizations seeking a more inclusive community, in a campaign called, “There’s No Shame In Asking.”

We timed the campaign around Purim because we imagined what the hero of the story, Esther, must have experienced before approaching her husband the king to disclose a piece of her identity that she had previously kept private. She must have feared rejection or being made to feel ashamed. Thankfully for the countless generations of Jews since, she did come forward and she was met with sensitivity and understanding. If there are people today who want to be a part of our community, perhaps to educate their children Jewishly, but doesn’t come forward with their financial challenges because they fear rejection, who knows how many countless future Jews we might lose?

To provide a more uniformed message to those with financial challenges, member organizations in the Big Tent Judaism Coalition are being furnished with large-format cards [PDF version here] that they can distribute to potential new members. The cards provide two key pieces of information: encouragement, including a standard sentence to initiate the conversation, “I’d like to learn more about adjustments offered on your organization’s (membership/tuition/program) fees”; and the name and contact information of a specific individual at the organization that is distributing the cards. The contact person is essential because whoever is on the receiving end of that sentence needs to be able to reply with sensitivity and confidentiality, and to clearly articulate the organization’s policies.

We recognize the many challenges in such an advocacy campaign, and why so many organizations have been hesitant to make public their willingness to accommodate those with financial challenges. Many organizations are hurting financially as well, and this approach seems counterintuitive to their bottom line. Others fear that people might take advantage of an organization’s sensitivity by lying about their financial needs. To address these and other concerns, we’ve initiated a conversation among organizations to share best practices, and additional features of the campaign will include a webinar of what we’ve learned from the field.

But we initiated this campaign, especially during these difficult economic times, because we felt strongly that this was a barrier to participation in Jewish communal life that we could address for those who are currently financially challenged; and that by doing so we could showcase our values as a community. We want people inside our tent. We want to serve those who are struggling. Those of us who may have struggled in the past but are in a better place now and want to give back, want to bring more people with us, and doing so together as a community sends a powerful message that we are extending our hands from a position of moral strength rather than withdrawing due to a fear of economic uncertainty.

We invite all Jewish organizations to participate in this campaign by joining the Big Tent Judaism Coalition, which is free and only requires that the organization aspires to the “Ten Principles of Big Tent Judaism”; learn more and sign up here.

Paul Golin is associate executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute, which serves as the coordinating organization of the Big Tent Judaism Coalition.

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The article was about a new study, purportedly on how to get more Midwest kids into Jewish summer camp, which claimed an "interesting finding" that intermarried families are sufficiently welcomed into the Jewish community?they just don’t participate because of a "competency barrier" that leaves them feeling uncomfortable about things like Hebrew-heavy prayer services?and therefore the work of outreach organizations to welcome the intermarried is "misguided."

I found a number of things wrong with the piece.  The reporter did not ask any other sociologist to verify the methodology, even though the "finding" about how welcomed the intermarried feel was based on just one hypothetical question out of a lengthy survey ostensibly about camps.

The article also stated that the work of interfaith outreach was "a fairly simply strategy" to "be more welcoming," and that outreach organizations operate on an "assumption that all that’s needed is open arms."  A quick investigation would have uncovered that, in fact, the overwhelming majority of outreach programs are educational in nature, not focused simply on welcoming (for example, the Reform movement’s "Intro to Judaism" and Jewish Outreach Institute’s "Mothers Circle" are months-long courses).  Addressing the "competency barrier" has been a primary outreach activity for decades.

But perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the article is that it tries to identify the motivation as to why outreach advocates would disagree with this finding, while there was no question of motivation put to the author of the report himself.   Dr. Steven M. Cohen has spent the past two decades as one of the most vocal opponents of communal resources being allocated to interfaith outreach, and just a few years back was a board member of something called the "Jewish In-Marriage Initiative."  In fact, none of his past writings on intermarriage were even mentioned.  Instead, another of the handful of vocal outreach opponents offered her own theory, that "Many of the people leading these [outreach] efforts are intermarried themselves…and had to overcome the uncomfortable stares of an earlier era. ‘But this was decades ago and no longer relevant.’"

My wife is 32 and though we have yet to begin a family, we hope to.  I’m not sure what "earlier era" I belong to, that I’m unqualified to determine whether or not I’m being welcomed into a community.  To me, that quote is like a heterosexual person declaring the Jewish community sufficiently welcoming to GLBT Jews and then, when GLBT advocates point out how that hasn’t been their experience, replying, "Well, they’re from an older generation of gays and today it’s not an issue, and I know because I’ve spoken to dozens of gay people who feel totally welcomed."

As an advocate, I have to be upfront about my agenda.  Just because someone hides behind the veneer of academia doesn’t mean she shouldn’t also declare her own agenda.  While there’s a "science" to sociology, sociology is hardly a "science" like chemistry; it’s totally susceptible to agenda.  (Ever wonder why the Jewish community only hires Jews to study itself?  If we really wanted unbiased answers, let’s hire some social scientists without a horse in the race.)

Nevertheless, I was ready to give the reporter the benefit of the doubt.  After all, journalism is a demanding job and I simply assumed he didn’t have the time before deadline to be more thorough.  Then I listened to a 25-minute podcast that accompanied the article in which he not only elaborated on all the above mistakes but offered a position on welcoming the intermarried the likes of which even Dr. Cohen hasn’t suggested aloud in years:

"The problem is that if you want to take what [Dr. Cohen] discovered and be prescriptive about [helping intermarried families overcome the competency barrier], it’s kind of dismal what you end up with because you basically would have to strip – as far as I’m concerned – you’d have to strip all Jewish religious life of anything that might alienate somebody who’s not particularly familiar with it…. I mean, [more education is] one thing that you could do, but ultimately…you basically have to…wipe away anything that would have an ethnic or religious particularism to it if you want to bring in people that don’t know what’s going on."

There you have it: the dilution of Jewish ethnicity by welcoming newcomers.  The big fear.  This same quote can also be used as an argument against accepting converts.  Yet the most fervently-Orthodox Jews-by-choice somehow found ways to first access the Jewish community as adults (and now the rest of us look like we’re diluting Judaism for them).  They weren’t born knowing Hebrew and?guess what??none of us were.  Despite the fears, outreach has always been about building ramps up to the Jewish community, not forcing all the rest of us to dumb it down.  We just need to build many more ramps, which is the focus of outreach.

The reason we haven’t heard this "dilution" argument in public much lately may be because by all observers’ accounts, the Reform movement in general has deepened its Jewish ritual practices, even as it absorbs large numbers of interfaith families.  On the podcast, the reporter admits to not having known before covering the story that at least 30% of households affiliated with Reform synagogues are intermarried.  But there’s a bigger lesson to be learned: Jewish identity as an "ethnicity" is untenable.

The cavalcade of punditry about Chelsea Clinton’s recent intermarriage has opened anew the entire spectrum of opinions on the issue?including all the standard excuses for an exclusionary approach (as if welcoming the intermarried was a done deal!)?but Rabbi Irwin Kula recognizes perhaps more than most where we’re headed: "The Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding is a perfect expression of the emerging American religious and social landscape in which one’s inherited group identity bears little or no significance on one’s marriage….The silos between groups are rapidly becoming permeable, and this shift in notions of group loyalty and exclusivity, especially as individuals form their most intimate relationships independent of any restrictive creedal or tribal inheritances, marks an uncharted world."

If the only way, or preferred way, to receive the ethics and values of the Jewish tradition is to be born into it, then Judaism will remain relevant to a decreasing small minority of people?those who choose only one identity while the rest of us take on many.  If, however, we believe there is relevancy and value in our traditions, we must find better ways to share it, and intermarried families represent the best place to start because most are already interested and in some ways connected.  But it will require demonstrating the same enthusiasm for every individual who comes and says, "I want to learn," regardless of who his or her parents were.  And it will require getting past the notion of inherent Jewish ethnicity?especially by those who are charged with telling our story.

The post Continued Confusion About Intermarriage appeared first on Jewcy.

Blaming intermarriage for something so seemingly unrelated as prevailing political attitudes should come as no surprise.  After more than a decade working in the organized Jewish community, I’ve seen intermarriage blamed for every Jewish social ill imaginable–from decreasing synagogue affiliation to the "dilution of Jewish ethnicity."  Intermarriage ends "Jewish continuity."  It creates two separate "Jewries."  It lays waste to crop and cattle.

In honor of the ongoing blaming of intermarriage for just about everything, I’ve taken the time–as a public service–to identify additional problems caused by intermarriage that have yet to be properly studied, so that the half-million intermarried households raising Jewish children and participating in Jewish life are aware of the disaster they have wrought. I hope the Jewish community will soon be able to find the time and funding to blame the intermarried for:

• Global warming;
• The collapse of the housing market;
• The lame series finale of "Lost";
• The discontinuation of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough frozen yogurt;
• The Rape of Nanking;
• Mariano Rivera’s blown save in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series;
• That time I was ten years old and lost my wallet in the Smithsonian on a family vacation to Washington, D.C.;
• Everything that happened to the Jews on Tisha B’Av;
• Everything that didn’t happen to the Jews on Tisha B’Av but could have;
• The Biblical (and intermarried) Ruth following her mother-in-law Naomi from Moab to Judah-we all know how badly that turned out for the Jews;
• Did I already say global warming?
• Bad things happening to good people;
• Glenn Beck;
• The tragic lives of all three child-stars of "Diff’rent Strokes";
• Spelling "Different" as "Diff’rent" to make it seem urban (and saying "urban" when you really mean "black");
• Time Warner Cable still not carrying the NFL Network;
• Only three of the nine Supreme Court Justices being Jewish;
• The universe expanding;
• Extinction of the dinosaurs, especially the cuter ones;
• Synagogues having to find ways to be more welcoming and engaging toward newcomers to our tradition-oh wait, that one really is because of intermarriage;
• Flying cars still not commercially available;
• Canadian progressive rock trio Rush still not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I mean, Madonna but not Rush? Frickin’ ABBA but not Rush?! It’s called the "Rock and Roll" Hall of Fame not the "Disco" Hall of Fame!
• Mosquitoes;
• BPH, more commonly referred to as enlarged prostate, talk to your doctor or see our ad in "Golf Digest";
• The inevitable disappointment that will be "Avatar 2";
• Humanity’s continued inability to simply get along and love our neighbors and share our land and, you know, just chill, man, it’s all too beautiful;
• And finally, young Jews losing interest in sociological studies that blame everything on intermarriage.

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