By Donald H. Harrison  

SAN DIEGO—Are non-Jews who are exploring converting to Judaism sometimes driven away by derogatory  comments that Jews occasionally make to each other about other kinds of people? 

Imagine if you were a Christian attending a social event at a synagogue and you overheard someone else deriding a person for having a “goyishe kop” — a non-Jewish head.  Or how you might feel if you heard someone saying that “all the goyim (non-Jews)  will get schicker (drunk) over the holidays? “  Or that “Jews never get drunk, and never are abusive to their families like Christians are?” 

Norm Kurtz, a Chicago attorney who is international vice president of the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs,  says these and similar elitist comments are untrue, stereotypical,  offensive to non-Jews, and hurtful to good relations between Jews and Christians.  He wants fellow Jews eliminate them not only from their public conversations, but their private ones as well.

An essay written by Kurtz on this subject served as the basis for a seminar in Providence, R.I. , attended  last November by  Men’s Clubs representatives from Conservative congregations from different parts of the United States.  Phil Snyder, chairman of the Keruv (Drawing Near) Committee of  the Men’s Club of Tifereth Israel Synagogue in San Diego, chaired a discussion based on the essay.

During the session, participants  remembered their own encounters with prejudice and empathized with how the non-Jewish spouses of Jews might feel when people, perhaps assuming they are in the company of  fellow Jews, say such things.  

The Providence seminar as well as a larger conference held last month in Baltimore, Md., was organized by Rabbi Charles Simon, the New York City-based executive director of the Federation of  Jewish Men’s Clubs.  They were part of a process he described in a Friday, April 7 telephone interview,  as a step-by-step approach to developing programs addressing the needs of the increasing number of non-Jews who follow family members to synagogues—and, sometimes, upset by what they hear, go right back out the synagogue doors.

In Baltimore, Snyder and other participants discussed a multi-media presentation which, through movie and television clips, portray typical situations that intermarried families encounter, thereby providing an opportunity for them to discuss such problems openly and candidly.

Snyder said representatives from four intermarried  families in Baltimore permitted conference delegates to monitor a keruv session in which they told of the problems they encounter and the adjustments that they make.  He said he remembered one Jewish woman whose three children all married non-Jews telling how she is doing her best to teach her children’s spouses about Judaism, and having them over for Passover seders, in an effort to insure that the grandchildren will receive some of their Jewish heritage.

A woman who had converted to Judaism from Roman Catholicism told how difficult it had been to make that decision, especially because it made her parents feel bad, Snyder recalled.

All the families seemed to benefit from the session, which helped them “get out in the open” some of the issues on their minds, Snyder said. “They all said they wanted more.”

Snyder said he is now consulting with a social worker trained by Jewish Family Service in San Diego about conducting similar sessions here  as part of an effort by the Tifereth Israel Men’s Club to develop programs for intermarried couples.  If successful, the program can be a model for other Conservative synagogues in the area.

Other pilot programs in the national effort  by the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs to bring non-Jews closer to Judaism include one to offer support and guidance for synagogue members with non-Jewish children; another to develop educational materials for pulpit rabbis, who often are considered as the personification of the Jewish faith by non-Jews, and a third to welcome people who are seeking to learn more about the heritage of their ancestors.

Simon explained that many Christians have Jewish ancestors, or think that they do, and would like to understand more about their ancestral religion.  “These are the seekers,” he said.

The rabbi added that the four pilot programs recognize the fact that in the 750 synagogues of the Conservative movement across English- and French-speaking North America, between 3 and 40 percent of the membership may be part of intermarried families.

Snyder said the number of families affected by intermarriage is even higher.  At a recent board meeting of Tifereth Israel Synagogue, for example, he said he asked for a show of hands of how many members either were themselves intermarried or had other members of their family who were.  Snyder said almost every hand in the board room went up.

The Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs is only one body in the Conservative movement.  The four others include the United Synagogue, representing congregations; the Rabbinical Assembly, representing clergy; the Jewish Theological Seminary and University of Judaism, representing education, and the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism. 

Simon said the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs is pioneering the outreach efforts, which he hopes will come to be accepted by the four other bodies.  Snyder said there is some controversy over the outreach programs from those who believe efforts should be focused on converting the non-Jews to Judaism, and not simply on making them more comfortable in Jewish surroundings.

Last summer Simon traveled to 15 cities to meet and talk with non-Jewish spouses. “Some were spiritually committed, some were intellectually committed, some were just along for the ride, some said they were atheists but were willing to raise a Jewish family,” he recalled.  “But what everyone of them said was that they never felt a greater sense of community than they did within the confines of Jewish life.”

Twenty-five to 30 years ago, synagogues enacted various policies that they thought would serve the purpose of discouraging people from marrying outside the religion, Simon recalled.  For example, some synagogues “would not mail to a non-Jewish spouse—if you were intermarried you were considered single, and the synagogue would mail to you only as an individual.   This was offensive.  Imagine, telling a spouse that they were not considered people!

"The policy obviously failed.  People would not stop marrying because they would not get mail; this was ridiculous. Now everybody gets mail. We have to respect people’s choices and address them as people.”