Times Are Strange

A lengthy op-ed in the New York Times today by one Susan Katz Miller celebrates intermarriage and the raising of children of intermarrieds in both Jewish and non-Jewish traditions. Her family “celebrates Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashana, Sukkot, Simhat Torah, Hanukkah, Passover and many Shabbats… We also celebrate All Saints’ Day and All Souls, Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter.”

Ms. Katz and her Episcopalian husband want their children “to feel equally connected to both sides of their religious ancestry.”

“Perhaps,” she writes, “having been given a love for Judaism and basic Hebrew literacy in childhood, they will choose at some point in their lives to practice Judaism exclusively. That would be good for the Jews. Or perhaps they will choose to be Christians or Buddhists or secular humanists who happen to have an unusual knowledge of and affinity for Judaism. That would also be good for the Jews.”

Neither, however, would be good for the Jews. Ms. Katz, “the granddaughter of a New Orleans rabbi,” was “raised Reform Jewish” by her own “Episcopalian mother and… Jewish father.”

Times, indeed, are strange. Geraldo Rivera and Stella McCartney (Paul’s daughter) are halachically Jewish. But Susan Katz Miller is not.