Breakthrough! Interfaith Families, Interfaith Engagement

For years now, I have been advocating for interfaith families to be included in interfaith activism and conversation. Since 9/11, an inspiring interfaith movement has been growing, including interfaith activism on campuses. And just in the past couple of years, atheists and agnostics and secular humanists have been welcomed by many of these interfaith organizations, in recognition of the growth of these communities, and the idea that you do not have to have a faith to want to join the interfaith movement. All of this is good—very, very good.

But for those of us from interfaith families, the new focus on interfaith activism has raised two tricky (and intertwined) issues. The first challenge is linguistic. Interfaith families have always used the word “interfaith” to describe who we are. The pioneering intermarriage of my parents occurred in 1960. And since at least the 1980s, some of us have been raising interfaith children with both religions, and some of those children use “interfaith” as an identity label. So the word “interfaith” is being used both at a macro level to describe engagement between people of different faiths, and on a micro level to describe, well, engagement and marriage and identity in interfaith families. I don’t know if we should have or could have had different terminology to distinguish these two phenomena, but we don’t.

The second issue is that official interfaith conversations between representatives of different religious institutions have not always welcomed interfaith families and those with interfaith or dual-faith or multifaith identity. We represent a blurring of boundaries, and that ambiguity can sometimes make people uncomfortable.  And yet, people from interfaith families have skills to contribute to interfaith conversations and programs. We practice the art of communicating across religious divides, day and night, throughout our marriages, or throughout our lifetimes if we are born into interfaith families.

This week, I felt like I witnessed a breakthrough. I was invited by interfaith activist Sana Saeed to co-sponsor a twitter chat, alongside a group of interfaith organizers, leading up to a DC Young Adult Faith Leaders Summit tomorrow, organized by Faith in Action DC.  (Note: You can follow the Summit on twitter at #DCFaith). I started to buzz with excitement when I saw that the Summit will include people who “belong to traditional religious institutions, have multiple affiliations, no affiliations, or are somewhere in-between.” In other words, the summit is inclusive, on a whole new level.

In the twitter chat, I dove in and asked two questions: What can people from interfaith families, or who claim more than one religion, bring to interfaith activism and conversation? And, what are the challenges of including people with dual-faith or multiple-faith identities in interfaith conversation?

It was thrilling to read the responses from people who work full-time on interfaith engagement. Usra Ghazi of the Interfaith Youth Core tweeted that “interfaith families are like religiously diverse communities: great places for interfaith literacy.” Bud Heckman of Religions for Peace USA agreed that people from interfaith families bring their “lived daily experience” to the conversation, “But also assumptions/positions that are threatening to ‘single faith’ others. Benefit & barrier.”

And so, on to those challenges. Ghazi tweeted that interfaith conversations “tend to put people in a box. You can’t do that with ‘seekers’ and multi-faith identities.” InterfaithYouthCore responded that people with dual-faith or multifaith identities challenge “the norm that certain faiths are exclusive of others.” Faith in Action DC confided that, while organizing tomorrow’s Summit, they had the “challenge of placing multifaith participants. Which group are they in? So we created “Multi” category! #simple!” I am not sure everyone will find it that simple. But this chat felt like the beginning of a beautiful, and radically inclusive, conversation.

(Note: Some twitter abbreviations have been expanded in this post, to ensure greater comprehension by those over 30)

Top Ten Interfaith Posts on This Blog

Pausing for reflection at the end of the year, I thought I would reveal the most popular posts from this blog on interfaith identity, interfaith parenting, interfaith children, interfaith families, and interfaith life. Below is a list of the top ten most-viewed posts since this blog began in 2009. In the comments, let me know which posts were your personal favorites of all time, and what topics you would like to see covered in the year to come.

1. Ten Reasons to Teach Interfaith Children Both Religions. It seems fitting that the number-one post on this site is devoted to explaining the benefits of exploring both family religions with dual-faith children.
2. Advent, Christmas, Hanukkah, Welcome Yule! Interfaith Families Doing the Most. This post includes vignettes from my family celebrating each of these holidays. It was selected by WordPress for their “Freshly Pressed” feature. It also benefited from traffic based on the provocative public letter addressed to me by a blogger for the Jewish Daily Forward who objects to intermarriage.
3. Welcome Walker Diggs, Interfaith Child. Fans of intermarried Broadway and television stars Idina Menzel (Jewish and white) and Taye Diggs (Christian and black) have kept this post at the top of the hit list. When their baby son Walker was born, I wondered in this post how they would choose to raise him in terms of religion. The last I read, the couple is still figuring out their religious pathway for Walker.
4. Interfaith Marriage: A Love Story. The post describing the long and happy marriage of my Jewish father to my Christian mother has become a perennial favorite on this blog. When they celebrated their 50^th anniversary, I wrote about how their successful interfaith marriage has made it impossible for me to feel that intermarriage is a bad idea. Readers are scouring the internet, looking for signs of happy interfaith couples. The popularity of this post inspired me to start a whole series on successful interfaith marriages.
5. Muslim and Jewish: Interfaith on “Shahs of Sunset.” Okay, so this post is popular because of a trashy reality TV series, featuring wealthy Jews and Muslims of Persian (Iranian) descent misbehaving in Los Angeles. Fans trying to figure out which character is Muslim, which is Jewish (and which is from an interfaith Muslim/Jewish family) end up on my blog. Intermarriage between Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Christians represents the next wave of multi-faith families. So I am glad the interfaith world beyond Judaism and Christianity is represented in my top-ten posts.
6. Roger Williams, My Bat Mitzvah, and the “Lively Experiment.” I adore the fact that this tribute to a 17^th-century religious rebel in New England remains a top post on my site. Roger Williams founded what would eventually become Rhode Island as a refuge for Quakers, Jews, Anabaptists, and anyone fleeing the religious oppression of Massachusetts Puritans. Williams himself ended up becoming a very early example of the “religious nones,” without institutional religious affiliation.
7. Black and Jewish, Interfaith and Interracial, Hilarious and Offensive. A parody music video created by two pop culture stars who are black and Jewish inspired this post. It represents a pushback against the idea that Jews are by definition white, and a reminder of the rise of racial and religious intermarriage in our increasingly multicultural world.
8. Successful Interfaith Marriages Ignored Once Again. This post critiques a Washington Post opinion piece that described interfaith marriages as doomed to frequent failure. The author is affiliated with a conservative think tank, and was fired this year from a blogging position at the Chronicle for Higher Education over a post described by some as racist. People searching for news of successful interfaith marriages stumble on this post, and I am glad that responding to an anti-intermarriage piece provided me with an opportunity to connect with more readers and bring them news of happy intermarriages.
9. Celebrating Martin Luther King: Multiracial, Multifaith in the 21^st Century. This post in honor of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday refers to his relationship with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched alongside King. I go on to describe how my community of interfaith families, composed of intermarried Jews and Christians, and intermarried blacks and whites, celebrates King’s birthday holiday and the Civil Rights movement.
10. Interfaith Children: Born This Way. I wrote this post to respond to the blogger who was dismayed by the idea that my family celebrates both Christmas and Hanukkah. While making reference to Lady Gaga’s anti-bullying campaign and her hit song “Born This Way,” I describe how children from interfaith families benefit from claiming our interfaithness and discovering all that is positive about bridging two religions and two cultures. I am glad the idea that families can and should instill pride rather than shame in their interfaith children, made it into the top ten posts.

Susan Katz Miller’s book, Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family is available now in hardcover and eBook from Beacon Press.

 

Catholic and Buddhist: Barbara Johnson, Deconstructing False Binaries

My days and nights are full now as I work to meet the deadline for my book manuscript. I am weaving together the stories of hundreds of interfaith families, describing the growing grassroots movement to teach interfaith children about both Judaism and Christianity.

So at the moment, I try not to be distracted by the daily news. But it has become impossible to ignore the story of local art teacher Barbara Johnson, who was refused Communion, because she is a lesbian, by the Catholic priest at her mother’s funeral. Now, the media has discovered an online paper Johnson wrote, in which she described herself as a Buddhist. So the focus has shifted from “Should a priest give Communion to a lesbian?” to, “Should a priest give Communion to someone who claims both Catholicism and Buddhism?”

Suddenly, Barbara Johnson’s story has become yet another “both/and” challenge to the “either/or” world. Washington Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein, who has covered this story from the start, interviewed Johnson (and her brother) to get Johnson’s own description of the role these two religions play in her life. Johnson says that by the time of her mother’s death, ironically, she “had really integrated my Catholic identity into my larger identity as someone who is very influenced by Buddhist teachings.” She also described how, for her, Buddhism and Catholicism “inform one another in this constant internal conversation.” That conversation will be a familiar one to many of us who are born into interfaith families.

Often, clergy who claim religious double-belonging seem to carry more weight than those of us who are rank-and-file dual-faith individuals. And so, Boorstein mentions Trappist monk Thomas Merton as another Catholic who embraced Buddhism. And she mentions, though not by name, Ann Holmes Redding, a former Episcopal priest who describes her religious identity as a convergence of Christianity and Islam.

Perhaps the best contemporary exploration of religious double-belonging is by eminent theologian and former Catholic priest Paul Knitter, in his 2009 memoir, Without Buddha I Could Not Be A Christian. Knitter writes, “dualism results when we make necessary distinctions, and then take those distinctions too seriously. We turn those distinctions into dividing lines rather than connecting lines; we use them as no-trespassing signs.” When writing about his own identity, he says, “I have to be religious interreligiously.” As an adult interfaith child, I, too, feel compelled to be religious interreligiously.

As an interfaith parent raising interfaith children, this rising tide of fluid identity thrills me: I feel lifted up, weightless and exhilarated, each time a new wave rolls in. I feel supported by other Jewish and Christian interfaith families, but also by Catholics claiming Buddhism, and Episcopalians claiming Islam, and multiethnic and bilingual and immigrant and expatriate and multiracial families, and all of the many expressions of gender identity and sexual orientation in our world.

In the 2011 memoir Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender, Nick Krieger concludes, “Some people see it as a binary, a spectrum, a continuum, or a rainbow. But when I envision my own gender, it is with my eye to the lens of a kaleidoscope that I spin and spin and spin.” Thanks to Krieger’s metaphor, I can now visualize the complexity of my own religious identity as a kaleidoscope of shifting spots of Jewish belief, English and Scottish and Irish heritage, Jewish ritual, New England Protestant culture, Jewish studies, Catholic social teaching, Muslim immersion, African animist encounters, Buddhist practice.

In Barbara Johnson’s eloquent academic paper posted online, she discusses the dilemma of gay and lesbian teachers in the context of queer theory that is “deconstructing the false sexual binaries of masculine/feminine and heterosexual/homosexual.” And now, by her own example as a Catholic and a Buddhist, I believe that she is helping to deconstruct false religious binaries, as well.

Three New Year’s Resolutions: Interfaith Mom

Entering the New Year, wearing the glittering, particoloured hat of an interfaith mom, I have three main goals for 2012:

1) Gracefully release my first child into the world. My daughter’s about to turn 18; she will leave for college this year. I have spent much of the past few months interviewing college students and young adults who graduated from interfaith education programs like ours, as part of the research for my book. I am examining the role religion plays in their lives once they are outside the protective bubble of an independent interfaith community. As she leaves our family, and, effectively, leaves the Interfaith Families Project in which she has been raised, I give my daughter this advice: continue to study and explore religion, deepening your knowledge, seeking the forms of spirituality that work best for you. Take advantage of the opportunities provided on campus to connect with both sides of your religious heritage. But also, feel empowered to create an independent space on campus for interfaith children to come together and support each other: to replicate in miniature the interfaith community that nurtured you. And also, feel empowered to explain the particular skills and experience you bring, as someone raised in an interfaith community, to interfaith dialogue and interfaith activism efforts such as the campus-based Interfaith Youth Core.

2) Figure out what an interfaith community will mean to me in my “post-mom” phase. I still have a son just starting high school, but he has finished his formal Sunday School training in our interfaith community. So far, I find that even without children in the program, I continue to be drawn to our community on Sunday mornings–to the songs and reflections, to the chance to celebrate joys and mourn losses together, to the deep friendships I have made in our thriving community, to the lively adult discussion group, and to the tempting yoga class our community provides.

3) Finish the book! This fall, I recorded dozens of final interviews with interfaith parents, interfaith children, and clergy working with interfaith families. Over the next six months, I will wrestle this new material, and my hundreds of survey responses from interfaith parents and children, into a book with the working title, The Joy of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Family. I cannot wait to bring you these new voices and stories from the emerging movement of interfaith families raising children with two religions. Next year, inshallah, the book will reach your bookstore and your e-reader, thanks to Beacon Press.

Want to help? I am still seeking to interview more families raising children in two religions other than the Jewish/Christian combination (i.e. Muslim/Protestant, Buddhist/Jewish, Pagan/UU, Hindu/humanist, etc.). Please contact me at susan@onbeingboth.com.

Occupy Interfaith Families: The Metaphor

Recently, I wandered through the tent community at Occupy DC, admiring the boisterous, particolored arrival of the people into the mute, monumental grey canyons of the federal city. I knew I felt some personal harmonic resonance, but until this morning, I could not clearly articulate how or why the Occupy movement seemed especially relevant to interfaith families.

Then, I read a brilliant reflection on “Occupy’s Sacred Mob” by Vincent Gonzalez, a doctoral student in religious studies. Like most other religion writers and theologians, Gonzalez has been pondering “what is “religious” about the Occupy Wall Street movement.” And although this was not his intent, his analysis, on the website Religious Dispatches, spoke directly to me as an interfaith child and parent.

Inspired by the writings of French intellectual Roger Caillois, Gonzalez analyzes religion in the Occupy movement in the context of a vision of the sacred “characterized by organic complexity rather than spiritual singularity.” Of course, as someone born into a state of religious double-belonging, I am immediately drawn to any analysis that privileges complexity over singularity.

Gonzalez goes on to describe how “the intimacy of life in a park or along a sidewalk is causing traditions to do something more than “coexist” plurally. Religions are colluding and combining.” And this is exactly how traditions behave in interfaith families: they go beyond safe and ephemeral “interfaith dialogue” and commit to living together and combining into families, not in temporary encampments but in permanent dwellings. Beyond the parallel play of pluralism, interfaith families are swapping ritual genes and spiritual memes.

In the Occupy tent cities, Gonzalez identifies the natural emergence of “sites of religious conjunction” (meditation spaces and improvised shrines where images of Buddha, Ghandi and Christ coexist). This cross-pollination, he admits, may “repel” some, and clearly it inflames the religious right.

In interfaith families, we are all too familiar with the idea that we have gone too far, that such hybridization is unseemly, or even perilous. We wrestle with those who wish that interfaith families did not exist, or that all such families can and should be somehow absorbed back into religious singularity. Instead, many of us insist on reveling in our organic complexity, our embodiment of religious conjunction. We are gathering to drum our polyrhythms in cities across America, building new communities in which to explore the rich synergy of our interfaith existence.

Are Interfaith Children the Key to Interfaith Dialogue?

I would never have had the chutzpah (a word famously mispronounced by Michele Bachmann this week) to posit that interfaith children are actually THE key to interfaith dialogue. This week, I wrote an essay for Huffington Post and gave it the more modest title  “Why Include Interfaith Children in Interfaith Dialogue.” I made the case that interfaith families, and in particular, adult interfaith children, are “natural experts” in bridging cultures and religions, and that it would benefit the interfaith dialogue movement to reach out to interfaith families, rather than avoiding them. Huffington Post then tweeted a link to my essay, asking if interfaith children are the key to interfaith dialogue. Who knows? We won’t know until they are invited to participate. It’s certainly a grand vision. But my more modest point was to urge the organizers of interfaith conferences and programs to at least begin to include, rather than fear, interfaith families and children.

I have written before about the awkward semantic overlap of “interfaith families” and “interfaith dialogue,” and the way the word “interfaith” describes two independent concepts. But are they so different, really? On Huffington this week, I gave in to the classic bridge-building urge of many interfaith children, and attempted to span the gap between the interfaith families movement and the interfaith dialogue movement.

After posting to Huffington, I had an email conversation with religion (emeritus) professor Ned Rosenbaum, co-author (with wife Mary Helene Rosenbaum) of the ground-breaking book Celebrating Our Differences: Living Two Faiths in One Marriage. He has also noticed the uneasy relationship between interfaith dialogue and interfaith families. He describes the speakers at many interfaith dialogue conferences as like “parallel lines in Euclidean geometry, never meeting.” And adds,  “If they ever wanted to see what happens when interfaith paths cross like strands of DNA” he and Mary are available. And so are the adult interfaith children who embody those intertwined strands.

Journalist Susan Katz Miller is an interfaith families speaker, consultant, and coach, and author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family (2015), and The Interfaith Family Journal (2019). Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

Being Both: Biracial, Bireligious, Multiracial, Multireligious

Today’s front-page story in the New York Times under the headline “Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above” describes how mixed-race youth are claiming their right to what I call “the joy of being both.” I often write about the parallels between biracial and interfaith children. A lot of the quotes in the article from students at the University of Maryland will resonate with those of us who are “mixed-religion” children. The President of the university’s Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, when asked how she marks her race on a form, replies, “It depends on the day, and it depends on the options.” This is exactly my response to forms that ask for my religion.

The reporter does an excellent job of explaining that these youth are not necessarily trying to transcend the categories, they are simply “asserting their freedom to identify as they choose.” And an interfaith child should have the right to choose to be a Jew or a Christian (or whatever religion they want), or to keep the interfaith label. “All society is trying to tear you apart and make you pick a side,” says another biracial Maryland student. “I want us to have a say.” And that’s what interfaith children want.

On the other hand, the realities of African-American history, of Jewish history, of the minority experience, mean that the two sides are weighted and freighted unequally. One mother of biracial black/white children told me, “I have always been crystal clear with my kids: you are black.” Many interfaith families choose Judaism for their children, for similar reasons. Be proud and stand with your people, others are going to identify you as black (Jewish) anyway, do not try to “pass.”

Nevertheless, the US census began allowing mixed-race children to check more than one box for race in 2000. A somewhat snarky line in the New York Times article attributes this change to “years of complaints and lobbying, mostly by the white mothers of biracial children.” This ignores the contributions of adult mixed-race people such as psychology researcher Maria Root, whose work was considered by the government in their decision to change the census format.

With her permission, I adapted Root’s powerful “Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage” into a parallel “Bill of Rights for Interfaith People.” Less well known is her equally compelling “50 Experiences of Mixed Race People.” The first experience on this list: “You have to choose; you can’t be both.” Familiar, indeed.

President Barack Obama, born as both a biracial and an interfaith child, writes in his first memoir of choosing to be black, and choosing to be Christian. Part of the point that mixed-race students make in today’s article is the right to this self-identification. On the other hand, some of us claiming and exploring the positive aspects of mixedness, or bothness, can be zealous in our newfound enthusiasm. We cannot help spotting and pridefully claiming fellow interfaith (or multiracial) children. The reporter describes tension between students who claim Obama as a mixed-race President, and an African-American student who pleads, “Stop taking away our black president.”

As an interfaith child, I recognize the right of any mixed child to self-identify. I respect Obama’s self-identification, just as I recognize Gabrielle Giffords as Jewish, a choice she made after being raised with a bit of “both.” I’m not trying to take away anyone’s first Jewish congressperson from Arizona. Or anyone’s black President. But as intermarriage continues, and as the population of “both” children grows, how we label ourselves, and the labels we give each other, will inevitably continue to change.

Positive Interfaith Identity in Children: Five Strategies

Those of us born into more than one race, culture or religion share a bond of “bothness.” Whether from immigrant families, adopted, multifaith, multiracial, raised overseas, or simply of mixed Irish and Italian background, we share the experience of growing up with more than one worldview. And we share the reality of existing outside of neat, labeled identity boxes. As an interfaith child and parent, I am teaching my own children to leap joyfully in and out of those boxes, and frolic in the space between them.

My parents (one Jewish, one Protestant) have been happily intermarried for more than fifty years now. I revel in being a “both/and” person rather than an “either/or” person. Through working with a community of over 100 interfaith families, counseling interfaith couples, and writing an interfaith families blog, I have distilled principles to help in cultivating the joy of being both:

1. Give children permission to explore and connect with all sides of their heritage. This sounds obvious, but there is tremendous pressure from society to reduce your child’s identity to a single label. Every time we fill out a form and check one box for race, or religion, we face this reductive and diminishing pressure. Ironically, ignoring a significant part of a child’s background can create a situation in which the “forbidden fruit” becomes more attractive than the identity you are trying to foster.

2. Avoid setting up an expectation that the child will “choose” an identity someday. Pressure to choose can create a sense of competition. Understand that your child may shift identities in different circumstances, and over time. We are complex, not confused. Pioneering psychologist Maria Root has written a “Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage” every “both” child should hang in his or her bedroom. With Dr. Root’s permission, I have adapted this into a “Bill of Rights for Interfaith People.”

3. Understand that those who are not born into bothness, even those who are intermarried, may never fully appreciate the idea of being both. For historical, political, or practical reasons, we all choose labels sometimes that simplify our backgrounds and allow us to fit in, or make a statement of solidarity with one of our cultures. In the presence of anti-Semites, I loudly proclaim my Judaism, rather than denying it. Many black/white biracial children find it necessary in American culture to identify as African-American. But we still feel our bothness.

4. Insist on the joy of being both. In the face of skepticism from the media, friends, family and clergy, stay true to the vision that inspired you to intermarry, move to a new culture, or adopt across boundaries. Communicate to your children that they represent hope for the future, bridges of peace and understanding, crucial new connections across rigid, deteriorating barriers.

5. Seek and develop communities that share your bothness. I grew up as the only “half-Jewish” kid I knew. Now, I see my children thriving in a community of interfaith families. Find or construct a community that shares your family’s complexity. This will be easier in Brooklyn or Vancouver than in a rural area. If you are an interfaith family, check the list of resources on my blog, onbeingboth.com. (An interfaith families community in Philadelphia is just starting up!) No matter where you live, it is getting easier for us to find each other online. Because we are the demographic future.

 

Susan Katz Miller is the author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family, from Beacon Press. She works as an interfaith families consultant, speaker, and coach. Follow her on twitter @susankatzmiller.

I wrote this essay for the debut issue of  Bridge Magazine, a Philadelphia-based digital publication created to tell the stories of the intereverything generation (biracial, interfaith, transracially adopted, etc.). Special thanks to Sam Watson, founder and editor, for permission to repost.

Interfaith Child: The Bar Mitzvah Plan

So the decision has been made, we have two rabbis involved, and we’re heading for a Bar Mitzvah this spring. Over the winter vacation, my son, 13, even got to study his Hebrew with my 86-year-old father, who happens to be his only Jewish grandparent.

Some folks are curious, bewildered, or even disgruntled, about why we would undertake the involved process of Bar Mitzvah preparation for a child raised in an interfaith community. Let me try to explain.

Many of our reasons should sound familiar: we want our child to learn the Sabbath prayers, affirm a deep connection to Judaism, celebrate his imminent manhood, and have the formative experience of standing up and leading a worship service. And we want to provide an opportunity to bring the generations of our family and friends together, to kvell and feel nachas and dance a joyful hora.

So why is this Bar Mitzvah different from all others? My child’s family tree includes more Christian than Jewish branches. Celebrating a coming of age together provides a chance to share with extended family the possibility of interfaith community. We will honor and acknowledge all of my son’s heritage in this rite of passage, including a blessing from our interfaith minister. Coming from our interfaith worldview, it would be both inauthentic and disrespectful to do otherwise.

Judaism’s Hebrew liturgy has survived through the millenia, through the diaspora, through the Holocaust. When my children learn to decipher Hebrew, and recite Hebrew prayers, they affirm their connection to this powerful history. But at the same time, all religions and rituals evolve over time, and Judaism is no different. In creating a coming of age ceremony that reflects the full heritage of my children, we realize that we are pushing boundaries.

In designing these ceremonies for my children, I try not to become completely paralyzed by the (often conflicting) “requirements” for a Bar Mitzvah, issued by various sages and authorities. The truth is that the Bar Mitzvah tradition is not an ancient one. Since I began planning for my daughter’s coming-of-age five years ago, I have spent a lot of time fending off the “a Bar Mitzvah has to include such-and-such” statements. With each of my children, I have tried to help them craft a rite of passage best suited to their own place in their spiritual journey.

Technically, a child who reaches the age of 13 becomes a Bar or Bat Mitzvah (“son or daughter of the commandment”), whether or not a ceremony occurs. Originally, reaching this age simply meant the child could now fully participate in Jewish rituals, such as fasting on Yom Kippur or counting as part of a minyan. In the Middle Ages, this milestone began to be recognized by calling the Bar Mitzvah boy up to the bimah for the first time, to say the blessings over the Torah reading, in what is known as an aliyah. More recently, the tradition of the first aliyah at age 13 evolved into chanting all of the Shabbat prayers, the entire Torah portion, and the accompanying haftorah. My son will lead prayers, and chant from the Torah.

I know only too well from personal experience that as interfaith children we are constantly called on to defend our Jewish identities, and that saying I “had a Bar Mitzvah” helps to deflect these inquiries. In creating these ceremonies for our children, we arm them with a positive retort when questioned on this subject. This does not diminish the fact that the actual day of celebration for my daughter was truly a spiritual experience for her, for her parents, and for many of the Jews and Christians who shared it with us. And I know that it will be just as meaningful for my son, in the spring.

Chelsea’s Marriage as Interfaith Story of the Year: Top Five Reasons

After scouring the various lists of “top religion stories of the year,” I was frustrated, but not surprised, to find nary a mention of interfaith families, let alone Chelsea Clinton’s interfaith marriage last August.

About 100 reporters from the Religion Newswriters Association voted on their top 20 religion stories from 2010. Many of the top stories were not about religion, per se, but religious angles on major news events: the Haiti earthquake, the rise of the Tea Party, bullying of gay teens, immigration reform. Somehow, Julia Roberts got mentioned for converting to Hinduism after appearing in the movie version of “Eat, Pray, Love.” But strangely, the word “interfaith” does not even appear anywhere on this list. Too often, religion reporters seem to gravitate to the religion beat because of their own faith, whatever faith that may be. They do not seem to understand, or give much press to, those of us who cross religious boundaries.

Over at Huffington Post, crowd-sourcing produced what seemed to me to be a more thoughtful and savvy list of nominees for Religion Story of the Decade, including the growth of the “Interfaith Movement.” The Interfaith Movement is not synonymous with the Interfaith Families Movement: most clergy engaged in religious dialogue have yet to fully acknowledge the vast numbers of dual-belonging and intermarried folks, and fully include us in their parliaments and pow-wows. Nonetheless, HuffPo’s acknowledgement of religious bridging, if not literal religious cross-fertilization, provides a certain satisfaction.

Since no one else seems to be picking Chelsea’s wedding as religion story of the year, I will just have to go ahead and do it myself. Interfaith marriage has occurred since ancient times. So why was this celebrity wedding such a big deal to interfaith families? Here are five reasons:

1. This wedding brought all of the issues surrounding intermarriage to the national and international media and launched a thousand blogposts and editorials. While some of the Jewish bloggers were angsty and even negative about the marriage, the opportunity to post comments led to a thousand discussions on my favorite topic. And discussion is good.

2. This wedding normalized interfaith marriage in the American political elite and highlighted respected leaders (Bill and Hillary) as gracious in-laws who did not issue so much as a peep of protest or concern when their daughter married a Jewish man under a chuppah. Truly, times have changed.

3. This wedding stands in to signify what I think is the most important trend in American religion.  A year ago, the Pew Research Center released a report concluding that “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths.” This news did not come as a shock to anyone in an interfaith marriage, since intermarriage is one of the driving forces behind this trend.

4. This wedding created an opportunity for intermarried couples to relive a key moment in their own stories. Did you find a rabbi and a minister willing to perform your intermarriage? If not, how did that impact your choice of religious affiliation? A recent, poignant essay recounts the pain caused when “Chelsea’s rabbi” refused to marry another interfaith couple, years ago. After Chelsea’s wedding, Rabbi James Ponet wrote of how his thinking, and the thinking of many Reform rabbis, has evolved to allow him to perform interfaith ceremonies. He writes eloquently of the Jews as an “ever-evolving” people.

5. This wedding created a moment of festivity, of vindication, of positive energy for interfaith families around the globe. In a year when major media continue to twist the slim research and publish opinions to discourage interfaith marriage, I could not help but enjoy the chance for national celebration of the growing acceptance of interfaith unions.

So thank you to Chelsea and Marc, and to Bill and Hillary, and to Rabbi Ponet and Reverend William Shillady, for brightening my interfaith year.