Top Posts in 2020

My current jigsaw puzzle, also a mandala, also reminiscent of a covid sphere.

Does anyone else feel like these final days of 2020 are moving in slow motion?

We’re “on vacation” with nowhere to go, no one to see. The psychopathic demagogue in the White House is using every final moment of 2020 to wreak more havoc. The pandemic continues to roar through like a tidal wave, and lifeboat vaccines seem to sweep out of reach. Honestly, it is hard to focus on interfaith families (or anything). Though of course family, any family, every family, remains crucial in this time of unbearable stress and trauma.

So this was not a year for big accomplishments, unless you work in medicine or public health, or you are a teacher who managed to transition successfully to working online, or entirely outdoors. Myself, well, I sure did a lot of jigsaw puzzles–a “mindless pleasure” my family likes to indulge on vacation together, but something I had never let myself do alone at home before. Finding a missing piece, fitting the pieces together, is a balm now, and a meditative practice, and I see no reason to deny myself the hours of “unproductive” puzzling.

But I also feel I owe it to my readers to look back on this year as it ends, and think about how interfaith families are weathering this moment in history, a topic I wrote about here, and then here and here and here. What else? I gave some keynotes and talks that were supposed to be in person, on zoom instead–others got postponed.

Back in the spring, the facebook group I founded, the Network of Interfaith Family Groups (NIFG), got excited about meeting up on zoom, for awhile, until we all got zoomed out. And I helped some of those families connect to online worship and interfaith religious education for kids, through IFFP in DC, the Brookville Multifaith Campus, and the Family School in Chicago. So all of that was satisfying.

Especially, to be perfectly honest, the jigsaw puzzles!

After blogging for more than a decade, I took some months off, but then found a lot of energy for writing short reports and essays in the final weeks of the year. Since it launched in 2009, this blog has been visited by over 195,000 people, with over 366,000 views, and 382 essays on interfaith families.

My top posts in 2020 had nothing to do with the pandemic, and may surprise you:

1. The Interfaith Family of Kamala Harris. This was the feel-good story we all needed in 2020. An interfaith kid raised with both Christian and Hindu traditions grows up and marries a Jewish man, and goes to the White House! Surely this example of what I call an interfaith trifecta family will help to normalize the beauty of our complex, rich, multireligious heritages and extended families, going forward. While many in the Jewish (and South Asian) press wrote about Harris’s interfaith family from monofaith perspectives, this post got a lot of hits because I pointed out that we–those of us who grew up in interfaith families–are a demographic force to be reckoned with, and we are showing up in leadership positions, even at the very top now.
2. Ten Reasons to Teach Interfaith Children Both Religions. This is exactly what Kamala Harris’s mother did! I love that this little essay, written ten years ago now in 2010, continued to hold down the #2 spot for popularity on my blog ten years later in 2020. It lays out the argument in my first book for giving interfaith kids an interfaith education, in a condensed list of ten points. As a growing segment of the population is celebrating more than one religion, this post is only becoming more relevant.
3. Interfaith Marriage and the Rise of the Religious “Nones.” This is another older post (from 2012) that is only becoming more and more relevant with time. The religious “nones” (atheists, agnostics, the spiritual but not religious or SBNRs, anyone who doesn’t affiliate with a single religious identity anymore) continue to grow. Families spanning Christians and “nones” are the largest segment of interfaith families in the US, and the fastest-growing. Recently, I reviewed a new memoir, Blessed Are the Nones, that is a dispatch from this world. This is a topic I will return to in 2021, and beyond. So, onward through the unknown.

As pandemic fatigue sets in, keep your interfaith family safe–and that means keep everyone safe, because as I like to point out, we’re all interfaith families now. Keep your mask on outside your house. Stay inside, or outside in the wild, if you have that privilege. Me, I am trying to get beyond jigsaw puzzles, to some creative new endeavors. And that may or may not happen in 2021. And that’s okay.

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.

Eight Top Interfaith Family Posts of the Decade

Author Susan Katz Miller in Chicago in 2019

We are heading into a new decade (and the second decade for this blog). So I thought I would pause to think about the top interfaith family themes from 2009 to 2019, as represented by the most popular posts on this blog.

1. Muslim and Jewish: Interfaith on “Shahs of Sunset“ (24,879 views). This post gets a lot of hits because of the success of the frothy long-running reality show, with all its fake scripted scenes and whipped-up melodrama. But I like to think there is something valuable, and future forward, about what I describe as the “unusual depiction of a close circle of Jewish and Muslim (and Christian) friends.”
2. Ten Reasons to Teach Interfaith Children Both Religions (20,336 views). This is probably the foundational post on this blog, distilling the philosophy of interfaith families who want to give their children interfaith literacy. So I am glad it has remained a perennial top post, ever since 2010.
3. Life of Pi: Hindu, Christian and Muslim (17,890 views). As with half the posts on this top hits list, this one goes beyond the familiar Christian-and-Jewish binary. Life of Pi reflects the global reality in which multiple religious practice is common. And the popularity of the book, and movie, has introduced many people in the United States to theological and philosophical ideas raised by the complex forms of religious identity in Asia and elsewhere around the globe.
4. Successful Interfaith Marriage: Reza Aslan and Jessica Jackley (12,320 views). I was lucky to interview Reza and Jessica about their Muslim and Christian interfaith marriage for my first book. Later, they recorded a popular TED talk on the topic, and have begun writing about their interfaith family, so stay tuned. Muslim and Christian is one of the fastest-growing forms of interfaith family, as demonstrated by the Muslim Christian Interfaith Families group on facebook (which I helped to inspire!).
5. Advent, Christmas, Hanukkah, Welcome Yule! Interfaith Families Doing the Most (4477 views). I have written dozens of posts on the various “December holidays” and how they overlap and interplay from year to year, but this one touches on them all. It got a spike in views in 2011 when a light-hearted piece I published in Huffington Post resulted in a nasty response in the Forward. I wrote a letter back (and eventually received an apology). For me, this post signifies the fact that much of the institutional Jewish world still cannot accept that somewhere between 25% and 50% of interfaith Jewish families are practicing more than one religion.
6. Successful Interfaith Marriage: A Jewish and Muslim Wedding (4140 views). I love the fact that two of the posts in the “Successful Interfaith Marriage” series made it into this top eight, and neither actually centers on a Jewish and Christian family. This was the only top post written by a guest blogger, Rorri Geller-Mohammed, a social worker who runs a therapy practice focused on multiracial and multicultural families. I welcome guest bloggers, so contact me if you have anything you want to say to the world about being part of an interfaith family!
7. Blessing of the Interfaith Babies (3782 views). This is one in an ongoing series of essays that describe moments in the communal life of an interfaith families group–in this case the Interfaith Families Project of Greater Washington DC. I think it gets a lot of hits because there is very little out there about how to welcome interfaith children into the family. This post provides some rituals and strategies and thoughts on how to do it.
8. Interfaith Marriage: A Love Story (3154 views). As I write this, I see another pattern in this list. People are searching for examples of successful, loving interfaith relationships, and finding them on this blog. And it seems fitting that this post, a celebration of my parents on their 50th wedding anniversary, made it into the top eight. Now that they are both gone, I feel so very grateful that I wrote this post, and my first book, while they were still alive. Their example continues to inspire me as I begin to write about the next decade, from my new perspective as part of the eldest generation in my interfaith family.

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.

New! Online Interfaith Couples Workshop

Photo: StephanieWilliamsImages

For years now I have led interfaith family workshops for specific groups (including rabbis, and Unitarian-Universalist religious educators). I have helped lead interfaith couples workshops in the DC area, and privately coached interfaith couples.

But this fall, for the first time, I am thrilled to facilitate a four-part online workshop for interfaith couples based on The Interfaith Family Journal. The workshop is open to those from any religion, or all, or none. It is open to those who plan to practice one religion, or two, or more, or all, or none. All are welcome. The sponsor is Reconstructing Judaism, the first of the four largest Jewish movements to ordain rabbis with a spouse or partner from another religion. I am honored to work with them to bring you this unique workshop experience. We will meet online for an hour on each of four Tuesday nights starting September 3rd.

I created The Interfaith Family Journal to help any family or individual, anywhere. Through writing prompts, interactive exercises, and creative activities, the Journal supports you in understanding your religious and cultural past and forging a plan for your own interfaith family dreams and visions. Those who have used it testify to the power of this slim workbook.

Now, with this workshop, we have the opportunity to come together as interfaith families, no matter where we live. Together, we will create a supportive mini-community while working through the Journal to share our thoughts and experiences, our challenges and our joys. There is nothing like hearing your own questions and formative moments reflected in the words of someone else in a group, someone you’ve never met before. By spending these intimate hours together, we have the chance to feel affirmed and supported, gather new ideas, and feel less alone when facing ignorance or exclusion. Together, we will create this new space, and feel free to celebrate all that can be joyful, educational, and inspiring about being an interfaith family–whatever that family looks like for you.

I cannot wait to meet those of you who sign up! I am spending my August making plans for how we will weave this community together, and how I can be most helpful to you in these hours online. I have that excited back-to-school feeling with September approaching. Who will be in my class this year? (Yes, I was that nerd who loved school, both as a student, and later as a teacher). So please join me, sign up here before the workshop fills (space is limited), and share this post with anyone you know who might benefit.

I hope to see you soon, online!

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 a workbook, The Interfaith Family Journal (2019).

“Conversation With Interfaith Family Pioneer”

Ken Chitwood describes himself as a “theologian without borders,” interested in “the contextualization of doctrines & practices across religious boundaries, physical borders, & cultural barriers.” Needless to say, that’s my kind of theologian. Ken is both an academic in religious studies, and an experienced religion newswriter. This somewhat rare combination informed an unusually long and thoughtful interview about interfaith families and Being Both, published on Ken’s Houston Chronicle blog, Sacred Duty, this week. For those who don’t follow me on twitter (@beingboth) or Facebook, I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss this interview. Click the link here:

What’s it like ‘being both?’ A conversation with interfaith family pioneer, author, Susan Katz Miller

 

Susan Katz Miller’s book, Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family is available now in hardcover and eBook from Beacon Press. You can also pre-order the paperback now.

 

Listen, Include, Engage: Progress for Interfaith Families

 

My parents, interfaith family pioneers, still kicking and strumming at 83 and 89

 

A couple of years back, the venerable Jewish Daily Forward published a blogpost in the form of a letter attacking my family for celebrating Christmas. I waited several days before responding. Meanwhile, readers and bloggers rushed in to decry the “snide” “condescending” “offensive” “anti-interfaith family” tone of the original post. One wrote that it “paints a scary picture for interfaith families in the Jewish community.”

But in the six months since the publication of Being Both, I have witnessed a different picture emerging. I have been honored to give talks sponsored by synagogues, Hillels, Jewish Community Centers, and a group of rabbis. I was invited onto an interfaith family task force by my local Jewish Federation. And The Forward chose my beloved rabbi, Harold M. White, the Jewish Spiritual leader of my interfaith families community, when I nominated him as one of the most inspiring rabbis in America for 2014.

Granted, progress comes in fits and starts. Sometimes a leader from a synagogue discussion group calls asking me to speak: these congregants are worried about intermarried children and grandchildren who are often “doing nothing.” They wonder if “doing both” might not be a richer experience for their grandchildren, and a better bet for Jewish continuity. Whenever I receive one of these invitations, I have to ask if they have checked with the rabbi. More than once, I have received a call back from a frustrated and embarrassed congregant dis-inviting me, and explaining that the rabbi sees my mission as counter to the mission of institutional Judaism.

And yet, everywhere I do speak, I see the religious landscape shifting, with extended families and religious institutions far more willing now to support interfaith couples and children, even when they must “share” them with another religion. And that means that interfaith families have many more good options for finding community than they did a generation ago, whether that community is Jewish, Christian, Unitarian-Universalist, secular humanist, or (like my own Interfaith Families Project) intentionally interfaith.

Just this spring, I realized once again how far we have all come when The Forward, the same media outlet that published that scathing letter addressed to me two years ago, asked me to join the roster of experts for their new interfaith relationship advice column, The Seesaw. The expert panel includes an Orthodox Jew living in Israel, a Christian spouse, and Rabbi James Ponet (Chelsea Clinton’s rabbi). I am the only panel member raising children with any formal religious education beyond Judaism.

If I were to design my own roster of experts to give advice to interfaith families, I would of course choose people raising children on many different religious and non-religious pathways. But given the chance to represent something other than the “you must raise kids exclusively Jewish” perspective,  I said yes. The comment section on The Seesaw is at times filled with sarcasm and intolerance, and at least one of my fellow respondents regularly despairs over my responses. But over all, I enjoy seeing how the respondents reflect diverse Jewish viewpoints, often displaying a deep sensitivity to the nuances and complexity of interfaith family life.

I advocate for the Jewish community (and all religious communities) to engage with, rather than exclude, parents who expose their children to more than one family religion. Given that Pew Research has found that 25% of intermarried Jews are raising children with more than one religion, the logic of including rather than spurning these families seems very compelling to me, even when viewed through the lens of preserving Jewish institutions. And this spring, I see a flowering of support for the idea of providing Jewish content to all families who want it, creating meaningful Jewish experiences for them, and allowing children to grow Jewish roots, even if they are putting down roots in more than one family tradition.

I celebrated my birthday this week, in my childhood home, with my pioneering interfaith parents (who are 83 and almost 90). It seemed like a fitting moment to look back on an exhilarating six months of public interfaith conversations. If you are in the Washington DC area, I hope you will join me for my final interfaith talk of the season, at the MLK branch of the DC public library this Wednesday at 7:30pm.

And if you haven’t been able to get to a live Being Both talk, you can watch two new videos. One is a webinar posted by Religions for Peace USA, in which I chat with Aaron Stauffer of Religions for Peace USA, and adult interfaith child Samantha Gonzalez-Block. The other is a video of an event at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs at Georgetown University, in which I appeared with Georgetown’s Erika Seamon, author of the excellent academic book, Interfaith Marriage in America. Erika’s history of interfaith marriage at the beginning of the program is fascinating, and don’t miss our lively Q&A with students and faculty at the end.

I already have plans for talks in Chicago and New York next fall. Let me know if your community wants to be included in either of those visits, or if you want to host a talk elsewhere in the country. I look forward to a conversation that will continue with all of you, growing deeper and wider and more complex, next year, and into the years ahead.

 

 

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

 

 

Being Both: Catch the Interfaith Tour in PA, CT, CA, VA, DC

Susan Katz Miller at Politics & Prose, StephanieWilliamsImages

The Being Both book tour is ramping up again, just in time for Passover and Easter. You can help by forwarding this post to friends and family near Easton PA, Greenwich CT, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Charlottesville VA and Washington DC.

First up will be Lafayette College in Easton, PA on March 6th. I’ll be giving a new talk tailored for college campuses, drawing on interviews with college students from interfaith families, and emphasizing the extraordinary religious complexity, fluidity and flexibility in this generation. I will also advocate for young people from interfaith families to take leadership roles in interfaith dialogue and activism on campus. Facebook event page here. I’m currently booking college campus speaking engagements (as well as church, synagogue, and library talks) for next fall, when the paperback of Being Both should come out, so contact me now if you are interested.

Next, I am excited to be speaking at the historic Bush-Holley House in Cos Cob, CT on March 13th, for an Interfaith Conversation with a wine and cheese reception, sponsored by the Greenwich JCC, Jewish Family Services of Greenwich, and the Jewish Book Council. Required reservation and RSVP here.

Then, California here I come. First stop will be at the Silicon Valley JCC on March 19th, for an event titled, “Two Religions, One Family, a Million Questions.” I’ll be appearing with authors Rabbi Michal Woll and Jon Sweeney (a Jewish and Catholic couple). Please purchase tickets here. This event, and the Greenwich event, are part of my year as a Jewish Book Council Network Author.

The next night, join me at the “Bay Area’s Liveliest Bookstore,” the marvelous Book Passage in Marin County, at March 20th at 7pm, followed by wine and cheese. Facebook event page here. This is my only appearance on this trip in the Bay Area, but I hope to return next year. Contact me if you want to schedule an event for the next California trip!

After northern California, I will nip down to LA to visit a certain beloved college student, and also to visit classes at Claremont School of Theology. (Contact me if you want to sponsor another event in LA between March 22nd and March 26th.)

Later in the spring, I’m planning events at the Berkeley Center at Georgetown University on April 3rd, at the University of Virginia on April 9th, and at the MLK branch of the DC Public Library on May 7th. Stay tuned for more…

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

Being Both: The Interfaith Book Trailer

Over winter break, I returned to my childhood home outside Boston, surrounded this time of year by deep snow and deer and wild turkeys. I love to go through the old photos stored in a window seat there, and ask my parents to tell and retell our family stories. This year, I took some of those photos and made them into a book trailer (a short video), in order to illustrate the memoir chapter of Being Both. If you watch closely, you will notice that I wore my mother’s wedding dress. And if you listen closely, you will hear my father at the piano. I hope you enjoy these minutes (less than two actually) of interfaith family history, and will pass it on to friends.

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