I grew up with children of converts. The converts are active in the synagogues and well respected. More so than others, because they CHOSE Judaism, not just born to it. I too feel this respect. Maybe that isnt true everywhere, but in Boston and Houston in the Conservative community in the US they are welcome with open arms. We should support all who embrace Judaism. Why wouldnt we? Its the Jewish way. It is also the Jewish way to respect non-Jews. Those are some of the reasons I love being Jewish. I coudnt imagine not being Jewish or not raising my children as Jewish.

What needs to be re thought is the smicha you received, you will go the way of Mattisyahu, Schlessinger and Boteach, do you need a forum, maybe you will become a Westheimer, why can't you just be a normal Rabbi, Noah no No G-d Feldman is a nasty man, who pro bono fought for a town against an eruv, he lied he was not cut out of a school picture because of a then Korean girlfriend, he is just nasty man, intermarraige is the death of Judaism for that line that CHOOSES that path, and that choice is made for many reasons the most important ignorance of the punishment from G-d for it ,it is not sociology but Jewish self hate hate hate.

Hey Mike if you were would you go to the gas chambers with the six million?

They used to say that Lubavitch is the closest religion to Judaism. "Rabbi" Brackman proves in this article that Lubavitch no longer deserves that distinction. It's approaches are totally different from the Torah and are hateful and destructive to Jewish continuity. It is a crime to let this imposter quote things in the name of Judaism. A Bhuddist Priest would stand a better chance of coming close to the truth than this fellow. Those who voluntarily and knowingly cut themselves off from Jewish llife deserve no consideration.

"hook-line-and-sinker their misguided teachings"="The converts are active in the synagogues and well respected. " Does it occur to you that they are not doing Torah?

I am not a Lubavitcher, but to say that a whole segment of the Torah observant population are not Jewish anymore it seems like hate for the different. The Meshichisti are a bit meshugah but there is allways been the odd ones amongst us, take it whith humor that's also a characteristic of the Jewish people.

I read Rabbi Levi Brackman's article on re-thinking interfaith....and it struck home. I am a product of an inter faith Marriage and often am unsure of my standing in the Jewish community...and also my wife and children's(Sarah and Hannah)...anyway my father says we are Jewish..but I wish the Jewish community would accept us. Martin Levi

Of course your neices and nephews hate Jews because of what they've heard and seen at home. Your siblings need psychological help with their Jew-shame and intense self-hatred which led them to choose partners who are basically Neo-Nazis. You have a lot of patience because if your in-laws would have said those anti-semitic things in front of me, they would be in the hospital and I would be in prison.

I don't approve of marriages outside our faith, but, once a Jew, always a Jew and we should NOT drive any Jew away from the fold.

i'm here sacrificing to stand with the jewish state, have my kids in jewish israeli schools, and we are targets of terror and future wars despite the fact we're not jewish. if the iranian nuke falls on israeli jews, i'll be dying with them. so what's your point?

What about the children? That is the big problem about this whole thing!!!!

ur contribution to the subject was highly informative,u said it the way it should be ,no half measure

#36, Lubavitchers may nominally be Jews but they don't follow the Torah in the views they express. They also espouse apikorsus with their meshichist and elokist approaches.

It has been incredibly hard especially during the holidays. When my siblings intermarried they stopped being Jewish. I go to their homes and spend the evening with their Christian relatives and friends, listen to their stories about Christmas and politely refuse to eat their baked ham, etc. I actually find more in common with the devout Christian relatives of my in-laws than with my siblings and their spouses. At least they believe in G-d and care about Jerusalem.Trying to "rethink intermarriage" - to make a Jewish family when there is no commitment to Judaism is a waste of effort. All 3 of my children have dated non-Jews. One is close to intermarrying. My husband and I are making aliyah with the other 2. To Christians and "progressive" Jews here: Go ahead and call me a racist for wanting Jewish grandchildren.

Noah Feldman's inflammatory article unleashed two weeks of debate within and about modern orthodoxy. Not only was the article poorl argued--lumping tefillin with Oped Dei accoutrements and pulling in Yigdal Amir and Baruch Goldstein as representative examples of the movement, the social slight that justified the article--his being cropped from a class photo because he had a non-Jewish fiance--was a fabrication. As Feldman admitted in the Jewish Week, he knew two weeks in advance of the article's publication that many photos were taken at his reunion, none of which captured all the students. The one that appeared didn't have Feldman and his wife to be, but it also excluded fourteen other people as well. One would expect a Harvard Law professor to be more careful with the facts and less loose with prejudicial innuendo that is patently false.

Statistics show that most children of intermarrieds marry outside the faith. The focus should be on strengthening Judaism for Jewish youth and singles, and on helping young Jewish families.

Communism which is atheistic has killed 100 million people and still enslaves 1/5 of the world's population. Communist ideology replaced G-d as a new religion. I live in an extremely secular neighborhood in the heart of the Hollywood entertainment community. My neighbors do not go to church or synagogue. They may be into the New Age religion of the moment (pseudo-Buddhism or pseudo-Kabbalah) but mostly they worship the religion of "the right image." They seek happiness by acquiring material possessions like expensive clothes, cars and homes, by being seen at the right restaurants and clubs, throwing parties to show off their interior decorating, travel, sex, alcohol and drugs. Secular people are no different from religious people in their basic need to find meaning in life. The difference is religious people find spiritual fulfillment. Secular people are constantly seeking...something.

I don't doubt for a moment that what you say is true, but you're describing a rather unique community of people in a very artificial environment. Many of us who are atheists go about our lives trying to live by "The Golden Rule," but without the need for a belief in a higher power. In fact, the sort of material and physical fulfillment you describe isn't necessarily something all non-believers feel compelled to strive for.

PLEASE CONTACT ME ,PERHAPS I CAN HELP YOU ! AVROHOM

inviting a intermarried couple into your home at any time is not the correct choice of action. This will signel to the Jew and non Jew that they are on safe ground; further the children if the mother is non Jewish are goyim. You are proposing a very dangerous and misleading path of action. People should be treated with human dignity but not misled or cusioned as to their halachic status. The Rebbe would never have support your stated position we in Chabad are not neo-Orthodox. Dr Feldman needs to be diplomatically encorage to do Teshuvah and his non Jewish spouse may under approprtiate halachic guidance by an established Beis Din be encouraged to convert. I read Feldman's piece in the New York Times and I found it a pathetic self defence of the indefenceable, boorish and intellectually dishonest, he need the proverbial spanking at his mother's knee. If this is the calibre of professors in American colleges, no wonder the Rebbe discouragered college attendence

OK I understand that Rabbi Brackman worries about losing Jews to intermarriage--but what about the Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform movements' and even the Orthodox track record with conversion? New blood, new conviction, new energy--all over the world, and especially in the United States, and here in Israel. Poor Rabbi Brackman lives in a tiny, pathetic, inbred world where people are so afraid of something new and different that they would deny marriage with the very people who will be instrumental in saving the Jewish people.

I intermarried. Some members of my community were uncomfortable, but the local Jewish community did NOT cut me off. Thank heavens for that! After getting to know my family and many decent, kind members of our community, my wife also began to appreciate the beauty of Judaism. She eventually converted (I'm proud of my wife) and we now have 3 terrific kids who value being Jewish. My wife's family is not Jewish, but her parents have had very close Jewish friends for many years, so I suppose it's not at all surprising that their daughter ended up marrying a Jewish guy. News flash: many non-Jewish spouses actually LIKE Jews. Shocking, isn't it? The fact that some relatives celebrate Christmas in their homes (we celebrate only the Jewish holidays, in ours) *is* sometimes a challenge. But then, the kids have friends who celebrate those holidays in their homes as well. The best way to deal with the challenge is to teach our kids to value all of the wonderful things Judaism has to offer. But you won't accomplish this by making threats or expelling their parents. As someone said above, we're in damage control mode, people. Intermarriage is going on regardless of your opinion or mine, and the more you throw tantrums and shove intermarried couples away instead of responding constructively, the worse the problem will get. You assume that the marital behavior of children of intermarried couples is fixed, that it has nothing to do with the fact that intermarried couples are frequently cut off by their communities. WELL DUH! Reach out, make sure that mixed kids DO have a chance to learn about their Jewishness, instead of writing them off! The rabbi is right.

Thank you for this intelligent piece. A few years ago, when my brother announced his intention to marry a Catholic girl, my parents went straight to their (Traditional) rabbi, who advised them never to let her into her home. My parents were horrified. When they came to me, I said, "Do you want to teach her that Judaism is a religion that discriminates and excludes, or do you want her to learn that Judaism is a religion full of beatiful old traditions?" They had a Jewish (reconstructionist) wedding, converted their first son when he was born...and my sister-in-law made the decision to convert herself at the same time. The path of love is always stronger.

Nice article Rabbi. I am a born again Christian and my wife is Jewish. We have been happily married for 13 years and have two beautiful children. We celebrate the religious holidays of both faiths which is extremely pleasing to my children during Christmas and Chanukah. When we were married, my wife’s Rabbi would not conduct an interfaith marriage, so we were forced to fly a Rabbi up from Los Angeles to Portland to conduct the service. Needless to say, my wife still refuses to go back to that Synagogue.

Umm- has he forgotten that bit int he Torah where it says very clearly "Do not let your sons marry theor daughters for they will be lost to ISrael. Do not let your daughters maryy their sons for they will lead your children to idoltary" In other words- intermarriage is completely forbidden. So, how can somebody who is publicly sinning be a shaliach for the congregation? Read the Shulchan Aruch or the Talmud and you will find it stating that a Shaliach Tzibur or Chazan needs to be an upstanding person who is respected and does not publicly sin. Exactly how does a Rabbi get upset that a person who is living a life in direct contradiction to halachah is not allowed to represent the community? And to those who want to claim that matrilineal descent was introduced by the Rabbis- rubbish. The quote I gave from the Torah shows that Jewish descent has always been matrilineal- that is why a man marrying a non-Jew is lost to the nation, since his children are non-Jewish children and thus lost to Bnei Yisrael. The children of the women might be enticed to other religions, and that is a concern since they are Jewish!

I started reading because of the article the Rabbi wrote about the election. I'm a Mormon, and we understand the concept of marying someone of the covenant so that your children will be raised as they should. Most Mormons mary other Mormons, but some do not. But we do not punish either spouse in any way. Being nice and wellcoming to someone of another faith is (a) the right way to be, and (b) makes them more likely to eventually convert. That's how we deal with the issue.