In March, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) issued a statement on intermarriage during the organization's 2010 convention that stated,

"While in the past the Reform rabbis focused discussion on how to prevent intermarriage, the CCAR today affirmed that    intermarriage is a given and should be approached with the goal of engaging intermarried families in Jewish life and living. Rabbis can and should work to improve the effectiveness of their efforts to encourage intermarried people to embrace Judaism for themselves and their children."

If you participate or work in interfaith outreach programs, you may have been happy to see our efforts finally getting some recognition, or maybe you thought, "What took so long?" It took a three-year study by the CCAR's Task Force on the Challenges of Intermarriage to determine what many of us already know from personal experience, that outreach to interfaith families works.

My synagogue, Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, does many things to connect with interfaith families and make them a part of the congregation. We have a lot of anecdotal experience demonstrating why outreach matters. But something interesting has been happening, we are finding that outreach to interfaith families is filling a need for our inmarried families as well. For the past year, we have seen an increase in inmarried attendance at our Interfaith Moms and Interfaith Dads educational and community events.

Why Inmarrieds Participate

It is nice to think that our outreach initiatives have broad appeal, but it begs the question, why would inmarried families want to participate in interfaith family events? Here's what we've determined.

Compelling programs. The discussions that our Interfaith Moms and Dads groups have developed are filling the need for education on Jewish topics for all parents, not just interfaith ones. Programs such as How to Talk to Your Children About God, What is a Mitzvah, How to Celebrate Shabbat in the Home and Dealing with Prejudice were created from questions interfaith families asked, but are in fact, of interest to all our parents raising Jewish children.

Jewish connection. Our Interfaith Family Chanukah Story Time, created so interfaith families could celebrate and connect during the holiday season, had strong attendance by inmarried families. Seeing that families in general want Jewish connection, we opened our Passover matzo making and Yom HaShoah Holocaust museum visit to the entire congregation.

No one else is addressing the issues. Our interfaith groups are covering topics that other synagogue groups are not. That's not a bad thing, the temple calendar is filled with so many learning opportunities that there isn't a need to have multiple groups talking about the same thing.

It's a non-threatening environment. Our groups provide a safe learning environment. An inmarried mom said she felt embarrassed that she had questions about mitzvahs. In a setting where many of the other the participants weren't raised Jewish and so didn't expect themselves to know about Jewish concepts, it was safe for this mom to say, "I don't know."

Younger congregants aren't as apprehensive about intermarriage. Our younger families are more accepting, probably because it is more common among their peers. As one inmarried mom told me, "I wish I could attend every Interfaith Moms program. You do such cool stuff."