New interfaith task force seeking grant applicants

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey is making available $50,000 to subsidize programs for intermarried couples.

The hunt for grant recipients began on Sept. 15, when the newly formed Interfaith Family Engagement Task Force sent out a mass mailing to synagogues and other tax-exempt agencies, asking them to apply for funding for old and new locally based programs for “welcoming and integrating interfaith families into community life.”

“We do not have a set number of grant recipients,” said task force chair Alia Ramer. “We will take proposals and evaluate them on their merit. We don’t know if the requests will be for $5,000 or for $25,000.”

Ramer, a Maplewood resident and mother of three, has worked as a reporter and editor at NJ Jewish News.

The task force replaces the 14-year-old Pathways program that was abolished at the end of the 2004-05 fiscal year.

“This is a departure from Pathways. The federation does not want to be providing direct services to the intermarried,” Ramer said. “With almost every other federation- supported program, we do not provide direct service to the community the way Pathways had been doing; with this program we will go back to providing the resources for direct services rather than the services themselves.”

Ramer cited statistics from the 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey, which show that 47 percent of Jews who married since 1996 have intermarried, and two-thirds of the children of all intermarried parents are not being raised Jewish.

“Interfaith families are getting mixed messages about whether or not they are accepted [in the Jewish community]. I would prefer to see Jews marry Jews, but I accept the reality that not every Jew does, and I would like to welcome that couple to Jewish life at whatever level they are,” Ramer said.

She said the task force is eager to spend money on innovative ways to educate and give emotional support to intermarried couples and their extended families.

“We would love to see programs that deal with intergenerational issues within the interfaith family,” she said. “If a synagogue wants to have a ‘taste of Judaism’ and needs a grant for advertising their program or maybe a mailing or a trained staff person to run it instead of a volunteer, that’s the kind of thing we’d love to support.”

Laurel Weber Snyder, a West Caldwell resident and task force member, agrees.

She and her Presbyterian husband, David, were married 22 years ago by a rabbi and a minister.

Weber Snyder told NJJN she would “like to see educational programs available. It would be great if they developed course modules for kids as well as adults.”

She would also like to see the development of packets of materials on Jewish holidays to be handed out to secular schools and day care centers.

Weber Snyder said it is imperative for most synagogues to make non-Jewish spouses feel accepted. “They better welcome these people or they are going to lose them, and you are losing Jews if you make them feel unwelcome, and you are losing the possibility of having these interfaith couples’ children follow a Jewish path.”

Even as she applauded the concept of making interfaith families feel accepted in the organized Jewish world, Lynne Wolfe, who directed Pathways until its $90,000 budget was no longer funded, told NJJN the replacement program “is helping for the moment, but not helping people for the long term. The long-term effort we were doing was the fact there was always somebody they could call. When you’re facing the issue, they need you to be there.”

Wolfe is currently one of eight members of the national advisory council of interfaithfamilies.com and a consultant on interfaith issues for Jewish agencies in the San Francisco Bay and New York metropolitan areas.

Arthur Sandman, associate executive vice president, said that the formation of the task force represents “the beginning of a new approach; we have not yet even seen the proposals. I think the community can look forward to new models engaging interfaith families that will serve us all well for years to come.”

The deadline for applying for a grant is Nov. 1, and chosen recipients will be notified on Dec. 9. Those wishing further information can contact Mandy Kaiser-Blueth, UJC MetroWest planning and allocations associate at 973-929-3047 or akblueth@ujcnj.org.

Robert Wiener can be reached at rwiener@njjewishnews.com.

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