The Glass is Half Jewish: Mixed Heritage, Conversion, and Intermarriage
Rebecca Ennen
Mixed-heritage Jews are the present and future of the Jewish community. Gentiles are inextricably woven into our communities and personal heritages. Does this trend represent enrichment or watering-down? In the past as today, Jews have been committed to maintaining our distinctiveness, even as we adopted ideas and practices from neighboring cultures. How have Jews created, transformed, and deconstructed the boundaries between others and ourselves? Is there any such thing as half-Jewish? In search of new ways of understanding mixed heritage, conversion, and interfaith families, we will study a wide range of traditional, contemporary, autobiographical, theoretical, and ethnographic texts. We will share personal reflections on mixed ethnicity, faith, culture, and lifestyle.
Rebecca Ennen is the complicated child of a complicated Jewish-Catholic union. As a dialogue facilitator for Jewish Dialogue Group in Philadelphia, she helps Jews engage gracefully in thorny conversations. Rebecca is a 2008 and 2009-10 Yeshivat Hadar Fellow, where she studied traditional Jewish sources on peoplehood, conversion, and intermarriage. She co-created a daylong workshop for mixed heritage Jews, including children of intermarriage and converts, in March 2009.
Categories
- Contemporary Issues
- Intermediate Text
- Morning Course
