60% Interfaith couples raise kids as Jews in Boston
Posted November 10, 2006
from Ed Case, CEO of InterfaithFamily.com
************
There is extraordinary news coming out of Boston today for everyone
interested in Jewish outreach to the intermarried.
The preliminary findings from the 2005 Boston Jewish Community Survey,
conducted by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute and released today by
Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Boston federation, show that 60% of
interfaith families in Greater Boston are raising their children as Jews.
You can read the first publicity, a front page story in today’s Boston
Globe, here:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/11/10/jewish_population_in_re
gion_rises
The report is available on CJP’s website, http://www.cjp.org, today.
This is the first survey to find that a majority of interfaith families are
raising their children as Jews. The national rate is 33%, according to the
2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey.
For fifteen years, the debate over the effectiveness of outreach has
centered on the percentage of interfaith families who raise their children
as Jews. If only one third do, the number of Jews decreases. But if a
majority do, the community increases in size — to say nothing of
qualitative enrichment from enthusiastic new members. The 2005 Boston study
concludes that in Boston, “Intermarriage is contributing to a net increase
in the number of Jews.” Instead of a threat, intermarriage is now an
opportunity.
Boston has extensive, well-organized and relatively well-funded outreach
programs. CJP allocates 1% of its total annual spending to services to the
intermarried, compared to national levels of less than one tenth of one
percent. InterfaithFamily.com is proud to be a recipient of CJP funding, and
to play a key role in spreading news about the Boston community’s welcoming
attitudes and programming. The Boston pages on our Connections In Your Area
system, listing welcoming Jewish organizations and their programs, have been
accessed over 19,300 times in 2006 to date.
While the survey report makes no claim about causation, there is no doubt in
my mind that Boston’s extensive outreach efforts have resulted in the high
rate of interfaith families raising their children as Jews.
Boston¹s results come on top of San Francisco¹s 2004 Jewish Community Study,
which showed, in the one other community that has a robust collection of
outreach programs, a higher than national rate of interfaith families
raising their children as Jews.
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