RJ Blog

My name is Rachel Jurisz-Singh. Some of you know me by the name I use professionally – Jurisz – which is actually my maiden name. Yes, I am intermarried and my family is interracial too. Growing up I never thought I would choose to marry outside of my faith. I was always involved in my synagogue and youth group. I went to Jewish summer camp and attended Hebrew school through my senior year of high school. I even chose my career path in the Jewish field, working at four major Jewish organizations in the last 14 years.

by Jordan Peck Make sure you are helping your partner get what they need. This was a simple yet powerful concept my fiancée and I learned while participating in the free ‘Inside interfaith Relationships’ workshop through Reform Jewish Outreach Boston. Emily is a self-described “C and E” (Christmas and Easter) Congregationalist Protestant, I grew up Conservative Jewish but starting in college I became a “Y, C, and P” Jew (Yom Kippur, Chanukah, Passover). Despite our different religious upbringings we fell in love and became inseparable quickly and only small things reminded us of our different upbringings. During the first three [...]

by Ellen S. Glazer Several years ago I had a running buddy who was a rabbi. We covered many miles together and many topics, among them his beliefs about interfaith weddings. As a member of the Conservative Movement, he said he would not perform interfaith marriages because he felt that Jews should be married in Jewish ceremonies and, in his words, “It’s not a Jewish ceremony if it is between a Jew and a non-Jew.” Interestingly enough, when two of our fellow runners – both Christians – asked him to marry them, he happily said yes. “After all,” he quipped, [...]

On May 20, 2012 – only 10 days from now! – I will be marrying E., the Jewish woman I love. (I call her E. here because as a therapist, she maintains strict boundaries between her professional and private life.) We will stand under the flowing, stunning, yellow, orange, red, and turquoise chuppah that she designed and painted on silk (a painstakingly challenging design process for a beginner, but that’s another blog post). We will drink from a sparkling, cobalt blue wine goblet that says in Hebrew, “Ani leh-dodee veh-dodee lee,” “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” [...]

Haggai. I danced at his wedding in the fall of 1971. He was a proud member of the IDF Tank Corps. The wedding was at Kibbutz Na’an not far from Rehovot. My first Israeli wedding. We laughed and danced. He embraced me into the “kibbutz family” into which my sister would marry in February. On the first day of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Haggai was killed on the Golan. He is buried not far from where he fell. Haggai was born on the 29th of November 1973, an auspicious day in our Zionist/Israeli history. He was the first child on Kibbutz [...]