Treasured Venue's Confused Priorities

Several years ago, a handful of wealthy Jews in Washington DC acquired the old synagogue at Sixth and I Streets, which had become a church for 50 years after the area's Jewish population moved to the suburbs.

Sixth and I Synagogue, as it's now called, was rededicated in 2004 and has since become one of the hottest venues in town, hosting a variety of Jewish religious, social, and cultural events.

Sixth and I admits it's an "ongoing experiment," and it sometimes has problems -- like when it disclosed to a third-party commercial interest the e-mail addresses of hundreds of attendees after an event last Fall.

Now, it appears, Sixth and I administrators and event planners could benefit from a reminder about what has become one of the greatest threats to Jewish continuity: intermarriage.

Certainly, many events at Sixth and I help bring together young Jews, thus creating opportunities for young men and women to meet when they might otherwise not. This may help combat intermarriage.

But another part of the problem of intermarriage is the incredible numbers of Jewish males who feel no particular need to marry inside the faith and what must be done to reach out to them and draw them back.

It has been widely reported that about 50 percent of young Jewish men marry non-Jewish women, whereas only five percent of Jewish women marry outside the faith. There is even a Facebook group drawing attention to the problem.

At Sixth and I, however, the priority has been on programming appealing to Jewish women. Last October, Sixth and I screened Seeking Happily Every After, which, basically, preached to Jewish women in their 30s that it is okay to remain single -- that they can still live happy, healthy lives.

While it is important for single women in their 30s to receive support and encouragement as they watch friends around them marry and start families, I'm not sure this was at all helpful in encouraging marriage, which I think ought to be the Jewish community's number one concern to make up for the six million it lost.

Now, Sixth and I has planned another event targeting young Jewish women. At the event in late January, women in their 20s and 30s will learn "successful negotiation strategies," to use with "supervisors, significant others, and family."

Again, while such programming may have important uses, it still begs the question: Does not Sixth and I also see outreach to young Jewish males as a priority? Is it not important to try to craft programs that identify and confront the reasons why so many young Jewish males are falling out of touch with their faith and intermarrying?

For those men who marry non-Jewish women who do not convert to Judaism, their children are not considered Jewish under Jewish law. Essentially, their offspring are lost to the Jewish faith. Some will argue that, as long as those kids are involved somehow in Jewish life, then they are not lost. But many others still recognize such ties as fragile, likely temporary, and infrequently inherited. Really, most Jewish men who marry non-Jewish women bring very little, if any, Jewish observance into their households and their kids are, legally, not Jews.

I can't recall an event at Sixth and I targeted specifically to young Jewish men. Shouldn't it be a priority to reach out to them, too? Otherwise, we shouldn't be surprised when 50 percent of men intermarrying becomes 60 and then 70 percent.