There is no guarantee what Jew/pop-culture shtick I’ll find amusing what I’ll find unbearable. I wish I could offer a rubric of some kind for determining one way or the other, but no such luck. To quote someone else, “I don’t know art, but I know what I like.”

And I like this.

I just thought you should know that such a thing exists.

Hat tip to Jewcy.

If you read any other Jewish online publications besides this one (although, honestly, why would you?) you have likely by now heard about Peter Beinart’s essay for the New York Review of Books about the state of and trouble with American Zionism. Because so much is written about Israel each week for Jewish consumption in dozens of publications, I honestly didn’t think it was possible for a single piece to make a big splash anymore. But Beinart’s done it. The people of the Internets are agitated.

I personally didn’t find the piece all that inflammatory, but it is provocative. And if you are a die-hard supporter of Israel wondering where all the other die-hards have gone, or a liberal Jew conflicted about Israel, it’s worth a read. So if you haven’t done so already read it now. 

The Jewish community at large spends a lot of time (far far too much time, in my opinion) freaking out about the intermarriage rate. It’s rapidly heading toward 50%, oh no! Almost all of this attention is aimed at the children of intermarriage. How can they truly see themselves as Jews if raised in a household that is not 100% Jewish? And what if it’s the MOTHER that isn’t Jewish? God forbid Jewish men should be wasting their seed to create non-Jewish kids…and blah blah blah.

This week, The Forward has an opinion piece that considers the experience of non-Jewish parents who are raising Jewish kids. It’s a perspective I think often gets overlooked in the intermarriage discussion. But the fact of the matter is, a lot of Jewish people who intermarry want to raise their kids as Jews and that means their non-Jewish partners have to get on board with what may seem a very foreign and complex belief system. But so many rise to the occasion and provide wonderful guidance and education for their Jewish kids even thought they themselves have no intention of becoming Jewish.

In such cases, the non-Jewish wife could easily have declined to take on this chore, but it was often important to her to feel that her children’s Jewishness had integrity. The non-Jewish women I met in the course of my research were selecting synagogues for their families to join, earnestly learning about Jewish traditions and baking challah from scratch. (Many of the families I describe here align themselves with Reform congregations, which recognize patrilineal descent, but one could imagine instances in Conservative, and even Orthodox, communities in which a non-Jewish mother is raising a child who has converted or will end up converting to Judaism.)

I’ve also met non-Jewish men — like my own husband — who attend synagogue with their Jewish wives and kids and participate actively in Jewish home and communal life. One man with no plans to become Jewish even directs his synagogue’s choir, overseeing weekly practices and recording sessions.

I’m a child of intermarriage, and as I’ve written before, my mom was certainly one of those non-Jewish parents who jumps on the bandwagon to help their kids grow up Jewish. Mom herself didn’t have any interest in converting and to the best of my knowledge it’s not something that anyone ever asked of her. But I never as a kid felt like our family was any less than fully Jewish. I literally never considered the fact that my Mom was raised Christian as a strike against our Jewishness. We were Jews, all of us.

One of my favorite anecdotes to share about growing up as a child of intermarriage is the day when I was a senior in college that my mom called me to tell me she’d just found out I wasn’t really a Jew. Apparently, when she married my dad no one told her that any kids she had with him would never truly be considered Jewish even if they were raised in the Jewish faith. But then, after 21 years of “Jewish” motherhood, she’d read something that clued her in. “Did you know you’re not Jewish?” She demanded. I said yes, I did know that traditionally that was the case, but since we were Reform Jews, I was okay. Besides, who cares what other people say? Mom remained a little pissed. “All those hours driving you to and from Hebrew school and you’re not a real Jew.”

It’s a funny story, but it’s also a sad story. My mom had never even met a Jewish person until she roomed with a Jewish girl at UCLA as a college freshman. The religion was still pretty much a mystery to her when she met my dad. But she learned the basics and agreed to be a full participant in the Jewish education of their kid. She took me to and from Hebrew and Religious school, attended synagogue, picked out Jewish books from the book store, made our home festive for the holidays, helped plan my Bat Mitzvah, etc. And for her efforts she gets to be rewarded with the knowledge that most of the Jewish world still does not believe she’s raised a Jewish child? That she was incapable of the task? Doesn’t seem right. I feel pretty Jewish. And I credit both my parents equally for that.

For the Jewish community to continue to insist that only a Jewish mommy and a Jewish daddy can successfully raise a Jewish baby is both bigoted and false. Intermarriage isn’t going to be the death of Judaism. But the continued insistence by many that intermarried families are some how less than Jewish will drive away plenty of people who would otherwise be full participants in the faith. And that very well may be the death of Judaism. So how’s about we all show a little more love for the intermarried, the kids of the intermarried, and those amazing non-Jewish parents stepping up to raise Jewish kids?

For the last couple of weeks, author Steve Almond has been playing the role of advice columnist for the Forward’s Bintel blog. Almond is the author of a variety of books, most recently Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life. Almond’s writing is, typically, very clever. So I was surprised to see that he seems to be taking his temporary columnist job seriously rather than answering questions, you know, cleverly. For example, for a person concerned about staying at the house of friend rumored to have bed bugs, he suggests the following:

First things first: before you get yourself in to a tizzy, find out what’s really happening. Do they have bedbugs or not? If so, what’s the extermination process? What are the associated risks? It may be that they’ll be spending some time in a hotel themselves, in which case they’re certainly not going to begrudge you one.

If, on the other hand, your friends tell you the infestation is less serious, and/or that the exterminator was able to get rid of it before your arrival, I’d trust your friends and show up on their doorstep. You do trust your friends, don’t you? If the whole idea of being in a home that was recently infested by bed bugs (or something) freaks you out, well then, you have to be honest with your friends. The worst thing you could do in this situation would be lie about your true motives. They’ll see through it anyway.

It continues in a similar fashion from there. I guess my question here is…if you asked Steve Almond a question, would you want real advice? Or would you just want him to say something amusing because he’s supposed to be amusing?