Judaism Opens Its Doors to Gentiles : Religion: Growing numbers of interfaith couples are being welcomed. Study shows an easing of strict marriage traditions.

Kathleen Shanfield of Fullerton was looking forward to Yom Kippur services with her husband at a Reform congregation Friday night. And John Brekke of Altadena expected to accompany his wife to evening services at Pasadena Jewish Temple, a Conservative synagogue.

Neither Shanfield nor Brekke is Jewish, nor did they convert. But both say that they feel comfortable in their mates’ synagogues even on the most solemn of Jewish holidays, the Day of Atonement, which started at sundown Friday and ends at sundown today.

“I don’t feel odd at all,” said Shanfield, who was raised Catholic. The prayers are “beautiful in many ways,” she said. Brekke said he sometimes feels excluded from cultural and ritual aspects of Jewish life, but “the passion of the faith and the extraordinary Jewish history is something I relate to.”

The two couples are part of an increasingly evident phenomenon in American Jewish life. Not only are marriages proliferating in which only one partner was born Jewish, but growing numbers of the interfaith couples are being welcomed into Jewish religious life.

A nationwide survey of Jewish leaders on interfaith marriages released this month confirmed that most Jewish parents would rather see their children marry Gentiles than remain single even though most rabbis try to discourage the trend by refusing to perform the weddings.

The study conducted by sociologist Egon Mayer of the Center for Jewish Studies at City University of New York estimated that at least 40% of Jews marry outside their faith--a figure that is consistent with other findings. The study was based on 2,179 responses to 9,000 mailed questionnaires.

Yet, in one surprise, more than 80% of those who responded to the survey said that Gentiles who are married to Jews would be welcome at synagogues and Jewish community organizations. The study found that even Orthodox leaders would reach out to interfaith couples--in hopes of the non-Jewish partner converting and the children being raised Jewish.

“The big news is that groups which once ostracized intermarried couples now realize you can’t do that,” said Rabbi Gilbert Kollin of Pasadena Jewish Temple. Kollin is national chairman of the Outreach and Conversion Committee for Conservative Judaism’s Rabbinical Assembly.

“Many Jews used to think that if a Jewish young person married a non-Jew, he or she was making a ‘statement’ against Jewish tradition,” Kollin said. “However, people realize now that it is just the American way of viewing marriage--first and foremost an individual decision to seek happiness.”

The recent study of Jewish interfaith marriage found that 40% of Reform rabbis said they would perform such weddings, but only 5% of Conservative rabbis and none of the Orthodox rabbis surveyed said they would.

A Reform rabbi who does not marry interfaith couples--Rabbi Larry Goldmark of Temple Beth Ohr in La Mirada--nevertheless accepts interfaith couples as members. “A substantial number of our members are in mixed marriages and usually have decided to bring up their children as Jewish,” Goldmark said.

Kathleen and Dr. Stewart Shanfield, who attend Temple Beth Ohr, were married about eight years ago by a judge. They joined Goldmark’s congregation two years ago when they decided the oldest of their three children should start religious education.

Stewart Shanfield, an orthopedic surgeon in Fullerton, said he and his wife agreed that their children would be raised Jewish. His mother, he said, was the only survivor in her family from the Nazi Holocaust and he was raised as a religious Jew.

Rabbi Goldmark assured the physician that his children would be regarded as Jewish in his congregation. Jewish law says that children must have a Jewish mother to be considered Jewish, but the Reform movement adopted a position several years ago that children brought up in the faith, signified through public rituals such as bar mitzvahs, would be considered Jewish even if only the father was Jewish.

As he has grown older, Shanfield said, he realizes that what many rabbis have feared about the interfaith marriage trend is true--that the potential is great for cultural assimilation.

“I’m seeing that with some friends the easiest thing to do is to do nothing or practice more of the Christian holidays,” he said. “It takes some work and dedication” to maintain Jewish identity, he added.