Susan Katz Miller's Blog, page 4

The Gift of Love in December

Today, I am honored to post an essay from guest blogger Shai Wise. –SKM

Wise family photo

I was tempted to have this be about how the month of December taught me more about love growing up than almost anything else. Not because of gifts – though they were nice to receive. It wasn’t even because of seeing family although we did that too. It was because my parents balanced December in a way that always made me wonder why people would ask how they “handled it” or what they did about the “Dec...

Being Both: An Enduring Choice

Today, we consider a question I often hear from religious leaders:

Will interfaith families still choose “both” if our traditional religious institutions become more welcoming and inclusive?

The unspoken corollary seems to be:

Can I ignore this “being both” mishegas? It’s not really statistically significant, is it?

This question seems particularly relevant as the 10th anniversary of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family approaches. Approaching the ques...

Brand New Bubbe: Book Review

Children born into interfaith families have an intuitive understanding of the benefits and challenges of interfaith family life. But what happens when a child suddenly finds themselves at the center of a new interfaith family, when a parent remarries or chooses a new partner? The new blended family can be both enriched and complicated by cultural and religious differences.

Brand New Bubbe by Sarah Aronson is the first picture book to address the sudden formation of an interfaith family...

Extra, Extra! Jewish Press Talks to Interfaith Partners

The complexity of interfaith family experiences. From the cover of The Interfaith Family Journal

We have to call it big news when a generally conservative Jewish media outlet summons 10 “non-Jewish spouses” of Jews and asks them about anything. So the publication of the piece in The Tablet last week, entitled “The Minyan: Non-Jewish Spouses,” represents progress. And that’s because most of the Jewish press coverage and academic work on interfaith families has been based on interviews and ...

“All of Us,”and Interfaith Families as Inspiration

Filming “All of Us” in Herald Square

All of my life, even before writing two books on the topic, I have worked to explain that interfaith families have expertise in interfaith peacemaking.

If you want to learn how to have interfaith work relationships, school relationships, community relationships, then look to interfaith families for clues. Talk to the people who embody interfaith relationships full-time.

Over a decade ago now, I wrote on this topic for Huffington Post, and and on my...

Ramadan, Passover, and Good Friday. Interfaith Families Making it Work

Spring Crocus by Susan Katz Miller

The crescent moon will appear this Saturday night, marking the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting and reflection. I am a Jewish and Christian interfaith kid who spent three years in Senegal, a predominantly Muslim country, so I pay attention to our intersecting religious calendars. And this year, we will have a great convergence, as all three Abrahamic religions mark important religious holidays on the night of April 15th. Good Friday falls...

In Memoriam: Sheila Gordon, Interfaith Families Leader

The interfaith families community movement has lost our most important founder and leader, Sheila Gordon.

Sheila was a passionate visionary. She did more than any other human being to forge the concept of a community providing interfaith education for interfaith children, and then to ensure that idea persisted in the world. She was co-creator of the very first interfaith families community, which became the Interfaith Community (IFC) in New York City. And then, instead of retiring, s...

Spring Interfaith Holidays 2022

Glorious Color quilts by my cousin, Liza Prior Lucy

This post has become an annual tradition. Over more than a decade writing this interfaith blog, I have posted multiple essays on many of the spring Jewish and Christian holidays: Purim, St Patrick’s Day, Passover, Easter. But the complex, interlocking quilt squares of #GenInterfaith now go far beyond Judaism and Christianity.

My latest book, The Interfaith Family Journal, is designed for all interfaith families, of any or all religions, o...

Valentine’s Day in My Interfaith Family

Snowdrops. Photo, Susan Katz Miller

This was another long, hard winter, with the pandemic continuing, and too much isolation for all of us. Today, on Valentine’s Day, we had flurries of snow here in DC, but the delicate snowdrops are already blooming with the promise of spring.

Valentine’s Day, for me, always means remembering the epic interfaith marriage of my parents. They got married on February 13th, 1960, in a snowstorm in upstate New York. When they woke up the next morning, they...

A Cloud Never Dies. Interfaith Families and Thich Nhat Hanh

Photo, Susan Katz Miller

In the most well-known dharma talk by beloved Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, he contemplates drinking a cloud in a cup of tea. The cloud never dies–it transitions to a raindrop, to a river, to the tea in his cup. Yesterday, we learned of the peaceful transition at age 95 of Thich Nhat Hanh, or Thay (“teacher”), as he was known to those who followed his mindfulness practice. We must now look for him in the clouds, in the rain, in the steam rising from ou...