DETROIT — Step inside Temple Emanu-El in Oak Park, Mich., and you're greeted by a 6-foot mosaic with thousands of hand-cut glass tiles that symbolize God's promise to Abraham: I'll make your descendants as numerous as the stars and grains of sand.
It's a scene that highlights the temple's commitment to its future. "Preserving our Legacy," it reads next to the artwork.
But despite its Jewish motif, the artist is Catholic: Mary Gilhuly, 49, an Oak Park resident who sits on her church's parish council and is also active in the temple.
She and her Jewish husband, Steve Klaper, 56, are part of a growing number of interfaith couples among the Detroit area's 72,000 Jews.
But along with the increase comes concern about a loss of identity.
Nationally, about 50 percent of Jews who marry now wed non-Jews. The changes have sparked a debate among Jews over how to respond.
"If you push (interfaith couples) away, they're gone forever," said Rabbi Aaron Bergman of Adat Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Farmington Hills, Mich. "On the other hand, you're taking away incentives for people to marry within the faith."
Many Detroit-area synagogues welcome interfaith families
Growing up in a Jewish home, Gary Shuman of West Bloomfield dated mainly Jewish girls and assumed his future wife also would be Jewish.
But after meeting Mary Coccia in a library at the University of Michigan business school, Shuman, 48, found a connection that led to marriage, despite the fact that she was Catholic.
It's a growing trend in the American-Jewish community, where about half of recently married couples nationally have non-Jewish spouses, according to experts analyzing data from the National Jewish Population Survey and other studies.
While the percentage of interfaith marriages is lower in metro Detroit, the numbers are increasing, especially among those 35 and younger.
That growing rate concerns those who fear it will erode the vitality and numbers of a small community. Studies show that interfaith couples are much less likely to maintain Jewish traditions.
But Shuman and others in interfaith families are finding ways to maintain their Jewish identity and pass it on to future generations. Shuman and his wife are raising their three children as Jewish.
A threat to the faith?
The upswing has alarmed others, however. A controversial ad last year sponsored by the Israeli government and aimed at Jews in the U.S. and elsewhere said those who marry outside their faith are "lost," comparing them to missing children. But the ad was quickly pulled after an uproar from Jewish Americans.
"I found that people intermarrying are not becoming lost at all. In fact, some become more Jewish," said Keren McGinity, a postdoctoral fellow at University of Michigan and author of "Still Jewish: A History of Women and Intermarriage in America."
But the concern remains among some.
"Intermarriage does indeed constitute the greatest single threat to Jewish continuity today," said Steven Cohen, a leading expert on Jewish intermarriage who is a professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York.
Cohen and others emphasize a dual, if contradictory, strategy: finding creative social spaces for single Jewish people to bond and welcoming intermarriage while maintaining Jewish standards, so children can be raised as Jews.
This year, for example, the main body of Conservative Judaism voted to allow interfaith families to be buried in Jewish cemeteries. Educational classes in synagogues on the basics of Judaism also are increasingly popular for non-Jewish spouses.
"I don't see our non-Jewish spouses in any way ... harming our Jewish community," said Rabbi Joseph Klein of Temple Emanu-El. "In fact, I see them as a strength. So we're happy to welcome interfaith families, presuming they have decided their family is a Jewish family."
But some rabbis worry that such views might diminish the value of Jewish marriage by equating interfaith couples with those who commit to marrying someone who is Jewish.
More inclusion
The changes come as a new generation of Jews are being raised after the 1983 decision by Reform Jews that said children born to a Jewish father would also count as being Jewish; in the past, only descent through mothers generally counted.
That decision was controversial because some, especially Conservative and Orthodox Jews, worried it would devalue Jewish marriages and the long history of the Jewish people.
To the Orthodox, the growing rate of intermarriage among Jews stems from ignorance of the Torah, says Rabbi Doniel Neustadt, head of the Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Greater Detroit.
"They don't have the proper Jewish education to know the calamity that it's causing, and how strictly forbidden it is," Neustadt said.
Some go so far as to compare intermarriage to the Holocaust.
Others have mixed views.
Like many rabbis, Conservative Rabbi Jason Miller of Tamarack Camps in Ortonville, Mich., and Congregation T'chiyah in Oak Park won't perform weddings between Jews and non-Jews. But he encourages couples to be active in Jewish life.
"I certainly don't want them to feel shunned or to have negative feelings toward Judaism," Miller said.
Most Conservative synagogues require children born to non-Jewish mothers to convert to be considered Jewish, but they, too, are increasingly a home for interfaith couples. In some cases, the non-Jewish spouse later will convert.