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No fewer than three new reports on Jewish intermarriage are being released this week. The reports, prepared by The Steinhardt Social Research Institute and Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis, the National Center for Jewish Policy Studies, and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) focus on intermarried couples throughout the U.S.. All three draw conclusions about the rate at which Jews are marrying goyim and the extent to which interfaith couples are raising their children as Jews. The result? While the studies differ in focus and demographic, at least one conclusion can be drawn from all three: Judaism needs to get sexy. As Leonard Saxe, author of the Brandeis report entitled It’s Not Just Who Stands Under the Chuppah, puts it, "The ‘tragedy’ is not intermarriage but that we haven’t created an engaging Judaism that Jews, whether married to Jews or non-Jews, want to take part in."

Some of the more interesting findings had to do with whether interfaith couples are married by a rabbi. Most Jews who were refused by a rabbi come wedding-time tended to turn away from Judaism (sometimes all the way to Christianity), while those who were married by a more flexible rabbi tended to be more interested in passing Jewish traditions on to their children. We can’t wait to hear what Rabbi Hammerman has to say about that one.

In other news, the Jerusalem Post coined a new adverb today: "Jewishly". Interesting…