The New Jewish Family

Adjusting communal structures to match the new realities of the Jewish family will require letting go of a romanticized version of familial reality.

By Gary A. Tobin for MyJewishLearning

The family has always been central to Jewish life and culture.

Recent demographic changes in the Jewish community and changing social realities and norms have challenged traditional ideas of what a family is, and in the following opinion piece, the author argues that the Jewish community needs to address the new realities of the Jewish family frankly. Reprinted with permission from Sh'ma magazine.

Our understanding of the Jewish family is furthered more by the text of the Torah than by the myths of the 1950s. We are far closer to our biblical roots in terms of family structure than we are to "Leave It to Beaver" or "The Cosby Show." Thinking about the Jewish family and adjusting our organizational and institutional network will require letting go of a romanticized view of the Jewish family that never existed.

When most people close their eyes and conjure up an image of a Jewish family, they are most likely to see a man and a woman married to each other for the first time with biological children that belong to both of them, where both spouses are Jewish and at least somewhat involved, if not actively involved, in Jewish life. They tend not to see divorce and remarriage, gay or lesbian families, singles, non-Jewish spouses, or partners living together without marriage. That is just for starters. They certainly do not imagine all of the pathologies and dysfunction that plague American families in general, and have troubled families since the institution of "family" was created biological eons ago.

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