In his book Making a Successful Jewish Interfaith Marriage, Rabbi Kerry Olitzky comments on the extent of intermarriage in the Jewish community:

In the past 10 years, over half of the marriages involving Jews have been to partners not born Jewish. At least one third of the three million Jewish families who identify as such in the United States have a head-of-household (this includes men and women) who was not born Jewish. About one third of the families who are members of Reform congregations are interfaith families. And over 50 percent of the children born into Jewish families in the last decade have one set of grandparents who is not Jewish. There is no reason to believe that these percentages are going to become smaller in the years ahead (p. 1).

Hundreds of thousands of intermarried couples today are doing their best to figure out how to honor two religious heritages in a single home. Of the possible ways to do this, I would like to suggest that Messianic Judaism is the best-kept secret in the world of intermarriage. It is an approach that honors the faith traditions of both spouses, conveys Jewish identity to the next generation and makes it possible for intermarrieds and their children to worship together as a family. What is Messianic Judaism and how is it different from the popular “Interfaith” option?

In the Interfaith approach to intermarriage, children are raised as Jews and Christians. The couple seeks to maintain a household that has both a Jewish and Christian expression. The child’s identity is best described as “Jewish/Christian” with emphasis on the slash (“/”). This approach is generally not an attempt at reconciling the faiths but aspires to convey to the children two separate and distinct religious traditions.

By contrast, Messianic Judaism conveys a single religious identity to the children of intermarriage. Essentially, it is the removal of the slash between “Jewish” and “Christian.” It is the recognition that Jesus and his first followers were all Jews, that in the first century the slash did not exist between the two faiths and that it does not need to exist today. There are presently over 500 Messianic synagogues in the United States and around the world. Messianic Judaism challenges the notion that Judaism and Christianity are mutually exclusive religions and contends that it is possible to naturally reconcile these two faiths at their core and in a way that is respectful to both Jewish and Christian tradition. Therefore, it is possible today to raise Jewish children who believe in Jesus and live as practicing Jews.