Court sides with polygamist families

Breaking news in the Texas polygamy raid from the NYT:

A Texas state court of appeals ruled Thursday afternoon that the state of Texas had no right to seize more than 400 children from a polygamist ranch in Eldorado, in the western part of the state.

The ruling asserted that the state’s child protection agency not only acted hastily in removing the children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in April but also failed to show that they were in immediate danger. According to the court, the state did not establish proper grounds to remove the children from their families, who belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S. The F.L.D.S. broke off from the mainstream Mormon church after it had disavowed polygamy in 1890.

At news conference in San Angelo, the closest city to Eldorado, a lawyer for the sect said it was unclear when the families would be reunited, and that the team was reviewing the next legal steps in the process.

American Jews and Israelis: brothers from different mothers

Kvetching in PresenTense about being a "single, twenty-something Jewish coquette" expected to marry a nice Jewish boy, my friend Rachel Axelbank explains why she finds herself much more attracted to Israelis. As a point of reference, she mentions the guards who issued our security clearance before we met last summer with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert -- they apparently shot her glances that I, fortunately, didn't receive -- and quotes Jon Stewart on the differences between our Jews and theirs:

“You have American Jews, who are the ‘let me help you with your tax return’ Jews,” he said. “And you have Israeli Jews, who are the ‘hold my machine gun while I take a leak’ Jews.”

Anyone want to argue with that wisdom?

Many of Texas' FLDS teen girls pregnant, mothers

More bad news regarding all those children taken into Texas custody when their parents' polygamist ranch was raided earlier this month. From AP:

SAN ANTONIO - More than half the teen girls taken from a polygamist compound in west Texas have children or are pregnant, state officials said Monday.

A total of 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are in state custody after a raid 3 1/2 weeks ago at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado. Of those girls, 31 either have children or are pregnant, said Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar. Two of those are pregnant now, he said; it was unclear whether either of those two already have children.

"It shows you a pretty distinct pattern, that it was pretty pervasive," he said.

To be fair, I know some churches that wouldn't fair much better on a non-pregnant, per-capita basis. The difference, of course, is that the pregnancies in the former were caused by a now-repudiated religious lifestyle while in the later they're borne of, as Juno's mom puts it, teenage boredom.

Wheaton professor fired over divorce

Wheaton College is an evangelical school outside of Chicago. Like many colleges cut from conservative Protestant cloth, its students and faculty must uphold a stricter standard of conduct than they would at, say, Florida State. One of those rules for married faculty is remaining so. Divorce is grounds for dismissal unless your circumstances fit the biblical exemption, which generally is limited to an unfaithful spouse.

The problem for Kent Gramm is he doesn't want to talk with Wheaton administrators about why he and his wife are separating. So they're letting him go.

For him, he says, it didn’t seem appropriate “to subject your personal life to the judgment of the college administrators.” However, he told his students of his reasons for leaving – first reported in Wheaton’s student newspaper, The Wheaton Record – to offer them an alternative model of Christian living. Gramm, who teaches literature, fiction and nonfiction writing, has his master of divinity degree in addition to his M.A. and Ph.D.

“I think the students can be given a false picture of what the proper Christian life should be,” Gramm says. “Whereas many of these students come from households that have been broken by divorce, and if they conform to the overall population, half of them themselves will be going through divorce. And if they are shown that God doesn’t abandon you if you are divorced and they’re shown that this is a part of life and that sometimes it can possibly be the right thing or the best thing, not necessarily the desirable thing, to do, then I think that might help them in their future lives.”

Born-again Christians more likely to divorce

Born-again Christians in the United States are more likely than atheists to have their marriage end in divorce, according to a new study by The Barna Group. The Bible Belt Blogger quips:

So much for “The Family That Prays Together Stays Together.”

Stop me if you've heard this one

Anita Renfroe didn't become a star overnight. It took a few months of her "Mom Song" video bumping around YouTube to go viral, and then, almost overnight, she became an unlikely and lovable entertainer.

Renfroe is a suburban mom from flyover country — specifically, Cobb County, Ga., home of Newt Gingrich. She is round and soft, loves butter, carbs and sugar and worries routinely about her weight. She is maternal to just about everyone, even people she doesn’t know very well. She pinches pennies and worries that her spotless house isn’t clean enough. Renfroe is a former stay-at-home mom who for some years home-schooled her kids. Now that those children are past the age of consent, she still cannot stop telling them what to do; she is always just a little bit anxious.

Renfroe is also a devout Christian and for about eight years has been slowly building a career as a comedian on the Christian women’s circuit. Like Mike Huckabee’s easy humor, Renfroe’s wit comes as a surprise to nonevangelicals. She performs what she calls “estrogen-flavored musical comedy” in large halls and arenas, often with an inspirational group called Women of Faith. At those performances she sells her DVDs and humorous books with religious undertones: “If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother,” “If You Can’t Lose It, Decorate It” and “Purse-onality.” “I love the way God lets you use everything in your life,” she says about her chosen career as a comic. “It’s cool how it all comes together.”

The headline for this article from the New York Times Magazine, "Did You Hear the One About the Christian Comedian?," reminded me of this sort of lame article I wrote a few years ago. (Coincidentally, the magazine's piece has bristled a lot of Christians because of the condescending tone, discussed here.)

Comedian Mark Fitter's greeting is also his opening joke.

"Hi, my name's Mark, and I am a pastor of a church."

Audience members and bar patrons laugh and clap. Someone shouts, "Amen!" Another, "Hallelujah!"

Performing on the same bill as comics whose repertoire revolves around lewd innuendos and blatant bawdiness, the Victorville resident cracks clean jokes.

"You know, the tough thing about being a pastor is most people only see you work on Sundays," Fitter said as he performed at Tuesday at Omaha Jack's Grillhouse and Brewery in Rancho Cucamonga.

"And most give you a hard time about it. 'Hey Mark, it must be great having a job where you only have to work one day a week.' That really ticks me off because I don't work one day a week I only work an hour per week."

Ba-dum-cha!

Cheesy reporting aside, there is an industry of Christian comedians -- just like there are Christian karate instructors and Christian tattoo parlors. Between 2002 and 2005 alone, the Christian Comedy Association grew tenfold, from 35 to 350. Clean comedy is not always humorous (something I witnessed Sunday at a celebration of Biola's 100th birthday) but its wholesome, often encouraging and sometimes entertaining.

30-day sex challenge

It feels like I read this story every six months:

A southwest Florida church issued a challenge for its married members: Hanky panky every day.

Relevant Church head pastor Paul Wirth issued the 30-day sex challenge to take on high divorce rates.

"And that's no different for people who attend church," Wirth said Sunday. "Sometimes life gets in the way. Our jobs get in the way."

The challenge doesn't extend to unwed congregants, however.

The accompanying video report, embedded above, is a joke. So trite. The reporter so obviously clueless. My favorite line: "Jarrett Haas says even if a sexy girl tempts him, he won't break the challenge."

Beloved rabbi says unbelievably regrettable things

Julie Fax's story this week is going to be a talker. It's about the Chai Center's beloved rabbi, Shlomo "Schwartzie" Schwartz, who has a habit of writing really inappropriate things -- in an odd texty language -- when responding to the e-mails of sort-of shiksas who come to his services. (I can only imagine what he would say to this shiksa.) Here's what he thinks of non-Jewish women who by dating Jewish men are diluting the Jewish people:

"You are a f---ing Nazi. You are killing a Jew and I hate you for that and I'll piss on your grave. You are not going to kill my Jews."

That should get your attention. But it's the e-mails he sent to three women that Julie found that really shocked me. He told one woman who had come to the Chai Center seeking support after her mother, whose dying wish was that she marry a Jew, passed. Schwartzie told her that because her mother's conversion wasn't legit:

"She might have been agrt mother, but as a 'Jewish' mother she was a miserable failure! In truth she really was not a FAILURE as a Jew; since, in the eyes of G-d (where it COUNTS) she wasn't!"

Here is the interchange with another woman:

Jackie Campbell (not her real name), who is not Jewish, was invited by her Jewish neighbor to attend Schwartzie's Rosh Hashanah services last fall at the Writers Guild Theater.

A graduate of Berkeley who has published research on breast cancer and Eastern medicine and now produces children's health and exercise videos, Campbell wrote to Schwartzie to follow up on a comment he had made about Jewish astrology. In her e-mail, she told Schwartzie that her father's father was Jewish, and she also asked the rabbi for "words of wisdom" about her Jewish ex-boyfriend, whom she had recently broken up with when she realized he wouldn't marry a non-Jew.

Schwartzie wrote back:

"A paternal grandpapy does not make U a Jew. Get used 2 it & get used 2 the program; its called the Reality of truth, even if it disturbs yr comfort zone. It is really low space morally & ethically of you 2 cast aspersions on Jews & their religion bcz they tell the truth. U R not a Jew even if tht means tht U lose yr boy toy," read part of his long tirade to her.

Campbell said the e-mails deeply disturbed her and embarrassed her Jewish friends, who assured her he did not represent Judaism. She wrote that to Schwartzie in answer to his e-mail.

Schwartzie responded:

"How dare U B so nervy as 2 criticize me when U r the brazen hussy slut chasing after Jewish men (even when they R Orthodox & you KNOW tht it is against their G-d & religion). Shame on U 4 yr disgusting unpaid whoring ways 2 try & take Jewish men away from Jewish women. Hitler murdered Jews & U R also trying 2 exterminate Jews."

Julie is ridiculously judicious with the handling of this story. It's a long, well-researched, thoughtful, relevant piece, and the sensational nature of Schwartzie's e-mails are handled with, I feel, total sensitivity for the fact that this is a man with a serious following in the LA Jewish community. Schwartzie's son, Mendel, said his father's e-mails were inappropriate but that they were an unfair blemish on an otherwise wholesome rabbinate.

*Update: Luke Ford read this article and had this to say:

If you believe that God gave the Torah, you can argue with the way Schwartzie expressed himself, but the gist of what he said and did is totally congruent with Torah. Orthodox Judaism has standards that are more important for Orthodox Jews than being nice to goyim.

SWM seeks 'every single other Jew'

Above is a sort of funny Valentine's video sent to me by a JDate press person. It's advertising, but it's from the Jew who brought you Chinese food on Christmas, the viral instaclassic below.

A shiksa's quest to destory the Jewish community

Under his ominous moniker, Abitbol runs jewlicious.com. He lives in Israel and occasionally New York City, and has been known to enjoy a good shiksa here and there. Still, he was skeptical about assisting me in the noble and generations-old gentile pursuit of trying to land a Jewish husband. Good Jew that he is, Abitbol is concerned about the marriage crisis sweeping the nation, especially in New York City, and especially among Jews.

The first time I met Christ Killer, he said, "You look like you should be wearing furry heels, eating bonbons with two little dogs. In bed." In other words, Christ Killer, whose given name is David Abitbol, correctly identified me a shiksa: a Jesus-loving, non-Jewish woman whose Miller-Monroe fantasy currently poses the greatest threat to the chosen people.

"The community is all up in arms about it," he told me over hummus on St. Mark's. "Jews aren't getting married, or they're waiting until much later to get married. The majority of Jews under 40 have never been married, which is a new trend. When you talk to men and women in New York, they say that it's hard to find an appropriate Jewish mate. It's bad for the continuity of the Jewish community, because if people are not getting married and creating family units, the Jewish population will shrink. That threatens the continued viability of the community. You're already coming into a field that's got a lot of competition."

The marriage market is tough enough, but a shiksa looking for a Jewish husband is up against an entire culture rooting for her failure. Trimming the intermarriage rate is paramount to a number of associated Jewish federations that collect charitable donations and redistribute them as needed to Jews and non-Jews alike. Without a steady, generational replenishing of the culture, there would be no one for the federations to collect from. "What they're doing now is spending a lot of money on Jewish singles programs," Abitbol said. They will do anything in the world to get Jewish singles together and married."

Unfortunately, no such programs exist to help Jews marry shiksas, save for good old-fashioned female ingenuity—and, of course, the sage advice of Jewish friends and associates.

This tongue-in-cheek indulgence is from Radar. Ann Coulter should try a similar strategy. The story of the shrinking American Jewish community is an old one. It's most attributable to intermarriage, which Marc Gellman rehashes in Newsweek.

(Hat tip: Bintel Blog)

More on the MySpace suicide

Remember the sad story of Megan Meier, the 13-year-old girl who killed herself after being ridiculed by a fictional "friend" on MySpace? A grand jury in Los Angeles is investigating charges that the mother who created or helped her daughter, a former friend of Megan's, create the Josh Evans identity committed fraud against the Beverly Hills-based company.

This story was, not surprisingly, at the top of the headlines across the country in November. For a better view, The New Yorker sent Lauren Collins to Dardenne Prairie, Mo. Here's her story.

Teen-age identities mutate so quickly online, and can be masked so easily, that by the morning after Megan was pronounced dead Josh Evans had vanished from MySpace. It wasn’t until a month after her death that a neighbor named Michele Mulford told the Meiers that Curt and Lori Drew, who lived four houses down, had created “Josh” in concert with their thirteen-year-old daughter, a longtime friend of Megan’s. (An eighteen-year-old girl who worked for the Drews was also involved.) The two thirteen-year-olds had recently quarrelled. Mulford’s own daughter, also thirteen, had been given the password to the account, and had sent at least one unkind message to Megan in Josh’s name. Megan had accompanied the Drews on several vacations, and they knew that she was taking medication.

For nearly a year, on the advice of the police, the Meiers had kept quiet about the Drews’ involvement in Megan’s death. After investigators determined that the Drews’ actions, if cruel, had not broken any laws, the Meiers spoke with Steve Pokin, a columnist at the local paper, the Suburban Journals. Pokin revealed the ruse in his column, “Pokin’ Around,” on November 13th of last year. “I know that they did not physically come up to our house and tie a belt around her neck,” Tina Meier told Pokin. “But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a thirteen-year-old—with or without mental problems—it is absolutely vile.”

(skip)

In the three weeks since Steve Pokin’s article appeared, public opinion against the Drews had been harsh, verging on violent. Much of the outrage was directed at Lori Drew as an exemplar of the micromanaging “helicopter parent,” a familiar image at least since the Wanda Holloway case. In Channelview, Texas, in 1991, Holloway, a homemaker, attempted to hire a hit man to eliminate a neighbor, Verna Heath, the mother of a girl, Amber, who had twice been elected cheerleader over Holloway’s daughter, Shanna. But Channelview and Dardenne Prairie, where teen-agers still have after-school jobs, are not type-A parent/overscheduled kid kinds of towns. Like Wanda Holloway, Lori Drew may not have represented a helicopter parent so much as a more ancient archetype: the resentful neighbor.

Lori Drew has shown little remorse, contending, through a lawyer, that she is the undeserving victim of an “avalanche of criticism.” Her statement suggests that she may have been less an overbearing parent than an indifferent one:

Although she was aware of the account, Lori Drew never sent any messages to Megan or to anyone else using this MySpace account. . . . Lori Drew was not aware of any mean, nasty or negative comments made by anyone against Megan until after Megan took her own life. . . .

Pam Fogarty, the mayor, had two hundred unanswered e-mails in her in-box. “People are shocked, and they’re pissed as hell!” she told me. Fogarty

The American wives of Saudi men

Yesterday's Column One by Jeffrey Fleishman was, as usual, an excellent read. The storyline was, as usual, unique and, as of late, about the collision of Western values and Muslim culture:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Teresa Malof knew she wasn't in Kentucky anymore when a cleric issued a fatwa against her secret Santa gift exchange.

Malof proposed the idea at the King Fahad National Guard Hospital, where she has worked for more than a decade. It was supposed to be discreet, but rumors were whispered amid veils and hijabs that the lithe, blond nurse, raised on farmland at the edge of Appalachia, was planning to celebrate a Christian tradition in an Islamic kingdom that forbids the practicing of other religions.

"Even though I'm a Muslim too, I like to celebrate the holidays and have gift exchanges," said Malof, a convert to Islam who is married to the son of a former Saudi ambassador. "But word got out and the religious people came with a fatwa [or edict] against the Santa party. My husband was having a heart attack. He was worried I'd be in a lot of trouble."

For American women married to Saudi men, such is life in this exotic, repressive and often beguiling society where tribal customs and religious fervor rub against oil wealth and the tinted-glass skyscrapers that rise Oz-like in the blurry desert heat. This is not a land of the 1st Amendment and voting rights; it is a kingdom run by the strict interpretation of Wahhabi Islam, where abayas hang in foyers, servants linger like ghosts, minarets glow in green neon and, as a recent court case showed, a woman who is raped can also be sentenced to 200 lashes for un-Islamic behavior.

"Haram, haram" (forbidden, forbidden). American wives know the phrase well. It is learned over years of peeking through veils at supermarkets or sitting in the back of SUVs while Filipinos behind the wheel glide through traffic. Their adopted Arab home is a traditionally close U.S. ally. But like much of the Islamic world, Saudi Arabia's relations with Washington have been strained since the rise of global jihad. Terrorist bombings, which have killed nearly 150 people here in recent years, have kept many American families in gated communities that have the aura of golf courses protected by small armies.

Most non-Muslim women convert to Islam as a prerequisite for marrying a Saudi and living in the kingdom. Many American women, including those who converted before they arrived, have embraced the Koran; for others, the adoption of Islam is a pantomime act, the disguise of a second self to hold them over until they peel off their head scarves and travel to the U.S. for summer vacations.

For both kinds of women, it is a life of sacrifices and measured victories: Women can't drive or vote in Saudi Arabia, but their children are largely safe from street crime and drugs; a wife can't leave the country without her husband's written permission, but tribal and religious codes instill a strong sense of family.

Freedom lies behind courtyard walls, where private swimming pools glimmer and the eyes of the religious police, known as the mutaween, do not venture. Rock 'n' roll (haram) is played, smuggled whiskey (haram) is sipped, and Christianity (haram) sometimes is practiced. This sequestered, contradictory experience, a number of American wives noted, can turn an expat into an alcoholic or a born-again Christian, and sometimes both.

"American women get together and we talk," said Lori Baker, a mother of two who met her Saudi husband at Ohio State University in 1982. "We ask one another, 'Where are you on your curve now? Have you hit bottom yet?' We all go through the highs and lows when it comes to moods and tolerance. . . . When I first got here, I felt naked without my head scarf.

"Then after the terrorist bombings in 2003, I even covered my face. Foreigners were a target then. I became very comfortable with my face covered. I felt safe. Nobody knows me. They can't see me, and if you're covered, they respect you. Sometimes without a covered face it's like walking down Main Street wearing a bikini."

Read the rest here.

'Father killed daughter for not wearing hijab'

This tragedy happened not in Saudi Arabia or Iraq but in Canada. From AFP:

Friends and classmates of a 16-year-old girl who police say was murdered by her devout Muslim father in a Toronto suburb told local media Tuesday she was killed for not wearing a hijab.

Police said in a statement they received an emergency call at 7:55 am local time Monday from "a man who indicated that he had just killed his daughter."

The victim, Aqsa Parvez, was "rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries, but tragically passed away late last night."

Her father, Muhammad Parvez, 57, was arrested at the scene and will be formally charged with murder when he appears in court Wednesday, said police.

(skip)

According to her friends, Aqsa had worn the hijab at school last year, but rebelled in recent months.

They said she would leave home wearing a hijab and loose-fitting clothes, but would take off her head scarf and change into tighter garments at school, then change back before going home at the end of the day.
The victim's 26 year-old brother was also charged with obstructing police in the investigation.

(Hat tip: GetReligion)

This is parenting?

This is one of the saddest stories I've heard in a long time. I've had friends who have lost a child, and for some it has been an absolute breaking point in their life. It's no wonder Megan Meier's parents are separated and seeking a divorce.

But the worst part about the Meier family losing their daughter to suicide has got to be the complicity of an adult neighbor in the harassment of 13-year-old Megan. The neighbor helped create a fake MySpace account belonging to "Josh Evans" that was used to torment Megan with promises of attention and affection and then to deliver devastating messages.

Suburban Journals has a powerful narrative of the end and aftermath of Megan's life. Here are her final moments.

Monday, Oct. 16, 2006, was a rainy, bleak day. At school, Megan had handed out invitations to her upcoming birthday party and when she got home she asked her mother to log on to MySpace to see if Josh had responded.

Why did he suddenly think she was mean? Who had he been talking to?

Tina signed on. But she was in a hurry. She had to take her younger daughter, Allison, to the orthodontist.

Before Tina could get out the door it was clear Megan was upset. Josh still was sending troubling messages. And he apparently had shared some of Megan's messages with others.

Tina recalled telling Megan to sign off.

"I will Mom," Megan said. "Let me finish up."

Tina was pressed for time. She had to go. But once at the orthodontist's office she called Megan: Did you sign off?

"No, Mom. They are all being so mean to me."

"You are not listening to me, Megan! Sign off, now!"

Fifteen minutes later, Megan called her mother. By now Megan was in tears.

"They are posting bulletins about me." A bulletin is like a survey. "Megan Meier is a slut. Megan Meier is fat."

Megan was sobbing hysterically. Tina was furious that she had not signed off.

Once Tina returned home she rushed into the basement where the computer was. Tina was shocked at the vulgar language her daughter was firing back at people.

"I am so aggravated at you for doing this!" she told Megan.

Megan ran from the computer and left, but not without first telling Tina, "You're supposed to be my mom! You're supposed to be on my side!"

On the stairway leading to her second-story bedroom, Megan ran into her father, Ron.

"I grabbed her as she tried to go by," Ron says. "She told me that some kids were saying horrible stuff about her and she didn't understand why. I told her it's OK. I told her that they obviously don't know her. And that it would be fine."

Megan went to her room and Ron went downstairs to the kitchen, where he and Tina talked about what had happened, the MySpace account, and made dinner.

Twenty minutes later, Tina suddenly froze in mid-sentence.

"I had this God-awful feeling and I ran up into her room and she had hung herself in the closet."

Megan Taylor Meier died the next day, three weeks before her 14th birthday.

Later that day, Ron opened his daughter's MySpace account and viewed what he believes to be the final message Megan saw - one the FBI would be unable to retrieve from the hard drive.

It was from Josh and, according to Ron's best recollection, it said, "Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you."

Read the rest of the story and you will be dumbfounded regarding how the idiot mother who helped her daughter taunt Megan can still live just a few doors down from the Meiers. I know what you're not thinking, but in case you are -- yes, God commands us to forgive. That's a lot easier in the abstract, I'm sure. But, more importantly, this neighbor hasn't apologized or asked for forgiveness. So should it be expected?

What's in a name? More than you think

This one is from the Freakonomics School of Unconventional Studies:

The title of the paper, to appear in next month's edition of the journal Psychological Science, is entitled "Moniker maladies, when names sabotage success." Here's the abstract:

In five studies, we found that people like their names enough to unconsciously pursue consciously avoided outcomes that resemble their names. Baseball players avoid strikeouts, but players whose names begin with the strikeout-signifying letter K strike out more than others (Study 1). All students want As, but students whose names begin with letters associated with poorer performance (C and D) achieve lower grade point averages (GPAs) than do students whose names begin with A and B (Study 2), especially if they like their initials (Study 3). Because lower GPAs lead to lesser graduate schools, students whose names begin with the letters C and D attend lower-ranked law schools than students whose names begin with A and B (Study 4). Finally, in an experimental study, we manipulated congruence between participants' initials and the labels of prizes and found that participants solve fewer anagrams when a consolation prize shares their first initial than when it does not (Study 5). These findings provide striking evidence that unconsciously desiring negative name-resembling performance outcomes can insidiously undermine the more conscious pursuit of positive outcomes.

The last chapter of Freakonomics argued that people given "super-black" names, like the father who called his two sons Winner and Loser, or the girl named Shithead (pronounced "Shah-teed"), don't do worse because of their names but often because of life circumstances. But this study looks at a much odder phenomenon of name association.

So what does this imply for people named Moses or Jesus?

Rabbi will pay for love

My editor got a lot of letters in response to a column a few months ago that said rabbis should encourage Jewish woman to date gentile men. I'm not sure if Rabbi Donald Weber read the column, but shortly after the New Jersey rabbi offered a unique approach to get Jews to marry each other.

Six weeks ago, in his Yom Kippur sermon at Temple Rodeph Torah, a Reform synagogue, Weber offered to personally pay for six-month memberships to JDate, the popular Jewish Internet dating service, for any singles in the congregation who asked.

JDate charges $149 for a six- month membership, and so far, nine people have taken the rabbi up on his offer. He and his wife, Shira Stern, initially pledged $1,000 to the effort but just donated a second $1,000 as more people came forward.

"All they have to do is claim it," said Weber, who received a slight group discount from JDate. "We'll do this as long as there's a need, and as long as there's a desire."

Well, considering the declining American Jewish population and the crisis of intermarriage that some Jewish sociologists have been crying gevalt over for decades, I hope Rabbi Weber and his wife have a large savings account.

Correction of the ... whatever

Editor & Publisher calls this from The Telegraph in London the "Newspaper Correction of the Month (If Not Year)."

Our obituary of Lady Jeanne Campbell (Sept 22) said she had a daughter, Cusi Cram, 'possibly by a man called Guy Nicholas Lancaster.' In fact Mr. Lancaster is Ms. Cram’s brother-in-law and was only five when she was born. We apologise to all concerned for our error.

When one parent thinks the other is going to Hell

Does it harm the children? Studies have found religious participation is good for people. Among adolescents, it increases self esteem, improves grades and keeps them from drugs and alcohol. So logically, it would seem, kids from intermarried couples would fare worse.

At least that is what two researchers at Ohio State though. With intermarriage all the rage, particularly with Jews, they published a study last month having expected the kids of "religious heterogamy" to suffer. But they found that the kids didn't have lower self esteem, grades or life satisfaction. (The same can't be said for the drug use.) Christianity Today has an online interview with one of the researchers.

When you ran the numbers, some of the negative anticipated effects of having parents with different religions didn't seem to be present. Do you have an opinion as to why?

This finding was especially surprising to us, because we figured that internalized well-being (such as self-esteem) would be more affected by religious heterogamy because youth would be less sure about beliefs and [would likely have] a weaker sense of identity.

I suspect that part of the reason that we did not find negative effects [in those areas] is that being raised in a religiously heterogamous family may actually be beneficial to youth in some ways. If interfaith parents teach their children that it is important to find a religion that best suits them [as individuals] and accept religious differences in others, then youth may actually develop a strong sense of identity and have an opportunity to find out which religious beliefs are important to them.

In addition, being raised in a diverse family is likely to increase one's tolerance and acceptance of others. These benefits likely have a greater effect on outcomes like self-esteem, life satisfaction, and school performance than delinquency, which may explain the results of our study.