Celebrating Our Differences: Hanukkah, Christmas, and Shalom Bayit

How to navigate competing winter holidays and the associated family issues can be challenging for mixed-heritage couples. This class will focus on the public and private meanings of the "December Dilemma." We will look at how Hanukkah and Christmas changed over time, learn about syncretism and ways to avoid it, and what it takes to keep peace at home. In addition to learning about the topic in a supportive space, interfaith couples will have the opportunity to make connections and build community. . . . Dr. Keren R. McGinity is an educator-activist who specializes in Jewish intermarriage and gender roles. Her pioneering book, Marrying Out: Jewish Men, Intermarriage, and Fatherhood (Indiana University Press, 2014), is the first gender history of intermarried Jewish men. Her earlier monograph, Still Jewish: A History of Women and Intermarriage in America (NYU Press, 2009), was selected as a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Dr. McGinity is affiliated with the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and taught American Studies at Brandeis University. She served as the first Interfaith Specialist at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the founding director of the Interfaith Families Jewish Engagement program at Hebrew College. She advises clergy and lay leaders about best practices for diversity, engagement, and inclusion. Dr. McGinity was honored as a Forward 50 in 2018 for her clarion call to the American Jewish community to address its #MeToo problem.