A review by carolynf
Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family by Susan Katz Miller

3.0

The majority of the book consists of anecdotes about various Jewish and Christian blended families, and how their choice of religion works for them. The first chapter is very interesting as this is the story of the author's own family, and there is one other chapter that deals with interfaith families that are now Jewish and Christian. The main message of the book is that when two spouses come from different religious traditions, learning about both backgrounds actually helps children develop stronger faith. The author admits that this only works if both spouses come from a progressive religious background, that does not believe that a person goes to hell if they do not follow the "correct" religion, with utter devotion to every tenet and practice. I will admit that I did not get more than a third of the way through the book because I got tired of hearing about just Jews and Christians all the time. But in the parts that I read I did not encounter any stories about people who were not able to make interfaith religion work for their family, and hypotheses about why it didn't work out for them. Or when happens when one spouse is very religious and the other is casual about their religion, or agnostic. In short, I was expecting more of a do's and don't's for various scenarios and situations, rather than just the positive stories resulting from one particular religious mix.