Edgar M. Bronfman, the president of the World Jewish Congress, has said that it was time to abandon "racist" ideas and encourage intermarried couples to raise their children as Jews. In an interview with the London-based 'Jewish Chronicle', Bronfman said he believed "the whole concept of Jewish peoplehood, and the lines being pure, begins to sound a bit like Nazism, meaning racism." He had come to that conclusion while working on his new book, "A Jewish Renaissance for a Significant Future". The WJC leader expressed his hope that the book would create "a lot of conversation on the part of thinking Jews about what we're not doing that we should be doing."
Bronfman went on to say: "Now we have a choice. We can double the amount of Jews that there are, or we can irritate everybody who is intermarried and lose them all." It was not necessary to insist on the non-Jewish partner converting, he continued: "I think the only condition we should make is that should bring up their children as Jewish." Some might convert in time, but "the rabbi who refuses to marry such couples is turning people off," he said. Bronfman's answer to the question "Who is a Jew?" is "Anybody who wants to be." People did not emigrate to America to become better Jews but to have a better life, he said. "The price of becoming successful in America is that people have forgone their Judaism. I don't want to give up on secular Jews. I want them to become more Jewish."
