A rabbi once told me that talking about intermarriage from the pulpit was a pretty bad idea all around.

Too many rabbis have done it and assumed that the audience is homogeneous, a group of Jews that does not include converts, Jewish children of interfaith couples, Jewish children with non-Jewish and intermarried relatives and even non-Jews. In “The New Jew: An Unexpected Conversion”, a newly intermarried Sally Srok Friedes has an awful experience at her first High Holidays service at a Reform temple when the rabbi chooses to open his speech by attacking non-Jews, intermarriage and assimilation in one breath.

Some of my good friends are intermarried, as is some of my family and some people would even argue that I am intermarried (because they view even marriages between converts and born Jews as intermarriage).

But in “Time for Straight-Talk About Assimilation”, Jack Wertheimer shoots from the hip and responds frankly to the MASA video that had the Jewish blogosphere and media up in arms recently.

To view the video with English subtitles (and read several–shell-shocked–perspectives on the video), hop on over to the Jewlicious blog: “MASA Video Freaks out the Jews!”