It's true, there is a good chance that another Ashkenazi jew will have similar genetic heritage. But medical science has already given a great option for not passing on genes to your kids, unless you carry two copies of a recessive gene (where you need two copies to have the disease.) It's called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. You do IVF, and select an embryo that's not a carrier. And here's the thing--if you do have two recessives, your child will be a carrier no matter whom you marry. Plus, you'll be spreading the mutation more generally.

There are indeed many genes that are more common among Ashkenazi Jews (many of them recessive, making PGID relevant.) But there are also plenty of things, some dominant, that are less common in the Ashkenazi population than in the general one, and some which are distributed generally. Also, guess what? All these mutations started spontaneously, and they still do. You can be a compound heterozygote, where you have two different mutations in the same place, and still have the disease. (Example: cystic fibrosis is not more common among Ashkenazi Jews than in the general population but prenatal or preconception screening for it is much more accurate, because the disease is caused by many different, combinable mutations, and Askenazi Jews have only a few). Even worse, there are many congenital birth defects that can happen anyway.

Intermarriage does have an impact on genetics, but not as clear as this article suggests.

It's true that it's great to try and avoid diseases, but you can't prevent everything, and everyone makes tradeoffs between quality of life now and longevity, for example every time you eat a chocolate bar. Until we know everything about everyone's genes, and unless you map yourself and your partner, choosing your partner by genetics is probably giving undue weight to the things we can find over the ones we can't.

What one can control much more is how you raise your child--what values you instill, what family environment you have, whether you give your child support and respect. Part of this is trying to give them a good start, part of this is helping them weigh risk benefit ratios.

It sounds like the author disliked her Jewish experience--but it also sounds like she didn't know much about her family's traditions, because they chose to pursue a different lifestyle, and not to give her contact with a Jewish community closer to their values. That was a choice they made for her, just like passing on their Jewish mutations, and one that could do as much emotional and spiritual harm as the cancer genes do physically (not that it necessarily did, she may be very spiritually fulfilled, I just feel that Judaism has a lot more to offer than she's describing, and don't know what if anything she found to take its place.)

I married another Ashkenazi Jew. We had genetic testing, but my daughter has a genetic disease anyway, something they weren't yet testing for. It's a non-fatal disease, but it has definite downsides.

But guess what else my daughter has? She has parents who are married, and deeply committed to working to stay that way, because that's part of our religion. She's off with her dad right now bringing food to the foodbank, which he does every week, because that's part of our religion. She's learning about truth, empathy, and all sorts of other things which one can certainly have without religion, but which our religion strengthens in us. We share a lot of expectations about values and lifestyle, we share the same holidays, the same community. Not sharing these can be overcome, but it's a stress. And most of all, she's learning about belief in God and the personal integrity it should demand, because that is a central part of our religion.

I did the best I could for my child--got testing to think about PGIF, took prenatal vitamins, avoided additives, etc, but also choose a parent for her I respect and love, who I believed would be committed and caring to her, and help raise her to a meaningful life in a happy family.

Based on how happy she is every day, I think it was a good choice.