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The FrankenJew Generation
By Kerry Olitzky / February 22, 2007
From: Kerry Olitzky To: Stephen Schwartz Subject: Inclusion—It’s That Simple. Stephen,
An “inclusive” Jewish community would accept those who cast their lot with the Jewish people. This includes interfaith families who would otherwise be excluded.
Of course, there must be limits to our openness. And while I personally have a rather liberal notion of what it means to become Jewish, I am mindful of the importance of societal norms and consensus on the process of conversion.
But even if family members don’t “become Jewish,” we should be prepared to welcome them into the Jewish community. Jewish tradition acknowledges a place for those who journey with the Jewish people, calling them “gerei toshav.” I am not sure this term is still appropriate, but it does indicate that a posture of 
openness permeated even the ancient and rabbinic Jewish communities. And we should remember that those who cast their lot with the Jewish people also demonstrate a great openness.
The rabbis commonly identify Ruth—a convert—as the best example of a non-Jew who joined the Jews. But there was little debate when Moses married a non-Jew (the daughter of Jethro, a priest of Midian) or when Esther’s marriage to Achashverosh saved the Jews of ancient Persia.
If we are speaking of those with interfaith parents, it is more appropriate to refer to them as possessing “multiple identities,” rather than being of a “mixed background.” Nevertheless, in my experience—and this is backed up by demographic studies—most so-called interfaith marriages are really not “interfaith” at all. As Rabbi Harold Schulweis quipped, they are “interfaithless.”
Such families generally practice American civil religion. They might also observe a smattering of residual religious practices, such as putting up a Christmas tree and Hanukkah menorah, or having a Passover seder and an Easter egg hunt.
I may not prefer to see such practices coincide in one family, but I also realize that just as a Hannukah menorah does not a Jewish identity make, neither does a Christmas tree make a Christian—as difficult as it may be for Jews to see beyond it.
In your various examples of those who “want to become Jewish,” I see evidence of the unique way in which Jews have assimilated into American culture. While most peoples lose their identity when they acculturate, the American Jewish community has not. We have held onto much of our minority culture, and we’ve made it attractive to those in the majority. Shall we now embrace these people? Do we “need” them, as you put it?
We do need them, and we should embrace them. There are many reasons to do so, both self-interested and not.
In my first e-mail to you I mentioned my ideological commitment to “Big Tent Judaism.” This is in part because, when I was a rabbinical student, my teacher Jacob Rader Marcus charged me with making up for the catastrophic losses of the Holocaust. This is an impossible task, but I work at it nonetheless.
We are now an aging people that is not reproducing itself. Welcoming interfaith families will not only stop our demographic decline, it will actually help to grow the Jewish community.
There is also a Zionist argument: the survival of the state of Israel is dependent, in part, on the largesse of the United States. The American Jewish community helps secure this largesse, and its influence is in some ways dependent on its size.
There are few American Jewish families that have not been impacted by intermarriage. A self-interested community cannot exclude them. A welcoming and tolerant community would not want to.
Kerry Olitzky
Next: Turning back to our Sephardic legacy
POST A COMMENT
To all of you anonymous haters and cowards who feel a need to terrorize "we who are not racially pure" I have only this to say:
What a huge shame I must bring to "true" American Jewry because I chose to seek out and embrace my maternal Jewish roots and reject those of my father.
How awful it must feel to have a "half-Jew" choose to live only as a Jew, shun all aspects of his half-gentile parentage and have a relationship with "your" G-d. Last time I checked, G-d created all of us, not some of us. Do the "real" Jewish people have so many friends and supporters that they should turn people away?
I don’t think so, MISTER "ALL CAPITAL LETTERS."
And who decides my worthiness in front of G-d? You? The last time I checked, by law I am a Jew. So whose a** do I have to kiss before I’m allowed a "real" relatonship with G-d and the right to practice my faith as much as you profess to?
No really…tell me so I can get this over with.
Are you angry, intolerant writers so full of yourselves that you can’t see the damage you are doing? Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the Teabaggers show more compassion than what I am reading here. Would you turn the Jewish people and religion into a racist organization?
For 20 years I have fought for Jews and Judaism with my own fists, sweat and blood. To all of you who devalue the lives of other human beings who’ve had no say in their Jewish parentage, I would argue that it is you who are a shanda fur die goyim, not us.
Erik Kolacek.
Haters aren’t real Jews. And if you think you are a "real Jew" because you feel like you somehow "belong more," you’re missing the point.
I suggest it isn’t liberalism and intermarriage that is causing slimming numbers of Jews, it’s bigots like the people calling people, who consider themselves Jewish, non-Jewish traitors and equating intermarriage with the holocaust.
Get over yourself.
"What is hateful to you, do not do
to another. That is the entire Torah. Everything else is commentary.
Now go and study!" R. Hillel
This last comment (another annon) is most welcome.
Many of us who intermarry, or come from intermarriages, absolutely understand that more traditional Jews have a hard time with intermarriage. We don’t think everyone should “just get over it” or anything. We see how complicated and difficult it can be to maintain a Jewish home/life withing a mixed household.
But helping to support such families as they build Jewish lives… that seems to me to be another kind of mitzvah. I don’t see what good is served by building walls that don’t work. Tall narrow walls.
xoLaurel
I concur with the comment from anon at 12:54. My views on this have changed drastically with time. I still oppose intermarriage whenever possible, but recognize that inmarriage is not the preeminent or only Mitzvah. While the Torah prohibits intermarriage, it also prohibits lots of other things that Jews nonetheless sometimes do. We don’t cut off Jews who do those things, we tyr to figure out how to bring them back. Organized Jewry must balance between strong opposition to intermarriage (starting with opposing interdating) and welcoming the Jewish spouse if an intermarriage occurs. We should be way beyond sitting shiva for an intermarried child….
to the original poster-
you are basically implying that Judaism doesn’t care what you do as long as you marry within the faith. you’re pretty much saying that people don’t have to go to shul, don’t have to observe holidays, etc. but they HAVE to marry another Jew. that’s ridiculous. just because two Jews marry, it doesn’t guarantee that their relationship will be successful or happy. there are many Jewish-Jewish couples who are miserable, totally incompatible, and can’t agree on whether or not keep kosher or drive to shul. are they better just because they married within the faith? that all depends on who you ask.
marrying Jewish is NOT the main priority in Judaism. you make it sound as though finding a nice Jewish boy or girl is the most important thing in the world, and that keeping mitzvot and Torah are irrelevant. your focus is totally backwards. furthermore, i do not believe that labelling people as successes or failures based on who they marry is necessary. your comment that Jews who intermarry are nothing more than treasonous non-Jewish backstabbers is absolutely uncalled for and you should be ashamed for even uttering such a sentence. people are too obsessed with finding a same-faith spouse that they totally forget the key aspects of Judaism: observing holidays and customs, studying texts, tikkun olam, and one of the most imperative commandments in the Torah- the act of welcoming the stranger, for we ourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt. you have clearly failed to keep that commandment with your disgusting comments towards some of the people on this board.
combatting intermarriage via the methods of disowning and neglecting has clearly not worked. nor has scaring the crap out of people into marrying their own kind with talk of ‘the end is near’. we can’t force Jews to marry other Jews. people marry whoever they want. it’s that simple. so instead of focusing on all the negative things about the Jewish community, we need to focus on the positive ones. what makes Judaism appeal to people, regardless of whether or not they themselves are Jewish? we also need to realize that intermarriage is a result of living in a free society, not a rebellion against faith or family. i myself am in love with a non-Jewish male, and it hasn’t prevented me from being part of a community. it hasn’t made my parents cut me off, though i’m sure they’d rather me be with a Jewish guy they’re not about to lose me over it. it hasn’t made me stop observing holidays or stop supporting Israel (in fact, i am heading there in 2 days with the Birthright organization on one of their 10 day excursions). instead, it’s made me MORE interested in Judaism and in turn, my partner has gained a wealth of knowledge and appreciation for a culture/religion he knew nothing of previously. this does not mean that i am becoming Orthodox or that my partner is converting. it simply means that i’ve re-dicsovered something wonderful. i’ve dated Jewish guys in the past and none of them cared about being Jewish. all they cared about was bringing a nice Jewish girl home so their parents would shut up about their dating life. you can think what you want about my relationship and the relationships of others. but i go where i am comfortable. and believe me, i have been comfortable in many places, not just in the Reform circle but in Conservative and even in some Orthodox settings. i am so thankful i discovered my local Chabad house. they are amazing, and they have not once passed any judgement on myself or my partner (yes, he DOES goes with me to their events). whereever i go, i hope it’s far away from you.
To say that intermarriage is killing Judaism is a flaw of causality. While it may be true (I’m not saying that it is) that many intermarried couples do not raise their children to be religious or with a strong Jewish identity (or whatever it is that you are insinuating), that does not mean that it is the intermarriage that caused this decline in Jewish identity. Perhaps the people that you are talking about would not have raised their children with a Jewish identity regardless of whether they had married a Jew or a non-Jew. Perhaps the two have nothing to do with each other. Coreelation does not equal causation.
I know MANY interfaith couples and MANY people who have converted to Judaism who have a stronger Jewish identity and keep more Halakha than many of the born Jews that I know. There are so many Jews (Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, etc. etc.) who were raised in a strong Jewish environment but rejected this as young adults. Here we have people who have observed Judaism from the outside and are able to see the beauty, widson, culture, history, etc., inherent in Judaism. Why should we turn them away?
Anon, I'm not sure who exactly deleted your comments, but it is our policy not to censor a user's discourse no matter who stupid he or his ideology is. What we don't typically allow is excessive disrespect toward other guests on our site. This includes personal insults and that sort. Sorry if you disagree with Dacon (God knows I do) but don't be a dip about it.
YOU PROVE MY STATEMENTS ABOVE,
YOU KNOW NOTHING OF JUDAISM:
I AM A BROOKLYN SEPHARDIC BUSINESS MAN.
YOU WOULD NEVER NOTICE ME FROM ANY OTHER BUSINESS MAN IN NEW YORK
EXCEPT YOU WOULD AND ADMIRE MY FINER QUALITY OF CLOTHES
OVER YOUR JEANS WITH HOLES IN THE KNEES.
MY GOY BUSINESS ASSOCIATES ARE HAPPY AND BRAG IN THEIR CHURCH
THAT THEY TOOK A JEW TO A GLATT KOSHER RESTURANT.
THE WORLD WILL LOVE YOU IF YOU LOVE YOURSELF IN A HUMBLE WAY OF COURSE.
YOU ARE UNFORTUNALTY SO FAR FROM UNDERSTANDING WHAT IT IS TO BE A JEW,
THAT I REFRAIN FROM REDICULING YOU AND I TRY AGAIN TO GIVE YOU WARMTH.
AGAIN I REPEAT WHAT I POSTED ABOVE,
‘GD’ ONLY ASKS THAT YOU TRY TO OBSERVE
AT ANY LEVEL, AS LONG AS YOU TRY AND NOT CALL YOURSELF ANYTHING
SUCH AS REFORM OR CONSERVATIVE OR SECULAR,
BUT ONLY CALL YOUSELF A ***JEW THAT TRIES***.
SO I COVERED THE CLOTHES I WEAR AND THE WAY I OBSERVE AND WHAT I FEEL ABOUT MY FELLOW JEWS AND I EXCUSED YOUR POOR INFANTILE ATTITUDE TO ME FOR OBSERVING TORAH.
BUT I JUST CANT RESIST SAYING THIS…..
THERE SO MANY SCHMUCKS LIKE YOU,,,ITS A SHAME ……
MASHIACH WILL HAVE A TOUGH TIME CLEANING UP….LOLOLOLOL
THANK YOU,
DACON999
PS. I DONT HAVE A BEARD
I WALK STRONG PROUD AND ERECT.
I AM A JEW THAT TRIES….
IF ‘YOU’ LOOK BAD..TRY CLEANING YOUR ATTITUDE.
TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY AND SOUL
I AM A NIDAN ‘SHO TO KAN’ JAPAN KARATE
AND I LEARN A FEW HOURS A WEEK.
BE A WARRIOR FOR JUDAISM AND SPEAK TO HASHEM LIKE DAVEED HAMELECH,
GO TO CHABAD
LEARN RABBI NACHMAN
EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS IN JUDAISM
AM YISRAEL CHAI
STEP ON HAMAN….
HE IS ALIVE TODAY IN IRAN AHMADENEJIAN
I AM A JEW ‘
IN MEMORY OF DANNY PEARL
AND ALL OUR WARRIORS/HEROS/VICTIMS
THAT LOST THEIR LIFES TO THE KILLERS CALLED TERRORIST.
GET OUT 3 KIDNAPPED SOLDIERS BACK NOW!!!
u delete my coments but leve his hateful shit up for all too see. well i am sick of these ultraortodox with there ratty beirds and smelly black clothes bossing us all around and calling us goyim. it is peple like dacon999 who make all jews look bad and will bring another hurban on us. ban him now!!!!!!!
hahahahahahaaaaa…..
1. Bacon cheeseburgers are yummy!
2. Non-Jewish women are hot!
3. Fundamentalist Jewish Nazis like you can kiss my you-know-what and geh in drerd!
MOST OF YOUR COMMENTS
ARE FROM IGNORANCE OF JUDAISM, IGNORANCE OF FAMILY, COMMUNITY AND TORAH IN THE JEWISH LIFE.
YOU COMMENT SUCH AS EVEN IF THEY INTERMARRY THEY ARE JEWISH.
COMMENTS I MADE WAS CALLED ‘CONTRADICTORY’ , ‘LACK OF LOGIC’.
Dear readers, those are ignorant answers to not only the religion JUDAISM but to basic reasoning and common sense.
when a commentator said
”well then why should you care ”
all these statements and questions are really very simple to answer,
but ‘WHY SHOULD I CARE”?
I care because the ONE ‘HOLY GD OF ISRAEL WANTS US TO CARE’
FOR EACH OTHER FOR HIS NATION FOR OUR FUTURE FOR OUR FAMILIES,
and for the world.
BUT also, I am not expecvtyed to lie down and die for those that may insult our holy TORAH or our ISRAEL.
I CARE BECAUSE MOST OF YOU ARE MISINFORMED NOT HAVING A CHANCE TO HAVE A GOOD TORAH EDUCATION, I CARE BECAUSE YOU ARE MISINFORMED ABOUT WHAT IS AN AVERAGE JEW TO DO TO ‘SERVE’ ‘GD’. I CARE BECAUSE YOU THINK THAT AN OBSERVANT JEW HAS TO LOOK LIKE A EUROPEAN HASID in black clothes TO BE A OBSERVANT JEW.
I know that many of you are not exposed to a JEWISH community, in order for you to separate the myths from the truths.
many of you are jew haters,When i ask you why, you say because i just hate you cause you own the world, yet you discount that the whole world kicks us jews out of their country and kills us or proselytizes and attempts to convert us.so if we jews own the world why are we kicked out
from that which we own?
HOW CAN I EXPECT TO ANSWER YOU, WHICH YOU HAVENT BE SATISFIED FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, BUT MAYBE SOME READER HERE WILL STOP TO THINK AND PROCESS WITHOUT PREJUDICE THINKING, THAT ”HEY MAYBE THERES MORE TO JUDAISM THAN I THOUGHT.
REMEMBER THAT JUDAISM DOES NOT ASK ANY OTHER RELIGION TO CONVERT TO JEWISH.
JUDAOSM ONLY ASKS THE NON JEWS TO FOLLOW ‘GD’S LAWS AS GIVEN TO NON JEWS IN THE TORAH ALSO
THEY ARE CALLED ‘NOAHIDE LAWS’
AND BORN JEWS ARE EXPECTED TO SIMPLY..JUST TRY HARDER.
‘GD’ NEVER EXPECTED US TO BE PERFECT..ONLY THAT WE TRY.
THANK YOU
DACON999
Eventually, the only Judaism practiced will be Orthodox, as the non-Orthodox will cease pretending to follow their attenuated, dessicated, weak Judaism.
If you practice Reform, your descendants will be gentiles and people who are halachically Jewish (through matrilineal descent) but are either totally secular or practicing Christians.
100 years from now, 90+% of the Jews in the U.S.A. will be Orthodox.
Anonymous [cut off from parents] here again… with one more thought.
I never understood why some people feel that I am obligated, by virtue of being born, to be responsible for the Jewish race. I understand the background, history, etc. My grandparents survived the concentration camps, and my father has made it very clear that I am worse than Hitler because I’m “doing what he couldn’t finish”.
But where did I sign up and promise that I would marry a Jew? When did I agree to these conditions? And I don’t want to hear when God gave the Torah to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai I was there and agreed to it, because that’s not an answer.
If I am to be punished in the afterlife, so be it… that’s between me and God. If Jeiwsh Destructo or Dacon999 are interns working for God and they know something I don’t know, I’d like to know that.
Otherwise, your opinions are valid as opinions only, and your hatred speak for itself.
…that Dacon999 has viewed the Next World for him/herself and therefore can be 100% certain who will be punished and who won't.
Also, as with Jewish Destrudo, if Dacon999 genuinely believes that "Judaism is quality not quantity," then why bother getting all worked up about intermarriage?
Just goes to show the complete lack of logical thinking some posters are exhibiting.
INTERMARRIGE, THE DESTRUCTION OF JUDAISM.
NEXT GENERATION WILL NOT INTERMARRY,
THEY WILL MARRY AND RAISE XMAS TREES.
JUDAISM IS QULAITY NOT QUANTITY.
YOU WANT TO JOIN A CLUB?
JUDAISM IS NOT A CLUB
JOIN THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB.
AND THOSE THATY INTERMARRY ARE NOT JEWISH ON THE MORTAL PLANET.
THEY CAN NOT BE BURIED IN A TORAH CEMETARY ETC ETC ETC.
IN THE NEXT WORLD THEY WILL BE SEVERLY PUNISHED.
ITS A PITY WHAT PEOPLE HAVE DONE TO THE HOLY TORAH AND JUDAISM.
THANK YOU,
DACON999
JD,
Your anecdotal evidence is silly at best. I grew up Orthodox and married a non-Jewish girl, and the second I announced my engagement, both of my parents cut off contact with me.
You were asked for *constructive* criticism, and all you said was “We have intermarriage today because parents spoiled their kids and gave their kids anything they wanted without ever putting their foot down or setting rules which need to be followed.”
You asked for someone to prove you wrong and here I am. Need anything else?
Laurel is the one using insults because she can’t factully debate the issue of intermarriage. Maybe the word “product” was not the best choice in referring to Laurel but I didn’t mean to be offensive. What is offensive is having people deny the obvious because of their personal agenda.
I'm just raising points for discussion. It's possible to do that without lobbing personal insults at people, such as reducing a human being to a "product." You do not speak for me.
Since you are a product of an intermarriage I wouldn’t expect you to understand the complexities of the Jewish community. Jewish leaders across the world agree that interrmarriage is destroying the community. Their opinions take precedence over your illogical views every single time. Michael describes people like you perfectly.
Understand, I'm not saying whether it should or shouldn't, because it's not for me to decide. But I wonder whether, assuming the current trends regarding intermarriage without formal conversion continue, most Diaspora Jews (apart from the Orthodox and right-leaning Conservatives) will come to view Jewishness as a religion exclusively, not as a nationality, peoplehood or ethnicity.
I remember studying the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey in a Brandeis course, and coming across the telling statistic that (roughly) 30% of respondents who self-identified as Jews by choice stated that they hadn't involved a rabbi at any point of their embracing Judaism. I took that to mean that many Americans who adopt Judaism, whether for marital or other reasons, see becoming a Jew as analagous to becoming a Protestant. That is, they feel it's enough to simply decide that they believe in Judaism, and perhaps join a congregation. After all, not all synagogues ask for proof of Jewish parentage upon application, and unless someone is of an ethnicity not normally associated with Jews (rightly or wrongly), it's relatively easy to blend in and be welcomed as one of the group. Some American Reform and Reconstructionist congregations grant full membership status, religious school enrollment, and in some cases ritual honours to spouses and children who are open and up-front about not having formally converted. As BeccaB notes above, this has led many interfaith Conservative families to switch to Reform affiliation (possibly Reconstructionist to a lesser degree, I don't know). Also, Jewish Renewal congregations, and many unaffiliated havurot and minyanim, openly and warmly welcome interfaith families.
Furthermore, I recall a national study (I wish I could remember under whose auspices) of American Jews by choice, which found that a substantial number felt less of a connection to Israel, non-U.S. Diaspora communities, or both, than Jews by birth. This shouldn't be taken as holy scripture, of course, being one study, but if accurate this finding would support the possibility of a future shift to an exclusively religious definition of Jewishness. Again, I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but it is a possibility, fraught with both positive opportunities and dangers. Positive opportunities, in that a larger number of people considered as Jewish, and practicing Judaism in some way, could help offset the negative reproductive rate of most Jews by birth. Dangers, in that this development could lead to a complete schism between traditional and liberal Jews and the formation of two separate, mutually-exclusive religions, as happened with Judaism and Samaritanism (and nearly did with Rabbinism and Karaism). There could also be a split, if not an official schism, between Diaspora Jewry and Israel, as most Israeli Jews have a weak connection at best to Judaism as a religion, but certainly have a strong sense of national identity. At the very least they see themselves as distinct from Israeli Arabs and other Israeli citizens or residents.
I fear I'm opening a Pandora's box here, but it is a distinct possibility within the next century and thus worth discussing.
No, anon…
You deal with anecdotal assumptions, stereotypes, and poor grammar.
Intermarriage is destroying the Jewish people because most children of these marriages don’t identify as Jews. That’s a reality that I’ve experienced as has many of my friends and relatives. I’m not attacking anyone here for having non-Jewish parents. If you are raising your children as Jewish you should be congratulated. The problem is that the majority of those in your situation aren’t.
The Reform Movement is absolutely declining in it’s numbers. Rabbis are being instructed to strongly encourage conversion before marriage because the majority of these families have little or no ties to the Jewish community. Reform might be the largest movement in the United States now but in a few decades the Orthodox will replace it due to the staggering rates of intermarrage in the Reform Movement.
Anon,
You might really want to look at the number JOI (Kerry's org) has on this stuff. I know that the intuitive "sense" of the Jewish community is as you say, but the numbers we're showing are otherwise. You can't separate out variables, and so it is very hard to validate the decline as a result of intermarriage. It's just as likley that intermarriage results from this decline, which results from assimilation, or any number of other scenarios.
But far more hopeful are the new numbers we're seeing that show how outreach to the intermarried can have a huge effect on the "decline". Seriously, you might be surprised if you took a peek at what people are finding out.
" The Reform Movement is shrinking rapidly because it's been too tolerant of interfaith marriages."
Yes, that would explain why it went from being the second-largest movement in the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) to being the largest movement in the 2000-1 NJPS.
For the record, I'm affiliated with the movement that used to be the largest and has fallen to #2 (1990 percentages: 35% Reform, 43% Conservative; 2000-1 percentages: 39% Reform, 33% Conservative.) –a change which many have attributed, not without reason, to Conservative Judaism's perceived unfriendliness to intermarried families. I discuss a roundup of statistics dealing with intermarriage and Conservative Judaism here , for those who like the details–but the basic deal is: the data from the 1990 NJPS on those who switched their affiliation from Conservative Judaism to another movement or another religion showed that 58.9% went to Reform Judaism. Why? "Our findings thus suggest that switching is very often related to intermarriage, and quite likely is the direct result of intermarriage," write Sidney Goldstein & Alice Goldstein, in their analysis of the data. (And if you like stats on adult children of intermarriage, to have a better sense of whether folks like me and Laurel are anomalies or not, you might like to have a look here.)
Let's remember, of course, 2 important caveats about the use and abuse of statistics:
1) correlation is not causation
–for example, if your data shows that those who have attended Jewish day school have lower levels of intermarriage than those who don't, you can't conclude that day school "makes you less likely to intermarry," so we can end intermarriage by sending everyone to day school: it's likely that the factor(s) that led a family to enroll their child in day school might be the same one(s) responsible for the relatively lower rate of intermarriage–so to know what the cause is, you'd have to either run an experiment or have other ways to do comparisons or gather survey data that would help you determine causation.
2) description is not prediction
–if your data shows that about 1/3 of intermarried households surveyed in 2000 were raising their children exclusively Jewish (a number often cited from the 2000-1 NJPS, though others would say it should instead be nearly half (42%), since the data showed: 32% Jewish (religion), 10% Jewish (secular)–vs. 11% Jewish + other, 35% Christian, 8% no religion, 4% other– I refer you once more here), you can't necessarily say that "only 1/3 of the children from mixed marriages will end up Jewish," as some sort of rule for predicting future affiliation. What we know about a population from one data snapshot in time gives us a basis for extrapolation and prediction–which we'll do better or worse at, depending on how well we consider all the relevant factors that might affect the situation over the timespan involved–but it doesn't predict destiny. So you can't confidently say that "90% of children who have one Jewish grandparent will end up losing their Jewish identity forever" (never mind the fact that the main issue is whether such children are given a Jewish identity in the first place!)
I just wanted to announce how cool it is that I now have a reason to wear my "I Am A Treasonous Non-Jew For Falling Love" T-shirt that's been sitting in my closet these last, oh, 13 years. I always felt it was just me who felt this way…I never knew I was part of a movement.
The fact is that the majority of children from intermarried families don’t identify as Jews. One of the most troubling aspects is that 90% of children who have one Jewish grandparent will end up losing their Jewish identity forever.
The Reform Movement is shrinking rapidly because it’s been too tolerant of interfaith marriages. This is why it’s a huge problem within the Jewish community right now.
You and Laurel should be commended for raising your children Jewish but unfortunately your families are an anamoly. If most intermarriage families were like yours this wouldn’t be an issue. Most of these families end up severing their ties with the Jewish community and that is the sad reality.
For a rather different view of why Jews intermarry, I commend to your attention this essay by Zackary Sholem Berger.*
On the anecdotal, personal level:
My mother (Jewish) married my father (not Jewish) not because she's a crying spoiled baby and her parents didn't care what she did. She married him because he was her bashert–the right person for her–AND because he would join her in creating a Jewish family, even though he did not convert. (He practises no other religion, and Judaism has always been the only religion of the household: I'd say he is in many ways a good fit with the category of the ger toshav.)
I (Jewish) went out with and got engaged to my now-husband (not born Jewish) for much the same reasons. As it happened, his positive experiences with all that Jewish life and learning have to offer led him to become a ger tzedek and convert to Judaism in the year before our wedding–and in so doing completely changed and deepened my own Jewish life and practice. Certainly, I know many Jews by birth for whom their partner's decision to become a Jew by choice has done the same–but so do other important family events. (For my mother, it was saying kaddish daily for her father, who died when I was in high school: she became more involved in Jewish life years before I did).
Those who want to "fight intermarriage" might hail my story's outcome as another triumph for "in-marriage" now that it's between 2 Jews–but they fail to see the damage done by treating my supportive non-Jewish fiance as the enemy before showering him with love as a new (and newly-acceptable) Jew. In either case, he would have helped me build a bayit ne'eman b'yisrael, a faithful household in the Jewish community, whether or not both of us were Jews.
My story isn't everyone's story–but there are a lot of us out there. Recent Hillel surveys show nearly half of the Jewish students on campus have one Jewish parent. And these aren't all marginal Jews: I've known Hillel presidents, leaders of campus Jewish organizations, and other core, committed Jews who, like me, have one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent.
The question you should be asking, Destrudo et al., is what will bring more of those who do choose to make their lives with a non-Jewish partner–regardless of your disapproval–decide to make Jewish choices in how they live that life and create their household.
As for the obsession with numbers:
in my family it's all increase–
1 Jew (my mother) + 1 non-Jew (my father) = 3 Jews (me and my 2 brothers)
as a couple, we have:
1 Jew (my mother) + 3 non-Jews (my father and my husband's parents) = 2 Jews (me and my husband)… + any children we should be blessed with, who will be nice Jewish children with various beloved non-Jewish relatives. No identity crisis there!
When my extended family gathers for seder every year, there may be 2 non-Jewish spouses, 2 Jews by choice, and a bunch of born Jews at the table…but there's no one who's "married out." We're all in–whatever the religion of a spouse or parent. No children being raised "out of the faith," no one "lost" to us or to Judaism: so much for the siren call of dominant Christianity or areligious apathy. I know that statistically our family snapshot is not the nationwide norm–but I think it says a lot about the pull of a strong Jewish identity rooted in committed family life.
I'd rather focus on what we can do to let Jews and any non-Jewish partners and friends see all that Judaism has to offer them–and let as many Jews result from that as it may–than obsess about sheer quantity, or make grossly oversimplified generalizations about quality Jewish life being only possible with–or an inevitable outcome of (would that it were so!)–2 partners who are Jewish at the start of the relationship. Let's build up, rather than tear down. I'm ready!
*Two excerpts from this essay provide a valuable overall framework for understanding what else intermarriage might mean or be, consonant with but not limited to my own story:
What might be going on in the mind of the committed Jew when he or she finds "the right person" – who isn't a Jew? It's quite simple: he or she imagines a future married life which includes both involvement in Judaism and marriage to a non-Jew. According to his or her deliberations, a non-Jewish spouse does not compromise individual, Jewish aspirations.
…
With regard to the non-committed Jew, perhaps the foregoing discussion provides a productive approach: rather than "enticing" the marginal Jew with dire predictions of the downfall of the Jewish people brought about by intermarriage, we can provide positive examples of substantive Jewish life among individuals from a variety of backgrounds and individual choices. All of these Jews, together with their families, make up the Jewish people, which is strong and broad enough to share its bounty with the "chosen non-Jews."
…when people barge into this site with insulting, hateful comments and then complain in turn about being insulted. This applies not only to Jewish Destrudo, but to that anonymous anti-Semite who keeps posting about the Khazars and about all Jewish history being a lie.
Bottom line, haters: if you can't take it, don't dish it out.
You can just take the LSATs again when you realize you blew it the first time, but you can’t just go out and marry a Jew after you decide it was a mistake to marry out–especially not if there are kids, that complicates things immeasurably.
On the other hand, you can get married quickly to a nice Jew if you know someone who makes shiddachs, but you can’t just quickly retake the LSAT and expect a different result. You need to crack the books. To be honest, if you didn’t start early on, you’re in trouble. It’s easier to learn the material if you study hard all the way through law school rather than study hard for the exam itself.
End of story!
I’d let them do whatever they want. Marriage is a matter of privacy and shouldn’t be interfered with by the state. This is an issue the community and the parents should deal with. The negative consequences of intermarriage will play itself out without the need of nanny state interference. But if I was head of the community I would probably ban it (although a ban is nothing more than a request which can be ignored at will).
And Laurel, I would argue that you’re wrong based on the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen. Almost all, in fact, now that I think of it, ALL of the interfaith marriage couples I have met had parents that cared little about it and certainly didn’t do much to stop it from happening. Think about it, how many interfaith couples do you know that no longer have any contact with their family strictly because they intermarried? I bet you the answer is nill. This proves that for the most part, the Jewish community as parents did not put their foot down. Their kid screamed for candy and they caved. Furthermore, even if they did put their foot down and it didn’t work, that isn’t the reason why we have intermarriage now like you state. We have intermarriage today because parents spoiled their kids and gave their kids anything they wanted without ever putting their foot down or setting rules which need to be followed. So yeah, maybe some rabbi 25 years ago gave a speech at a Y somewhere. But parents as a whole did little to stop it because thats what their babby wants and whatever their baby wants is what their baby gets no questions asked.
Admit it, our community fucked up. We were so happy to have some money and be accepted into a society that we gave our kids everything without questions and without ever putting our foot down. And you can complain all you want about me personally, but we have seen what inter-faith marriage does 1-3 generations down the line. It produces people who, if they are technically Jewish, have absolutey no desire or knowledge in Judaism. So you can say all you want but I guarantee you, in 50 years there will be at best a pocket of a couple of million Jews left that care. The rest will either be technically not Jewish (and most end up not), or so distantly Jewish so as not even matter. Of course a few here and there meet a chabadnik and return, but its never equal to those that dont. You guys keep complaining about me personally, but no one has ever even uttered a word about the above paragraph not happening or why it wont happen. Until then, Ill take the personal insults as testament that I’m right, since if I was wrong, you’d be able to disprove it or come even close to disproving it.
Jewish Destrudo
We've heard again and again from you about how terrible intermarriage is. So let me put this challenge to you: If you were appointed Head Jew of the World, with the power to enforce your decisions, what constructive steps would you do to handle the intermarriage issue?
I have a feeling you'd take the Nehemiah approach ("I censured them, cursed them, flogged them, tore out their hair"–Neh. 13:25), but I'd be happy to have you prove me wrong.
Destrudo,
There are so many problems with your comment I don't know where to begin. But for starters… Jews who intermarry are absolutely Jews, and not "treasonous non-Jews". That's one issue nobody really questions. Ask your rabbi about the law on this.
And the community DID put a big foot down 25 years ago. It didn't work, and that's why we're having this conversation.
I understand your feelings, but your logic and reasoning (and perhaps reading/listening skills) need some work.
Why should the Jewish community “reach out” and accept those that stab us in the back? It was precisely this overly condoning, overly sympathetic, overtly spoiling mentality that got us in this position in the first place. If the Jews had put their foot down 25 years ago we wouldn’t be in this situation. I just don’t understand why you should embrace those that despise you.
To be a member of Judaism, we rquire one thing, one social tax of sorts. In todays Judiams, fundamentally we don’t require you to keep kosher, to wear tziztis, to go to shul, to do anything EXCEPT to marry another jew. Here, you’re saying that even though these people have benefited greatly from being born Jewish, they were so narcissistic and so self-righteous that they couldn’t do the one thing that Judaism asks to be repaid for everything its done for them. And now you’re saying that even though these people couldn’t bother to do even the one request their religion asks of them, we should still open our arms to them? I would love to live in your world where there are no consequences for your actions. But in the real world when you eat the forbidden fruit, you pay the price. A jew that intermarries is a treasonous non-jew, nothing more, nothing less – and should be treated by the community the way our community treates every non-Jew be it good or bad.
Our numbers may go down, but Judaism has always been quality over quantity. The Jews paid the price for not fighting back during WWII, and they’ll pay the price now for baptizing their kids immortal and allowing their kids to marry whoever they wish. But the ones who survive, the ones who emerge Jewish will make Judaism that much stronger for it, instead of a watered down assimilated teen fan club you so desperately wish it to be.
Jewish Destrudo
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