Intermarriage - It’s Just Not The Same

December 17, 2007 at 4:50 pm | In culture, dating and marriage, other faiths, sexuality |

As the Jewish community variously gears up to prevent, ‘inreach’ fret, strategize, or otherwise just plain deal with intermarriage, I think an important point is being overlooked.

The intermarriage of today is not the intermarriage of the past. A good analogy is how America assimilates people today versus in the past. The model of past assimilation was the melting pot. A diverse immigrant population would come to America and busy itself with the task of becoming indistinguishably American. People sought to abandon the individual trappings of their cultural in favor of American homogeneousness, and with it, American prosperity.

Today’s assimilation is different, as is today’s intermarriage. Sociologists now refer to the “salad bowl” rather than the melting pot. Individuals do not melt into a single type, but rather, retain much more of their individuality and identity evena s they are accepted into the whole. One no longer need shave a mustache, discard a head scarf, or unwind a turban to achieve acceptance and success in what has gone from a repressed culture in the 1950s to an exuberant, expressive and polyglot one today.

Intermarriage today is not about erasing a Jewish identity in order to melt into a Gentile society. Though marrying a person of another faith will certainly blunt certain kinds of religious expression and later others, in relationships observed today, it does not, nor does it even seek to, eliminate expression of one faith or the other.

The point in this, as in all discussion of intermarriage, is the next generation. Put aside for a moment the question of which children from what types of unions are ‘actually’ Jewish, as vexing a question as this may be for some, and as consuming as it is when we engage it. Children from mixed unions are often encouraged to explore both faiths. Many wish to choose only one, and many wish to commit to one in a more complete manner than perhaps their parents did. Maybe this is in response to the fractured upbringing they experienced. Who can say for sure? But these children will resurface in our Jewish communities. And some children will embrace all the fragments of their religious identity, and try to stitch a whole fabric out of this patchwork. They too will resurface in oru Jewish community.

And so will many others, undescribed here. But that puts the point on this whole discourse. Intermarriage today is different than intermarriage in the past because the children WILL EMERGE in our communities. That’s a hopeful thought.

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I’ll have to blog on my intermarriage at some point, but suffice to say conversion had nothing to do with my wife or mother-in-law’s prodding because there was none. And my wife figures herself a Christian though raised Jewish due to issues with her father and the local synagogue’s way of handling some things.

It does make our world a lot more interesting come the holy days and holidays.

Comment by suitepotato — December 17, 2007 #
Well, sometimes they’ll emerge. I admit, it’s heartening to see Judaism occasionally win in the marketplace of ideas. But the figures I’ve heard are that 5-10% of intermarried couples’ children choose Judaism. That isn’t substainable. Now you can say “things could change anytime”. But I doubt many people who “grocery shop” for which parts of their cultural heritage they will preserve really keep the essence of it…in any example. I can’t put it into words quickly but I just don’t see a cause for optimism here. Treating one’s culture’s norms like fashion accessories (to be largely discarded) kind of defeats the purpose of culture. That purpose being to create a sense of something bigger than oneself. What’s the purpose of a headscarf without a commitment to modest dress to go with it? It’s not a badge, it’s part of a normative endeavor.

Moreover, of the younger people I have known there is a distinct stigma on religiousity. It stands in the way of having fun and they don’t need it for social networking. The most common religious position I have heard is “sure I believe in G*d but I choose what that means for my life”. One study I heard said the average view is of of deity as a combination social worker and Santa Claus.

I don’t think the Jewish vision of Hashem is going to survive well in this climate. If it does, I think it has to be under the guidance of parents and a community who make the living and teaching of Judaism their main business. And without the acceptance and endorsement of obedience to Hashem (however eclectic that obedience is for some traditions), Judaism doesn’t make any sense. Why belong to a synagogue or use Judaism as more than “opium of the masses” if one doesn’t need any thing from it and don’t acknowledge it can demand anything from oneself?

I have serious doubts that the majority of children of intermarriage really yearn for a more consistent observance. The attitude you cite with such hope argues against it. Why should they want more consistence observance when it’s not necessary? When they can pick and choose a few bits of Judaism of personal interest and abandon the rest? Why would they do what wasn’t necessary, if they have no example of absolute commitment to be guided by? I just don’t see the promising long term trend here.

Comment by Kendra — December 18, 2007 #
Kendra, I’m not suggesting intermarriage is a sustainable practice. But I also don’t believe statistics like the one you allude to. For one, I’ve seen to many of them made, and they are usually the products of preconceptions, not scholarship and objective analysis. In any case, it’s not clear to me that the studies, which by necessity are studying marriages that are themselves 20+ years old, are studying the same phenomenon I’m commenting on.

Trends do not remain the same, and neither do social institutions. The marriages of 30 years ago are not the marriages of today, and by extension, neither are the intermarriages. Studying the pas to avoid its mistakes can lead us to the trap of assuming that the present is just like the past.

I don’t want to get into the points of judging one kind of Judaism against another in this piece. I acknowledge that not all types of Jewish expression are equal, or that all modes of Jewish living are viable or sustainable in the long term. What I am suggesting is that, whatever their future prospects, the various modes of Jewish living do currently exist, and are lived by many thousands of actual, unique, human, Jews. Creating a category of Jews whom we are already in pre-mourning for seems macabre, unnecessary, and entirely unhelpful.

Comment by rejewvenator — December 18, 2007 #
I’ll grant that could be true: that the numbers of intermarried couples’ children going with Judaism has radically increased. But I’m deeply skeptical that it’s not a case of things changing and staying the same. I realized that my experience growing up Catholic is what makes me think this. I was schooled till grade 7 in a Catholic school in a small town in Northeaster British Columbia. It would today (were it closer to any large cities) be called an “exurb”: a small town with sufficient amenities and services of sufficient quality that rich people move there to “get away from it all”. The children were surprisingly decent, compared to the reports I had from my cousins in the big cities. Where I lived, once or twice a year someone got in a fight or died in a drunk driving accident. My cousin in the big city got beaten every week or two and he wasn’t the only kid at just his one school. And even accounting for size differences, the density of unpleasantness was much higher in the big cities. Not that country folk are perfect by any means. But I’m reasonably proud of my hometown even though I’m never going back there. As good a place to grow up as any and a sight better than most.

Our parish had a smart, perceptive, humane priest who believed in a liberal take on Catholicism yet still not heretical. Our school principals were reasonably skilled. Our teachers did a good job in catechism. All the same, despite all these blessings, of a class of twenty four people, there was not a single person who really kept even the minimal demands of Catholicism. I was one of three or four kids who attended _intermittently_. There were a few years I only showed up a handful of times outside Easter and Christmas. After 16, I stopped going except those. There might have been one kid who was regular but I don’t know for sure. I saw my peers wish each other the peace of G*d and then go be nasty to each other (and me, yes) in the schoolyard. They would listen to insightful sermons on the Holy Days and ignore them.

I didn’t do so well myself, either. And why? Because I felt like a lone reed against the wind. Life was constantly battering at me with demands and everything happened so fast. With no sense of connection to anyone but my family and the one or two friends I usually had, I had no motivation to really stick with controlling my behaviour. it made no difference when I misbehaved as long as I was quiet about it. Everyone was happy I was polite and stayed out of trouble and my religious disobedience was invisible.

I’m not saying Judaism fixes all this sort of thing. Hardly. If I thought it did, I’d say that would be 100% ironclad proof of the literal, traditional definition of Hashem. But the point is my experience in a nutshell is that people are absolute hypocrites about their religion at the community level. The level of commitment needed to fit in with a Jewish community and be even a hypocritical Jew is a couple notches higher than with a Catholic parish. I extrapolate and see no reason to think hardly any kid put in the extra work to be a hypocritical Jew. Much less one who is really helping to retrench and strengthen the religion at all levels. And we desperately need people like that because modernity is eroding religion. Before, religion took credit for all the good things in life and humans took the blame for the bad things. Now, the situation is largely reversed. And the teachers and Rabbis are not being very nimble on their feet accomodating this. I sympathize, it’s a horriby hard job.

But I see a radical contraction coming and I see intermarried couples’ kids _as a body_ playing even less of a role in stablizing that contraction than the children of their parents’ hypocritical peers. When it comes down to it, Judaism claims to be the most important thing in a Jew’s life. Even if most Jews defy and deny that claim in practice they can at least lie to themselves plausibly to the contrary. But looking at an intermarried parent, the veneer is usually too chipped by their disobedience to the law to even reach this false faced equilibrium.

You are basically correct that despite this there needs to be more peace. There is no point going on about this in mass media public forums against particular groups. (I don’t count this as such a forum.) It’s a rebuke delivered unhalakhically and futile. Certainly this defensive reaction to critize the Jews even more hypocritical than oneself (and I’m hypocrite most of the time too, but I’m trying to cut down… is just a bad idea.

But the feeling I walked away from your post seemed to be “ah, intermarriage isn’t that bad, things are different now”. It’s literally true. But it seemed to express a degree of relief and hope I found puzzling. a deep stab wound is better than a gunshot wound from a rifle, usually. It’s still pretty bad. I’ll admit though, i am biased. I am still very bitter over being driven out of Conservative Judaism. I’m a liberal, rationalist, humanistic aspiring Jew and their application of these principles on the Jewish algorithm shames me to my bones. There is one bright thread in Judaism that I have to hold on to: that it says humans have to set concrete targets for _how_ to be good people…rather than talking about how great it would be to be good. They are unique in this. And the Conservatives snapped this thread and don’t even seem to notice much less care. So I admit my objectivity is impaired.

Comment by Kendra — December 18, 2007 #