Why do Jews intermarry, and who wants to marry a Jew, anyway?

NEW YORK (JTA) – Over the past half century, intermarriage has become increasingly common in the United States among all religions – but among Jews at the highest rate.

Why that is the case is one of the questions Naomi Schaefer Riley probes in her new book, “‘Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America” (Oxford University Press).

One of the main reasons, Riley finds, is that the older people get, the more likely they are to intermarry — and Jews tend to marry older than Americans generally, according to the 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey. By the same token, Mormons, who encourage early nuptials, are the least likely faith to outmarry.

The findings in Riley’s book, for which she commissioned a national study, raise the question of whether Jewish institutions interested in reducing interfaith marriages should be encouraging Jews to marry at a younger age. They aren’t doing that now, according to Riley, and the American Jewish intermarriage rate is about 50 percent.

Another factor behind the comparatively high Jewish intermarriage rate is, simply, that Americans like Jews. Riley cites the work of sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell, who measured the popularity of various religious groups with extensive surveys for their 2010 book, “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.”
“America, for the most part, loves its Jews,” agreed Paul Golin, the associate executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute. “It doesn’t mean that anti-Semitism is over, but there’s much more philo-Semitism than anti-Semitism in America.”

Riley says intermarriage is both a cause and effect of this phenomenon. “The more you have exposure to people of other faiths, the more likely you are to like them and then marry them yourself,” she said.

Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of “’Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America” (Courtesy Naomi Schaefer Riley)
Riley, who identifies as a Conservative Jew, is herself intermarried.

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What do Hindus and Jews Have in Common? A Lot

 by Gabe Weinstein for newvoices

“Lead us from the unreal to the Real; Lead us from darkness to Light; Lead us from death to Immortality,” the audience repeated after the speaker. Though they were there to memorialize the Holocaust, their words did not come from the Torah, nor are they found in Christian Bible or the Quran.

The prayer came from the Brahadaranyakopanisad, one of the Upanishads, a series of ancient philosophical works central to Hinduism.

“It’s one of the most sacred texts in Hinduism,” explained Rajan Zed, who led the University of Nevada-Reno’s Holocaust Remembrance Day audience in a recitation of the scripture. Zed, the president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, participated in the event along with Jewish, Buddhist and Christian clergy. “I chose the text as a way to honor those people who had died and suffered, whose lives were changed forever.”

The major differences between Hinduism and Judaism—two religions with divergent views about theism and sacred images—have come to overshadow the many similarities between the two religions and their accompanying cultures, wrote Barbara Holdrege, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Holdrege also authored “Veda and Torah,” in which she notes that both religions are comprised of many sects, have priesthoods, notions of purity and impurity and vast legal codes.

Zed added that Hinduism and Judaism both emphasize family institutions, have dietary laws and designate sacred languages for prayer. These similarities have allowed India’s Jewish community to live in harmony with India’s Hindu community for nearly 2,000 years.

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In mid-September 2001, just three days after 9-11, Maureen Fiedler rounded up a multi-faith panel to reflect on the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was a live call-in show, and the phones rang off the hook for three hours. It became clear that public radio listeners were hungry for informed, respectful dialogue on religion in the public square. The idea for Interfaith Voices was born that evening.

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