Intermarriage: Can Anything Be Done?

By Jack Wertheimer for Mosaic

The battle is over; or so we’re told. A half-century after the rate of intermarriage began its rapid ascent in the United States, reaching just under 50 percent by the late 1990s, many communal spokesmen appear to have resigned themselves to the inevitable.

Some speak in tones of sorrow and defeat. Encouraging endogamy, they say, has become a fool’s errand; few Jews are receptive to the message, and short of a wholesale retreat into the ghetto, no prophylactic measure will prevent them from marrying non-Jews. For others, the battle is over because it should be over. Not only, they say, are high rates of intermarriage inevitable in an open society, but they constitute glorious proof of just how fully Jews have been accepted in today’s America. The real threat, according to this view, emanates from those who stigmatize intermarried families as somehow deficient; with a less judgmental and more hospitable attitude on the part of communal institutions, many more intermarried families would be casting their lot with the Jewish people.1

To anyone familiar with Jewish history, these views must sound novel in the extreme. For Jews, after all, intermarriage has been a taboo since antiquity. First enshrined in biblical texts prohibiting Israelites from marrying into the surrounding nations, the ban was later expanded in the rabbinic period to encompass all non-Jews. Nor, contrary to the fevered imaginings of anti-Semites, are Jewish endogamy norms the product of clannishness or misanthropy. Rather, they were introduced as a means of insuring Judaism’s transmission—by born Jews as well as by the converts to whom Judaism has almost always been open—from one generation to the next.

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Korean Christians Travel to New York With a Cause: Bringing Comfort to Jews

Observing biblical injunctions regarding the Israelites, a new evangelical group throws a festival in the world’s second Jewish capital

By Daniel Treiman for Tablet

The gathering had all the hallmarks of a typical pro-Israel event: Israel’s national anthem was performed. Rabbis and other machers in attendance were acknowledged from the stage. Light kosher refreshments were served afterward. There was even a trio of black-hatted ultra-Orthodox Jews from the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect protesting outside.

But the program at Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, on a warm August evening, wasn’t put on by a Jewish organization. The two-hour event was the kickoff to the 2013 Shalom Yerushalayim Cultural Festival, a three-day, three-borough summertime extravaganza organized by a brand-new group: Korean Christians for Shalom Israel.

So, everything else about the program was far out of the ordinary. “Hatikvah” was sung not only in Hebrew but also in Korean. The hundreds of attendees packed into the museum’s auditorium were treated to a Tae Kwon Do demonstration by martial artists whose robes sported South Korean and Israeli flags. Miss Korea 2011 modeled in a fashion show of traditional Korean costumes, and an operatic interpretation of the biblical story of Isaac and Rebecca was performed with dialogue in Korean, songs in English. The performers and most of the audience in the rented hall were Korean.

The evening’s climax came when three pastors—Korean, Chinese, and Japanese—were invited onstage along with a Holocaust survivor and Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis. The pastors presented their two Jewish interlocutors with an extraordinary “Statement of Repentance and Hope” endorsed by Asian clergy members. The statement was read aloud by the Rev. Jaehoon Lee, leader of the Onnuri Church, an influential Seoul mega-church that claims 60,000 members in branches around the world. “We have come here today because we believe God will keep all the promises he made to the Jewish people, his Chosen People,” the statement went. “Most of all, however, we have come here today with a heart of repentance.” After expressing contrition for 2,000 years of persecution—“the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocausts perpetrated in Christian nations, etc.”—the statement’s signatories vowed to support Israel, fight anti-Semitism, and work on building “a repentance movement among all Christians.”Continue reading.

Symi Rom-Rymer, Bringing Jews and Muslims together

For The Jewish Week

Symi Rom-Rymer, 32

As a child, Symi Rom-Rymer heard stories about her great-grandfather’s 1911 journey from Russia to the U.S.

“I was very aware of the immigrant experience,” says Rom-Rymer, who is a founder and director of the Global Muslim Jewish Friendship Forum, an Internet-based grassroots organization that tries to unite members of both faiths in discussion about politics, culture and religion.

Following this winter’s killing of both Jews and North African Muslims by a self-confessed al-Qaeda follower in Toulouse, France, “it’s more important than ever for Jews and Muslims to work together,” says Rom-Rymer, a world-traveling freelance journalist who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Her interest in inter-ethnic dialogue was kindled while working in France in 2005, when a government ban on women wearing the Islamic burqa became a controversy in French society.

Since founding the Forum last year with three international partners — two are Muslims, one besides Rom-Rymer is Jewish — the number of people participating in its Facebook postings, Twitter updates and live chats has steadily grown to more than 550 people in some 50 countries. “Every continent.” The Muslim-Jewish ratio: “50-50.”

The online discussions have fostered the shattering of suspicions and stereotypes among member of both groups, Rom-Rymer says. Some Muslims have expressed criticism of dialogue with Jews – particularly because of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, discussion of which is discouraged — but they’re a minority, she says. “The majority don’t feel that way. Muslims are not a monolith.”

Vocalist: A trained opera singer, Rom-Rymer performed with the New York Opera Theater in Carnegie Hall this summer. The place was nearly full. “It was exciting,” she says. Minority interests: Besides covering Jewish-Muslim issues as a journalist, Rom-Rymer has also written about the Roma (Gypsy), Latino and other ethnic groups. “I don’t want to pigeonhole myself too much.”

The war against intermarriage has been lost. Now what?

By Uriel Heilman for JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — When the nation’s largest Jewish federation convened its first-ever conference recently on engaging interfaith families, perhaps the most notable thing about it was the utter lack of controversy that greeted the event.

There was a time when the stereotypical Jewish approach to intermarriage was to shun the offender and sit shiva.

A generation ago, the publication of the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey showing intermarriage at the alarmingly high rate of 52 percent turned into a rallying cry. No matter that subsequent scholarship revised the figure down to 43 percent, interfaith marriage was seen as the core of the problem of Jewish assimilation in America. Jewish institutions poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Jewish identity building with an eye toward stemming intermarriage.

Fast forward two decades and the question is no longer how to fight intermarriage, but how Jewish institutions can be as welcoming as possible to intermarried Jews and the gentiles who love them.

“Clearly, Jewish communal attitudes have changed,” said David Mallach, managing director of the Commission on the Jewish People at UJA-Federation of New York, which hosted the one-day interfaith conference in June.

“One of the results of the whole process begun with the 1990 study was that in a free America we’re all Jews by choice. That’s been a profound insight that has permeated a lot of the work of the Jewish community in the last 20-plus years,” Mallach said. “It shifted the discussion from the classic stereotypical sitting shiva and never talking to a person again to saying that if we’re all Jews by choice, let’s also sit with this segment of the community and offer them that choice.”

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High Holiday Tips for Interfaith Families - from the Pros

by David Levy on behalf of JewishBoston.com

The combination of weighty topics (repentance and renewal) with long services (do they ever end?) can make Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur daunting even for experienced Jews. For people new to these holidays—whether because they have recently married into a Jewish family, converted to Judaism themselves, or simply connected with a religion that previously didn't interest them—it can be hard to know where to start.

Last week, I sent an e-mail to a variety of people known for thinking about interfaith issues—professionals, bloggers, and a couple of my friends—and asked for their advice to interfaith families at this time of year. Here's what they had to say.

Susan Katz-Miller, Blogger at OnBeingBoth.com
"For non-Jewish spouses, I recommend accompanying your Jewish spouse to at least one of the High Holy Day services. Growing up in an interfaith family, it meant a lot to me to have both of my parents there, even though my mother did not convert. These services can be dense with Hebrew, somber, long and not the most accessible or welcoming. But they often carry huge emotional weight for the Jewish spouse. Having a spouse by your side is comforting: sitting alone can be lonely or depressing. So even if it means taking time off from work to celebrate someone else's holiday, making this sacrifice for your spouse can be very meaningful and can strengthen your marriage.


Dr. Kerry M. Olitzky, Executive Director of Jewish Outreach Institute
"Here’s a secret that might help newcomers feel less intimidated at Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur services—most Jews who attend High Holiday services could not translate the Hebrew without looking at the English side of the prayer book. So instead of considering Hebrew as a stumbling block, let it be something that occupies the right side of your brain so that the other side can transcend the language and pray."

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