That intermarriage is bad for the Jews has been the Jewish establishment’s position ever since the first Goldfarb laid eyes upon an O’Malley.
But the good or bad has become largely irrelevant; intermarriage is a fact of life. Trying to combat it, sociologist Egon Mayer said, is like “arguing against the weather.” So much so, that in the oft-quoted — as well as disputed — National Jewish Population Study of 1990, some 52 percent of Jews were reportedly intermarrying.
That figure was the source of much communal fretting and hand-wringing, as the same study showed that children from those marriages were much less likely to be raised as Jews.
And now, along come more startling statistics. An American Jewish Committee-commissioned study found that 56 percent of American Jews said they would not be upset if their child married a non-Jew, and 57 percent believed that rabbis should co-officiate with Christian clergy at interfaith weddings.
The news that the AJCommittee has formed a task force to promote in-marriage is welcome, with a caveat or two.
As it is still in its nascent stages, it is impossible to know what tactics the task force will take. But we do know this: Finger-pointing and Jewish guilt do not work. If anything, they tend to do the opposite. And, frankly speaking, the Jewish establishment can often be completely out of touch with the majority of American Jews. With or without this task force, intermarriage will remain a fact of Jewish life.
The Jewish community has made huge inroads in welcoming interfaith couples, and those efforts must continue.
The task force, then, faces its greatest challenge in reinforcing the idea of in-marriage to a new generation of Jews, without alienating the Goldfarbs who marry O’Malleys. Indeed, promoting in-marriage by emphasizing what Judaism — and a Jewish home — has to offer is a fine idea. It just shouldn’t come at the expense of the outreach programs already in place.