The Jewish fear of intermarriage

 Intermarriage - when Jews wed non-Jews - has
been called a threat to the future survival of the
Jewish nation. So what happened when there
were reports that the Israeli prime minister's son
was dating a Norwegian non-Jew? The Norwegian daily Dagen last week reported that
Norwegian Sandra Leikanger and Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's son Yair are a couple, to
which the office of Mr Netanyahu has responded -
according to Israeli media - by insisting they are
only college classmates. But the damage has already been done. Leikanger is not Jewish, a fact that has sparked
outrage in Israel, a Jewish country which since its
inception has fought to have its Jewish character
recognised throughout the world. While Judaism is
not a proselytising religion, Leikanger, like any non-
Jew, does have the option of converting should she wish to become Jewish. Intermarriage and assimilation are quintessential
Jewish fears and have been called a threat to the
future survival of the relatively small Jewish nation.
According to Jewish law, the religion is passed
down through the mother, so if a Jewish man
marries a non-Jewish woman, their children would not be considered Jews. The chance that children of a mixed couple would
keep or pass along any Jewish traditions to future
generations is radically diminished. As today's rate
of intermarriage among Diaspora Jews stands above
50%, many are worried that the nation that survived
persecution, pogroms and the Holocaust could eventually die out of its own undoing. The anxiety was
expressed in an open
letter to Yair
Netanyahu by the
Israeli organisation
Lehava, which works to prevent assimilation, in
a post on its Facebook page, which warned him that his
grandparents "are
turning over in their
graves… they did not
dream that their
grandchildren would not be Jews". The issue of intermarriage has largely been one for
Diaspora Jews - the Jews who live outside Israel.
Inside Israel, Jews (75% of the population) and
Arabs (21%)rarely marry, but with an influx of
foreign workers and globalisation of the Israeli
community, in recent years the phenomenon has come to light. "God forbid, if it's true, woe is me," says Aryeh Deri,
leader of the Ultra-Orthodox Shas party, to a local
radio station, lamenting the news that the prime
minister's son was dating a non-Jew. "I don't like
talking about private issues… but if it's true God
forbid, then it's no longer a personal matter - it's the symbol of the Jewish people." Over the weekend, Eretz Nehederet, the popular
Israeli satirical television show, aired a parody
showcasing infamous historical oppressors of the
Jews including the biblical Pharaoh and the Spanish
inquisitor. The show culminated with Yair
Netanyahu's non-Jewish girlfriend, whom they called the "newest existential threat". She sang about a
shikse, a derogatory term for a non-Jewish woman,
sarcastically crooning that she is "worse than
Hitler". But jokes aside, even the prime minister's brother-
in-law, Hagai Ben-Artzi, spoke out strongly on their
affair, warning his nephew that if he doesn't end his
relationship with Leikanger, it is as if he is spitting
on the graves of his grandparents. "From my point of view, if he does such a thing, I
personally won't allow him to get near their graves,"
he told an Ultra-Orthodox website. "This is the most
awful thing that is threatening and was a threat
throughout the history of the Jewish people. More
awful than leaving Israel is marriage with a gentile. If this happens, God forbid, I'll bury myself I don't
know where. I'll walk in the streets and tear off my
hair - and here this is happening." Anyone who's watched Fiddler on the Roof, where
Tevye says his daughter is dead to him for marrying
a non-Jew, knows the issue has always been a
sensitive one among Jews. Another of Tevye's daughters, Hodel, finds love with
a Jewish man, Perchik But Dr Daniel Gordis, an author and expert
commentator on Israel and Judaism, says that has
changed in the past few decades, especially in the
Diaspora Jewish community. Whereas once it was greatly frowned upon for a Jew
of any stream to marry a non-Jew, today, among
unaffiliated (no synagogue), non-denominational
(those who don't identify with any movement),
conservative or reform Jews, it is not the taboo it
once was. The intermarriage rates of non- denominational Jews approach 80%, he says. But among Orthodox Jews and in Israel, it is still
much more controversial. "It's not a racial issue, it's not a superiority issue,
it's not a xenophobia issue," he says, explaining
that there are two reasons for the opposition to
intermarriage, one of which is that it is simply
forbidden in Halacha, or Jewish law. "The other thing is that Jews have come to see that
the only real way to transmit powerful Jewish
identity to their children is for them to be raised by
two Jewish parents. Kids raised by one Jewish
parent and one non-Jewish parent have more tepid,
more fragile, thinner Jewish identities than their Jewish parents did. "They are statistically more likely to marry non-
Jews. There's no guarantee, but statistically it's
almost impossible to create a child with the same
sense of Jewish passion that the older generation
has if he's raised by someone who doesn't share
that story." The result, he adds, is that in America, "there's a
rapidly eroding sense of Jewish commitment, a
complete collapsing of Jewish literacy, and a
thinning of Jewish identity". So Israelis are petrified, says Rabbi Dr Donniel
Hartman, head of the Shalom Hartman Institute of
Jewish studies, because since intermarriage is so
rare there, when an Israeli marries a non-Jew they
view it as if he is leaving Judaism. "When you're a small people and you lose your
constituents it makes you quite nervous. We are 14
million Jews in the world, that's it," he explains.
"What's changed in contemporary Jewish life
outside of Israel is that a Jew marrying a non-Jew
doesn't necessarily mean leaving Jewish life anymore." This is a new phenomenon in Judaism, and Hartman
says Jews must rise to the challenge. "The battle against intermarriage is a lost battle. We
are a people who are intermarried - the issue is not
how to stop it, but how to reach out to non-Jewish
spouses and welcome them into our community," he
says. "Our outreach has to be better, our institutions have
to be better, our Jewish experiences have to be
more compelling, we have to start working much
harder. "Living in the modern world requires you to be
nimble. Things are changing, I don't know if it's for
the worse or not, that will depend on what we do.
But the world is evolving, and we have to evolve
with it."