Rethinking the Intermarriage Crisis

...Here we can see the virtue of the all-inclusive approach of the NJPS...

...The NJPS philosophy was to "cast the broadest possible net" in defining Jewishness, an approach which differs from the traditional by including a much wider variety of Jewish "styles...

...Intermarriage is a variable, not a constant...

...When we examine the data, we see that for both children under 10 and for adults in the 20-29 category, inflow into Jewish population exceeds outflow from Jewish population...

...And when it is examined in all its complexity, we learn that many current articles overstate considerably the danger we face...

...Especially since the late 1960's, when estimates placed the intermarriage rate for Jews at near forty percent, the widespread assumption has been that America's Jews are marrying themselves out of existence...

...If fertility is more important than intermarriage, and if, in any case, the net effect of intermarriage may be an increase in Jewish population rather than a decrease, why the panic about intermarriage...

...Once again, we can see that we are not dealing here with absolute categories...

...The combined net increase for the two age-groups is just above 2 percent...

...Because of that, the study reflects reasonably well the outflow from Judaism, which most such studies do not pick up...

...Here, quite clearly, the result is a Jewish marriage in every sense of the word, with heightened commitment to Jewish life, including synagogue membership and attendance, as well as activity in Jewish community organizations...

...In view of the burgeoning intermarriage rate in the late 1960's, the adults included in this group are of special relevance, since they are more likely than other groups to be involved in intermarriage...

...Long-term, it is even conceivable that the fact of intermarriage might lead to some Jewish population growth, rather than the decline which is widely assumed or the stand-off which is more nearly the actual present case...

...Those who are in-married are, as we would expect, more likely to describe their upbringing as "strongly Jewish...

...Since mortality and in-migra-tion are of minor consequence for the two age groups we are looking at, it is evident that having children has greater impact on the size of the Jewish population than intermarriage has...

...The figures cited refer to the intermarriage rates for marriages established within specified five-year intervals...

...Year after year, as the statistics become more and more grim, the panic increases...

...Hence the studies we have, and the portrait of the intermarried that emerges from them, cannot be taken as accurate representations of all the intermarried...

...The fact is that in the mid-1960's, the Jewish intermarriage rate rose from its prior level (typically less than 10 percent) to more than twice that level, and then doubled again in the late 1960's, moving to some 40 percent...

...The National Jewish Population Study (NJPS), conducted in 197071 under the auspices of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, is the only comprehensive country-wide inquiry focused exclusively on the Jewish population of the United States...

...On the contrary—if the female parent is Jewish, chances that the children will be raised as Jews are extremely high, nor are they insignificant, even though they are lower, when it is the father who is Jewish...

...the non-Jewishness of the non-Jewish partner may be absolute in a hala-chic legal sense, but it is variable in the life and behavior of the couple...

...The data confirm the logic discussed earlier: Jewish life patterns differ between marriages in which the Jewish partner is a man and those where the Jewish partner is a woman...

...His books include Leadership and Organization—Mathematical Explorations in Behavioral Science as well as many articles on population and the American Jewish community...

...In the diagram (p...

...A significant increase in the intermarriage rate for one five-year grouping is then superimposed on an "inventory" of already existing marriages, many of them formed years ago when the intermarriage rate was very much lower...

...The loss to the Jewish population is greatest for male adults, where a 2.5 percent outflow is not fully counterbalanced by a compensating inflow, leading to a net decline of 1.7 percent below the original level of the Jewish born...

...But that which is obvious is not always true, and while there is some merit to the assumed link between intermarriage and population decline, this link deserves very careful examination...

...Similarly, there is, for some Jews involved in intermarriage, a drift away from Judaism...

...Let us, therefore, turn to the data...

...Above all, we must avoid the temptation, ingrained though it be, to leap to doomsday conclusions...

...inflow exceeds outflow by a nearly 11 to 1 margin...

...As we can see in the next diagram, the actual number of adults in the ten-year span 20-29 significantly exceeds the number of children in the ten year span from birth to ten...

...The first question is, for each husband and each wife, whether the person is Jewish, not Jewish, or is of some ambiguous religious-ideological status (part Jewish, etc...

...So, too, if both raise their children as Jews, then there will be even more Jewish children than there would have been without the two intermarriages...

...Yet the line of cause is not clear: Jews who end up in marriages involving conversion by non-Jews may in fact come from more positive Jewish backgrounds to begin with...

...But here is where we see the phenomenon of "Jewish drift:" between forty and fifty percent, by their own description, regard themselves as Jewish...

...Obviously, such high visibility presents a distorted picture...

...By and large, it appears that the net loss in Jewish upbringing of about one half of all "potential" Jewish children is counterbalanced (other things being equal) by the doubling of the number of marriages...

...This contrast holds for both the born-Jewish and the non-Jewish groups...

...Given current trends, the proportion will be considerably higher for marriages formed within more recent periods than for the entire population of the married...

...Here, primarily as a result of conversions to Judaism associated with marriage of initially non-Jewish women to Jewish men, a net increase of 6.7 percent above the "born Jewish" base is registered...

...He has served as Scientific Director, National Jewish Population Study, and as President of the Association for Humanistic Psychology...

...Unfortunately, from the standpoint of Jewish population, there are a good many more intermarriages where the husband is Jewish than where the wife is Jewish...

...And the intriguing possibility, which surely violates most of our preconceptions, is that precisely because there is a drift towards Jewishness among some intermarried non-Jews, and a drift away from Jewishness among some in-married Jews, the quality of Jewish life may be as rich among some intermarried families as among many of the in-married...

...The second pattern describes a Jewish husband who chooses a prospective spouse who is not Jewish at the time of their meeting, but who converts to Judaism before the wedding and is now, therefore, part of a Jewish marriage...

...In the example we have been dealing with, we note that adults who were in their early twenties at the time of the study were born during the post-World War II baby boom, while the children under ten were born during a period of declining birth rates...

...It excludes only those who explicitly deny all Jewish antecedents, such as their parents' Jewishness...

...Now, if we have two marriages where there would have been one, if only half the children are raised as Jews, there will be as many Jewish children as there would have been if the two Jews had married each other...

...I cannot here address at length the issue of the quality of Jewish life as it is affected by intermarriage...

...This is, obviously, a very important phenomenon...

...at three different time periods—when meeting the prospective spouse, then again at the time of the wedding (since there may have been a premarital conversion), and then still again later in life (that is, after the wedding ceremony...

...They follow a longFred Massarik is Professor of Behavioral Science at the Graduate School of Management, UCLA...

...With the "born Jewish" as the 100 percent base, we find a net increase of 1.8 percent for the children and of 2.3 percent for the adults...

...That decline—if decline there be— depends on what the Jews who are involved in intermarriage do...

...Homing in still further, we have two kinds of formal conversions— one in, the other out of Judaism— and we have also to take into consideration a "drift" towards or away from Jewish self-description...

...standing tradition of panic-sowing which, on the basis of inadequate and complex data, has predicted the destruction of American Jewry through its own devices...

...This form of analysis focuses on relative change in Jewish population, beyond levels provided by Jewish birth...

...The evidence does, in fact, show that there is a strong relationship between the nature of Jewish upbringing and both the likelihood and kind of eventual intermarriage...

...Since the NJPS study of 1970-71, several additional studies, all more limited, have been conducted...

...The interesting question here is whether such a drift is greater among the intermarried than it is among in-married Jews...

...It isn't...

...When rates of intermarriage are cited, it is important to know what kinds of marriages are included and what kinds are excluded...

...While the rapidity and volatility of social change mean that the data of the NJPS study are somewhat dated, reviewing those data is still useful...

...Given the prospect of a continuing high incidence of intermarriage, it may be that more resources should be invested in maximizing the opportunity that intermarriage presents, rather than in focusing all our effort on affecting the rate itself...

...It is apparent, in short, that there are many different family situations which are described by the term "intermarriage...

...Most intermarriage studies, in order to provide enough "cases," are based on a search for intermarried families...

...Actual percentages may be somewhat smaller, probably a shade below thirty percent...

...The prospect of conversion to Judaism may well be contingent not only on the degree of commitment to his non-Jewish religion of the non-Jewish spouse, but also on the degree of commitment to Judaism of the Jewish spouse...

...And Jewish husbands with non-Jewish wives are less likely to report a "strongly Jewish" upbringing than Jewish wives with non-Jewish husbands...

...In the language of the demographer, fertility is a more critical factor in determining Jewish population size than identity change or intermarriage...

...The number of people, Jewish included, who now opt for the single life appears to be increasing...

...Therefore, it does not address the issue of total 'raw' numbers...

...These tend to substantiate the assertion that the rate will continue to be high...

...Just as there are different degrees of Jewish commitment among people who were born Jews, so, too, are there different degrees of commitment to their non-Jewish religion by non-Jewish marriage partners...

...Some of the "permanent" singles may, of course, adopt, or raise children out of wedlock, but the net impact of the growing tendency to reject marriage will, if it continues, act as a brake on Jewish population growth—or even as an accelerator to Jewish population decline...

...There are nearly one-quarter more adults than there are children...

...Nor can we be sure that the new legitimacy attached to the "gay life" will not have a similar effect...

...But for adult females, the picture is sharply different...

...Further, important differences appear when the non-Jewish spouse has converted to Judaism...

...This additional element produces a bewildering range of possibilities and patterns, as can be seen in the first diagram...

...There are, however, some interesting exceptions and variations among the several age and sex categories...

...This leads the researcher to look for visible intermarriages, those in which the Jewishness of the Jewish partner is openly acknowledged— intermarriages involving conversion to Judaism, or those known to the rabbinate, or those still connected in some way to Jewish life...

...And for them, the problem starts with the very definition of the term itself...

...And the research findings show that it is by no means the case that all, or nearly all, children of intermarriage leave the Jewish fold...

...Accordingly, while the trends of the 1960's appear to be continuing, they are adding intermarriages on top of an older base constituted mostly by in-marriages...

...There is little doubt that the Jews of the United States will continue to experience a high rate of intermarriage...

...32) two groups of particular concern for Jewish survival can be examined: children under ten, and adults in the most critical reproductive age, twenty to twenty-nine...

...It is worth noting here that studies of Jewish intermarriage are almost never comprehensive enough to provide us with genuinely representative intermarriage statistics...

...Now suppose that we start with all those who report that they were born Jewish, and use that as our base line—100 percent...

...That is why it is important to distinguish between the proportion of all existing marriages that are intermarriages and the proportion of intermarriages among marriages formed within a specific time period...

...In the fourth pattern, the non-Jewish husband "drifts" into Jewishness, without benefit of conversion, thus creating a quasi-Jewish family setting...

...No one conclusion describes the complex data...

...What we are really after is data on the effects of intermarriage that is directly relevant to an understanding of the quality of Jewish life...

...The central point, then, is that knowing the rate of intermarriage does not tell us nearly enough...

...Other patterns can be readily inferred from these examples...

...In short, the fact of intermarriage does not necessarily lead to a decline in the Jewish population...

...The third refers to a situation in which the non-Jewish husband remains non-Jewish, while the wife continues in her Jew-ishness, resulting in a "typical" intermarriage: husband non-Jewish, wife Jewish...

...It tends to exclude from consideration those who truly seek to escape from their Jewishness...

...We must be very cautious here...

...We may assume, indeed, that the higher the commitment of the Jew to Judaism, the greater the likelihood that a romantic attachment to a non-Jew will be to a "weak" non-Jew, one with a relatively low commitment to his non-Jewish faith—and, therefore, a "riper" candidate for conversion...

...It is a way of saying that intermarriage is considerably more complex a phenomenon than we have generally assumed, and that the intelligent investment of communal resources—among other things, in updated studies of the phenomenon and its effects—may provide startling benefits to a community for which survival remains a pressing problem...

...Available data suggest that among non-Jewish wives, nearly forty percent claim conversion to Judaism...

...In other words, there are degrees of non-Jewishness...

...The first pattern is simple enough: a marriage between two Jews (in-marriage...

...When such commitment is slight, as seems often to be the case, there is considerable readiness to embrace Jewish values or selected ritual aspects of Jewish life—the more so, of course, when this pleases the Jewish spouse...

...Intermarriage in its widest sense need not imply Jewish population loss nor even inevitable decline in the quality of Jewish life...

...If only it were quite that simple...

...intermarriage creates risks, but it creates opportunities as well...

...Rather, we need to separate consideration of various marriage types...

...The question we want to ask is whether this 100 percent is increased or diminished by the process of intermarriage...

...What has captured the attention of people, evidently, is the growth in the rate of intermarriage, independent of its effects...

...The very first thing we need to notice about intermarriage studies—and let us, for the time being, define intermarriage as most people understand it, simply as a formal marital union between a person who is Jewish, by one definition or another, to a person who, before the marriage, is not Jewish—is that if a Jewish man and a Jewish woman who might have married each other, instead both marry non-Jews, we now have two marriages where there would have been one...

...We can work our way towards the answer by comparing the number of "Jews out"—those who overtly leave Judaism, by conversion or by other explicit disaffiliation—to "Jews in"—the non-Jews who convert to Judaism or who abandon their non-Jewish identities for some kind of commitment to Jewish life...

...Intermarriage is not only a problem for the community, it is a problem for those who study it...

...This "heresy" is not a backdoor way of saying that intermarriage is "good" for the Jews, or that efforts to affect the rate of intermarriage are necessarily doomed...

...The impact of conversion on intermarriage is considerable...

...What can we learn from all this...

...Indeed, there are other nascent social trends which may have a much larger impact on Jewish population in this country than intermarriage has...

...Conversely, among non-Jewish husbands, the rate of conversion to Judaism is probably not more than three percent...

...My own perspective is very different...