Why Be Jewish Intermarriage Assimilation And Alienation

Against a background of continuing erosion of Jewish numbers, the book investigates the many facets of Jewish identity by throwing the spotlight on people of part-Jewish descent, on born Jews on the fringes of Jewish life and those who have sought alternative affiliations. Emma Klein also calls for a response from religious and lay leaders to parochial communal attitudes and the anomaly of the definition of Jewish status in Jewish law which may be seen to contribute to the erosion.

Most research on intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews focuses on the United States. This volume takes a path-breaking approach, examining countries with smaller Jewish populations so as to better understand countries with larger Jewish populations. It focuses on intermarriage in Great Britain, France, Scandinavia, the Soviet Union, Mexico, Venezuela, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Argentina and Curacao, then applies the findings to the United States.In earlier centuries such a volume might have yielded much diff erent conclusions. Then Jews lived in more countries, intermarriage was not as prevalent, and social science had little to contribute. Before World War II, the Jewish population was dispersed much diff erently, and it continues to shift around the world because of both push and pull factors. Like demography, intermarriage is a dynamic process. What is true today was probably not true in the past, nor will it be true tomorrow.The contributors to this volume locate new forms of Jewish family life—single parents, gay/lesbian parents, adults without children, and couples with multiple backgrounds. These multiple family forms raise a new question—what is a Jewish family—as well as a variety of related issues. Do women and men have diff erent roles in intermarriage? Does a family need two people to raise children? Should there be patrilineal descent? Where do adoption, single parenting, lesbian and gay identities, and more, fit into the picture? Broadly, what role does the family play in transmitting a group's culture from generation to generation? This volume presents a portrait of Jewish demography in the twenty-first century, brilliantly interweaving global processes with significant local variations.

Over half of all American Jewish children are being raised by intermarried parents. This demographic group will have a tremendous impact on American Judaism as it is lived and practiced in the coming decades. To date, however, in both academic studies about Judaism and in the popular imagination, such children and their parents remain marginal. Jennifer A. Thompson takes a different approach. In Jewish on Their Own Terms, she tells the stories of intermarried couples, the rabbis and other Jewish educators who work with them, and the conflicting public conversations about intermarriage among American Jews. Thompson notes that in the dominant Jewish cultural narrative, intermarriage symbolizes individualism and assimilation. Talking about intermarriage allows American Jews to discuss their anxieties about remaining distinctively Jewish despite their success in assimilating into American culture. In contrast, Thompson uses ethnography to describe the compelling concerns of all of these parties and places their anxieties firmly within the context of American religious culture and morality. She explains how American and traditional Jewish gender roles converge to put non-Jewish women in charge of raising Jewish children. Interfaith couples are like other Americans in often harboring contradictory notions of individual autonomy, universal religious truths, and obligations to family and history. Focusing on the lived experiences of these families, Jewish on Their Own Terms provides a complex and insightful portrait of intermarried couples and the new forms of American Judaism that they are constructing.

It's a question many young singles have asked themselves at one point or another. Here are some very convincing answers to the question. Author Doron Kornbluth presents some hard-and-fast evidence that will educate and enlighten. Citing dozens of research studies, he shows how inter-faith marriages affect not only the couple's relationship, but their children's futures, their family dynamics, and their own personal happiness. This is an intellectually stimulating, eye-opening book that will challenge you to think deeper about who you are--and what you want from life.

Cultural boundaries and group identity are often forged in relation to the Other. In every society, conceptions of otherness, which often reflect a group's fears and vulnerabilities, result in deep-rooted traditions of inclusion and exclusion that permeate the culture's literature, religion, and politics. This volume explores the ways in which Jews have traditionally defined other groups and, in turn, themselves. The contributors, a distinguished international group of scholars, explore the discursive processss through which Jewish identity and culture have been constructed, disseminated, and perpetuated. Among the topics addressed are: Others in the biblical world; the construction of gender in Roman-period Judaism; the Other as woman in the Greco-Roman world; the gentile as Other in rabbinic law; the feminine as Other in kabbalah; the reproduction of the Other in the Passover Haggadah; the Palestinian Arab as Other in Israeli politics and literature; the Other in Levinas and Derrida; Blacks as Other in American Jewish literature; the Jewish body image as symbol of Otherness; and women as Other in Israeli cinema. Contributors to this interdisciplinary volume are: Jonathan Boyarin (New School for Social Research), Robert L. Cohn (Lafayette College), Gerald Cromer (Bar-Ilan University), Trude Dothan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Elizabeth Fifer (Lehigh University), Steven D. Fraade (Yale University), Sander L. Gilman (Cornell University), Hannan Hever (Tel Aviv University), Ross S. Kraemer (University of Pennsylvania), Orly Lubin (Tel Aviv University), Peter Machinist (Harvard University), Jacob Meskin (Williams College), Adi Ophir (Tel Aviv University), Ilan Peleg (Lafayette College), Miriam Peskowitz (University of Florida), Laurence J. Silberstein (Lehigh University), Naomi Sokoloff (University of Washington), and Elliot R. Wolfson (New York University).

And the issue of assimilation is always present - implicitly or explicitly, as subject or basis - in an outpouring of books, films, music, and plays by and about Jews.

Before 1985, depictions of ultra-Orthodox Jews in popular American culture were rare, and if they did appear, in films such as Fiddler on the Roof or within the novels of Chaim Potok, they evoked a nostalgic vision of Old World tradition. Yet the ordination of women into positions of religious leadership and other controversial issues have sparked an increasingly visible and voluble culture war between America's ultra-Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, one that has found a particularly creative voice in literature, media, and film. Unpacking the work of Allegra Goodman, Tova Mirvis, Pearl Abraham, Erich Segal, Anne Roiphe, and others, as well as television shows and films such as A Price Above Rubies, Nora L. Rubel investigates the choices non-haredi Jews have made as they represent the character and characters of ultra-Orthodox Jews. In these artistic and aesthetic acts, Rubel recasts the war over gender and family and the anxieties over acculturation, Americanization, and continuity. More than just a study of Jewishness and Jewish self-consciousness, Doubting the Devout will speak to any reader who has struggled to balance religion, family, and culture.