Double or Nothing?: Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage

This work is a study of two- hundred and fifty intermarried couples. It reveals that most intermarried couples who have children do not provide a Jewish education for their children. Such an education Barack - Fishman indicates is a crucial factor in determining the future religious identity of the child. It is regrettable that a smaller percentage of intermarrying Jews care to provide an education in their own faith than do intermarrying Catholics or Presbyterians. Barack- Fishman indicates that intermarried couples divorce at a much higher rate than do inmarried ones, three to one in general, and two to one for Jewish intermarrieds. She also reveals that the orthodox have considerably lower intermarriage rates, and considerably higher levels of communal committment than do the Conservative .The Reformed have the lowest rate of inmarriage. As many Reformed Jews come from intermarried families this is not surprising, when one understands another finding, the children of intermarried couples tend to intermarry at a much higher rate than do inmarried couples. This study confirms what Jewish community leaders and educators have known at least since the 1990 Demographic Study on the American Jewish community i.e. that intermarriage has reached records level in the community and is more weakening the community ( On the whole of course. There are many opposite examples of the Jewish community being strengthened by intermarriage. In these cases it is often the partner who has converted who shows the strongest commitment to Jewish community connection and education) than it is strengthening it. This is a very well researched and important study. Again its major finding is that the American Jewish community must greatly enhance its quality and quantity of Jewish education if the community is going to remain a significant one in the future.

As publisher of InterfaithFamily.com, and co-editor of The Guide to Jewish Interfaith Family Life: An InterfaithFamily.com Handbook, my main concern is Fishman's assertion that the vast majority of mixed-married families who say they are raising their children as Jews "incorporate Christian holiday festivities" into their lives, which makes them "religiously syncretic" -- combining Judaism and Christianity -- such that Jewish identity is not transmitted to their children, even though they say that these festivities have no religious significance to them. This central conclusion is not supported by the research itself, which is based on a limited sample and is inherently subjective; is inconsistent with other available evidence, including the results of the InterfaithFamily.com Essay Contest; and provides a wholly inadequate basis for the very dangerous policy it will be used to justify -- that it is not worth encouraging interfaith families to make Jewish choices.Instead of arguing about whether mixed-married families raising their children as Jews should see a Christmas tree in their own home or only in their relatives', rejecting the former but not the latter, everyone's focus should be on increasing the Jewish engagement of all liberal Jews -- including those in interfaith relationships. The real question about the transmission of Jewish identity in mixed-married families is not what they do around Christian holidays, but what they do the rest of the year.