W
e have come a long way. Once upon a time, the Jewish community viewed intermarriage as a calamity, to be fought vigorously. Those who married out were all but ostracized. Some parents whose children married out of the faith even sat shivah for them. To marry out of the faith was to commit national suicide, a goodbye to Judaism.
No more. American Jewry — all but the Orthodox — long ago lost that struggle. Ignorance and runaway assimilation have won the day. Those hoping to eradicate Jewish uniqueness have triumphed, and today the intermarriage rate is over 70%: Out of every ten non-Orthodox Jews who get married in the US, seven are marrying non-Jews. The prospect that children —and certainly grandchildren — of such marriages will be raised as Jews is practically nil. For such couples this is the end of the Jewish line.
What has been the response of the organized Jewish community? Though originally many Federations opposed yeshivos and day schools as being “un-American,” they have recently begun to support them in the name of Jewish continuity — a wise move, if a bit late. But in a contradictory decision, they have also moved the goalposts: Intermarriages are now accepted as a fact of Jewish life — labeled, in the politically correct euphemism of a recent letter from the Atlanta Jewish Federation, “multi-heritage relationships.” In this view intermarriage is no longer a problem; it is an “opportunity for Jewish engagement.” (This mangling of language is topped only by this mangling of Judaism.)
Abe Lincoln was asked how many legs a dog has if you call his tail a leg. He replied, “Four, because saying a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” Similarly, saying an intermarriage is a “multi-heritage relationship” does not change the fact of what it is.
