Interfaith marriage in Judaism
Interfaith marriage in Judaism (also called mixed marriage or intermarriage) was historically looked upon with very strong disfavor by Jewish leaders, and it remains a controversial issue among them today. Many Jews followed the Talmud and all of resulting Jewish law Halakha until the advent of new Jewish movements following the Jewish Enlightenment resulted in the "Haskala"; in Halakha marriage between a Jew and a gentile is both prohibited, and also void under Jewish law.[1]
A 2020 survey conducted in the United States by the Pew Research Center found that 42% of all currently married Jewish respondents indicated they have a non-Jewish spouse. Among those who had married since 2010, 61% were intermarried and the percent increases to 72% when Orthodox Jews were excluded from the data.[2]
Ancient times[edit]
The Hebrew Bible contains numerous examples of interethnic marriage. Numerous figures, such as Abraham, Moses, and David, are described taking non-Israelite women as wives or consorts, and the books of Ezra–Nehemiah describe widespread intermarriage of Jews and Samaritans, and to a lesser extent, Philistines. Interfaith marriage, on the other hand, was almost universally condemned, as it was perceived that such a union could result in the perversion or abandonment of Israelite religion. Since the notion of these interethnic marriages were inextricably tied to the potential mixing of Israelite and foreign religions, the biblical text uses the condition of having "foreign" spouses to illustrate the concerns surrounding interfaith unions.[3][4]
The Bible contains numerous laws which either forbid or restrict interethnic, and thus interfaith, marriage: ancient Israelites were forbidden from intermarrying with any one of seven "nations" that also dwelt within the "Land of Israel".[5] Israelites were permitted to take foreign female prisoners of war as wives, but only under specific conditions: the women could not have come from any city within the Land of Israel, as these cities may have been inhabited by the aforementioned nations, the captive woman was to be a virgin;[6] and was not allowed to have any sexual relations with her captor until after she had mourned her absent parents for a full month; if a soldier became tired of her, he was to give her freedom if she asked for it; he was not to sell her or enslave her since this was a marriage under compulsion.[7][8][9]
The crisis of the Babylonian exile renewed concerns for maintaining the "purity" of the ethnic Israelite population. Ezra is described as exhorting his fellow Jews to send away their "foreign" wives and children,[10] and under his tutelage intermarriage came to be highly discouraged.[11]
Prevalence[edit]
In a Pew Research poll conducted in 2013 found that religious and non religious jews 58% of marriages were interfaith, but that there was significant differences in the prevalence of interfaith marriages by denomination. Among Orthodox jews 2% of marriages were interfaith, among conservative jews 27% were interfaith, among Reform Jews 50% were interfaith, and among non denominational jews 69% were interfaith. Among those who were religiously jewish only 36% had interfaith marriages while 79% of Atheist jews have interfaith marriages. Those who had been married longer also had lower rates of intermarriage. The rates of intermarriage have been consistent since 2000 but had decreased from a low of 17% of marriages being interfaith before 1970.[45]
The exact definition of 'interfaith' marriage[edit]
Different movements in Judaism have different views on who is a Jew, and thus on what constitutes an interfaith marriage. Unlike Reform Judaism, the Orthodox stream does not accept as Jewish a person whose mother is not Jewish, nor a convert whose conversion was not performed according to classical Jewish law. Conservative Judaism does not accept patrilineal descent. Some Conservative rabbis will accept Reform conversions even absent traditional halachic criteria.
Occasionally, a Jew marries a non-Jew who believes in God as understood by Judaism, and who rejects non-Jewish theologies; Jews sometimes call such people Noahides. Steven Greenberg, an Orthodox Rabbi, has made the controversial proposal that, in these cases, the non-Jewish partner be considered a resident alien – the biblical description of someone who is not Jewish, but who lives within the Jewish community; according to Jewish tradition, such resident aliens share many of the same responsibilities and privileges as the Jewish community in which they reside.
Impact and consequences[edit]
In the early 19th century, in some less modernised regions of the world, exogamy was extremely rare—less than 0.1% of the Jews of Algeria, for example, practiced exogamy.[46] In the early 20th century, even in most Germanic regions of central Europe[47] there were still only a mere 5% of Jews marrying non-Jews.[48][49][50] However, the picture was quite different in other locations; the figure was 18% for Berlin,[51] and during the same period, nearly half of all Jews in Australia intermarried.[52]
In more recent times, rates of intermarriage have increased generally; for example, the US National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01 reports that, in the United States of America between 1996 and 2001, nearly half (47%) of Jews who had married during that time period had married non-Jewish partners.[53] The 1990 National Jewish Population Survey reported an intermarriage rate of 52 percent among American Jews.[54] The possibility that this might lead to the gradual dying out of Judaism is regarded by most Jewish leaders, regardless of denomination, as precipitating a crisis.[55] For this reason, as early as the mid 19th century, some senior Jewish leaders denounced intermarriage as a danger to the continued existence of Judaism.[56]
In the United States of America, other causes, such as more people marrying later in life, have combined with intermarriage to cause the Jewish community to decrease dramatically; for every 20 adult Jews, there are now only 17 Jewish children. Some religious conservatives now even speak metaphorically of intermarriage as a silent holocaust. On the other hand, more tolerant and liberal Jews embrace interfaith marriage as an enriching contribution to a multicultural society. Regardless of attitudes to intermarriage, there is now an increasing effort to reach out to descendants of intermarried parents, each Jewish denomination focusing on those it defines as Jewish; secular and non-denominational Jewish organisations have sprung up to bring the descendants of intermarried parents back into the Jewish fold.[57][58]
In some cases, children of a Jewish parent were raised in the non-Jewish parent's religion while maintaining a sense of Jewish ethnicity and identity. An example of such a child is the late Barry Goldwater, who had a Jewish father, but was a lifelong Episcopalian like his mother, though Goldwater rarely referred to himself as Jewish.[59]
Opposition to mixed marriages in Israel[edit]
Most Israeli Jews oppose mixed relationships, particularly those between Jewish women and Muslim men. A 2007 opinion survey found that over half of Israeli Jews believed intermarriage is equivalent to "national treason". In 2005, Ben-Zion Gopstein, a disciple of the ultra-nationalist Meir Kahane, founded the anti-miscegenation organisation Lehava.[65] The group's name is an acronym for “To Prevent Assimilation in the Holy Land”.[66] A group of Jewish "Lehava" men[67] started patrolling the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev in an effort to stop Jewish women from dating Arab men. The municipality of Petah Tikva has also announced an initiative to prevent interfaith relationships, providing a telephone hotline for friends and family to "inform" on Jewish girls who date Arab men as well as psychologists to provide counselling. The city of Kiryat Gat launched a school programme in schools to warn Jewish girls against dating local Bedouin men.[68][69] In November 2019, Lehava leader Gopstein was indicted on charges of incitement to terrorism, violence, and racism.[70]Chemla is also dictated of rescuing Jewish Women from marriage with Arabs[71] Yad L'Achim also opposes Interfaith marriages.[72]
Interfaith marriages and dating are extremely rare in Israel, reaching way below 0.5 of the population.