We're
all familiar with the people who claim the secret to Jewish continuity
is twofold: Step One: Marry Jewish (preferably really young). Step Two:
Crank out Jewish babies (with the conventional wisdom that when it
comes to bringing babies into the world, you give until it hurts and
worry about Jewish
education later). This implicates anyone who is a) not
married b) not married to a Jew or c) married to a Jew but not
reproducing for some reason as party to "Hitler's posthumous triumph."
There
are also people who claim that proponents of intramarriage are the ones
who are ruining everything, and that it's nothing more than racism to
suggest that Jews should only marry Jews. "Judaism should be open to
anyone! Why don't you just take the sentence and replace 'Jews' with
'whites' and you'll see how elitist you are," they scream. (As Chanan
Tigay noted in his Culture Schlock post
from earlier this week, non-Jews are even looking to Jdate to provide
them with Jewish spouses. This also leads us to be unsure as to whether
we should celebrate at early reports – currently denied by publicists –
that Leonardo DiCaprio had impregnated his Israeli girlfriend model Bar
Rafaeli.)
Then there are the larger communal issues – like how
one defines a Jew in this day and age, or whether families who are
already interfaith should be reached out to, welcomed, or rejected from
synagogue and Jewish community life. And then there are the
journalists, who create a vast number of posts and articles in the
Jewish press about this issue. We (and yes, I'm a party to this as
well) express hopes that our Jewish celebrities should date within the
tribe, not because of happy accident, but because it is important to
them. But does that make us elitists? Racists? And do we gain anything
from the debate other than intellectual exercise?
Beneath this
admittedly incendiary post title lies a language infused with violence,
paranoia and blame. And whether you're destroying Judaism or advocating
racism, no one wins.
