If yours is like the experience of most Jewish families, the first encounter with serious interfaith dating or intermarriage–typically through an adult child or grandchild–will bring on a keen sense of apartness. The long tradition of religious opposition, coupled with social stigma and the historical rarity of intermarriage among Jews, has made many Jewish families uneasy about the prospect of one of their own marrying someone who is not Jewish. The unspoken question, "Why is this happening to us?" is likely to gnaw at your thoughts for weeks or months.

In recent years the issue of intermarriage was brought more sharply to the entire Jewish community’s attention by the Council of Jewish Federation’s [now called United Jewish Communities] publication of the 1990 National Jewish Population Study. This study reported that in marriages involving Jews since 1985, about 52% were intermarriages. The 52% rate is probably now approaching 60%. Because each marriage involves two people, which means that three out of every four marriages involving American Jews are intermarriages. Whether we approve of this trend or not, it is, like the cycles of the sun or the tides, a fact. At present, there are about one million American households in which one adult is of Jewish background and the other is not.

Knowledge of this simple demographic fact, alone, should lessen some of the emotional turmoil that often attends the first intermarriage to occur in a modern Jewish family.

Intermarriage is increasingly common today among American Jews, as it is among all Americans, because of three factors, which were largely absent in prior generations: freedom, willingness, and acceptability. Unlike the situation fifty years ago, with many neighborhoods, areas, and buildings "restricted," meaning "no Jews," American Jews are generally free to live where they wish. Jewish "quotas," common until after World War II, are almost non-existent today, so Jews may freely attend the schools and universities of our choice. And (partly because it’s the law) Jews may work wherever they want. What better places than the neighborhood, college and work place to meet a future spouse.

Secondly, Jews today are far more willing to marry a non-Jew than they were even one generation ago. Jews choose to marry non-Jews (just as non-Jews choose to marry Jews) for reasons of love and commitment; because of the conviction that "this is the person with whom I wish to share my life." Intermarrying Jews are also not per se rejecting either their heritage or their Jewishness. One need only read The New York Times on any Sunday, note the very high proportion of obvious intermarriages at which a rabbi or cantor officiates, to realize that in so many cases intermarriage neither involves rejection nor denial of the Jewish heritage.

Finally, non-Jewish Americans have generally accepted Jews and are no longer shocked by interfaith dating and intermarried couples. National public opinion surveys suggest that the acceptance of Jews as marriage partners among the broad cross-section of America has increased from about forty-five percent in the early 1960s to nearly eighty percent by the end of the 1980s. Even if the average American non-Jewish family would prefer that their son or daughter not marry a Jew, the freedom described above has exposed them to Jews in the community, the school, and the place of employment to a far greater degree than experienced by their own mothers and fathers.

The creation, and success of the State of Israel not to mention the selection of Senator Joseph Lieberman as the first Jewish candidate for Vice President of the Democratic Party, has also helped to change many views about the "Jewish stereotype." Likewise, the civil rights movement in the United States, in which Jews had been so visibly active through the 1960s, has further helped to change perceptions about group boundaries. As a matter of fact, the social boundaries have become so porous that Jews-by-birth can drift away from their ancestral heritage as easily as non-Jews can drift into the community through intermarriage.

In our open society, every Jew is, in a fundamental sense, a "Jew by choice." That reality has led many of us to the recognition that the Jewishness of each family needs to be nurtured and enhanced–regardless of whether the partners are both born as Jews or whether the family includes an intermarried Jew and a non-Jewish spouse. We must not write them off, nor should we abandon their children to the natural assimilatory forces of the great American melting pot. They are all Jewish to some degree. Our task ought to be increasing the percentage of those who choose to become Jews fully or, at least, infusing more Jewishness into their lives.

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