But, facts alone are no sure guide to the Jewish future in America. A closer examination of the Council of Jewish Federation's 1990 National Jewish Population Survey shows a dramatic growth in the number of American households in which there is at least one person of Jewish descent.

In CJF's 1970 National Jewish Population Study it was reported that 2.1 million American households had at least one Jewish person. Approximately 250,000 non-Jewish adult were found living with Jews.

With some slight change in methodology, the 1990 survey reported 3.2 million households with at least one person of Jewish descent. These households also add about 1.3 million non- Jews.

The dramatic 50% increase in the number of American households with either Jews or persons of Jewish ancestry represents both the risk of assimilation and the enormous potential for Jewish growth.

In the 1990s, as a result of intermarriage and the increasing number of children born to intermarried Jews, more than two million non-Jews live in those self-same households.

The potential for growth inherent in these facts, which are usually treated with a sense of alarm, is that if all Jews married Jews, they could produce half as many families and, therefore, half as many children as if they all married non-Jews. In purely demographic terms (not religious or cultural terms) intermarriage is the fastest way that a small group can extend its reach, so-to-speak.

In 1990 the children under age 5 who are of mixed marriages, about two hundred and seventy thousand, represented 56% of all children in that age category with at least one Jewish parent. Dr. Barry A. Kosmin, CJF's director of research, estimates that between 1990 and the year 2000 (assuming the continuing increase in the American Jewish intermarriage rate of just 5% in the decade), 66% of all children with at least one Jewish parent will be the children of a mixed marriage.

The critical question of American Jewry is whether intermarriage
constitutes extending its reach or loosing its grasp.

Effective Jewish outreach can swell the ranks of the Jewish community in a very short space of time by providing networks of inclusion of the non-Jewish spouses and children of the intermarried. By enabling non-Jewish family members to participate and join in Jewish communal activities they will ultimately come to identify with the life and culture of the Jewish people, resulting in Jewish inclusion and growth.

As JOI's national directory, Jewish Connections for Interfaith Families, has shown the numerous synagogues, Jewish Community Centers, Jewish Family Services agencies and other communal institutions that have extended their embrace of the intermarried have, in fact, helped secure the Jewish continuity of those families and have also contributed to the growth and robustness of American Jewry.