Kesher Talk

Why should Jews not intermarry? The three most common given reasons really do stink: (1) Jews are different and cannot mix; (2) guilt, a concept Jews embrace all too easily; and (3) Jewish survival, which fails to give any reason for why Jews should survive as Jews.

So, got any better justifications?

To be frank, Rabbi Nachum Braverman does not have much better to offer. I personally have always had trouble giving a concise explanation why I wanted to marry a Jew and why I hoped my Jewish friends would marry Jews.

The upshot was that once I knew what was important to me, I knew I had to be important to my wife as well. So while I hoped to find a wife who shared my love of hockey (I did not), I managed to fall in love with a woman as equally committed to Judaism and raising Jewish children as myself.

Of course, I spend a lot of time explaining the problems of intermarriage to all my friends - Jews and non-Jews - from the standpoint of pragmatism. Effectively, anyone who takes their faith half-way seriously will have to confront the problem at some point. And if you take your faith for granted and try to match up with someone of a different faith, the relationship may not last. If it does, and you are Jewish, your Judaism will not last -- because it takes work to be Jewish, while you can be secular or Christian with great ease, at least in the U.S. and Canada.

posted by William @ 7/11/2003 08:50:55 AM