First published 2009 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2009005968
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jewish intermarriage around the world / Shulamit Reinharz and Sergio DellaPergola, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4128-1016-6
1. Interfaith marriage. 2. Marriage--Religious aspects--Judaism. I. Reinharz, Shulamit. II. Della Pergola, Sergio, 1942-
HQ1031.J46 2009
306.84'3088296--dc22
2009005968
ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-1016-6 (hbk)
Shulamit Reinharz
Jewish Intermarriage Around the World examines patterns of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews at the start of the twenty-first century. The authors provide information and analyses about a variety of countries with distinct histories, sizes and cultures. In contrast with other studies on this topic, Jewish Intermarriage Around the World deals only indirectly with the two countries that have the largest populations of Jewsthe United States and Israel. Instead our focus is on the relatively smaller communities. An overview of this sort has never been undertaken and represents a new strategy, i.e., studying a group of smaller cases in relation to each other for possible insight into a larger case. Specifically, Jewish Intermarriage Around the World offers data about marriage patterns in thirteen different countries. Because of the similarities within these groups, we use the categories of a) Europe (including France, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, and Norway), b) the Former Soviet Union, c) primarily English-speaking countries (including Canada, South Africa, and Australia), and d) South America (including Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Curaao).
One of the shared, but non-explicit, characteristics of these cases is that aside from France, Finland, Norway, and parts of the Soviet Union, the countries discussed in this volume were not sites of Nazi occupation. The story of intermarriage as a factor in post-Holocaust countries (e.g. Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy, The Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, the Ukraine, the Baltic regions and others) and as a factor in the attempted revival of Jewish life in those locales has to be the subject of another book. In contrast to those countries that experienced near total genocide of the Jewish population, the countries highlighted in this book received post-Holocaust survivors who joined the existing Jewish population.
The authors of the chapters to follow worked independently to produce these studies. In other words, this book does not represent the result of one overarching research project. Instead, it reflects a collection of discrete investigations that emerge from separate research programs in a variety of countries. One consequence of this independence is an inconsistency or variation both in the use of terms and in methodological approaches. For the purpose of this book, we use the terms mixed marriage, interfaith marriage, out-marriage, exogamy, and intermarriage to refer to the same phenomenon. We recommend that in the future, work on intermarriage be coordinated internationally so that we can ask exactly the same questions across the board and use the same terminology and research methods.
Although each chapter in this book approaches intermarriage in a distinctive way, the chapters as a whole have much in common, in part because the authors are in continuous contact with one another and because the issues cut across the various communities. Thus, each researcher deals with the rate of intermarriage; gender differences (i.e. do Jewish men tend to marry non-Jewish women in greater numbers than Jewish women marry non-Jewish men?); the challenges of raising children in families of intermarried couples; the influence of the structure of the Jewish community on the rate of intermarriage; and the likelihood of conversion in intermarriage. These particular studies do not use a nuanced, differentiated definition of the Jewish family or Jewish marriage, except in their inclusion of co-habitation in addition to legalized marriage. Thus, there is very little discussion of single parents, gay/lesbian parents, and adults without children. Instead, these studies have a very clear focuswhich Jewish man or Jewish woman is marrying a non-Jewish person, where, why, and with what effects? Nor is there an extensive discussion of the implications of intermarriage for the upbringing of the children; of adoption, divorce, or remarriage; or the nature of extended family networks. Social science research on both the local and international Jewish population is still very limited. Because this book is the first to explore its particular subject matter, I assume that future studies will introduce new definitions of family and marriage.
These studies are important in three specific regards that reflect the mission statement of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI) at Brandeis University, the sponsoring organization for this collection. From its origins in 1997, the HBI has been committed to developing fresh ideas about Jews and gender worldwide. HBI researchers work with the premise that Jews are an international people, continuously on the move and influenced by a myriad of non-Jewish cultures along with contemporary features of modern society such as global communication and secularism. There are many reasons that an international scope is important for social research. Primary among these is that contemporary society is global. The European Union, for example, has diminished the importance of national borders; transnational migration is very common, either for whole families or parts of families; many Jews call more than one country their home; and the economy has become largely global in its dimensions. Even more intimate activities such as dating (clearly significant for the theme of intermarriage) takes place on the Internet where people from anywhere in the world can instantly meet each other, leading to international Jewish marriages and Jewish intermarriages.
At the same time as Jews must be conceptualized as an interrelated group of people that transcend national boundaries, we cannot ignore the specificities of place. Thus we have sponsored studies of the history and current attitudes of Jewish women in Turkey, for example, as well as a comparative study of Jewish womens leadership in England and the United States. And finally, HBI publications and research are informed by the idea that one cannot study any social group without taking gender into consideration. In the case of intermarriage, ignoring gender would be particularly foolhardy, given that marriage is an institution rooted in gender issues.
