Ed Case: MASA gaffe shows what Israelis don’t understand about intermarriage http://blogs.jta.org/ENTRY_PERMALINK_HERE/ed-case-masa-gaff-shows-what-israelis-dont-understand-about-intermarriage/ MASA, the Jewish Agency-Israeli government program that gives scholarships to Diaspora Jews who take part in extended stay programs in Israel, ruffled quite a few non-Israeli feathers last month when it ran an advertisement campaign depicting assimilating Jews as missing persons.  en-us jberkman@jta.org Copyright 2009 2009-10-07T;18:56:00-05:00 Comment by Jewlicious jewlicious@gmail.com I don’t think anyone reasonable would equate intermarriage with an automatic negation and elimination of Jewish life. I, like many others I am sure, know many intermarried couples and children of intermarriage who lead full and rich Jewish lives. Furthermore, intermarried couples and their children ought not be treated like pariahs and every effort should be made to make them feel welcome both socially and communally. But please, let’s not be slaves to political correctness. While individual exceptions exist, intermarriage on a communal level is a threat to Jewish continuity. There’s just no sense pussyfooting around the very real studies that dramatically demonstrate that. Ed Case posits the cherry-picked 2005 Boston Jewish Community Survey and ignores the 1999 “America’s Jewish Freshmen” study that surveyed 250,000 American Jewish freshmen that found that “38 percent of the teens identified as Jews if just their mother was Jewish, and only 15 percent if their father was Jewish.” Also ignored were the surveys and studies cited by SimpleToRemember.com that demonstrate clearly the effect that intermarriage has on basic, large scale Jewish identification. The answer is not, of course, to demonize intermarried couples and their children. The best way to deal with these disturbing trends is to promote greater and more compelling Jewish education and innovative Jewish programing while being as inclusive, sensitive and compassionate as possible. The notion however, that intermarriage is somehow good for the Jews, is just patently false. The key isn’t whether or not these families are raising their children as Jews, but rather the question that should be asked, a question that has already been decisively answered by survey after survey, is how many of the children and grandchildren of these intermarried families identify as Jews. The answer is not many. Not many at all. I wish the folks at interfaithfamily.com would at least be honest about that. I don’t think anyone reasonable would equate intermarriage with an automatic negation and elimination of Jewish life. I, like many others I am sure, know many intermarried couples and children of intermarriage who lead full and rich Jewish lives. Furthermore, intermarried couples and their children ought not be treated like pariahs and every effort should be made to make them feel welcome both socially and communally. But please, let’s not be slaves to political correctness. While individual exceptions exist, intermarriage on a communal level is a threat to Jewish continuity.

There’s just no sense pussyfooting around the very real studies that dramatically demonstrate that. Ed Case posits the cherry-picked 2005 Boston Jewish Community Survey and ignores the 1999 “America’s Jewish Freshmen” study that surveyed 250,000 American Jewish freshmen that found that “38 percent of the teens identified as Jews if just their mother was Jewish, and only 15 percent if their father was Jewish.” Also ignored were the surveys and studies cited by SimpleToRemember.com that demonstrate clearly the effect that intermarriage has on basic, large scale Jewish identification.

The answer is not, of course, to demonize intermarried couples and their children. The best way to deal with these disturbing trends is to promote greater and more compelling Jewish education and innovative Jewish programing while being as inclusive, sensitive and compassionate as possible.

The notion however, that intermarriage is somehow good for the Jews, is just patently false. The key isn’t whether or not these families are raising their children as Jews, but rather the question that should be asked, a question that has already been decisively answered by survey after survey, is how many of the children and grandchildren of these intermarried families identify as Jews. The answer is not many. Not many at all. I wish the folks at interfaithfamily.com would at least be honest about that.

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