In 2014 I wrote a piece about an interesting poll from which a provocative headline could be drawn: How Many Israelis Would Gladly Intermarry? Quite a Few… It was a survey of Jewish Israelis – 54% of whom opposed intermarriage. But not many Israeli youngsters and seculars opposed intermarriage. If only 17% of Israelis 'strongly support' intermarriage, the poll by Menachem Lazar showed that among the younger generation the strong support category goes up to 29%, and among secular Israelis it goes up to 33%.
A year and a half later, another poll makes things seem more complicated. The poll was conducted professionally by the Marketwatch Institute. But the commission of the poll was by an NGO, Itim, that promotes hospitable conversion to Judaism. The good people of Itim agreed to share the data with the public, and the data is interesting. On the one hand, it somehow contradicts the conclusion from the other poll: “86% of the respondents said it was important or very important to them that their children marry Jewish spouses”. On the other hand, it affirms other conclusions. For example, it shows that for older Israeli Jews this issue is more important than it is for younger ones (the gap between the youngest group and the oldest one on this question is almost 12%).
Here's the problem with such polls, though: It is easy for anyone to say that it is “very important” for him\her to have the children find a Jewish spouse. The poll doesn't give us much when it comes to understanding the effort Israelis would be willing to invest in order to have such an outcome, or the resistance they would show in case their children find a non-Jewish spouse. Lazar's poll from a year and a half ago asked specifically “how would you react if your offspring decided to intermarry?” and hence got the more nuanced result: Israeli Jews might “want” something. But this does not necessarily mean that they are willing to fight for it, or that they are going to go to great lengths to reject the outcome they do not “want”.
All in all, I was surprised to discover that most Israelis do not subscribe to a highly negative view of Israel's conversion processes. That is clearly another case in which the view of Israelis runs contrary to the view of non-Israeli Jews (in this case, I agree with non-Israeli Jews). True, most Israelis (59%) agree that conversion in Israel is “too tough”. But that's just the instinctive answer: most Israelis would also agree that taxes are too high, and that summer is too hot. More important is the fact that a plurality of Jewish Israelis would still recommend to a “close person who lives in Israel and is not Jewish” to convert through the rabbinate. More important is the fact that most Israeli Jews (63%) believe that Israel's treatment of converts is “excellent” or “good”.
The profile of Israelis who deem conversion unimportant, who don't really care about their children having a Jewish spouse and who have a highly negative view of Israel's conversion is the one you'd expect. 18% of Israel's seculars don't really care if their children intermarry. That is a lot more than the percentage among traditional Israelis (3%) or religious ones (0%), but still quite low. More than half of the seculars believe that Israel's treatment of converts is “not good” or “terrible” – but traditional and religious Israelis do not agree. A plurality of seculars would recommend an Israeli non-rabbinical conversion (44%). But, once again, this secular group is a small minority compared to other groups.
What does this all mean? It means that there is no great incentive for Israeli politicians – especially not for politicians who rely on religious and traditional voters – to alter Israel's highly problematic system of conversion. Diaspora Jews have proved time and again that they are powerful enough to prevent Israel from changing conversion laws to make them even more problematic. But making them actually better seems to be, for now, an unrealistic goal. Israelis – to judge by the poll commissioned by Itim (again: this is an organization supportive of change) – are not likely to make this a priority.
More importantly, these numbers mean that on the issue of both conversion and intermarriage the gap between Israeli Judaism and American Judaism is wide and getting wider. Consider this simple and tricky Jewish reality: About half of all “millennial generation” Jews in the US are the product of intermarriage. Close to ninety percent of Israeli Jews express a preference for a Jewish spouse for their children.
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