It took nearly 10 years, but now the other shoe has dropped. In the early 1990s, the American Jewish community was jolted by findings of an intermarriage rate exceeding 50 percent during the previous five years. Now, a new survey sponsored by the American Jewish Committee (AJCommittee) sheds light on the profound social and psychological consequences of widespread intermarriage.
Pity the children. Rabbi Simeon Bar Yochai declared \”Throw yourself into a blazing furnace rather than shame a neighbor in public.\”
A new study of national Jewish population trends was completed recently at the University of Miami, by one of the nation\’s leading experts in Jewish demography, and it\’s a bombshell.
Heather Levy, l9, a merry, self-confident young woman from Silver Spring, Maryland, has dated primarily non-Jewish boys, and believes that religion should not get in the way of falling in love.
The leaders of the Jewish community worry about the high intermarriage rate, whether the children of such marriages are to be accepted as Jews, and about the separation of church and state.
The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, Jackie Mason, Woody Allen and, of course, Seinfeld. The history of American comedy is the history of America\’s funniest Jews. But while being Jewish and funny has never been mutually exclusive, comedians in days of yore mostly kept their Jewishness offstage. Times are changing, and with multiculturalism comes a new brand of Jewish comedian.
My maternal grandfather was an educated man, and cultured too.
Rabbi Eli Herscher is leading a discussion about the December holidays with about two dozen participants of Stephen S. Wise Temple\’s Holiday Workshop Series. The class attracts a good number of intermarried couples and those considering conversion, but they are not the only ones who squirm over the topic.
I see that it\’s time for the media to replay the perennial horror story known as The Dying Jew. \”The Vanishing Jew,\” by Alan Dershowitz, is a mea culpa over his son\’s intermarriage.
Stop the presses: The Jewish communityis ready to discover…singles. That\’s right. What intermarriage and\”continuity\” were to the 1990s, singles will be in the years ahead: agroup to study, court, serve and, finally, value.
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