Campaign 2008

More
culturebox
columns

The Soiling of Old Glory
The photograph that captured Boston's busing crisis: How it was taken, and why it still matters.
Louis P. Masur
posted April 10, 2008
It's Me in That 9/11 Photo
Walter Sipser was in that picture Frank Rich wrote about. Here's what he thinks of Rich's column.posted Sept. 13, 2006
It Takes a Horse
How America became obsessed with Barbaro.
Meghan O'Rourke
posted June 1, 2006
Fight Snub
How Cinderella Man sucker punches the Jewish boxer Max Baer.
David Fellerath
posted June 2, 2005
Towering Babel
A new translation makes the mighty author stoop.
Alex Abramovich
posted Oct. 29, 2001
Search for more culturebox articles
Subscribe to the culturebox RSS feed
View our complete culturebox archive

culturebox: Arts, entertainment, and more.

Racism, Schmacism: Opposing Intermarriage

Judith Shulevitz
Posted Monday, May 1, 2000, at 12:25 PM ET

Is it racist for Jews to oppose intermarriage? In his current New York Observer column, Philip Weiss says it is. Weiss (who is married to a non-Jew) thinks that the cold shoulder some Jews give Jews who marry non-Jews is just as bad as the ban against interracial dating recently rescinded by Bob Jones University. If Al Gore picked Orthodox Jew Sen. Joseph Lieberman (who would presumably oppose intermarriage for his own children) to be his running mate, says Weiss, then Gore would be vulnerable to the same sort of attack that was made on George W. Bush after he spoke at Bob Jones University.

Weiss' analogy is flawed in the following four ways:

1. Judaism is, among other things, a religion. The Jewish objection to intermarriage is (in part) identical to the Catholic, Muslim, Greek Orthodox, etc., objection to intermarriage. If you recognize the right of these religions to exist, then you have to acknowledge the validity of their distress at intermarriage and their attempts to limit it: Intermarriage disrupts the continuity of their customs and beliefs. People who intermarry are less likely to lead an observant life themselves, and to bring up their children to be religious, than those who marry within their own faith. Judaism, with its socially isolating rules about food and the Sabbath, is particularly susceptible to attrition through intermarriage. Even the most religious Jews drop their opposition to a so-called "mixed marriage" when the non-Jewish partner converts.

The edict at Bob Jones, on the other hand, was aimed at the preservation of a race. A white person was not allowed to date a black person. There was no conversion option. It didn't matter whether both were Baptists or one was Bahai and one was Hindu.

2. To be fair to Weiss, while Judaism may be a religion, it's also an ethnicity, though such a broadly defined one that the notion of a "Jewish people" is more of a myth than a reality--after 2,000 years of Diaspora there are Indian Jews, Chinese Jews, and Ethiopian Jews. (One thing Judaism clearly isn't is a race.) Some Jews oppose intermarriage more out of a sense of tribal loyalty than out of love for their religion. Yet even that chauvinistic position, though possibly less valid than the objection to intermarriage on religious grounds, is more valid than Bob Jones University's ban on interracial dating. Racism looks outward with horror. Its efforts are directed at preventing possible infection by the other. Racists frown on what they view as miscegenation because they hate blacks, Indians, Jews, the Irish, and so on. Tribalism, by contrast, looks inward with worried concern. The primary concern of Jews, as with other ethnic minorities, is maintaining the survival of their own group, not keeping out others. The proof of this is the existence and common use of conversion rituals.

In some ways, racism and tribalism have the same practical affect on intermarriage: They put obstacles in its path, and they impose a penalty on those who do it anyway. The formal distinction between racism and tribalism may be limited in this regard. But if you wish to make moral comparisons between the two forms of discrimination, motivations must be factored in.

3. Some forms of ethnic chauvinism bear larger historical burdens than others. It would be nice if we lived in a world in which all formally identical acts of discrimination carried the same social weight. But we don't. After 400 years of slavery, say, or the Holocaust, it is more reprehensible to get upset if your child marries a black or Jewish person (barring a legitimate religious objection) than it is for black and Jewish parents to frown upon their children marrying outside their respective groups, if that's the only reason the parents object.

4. "Frowning" is an important term here. It's indisputable that some Jews greet the non-Jewish spouses of fellow Jews with less than warmth and cordiality. Jews have been known to mutter behind the backs even of converts. This is deplorable, but there's a big difference between private acts of chauvinism and institutional discrimination, which is what was practiced at Bob Jones before it lifted the ban on interracial dating.

And yet--as Weiss points out--Judaism does countenance formal discrimination against the intermarried. Jews married to non-Jews may not be ordained as Conservative or Orthodox rabbis. They can't hold certain executive positions at Conservative or Orthodox synagogues. The children of non-Jewish mothers are barred from some aspects of religious education. (Conservative and Orthodox Judaism are matrilineal; for complicated reasons having to do with the conditions of life in medieval Jewish ghettoes, these Jews consider religious identity to be passed along through the mother, so all children of Jewish mothers are technically Jewish.)

It's important to note, however, that these rules pertain to life in the religious, not the social or civic, realm and are part of a large package of ritual observances required of rabbis and board members, at least at Conservative and Orthodox synagogues. For instance, they're also supposed to keep kosher and observe the Sabbath--and marrying outside the faith is at least as egregious a violation of Jewish law as eating ham or driving on Saturday. As for the children of non-Jewish mothers, as non-Jews they are forbidden to enroll in some religious schools because of a rule that says non-Jews can't have a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, which is the goal of most secondary Jewish education. In those cases, all that's required for them to register is to convert.

From a religious perspective, it's illogical for an intermarried Jew to protest that he or she can't hold this or that position at a synagogue or seminary or even a religious Jewish summer camp. Two basic principles of religious life are 1) that there are rules and 2) that they must be followed. These principles also apply in just about every organized area of secular life: If you don't like one of the rules, you're allowed to petition to have it changed, but you're not allowed to break it individually without penalty. A National League baseball team can't use a designated hitter, for example. So to condemn Jewish organizations for not allowing people to violate a law they don't like is to hold them to a standard we don't apply to any other institution.

Illustration by Robert Neubecker.

DISCUSS

E-MAIL

Judith Shulevitz is a former culture editor of Slate. She is writing a book about the Sabbath.

Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum

What did you think of this article?

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Reader Response from The Fray:

Well, I'm Philip Weiss and I strongly disagree. A few points in response.

1. I don't know that I think opposition to intermarriage is just as bad as Bob Jones policy. My point is, they're both intolerant. Probably I think the Bob Jones policy is more offensive, or was, but if we're doing moral calculations, let me add this: Shouldn't we have a higher standard for institutions that politicians say they're members of than the institutions they visit? GWB visited Bob Jones; Senator Joe Lieberman, D-Ct., is a member/congregant of the Orthodox Union.

2. I was not talking about general opposition to or the "frowns" directed at intermarriage. My aim was specific policies and official statements that strike me as obnoxious. To wit, the president of the Orthodox Union saying that children who intermarry are being "swept out to sea." The fact is that preventing intermarriage is a "bottom line" issue to this conservative branch of Judaism, which on its website promotes a book called, It All Begins With a Date (Buy it here). The fact that conservative Judaism bars intermarried not just from being rabbis, as Judith Shulevitz states in her piece, but from being youth workers, too. Any "role model," the conservatives say, must not be intermarried. These statements surely cross the line you draw between a religious group's religious actions and its social/civic actions.

3. Not that I abide the distinction entirely. When religious organizations make obnoxious declarations in the name of religion, it is sometimes fair to call them on it in the public square. Thus, whoever's comment some years back that God doesn't hear the prayers of Jews-- this was roundly denounced. And when the Catholic church makes intolerant statements about gays, on religious grounds, these statements are dealt with, to some degree, in the discourse; Catholic politicians often distance themselves from it. Just as I would expect that if Lieberman runs for national office, he might choose to distance himself from the intolerant rhetoric of his coreligionists about intermarriage.

4. I think it is at worst disingenuous and at best merely wrongheaded for you to suggest that these policies/statements/beliefs among Jews are similar to policies/beliefs of other ethnic groups on the intermarriage score. All American Jews know how central the concern with intermarriage has been in Jewish organizations and religious branches, and among secularized "cultural" Jews, too. The conservatives say that intermarriage is more important, as a religious matter, than maintaining a kosher table or observing the Sabbath. There is, quite plainly, great anxiety within this community on this issue, which I can understand, but some of the rhetoric that springs from this concern is intolerant and smacks of racism. I have no problem with Jewish groups deciding not to perform marriages of the intermarried, and I didn't bring up liturgical reflections of this concern, like the Jewish prayer in which one thanks god for not being born a goy. I am talking about public statements that are contemptuous of Christians and that put a lot of negative pressure on people who fall in love, in ways that are often "cruel," to use John McCain's description of the Bob Jones policy.

5. I reject your claim that Jews, like blacks, should get a pass on discrimination because they have been so oppressed. While I give the pass to blacks because they continue to suffer in America, as a group, in so many areas, the Jewish postwar experience in America is one of startling inclusion and success. Jews as an ethnic group are said to be the wealthiest in this country, and Jews have attained positions of leadership that were unthinkable in my father's generation. I celebrate this! The old paradigm of Jewish and black outsiders working hand in hand to counter oppression is largely over, and invoking it is a piece of nostalgia that in this case rationalizes intolerance. This is the paradox I sought to expose: some of the biggest winners in the country putting their heads together to try and keep their children from marrying Christians.

--Philip Weiss

(To reply, click here.)

[To read Philip Weiss and Zoe Heller in "The Breakfast Table," click here. To read Weiss and Katha Pollitt in "The Book Club" (on Philip Roth's I Married A Communist), click here.]

(5/4)

Culturebox's argument is essentially that because Jews have a sincere religious reason to oppose intermarriage, it is not immoral in the same way opposition to interracial marriage (at least by whites) is. One simple fact shreds Culturebox's entire argument: she apparently does not consider that the folks at Bob Jones University have a sincere belief that their religion prohibits interracial marriage the same way some forms of Judaism prohibit intermarriage with non-Jews. She may not agree with BJU's interpretation of the Christian Bible, but there is no evidence that it is not sincerely held. And people go to BJU to practice their religion as much as they do to get an education (there are far better schools providing the latter in South Carolina and elsewhere). Thus, the same argument that Culturebox claims justifies Jewish practice also would justify BJU's policy.

--Dilan Esper

(To reply, click here.)

It seems as though Culturebox has discovered another one of those famous English irregular verbs:
I am religious
You are a tribalist
He is a racist.

--Felix Salmon

(To reply, click here.)

(5/1)

Wow. After reading every message in The Fray I seem to be the only person here who agrees with the article.

Nearly every response, with the exception of the response by the gentleman who is President of a Reform shul, seems to show a total disregard and lack of knowledge of Jewish custom.

Marrying a Jew is not about race. It is not about nationality. It is about how we live, and how we raise our children.

Judiasm is a religion of the home. Holidays are home-based. You need a spouse who understands the importance of keeping Pesach (Passover), or keeping kosher, or observing Shabbat. You need a house which will be free of Christmas decorations. You need a spouse who will want your children to be brought up being taught Jewish moral values, which contrary to usual belief are not necessarily always the same as Christian beliefs.

This is important, because everyone seems to be caught up in this liberal dream that eventually we'll all be the same. Racially, I could care less. Black, white, honestly who cares? But when it comes to religion, I by no means want my children or my grandchildren to assimilate into the majority to culture, to celebrate the birth of someone else's god each December, to forget the teachings of Hillel, or Rabbi Akiva. Now, if everyone wanted to be Jewish, that I wouldn't mind. :)

One of my best friends is a convert. He was not born Jewish. He was dating a Jewish girl who demanded that he convert in order to marry her. He did so, but they broke up midway. But he discovered that he fell in love with Judaism, so he completed his conversion, learned some Hebrew, and even spent a few months in Israel. He will find a Jewish woman and raise Jewish children. And they will be just as Jewish as me, or my father, or Senator Leiberman, or the gentleman from the Reform shul who responded earlier. They will certainly be more Jewish than Mr. Weiss' children, who I very much doubt are growing up with any knowledge of Pirke Avot, or the teachings of Maimonides, or keeping Pesach laws for seven (or eight) days each year.

Yes, conversion is arduous. You aren't joining a tennis club here. If you want to be a Jew, you must show a knowledge of Judaism. Yes, many people who are born Jewish do not have this much Jewish knowledge. What can you do? (shrug) Some parents are not as concerned with such things. But our rabbis are, and they are effectively the "parents" of converts when it comes to learning the ways of Judaism.

Those of you who feel this is is racism simply don't understand what it means to be religious. Because while Bob Jones cannot make a black man convert to being white to marry one of his students, any black man can convert to Judaism and marry my daughter. When I have one, that is. And the Jews who do whisper behind the backs of converts are our bigots, and they make me ashamed to be Jewish, and they need to be reminded that they are wrong. And certainly Senator Lieberman, as any learned Jew would, feels likewise.

P.S. The battle over matrilineal descent between Reform and Conservative/Orthodox Judaism is really tangential to the question of intermarriage as racism, so can we not concentrate on it?

--Aaron Schatz

(To reply, click here.)

(5/2)