By Keren McGinity
Jewish sages teach us: “Carve out a time for learning” (Pirke Avot, 1:15). Jews pride themselves on high rates of post-baccalaureate educational achievement, professional degrees, and the associated prestige and success that go with them. Yet when it comes to Jewish intermarriage and interfaith families, we think personal experience or what we read in the Forward is sufficient intel. The uptick in news coverage about intermarriage and officiation at interfaith nuptials in just the past few weeks, the proposal by LabShul’s Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie and related rebuttals, including one by the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly executive vice president Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, tell us that there is a great need in the Jewish community to fully understand this social phenomenon in a deep and meaningful way. But understanding requires education and education is, unfortunately, socially constructed and gendered.
The gendering of Jewish education extends to education about intermarriage. Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, asked in a recent Facebook post what people knew or thought about the relationship between the rabbinate and attitudes towards intermarriage, wondering aloud in cyber space why in his estimation “the loudest anti-intermarriage voices are men.” The query netted dozens of responses, many of them insightful about the role of generation, denomination, sexism, power, misogyny, otherness, conversion, and more, which in turn spawned more replies. According to the 2015 survey of Conservative rabbis by Big Tent Judaism (now closed), more female than male rabbis have attended an interfaith wedding, would officiate if the Rabbinical Assembly changed its policy against doing so, and accept patrilineal descent. This survey, while limited to one denomination and those who participated, suggests that men may outnumber women among anti-intermarriage advocates. Although the question about whether there is a gender bias in the rabbinate about intermarriage is worthwhile, more important for the sake of the Jewish future is to look at who is actually educating themselves (mostly women), and to ask: why?
Time and again, it is women who are showing up at conferences and in classrooms to learn more about intermarriage so as to better teach, support, and engage interfaith families. In early June I had the privilege of teaching the 20th Summer Institute for the Friedman Commission for Jewish Education of the Palm Beaches in Florida. It was the first time that this community publicly discussed the topic of intermarriage and the organizers had high hopes for a great turnout. While the three-night conference was well attended, I was disconcerted but not surprised that all 22 registrants were women with one exception. Likewise, the first cohort of Interfaith Families Jewish Engagement (IFJE) fellows in the program by the same name at Hebrew College, which I direct, is two-thirds female, one-third male. This small group reflects the larger picture of students enrolled in the Shoolman Graduate School of Jewish Education and Jewish Studies: 72% women and 28% men. Education is not a high-paying field; in fact it is sadly undervalued, which at least partially explains why fewer men participate than women.
Thirty years ago, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Jewish men were more likely than Jewish women to intermarry and women of other faith backgrounds were more likely than men to convert to Judaism. The late sociologist Egon Mayer, author of the original study and the book Love and Tradition, and a pioneer of Jewish outreach, also found a correlation between education and conversion, with converts tending to have more education than non-converts. Jewish women have “caught up” with men when it comes to marrying out in some age brackets, but Jewish men have not come even close when it comes to pursuit of post bar mitzvah Jewish education. The assumption that they must be omniscient without actually learning influences the perception that men working in the Jewish community – including rabbis serving congregations, those who accompany couples on Honeymoon Israel trips, and outreach organization staff – somehow already possess the knowledge to do their job. Yet they don’t, because they – like most people – have not been taught the innovative skills to engage interfaith couples and families effectively in Jewish life.
Engagement professionals need to carve out more time to learn from colleagues and mentors about the relationship between intermarriage and gender to be able to empower intermarried Jewish fathers to raise Jewish children equally effectively as intermarried Jewish mothers; about the influences of culture and race on interfaith marriage and identity; and about denominational similarities and differences. Jewish institutions and organizations that seek to be truly welcoming, inclusive, and egalitarian must prioritize learning and professional development outside their own walls. We need to support our communal leaders – especially men – studying intermarriage.
Keren R. McGinity is the inaugural director of the Interfaith Families Jewish Engagement program at Hebrew College’s Shoolman Graduate School of Jewish Education and the founding director of the Love & Tradition Institute. She is affiliated with the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and teaches American Studies at Brandeis University. Her publications include Still Jewish: A History of Women & Intermarriage in America (NYU Press, 2009) and Marrying Out: Jewish Men, Intermarriage, and Fatherhood (Indiana University Press, 2014).
This first appeared on the blog of Lilith magazine – independent, Jewish & frankly feminist. More at www.Lilith.org.
I would be interested to hear why the author thinks there is a correlation between gender and opposition to intermarriage.
I would also like to know if the difference between male and female responses in the 2015 Big Tent Judaism survey were statistically meaningful, or just slight.
In addition to her well-taken point about women predominating in Jewish education (less true in the Orthodox world), women tend to participate more than men in almost all Jewish religious activities, including study (again, the Orthodox are the exception).
How to explain this? Could it be that, in general, women are (true to gender stereotype) more concerned about family than men? Could it be that men are (true to stereotype) often more driven in their careers, and less concerned than women about other aspects of a normal life?
I ask not because I know the answers to these questions; I don’t.
Thank for your good questions, David. I believe the gender difference in opposition to intermarriage is due to a confluence of factors, namely generation, age, denomination and power. Younger female liberal rabbis in junior positions are more likely to understand that intermarriage can be an opportunity to draw Jews and their loved ones into the community. The Big Tent survey is best understood as a tool that suggests there is a statistically significant difference between male and female Conservative rabbis rather than a conclusive source. The social construction of gender in America supports your last contention. However it is not that women are more concerned about family than men or that men are more concerned about professional success than women; rather that there is a disparity in social currency about “women’s work” and “men’s work” that influences behavior.
When reading and studying the Torah, we see examples of intermarriage; Joseph married an Egyptian woman, Moses married a non-Jewish/ non-Israelite woman, yet, their children were Jewish.
On Friday night, many parents bless their sons to be as Ephraim and Manasheh, the sons of Joseph and his non-Jewish wife,
All throughout our history there are examples of intermarriage, often with the children and non-Jewish partner becoming “very Jewish” (whatever that means).. Let us continue to welcome the non-Jewish (at the time) person into our midst.
As a longtime Jewish early childhood educator, I am aware of many instances where the non-Jewish partner, through many positive experiences of their child in a Jewish preschool, either converted formally or began to incorporate Jewish experiences into the family’s life and routine.
Dear Rena Rotenberg,
Joseph, Ephraim, Manasheh, and Moses were all married
BEFORE the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai.
Therefore, who they married cannot be interpreted
as meaning that intermarriage is acceptable in our times.
The Jewish Bible contains several post-Sinai warnings
against intermarriage: Deuteronomy chapter 7,
Joshua chapter 23, Ezra chapter 10 and Malachi chapter 3.
The Talmud and Midrash also contain several quotes
that indicate the unacceptability of intermarriage.
Sincerely,
Mr. Cohen / DerechEmet@yahoo.com