There is an old Jewish joke about a woman calling up her mother and informing her that she married an unemployed gentile man and they have nowhere to live. The mother doesn’t object; instead, she invites her daughter and new son-in-law to sleep in her bed. When the daughter protests, asking where her parents will sleep, the mother responds: “Don’t worry sweetheart: Papa will sleep on the sofa, and I am going to drop dead.” 

The joke’s reliance on the Jewish mother’s hyperbolic response to the intermarriage news, contrasted with the Jewish father’s ability to sleep peacefully despite it, plays on multiple stereotypes. But while Jewish mothers have been mocked and ridiculed since time immemorial for their protective response to perceived threats to Jewish continuity (see Tovah Feldshuh’s character in the Netflix hit “Nobody Wants This” as popular culture’s latest contribution to the trope), the role of Jewish fathers ensuring Jewish continuity has received comparatively sparse attention.

Getty Images

Illustrative. A father tells his toddler about the meaning behind the Hannukah candles.

I was therefore delighted to see the focus on engaging Jewish boys and men in two recent eJewishPhilanthropy articles. Authors Zack Wainer, Isaac Kurtz and Doron Kenter astutely point out that if we focus only on avoiding “manels” and not on the gender representation in audiences, we are missing most of the story (“Engaging men and boys in Jewish life: What we know, what we don’t know and what we can do,” May 26). And after witnessing male college students transform from passive to active Jewish learners in the Mensches to Men program (M2M), authors Rabbi Rob Gleisser and Mollie Feldman ask an excellent question: “What other experiments might invite young men to see themselves as contributors, leaders and builders of Jewish life?” (“What happens when students lead Jewish learning: An experiment in Jewish male engagement,” June 19). 

Who raises Jewish children is impacted by gender dynamics and roles. Extant scholarship about the children of intermarriage that takes gender into account contends that more Jewish children are raised by Jewish mothers married to gentile fathers than by Jewish fathers married to gentile mothers. The 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey found that among intermarried Jewish women, 47% raised Jewish children, compared to 28% of intermarried Jewish men. In the study of 90 young adults of Jewish intermarriage, A Flame Still Burns (2005), 77% of Jewish mothers encouraged their children to identify as Jewish, compared to 45% of Jewish fathers. A 2015 Brandeis study found that among the millennial children of intermarriage who went on Birthright and had some formal Jewish education, 51% had a Jewish mother and 37% had a Jewish father. The most important takeaway from the 2025 meta-analysis by staff at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Gender Dynamics and Engagement in Jewish Life, is that “[t]he concentration of gender differences among families with only one Jewish partner could be related to the fact that among Jews in particular, women are more likely than men to take on the role of transmitting religious identity to their children.” 

Why are men less likely?

In my research, I’ve found that intermarried Jewish men have not raised Jewish children equally effectively as have intermarried Jewish women because they still see their primary role as providers. And gentile women who married Jewish men and demanded their children be raised Jewish have unfairly shouldered responsibility for making Jewish homes and raising Jewish children. The success of the Mother’s Circle, a program that introduces women of other faith backgrounds to Jewish practices and holidays, compared with the lack of success of a pilot for a similar educational program for Jewish men, reinforces this point. Partners who are Jewish-adjacent often have the bewildering experience of being married to someone for whom having Jewish children is very important but who has not been empowered as a Jewish father. 

“Fortunately,” as Adam Teitelbaum wrote earlier this year in Sapir, “Judaism has its own conception of masculinity, one rooted in the power of responsibility for one’s family, community and society.” The “rules” of American masculinity that encourage men to “win” — to get ahead, make more money, buy more toys, build bigger houses — leads to competing priorities that can inhibit Jewish men from prioritizing Jewish fathering relative to their careers. Judaism’s model of manhood underscores the importance of teaching values; that words matter, and actions speak louder than words.  If we embrace Judaism’s model for manhood, we can assert that responsibility for one’s family extends beyond providing to include Jewish parenting.

Efforts around egalitarianism have focused on eliminating barriers to women’s full participation in Jewish life without the corresponding focus on men’s full participation in family life, specifically Jewish parenting.  Women are now admitted to rabbinical school, ordained, counted in a minyan, and wrap tefillin. As Rabbi Pamela Barmash wrote in a halachic responsa titled “Women and Mitzvot”: 

“Egalitarianism, the equality of women in the observance of mitzvot, is not just about the participation of women: it is about fostering the fulfillment of mitzvot by all Jews.” 

Jewish egalitarianism must be implemented beyond the bima to enable intermarried Jewish men to better integrate work and family. To accomplish this cultural shift, educators and engagement professionals can lift up the idea of equal parenting as a Jewish value and simultaneously revitalize the concept of l’dor v’dor (from generation to generation). 

For many men, particularly those without substantive Jewish education, what and how to teach their children is perplexing. This presents a tremendous opportunity to offer creative programming for single and intermarried Jewish men, as well as non-binary Jews. Jewish literacy will also increase as new parents can learn alongside their preschool-age children. By investing in developing a model of Jewish manhood that includes Jewish parenting for those who wish to become parents, we can foster greater gender equality and simultaneously teach that Jews of all genders have responsibility for Jewish parenting, regardless of who they marry. By placing greater social and cultural value on men’s roles as fathers, and by enfranchising men to participate in something that truly matters, we will increase the proportion of children raised Jewish and raise the likelihood that your grandchildren will be Jewish.

Keren R. McGinity, a research associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, is the author of two books on Jews, gender and intermarriage.