by Zohar Rotem
Intermarriage is not the problem. The dramatic overreaction to the recent Pew study of American Jewry provided a loud platform for many traditionalists to revive the oft-repeated canard that intermarriage itself is the cause of declining participation in the organized Jewish community; some even suggest that intermarriage is synonymous with the end of Jewishness in those households. In order to actually grow the Jewish community however, we must operate on a more nuanced view.
I don’t deny the finding – confirmed by multiple studies, including the 2001 National Jewish Population Study and the recent Pew study – that, on average, intermarried Jews lag behind their in-married peers on various measures of Jewish participation. What I am denying is the notion that intermarried individuals and their children participate less because of intermarriage. Jewish identity is too complex, and impacted by too many factors, for such simplistic causal relations.
Big Tent Judaism/Jewish Outreach Institute (JOI) has just released a study, “Listening to Adult Children of Intermarriage,” addressing some of those factors. Our study points to the lack of acceptance of the intermarried and their children, rather than intermarriage itself, as a pivotal reason why these individuals participate less in Jewish life. How is our study different from all other studies? In addition to the standard Jewish sociological questions about participation (Do you go to synagogue? How often do you light Shabbat candles?) we also asked a different set of questions about interest in Jewish participation. This allowed us to compare Jews with one Jewish parent (the adult children of intermarriage) to their peers with two Jewish parents regarding not only their Jewish participation but also their interest in Jewish participation.
What’s the difference? A considerable one. In our study, we compared Jews with one Jewish parent side-by-side with very similar Jews who have two Jewish parents. Respondents in both groups described themselves as engaged in Jewish life; they all said being Jewish is important in their lives; they all said that they are raising (or plan to raise) their children as Jewish by religion. Consistent with previous studies, we found that Jews with one Jewish parent do participate in Jewish activities less than Jews with two Jewish parents. However, the novelty of our study is that it also found that both groups express interest in these activities roughly at the same level.
Odd, isn’t it? Take two people – one with two Jewish parents, the other with one Jewish parent. Both say they are very interested in religious activities, yet one goes to synagogue often and the other rarely does. When we asked them why that is, Jews with one Jewish parent repeatedly said that the thing they need most from the organized Jewish community is greater acceptance. One respondent, a married woman in her 30s, said, “I am the adult child of intermarriage and have often felt out of place… I feel like we are a group that is often ignored or is a source of shame for the Jewish community.”
Two other findings also support this conclusion. When we compare respondents with no children to those with children, we find a noticeable increase in various measures of Jewish engagement and participation. We refer to this upward tick following the transition to parenthood as “the kid bump.” We found that Jews with two Jewish parents primarily experience the kid bump as an increase in identification with a specific Jewish denomination, with no increase in their (already-high) level of Jewish engagement. For Jews with one Jewish parent the picture is reversed. When they become parents, they describe themselves as more Jewishly engaged but their level of identification with a particular Jewish denomination stays very.
By now there should be alarm bells ringing in the heads of anyone who works for a denominationally-affiliated Jewish institution. Currently, one in four adult American Jews (about 1.3 million) has one parent who is not Jewish, and Jews with one Jewish parent are likely to become the majority in a generation or less. So why are those Jews with one Jewish parent for whom Judaism is high on their agenda not affiliating with the organized Jewish community? And what can be done about it?
A third finding offers one possible answer. There is one subset of adult children of intermarriage for whom the findings above do not apply; their level of actual participation in Jewish life matches their high level of interest. This subgroup is Jewish communal professionals. Jews with one Jewish parent who work (full- or part-time) for a Jewish organization and institution are no different from their peers with two Jewish parents in how much they participate in organized Jewish communal activities.
So what’s the difference? These are people who, in one way or another, have already transcended the barriers stacked against the intermarried and their children by the organized Jewish community. They are already on the inside, so it is relatively easy for them to find venues to express their high level of Jewish interest within the confines of Jewish institutions. For all others, their interest in Jewish participation remains expressed primarily in self-guided and exploratory ways. They surf the web or read Jewish books; they identify as secular or “just Jewish.” They feel that being a child of intermarriage is an important part of their identity, but are uncomfortable “outing” themselves as children of intermarriage within Jewish institutions (especially if they are patrilineal Jews, that is, with a mother of another background).
We hope that this study will serve to raise a discussion about the best ways to welcome and include the intermarried and their children. Big Tent Judaism/Jewish Outreach institute is proud to be a leader in this area of developing proven programs and methods for the inclusion of the intermarried as well as other populations traditionally marginalized or from institutional Jewish life.
The full report – “Listening to Adult Children of Intermarriage” – is available here.
Zohar Rotem is program officer for evaluation at Big Tent Judaism/Jewish Outreach Institute, a national nonprofit working to promote a more inclusive and engaging Jewish community for all who might benefit, including intermarried couples and their children. He can be reached at [email protected]
This piece originally appeared in Jweekly.com.
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I very much appreciate that the author clearly emphasized the difference between correlation and causality that so many others have seem to have confused as they have interpreted the result of the Pew study. I completely agree that Pew study does not show a causation between intermarriage and lack of Jewish participation.
Having been affiliated with two congregations that seem to make such a concerted effort to be accepting of intermarried couples and their families, I find it disappointing that so many would still feel like they are on the outside and do not have a place in the community.
Seeing so many intermarried couples and their families that are actually on the inside, it just does not seem plausible that the “lack of acceptance of the intermarried and their children… as a pivotal reason why these individuals participate less in Jewish life.” I am sure there are congregations that are not as accepting as should be desired of intermarried families (just as can be said for those with disabilities, LGBT families, middle age single folks, and others), but there are many that are accepting if it is one’s priority to find and associate with them. Personally, I think Jewish groups have a lot of work to do to move beyond accepting to be actually welcoming of all groups of people. I do not belong to any of the aforementioned groups but have never felt more alone than I have at time when participating in a service or program in a congregation I was affiliated with for quite some time. However, my feeling of exclusion led me to look for yet another community because belonging is a priority for me. Acceptance is not the same as welcoming and active (rather than passive) inclusion but that is an issue for some other discussion.
I do not think that a study that is based on self identified interest is particularly reliable or meaningful. Sure interest is a prerequisite to affiliation but it is not sufficient. I am interested in cooking, pottery, photography, gardening, bicycling, hiking, and fitness. However, I am unfortunately only currently pursuing only two of those to any significant degree. That does not mean I am lying when I say I am interested. It is a matter of time and resources and my priorities on how I allocate them. The same can be said of Jewish identity and affiliation. In fact, it would appear this is backed up by the author’s own example of Jewish communal professionals that are in intermarried families. It seems far more likely that they are more affiliated because it is a higher priority for them than it is that they are more accepted. The key is priorities. I am sure that the reason I am actively Jewish today is that somehow my parents instilled in me that it was important to be so. I am just as sure that whether or not my children will continue along the same path will be based on how well I am able to instill that same sense of importance/priority in them. The study the author refers to, the Pew study, and others seem to be not asking all the questions they need to. Attendance in Jewish day schools or Jew camps is not what is most significant. It is that fact that the family is willing to prioritize limited resources to that end which is compelling. If we want to find causation instead of correlation perhaps we need to ask questions more like:
a) Would you be willing to not take a better paying job in a community because either the Jewish population was too small or there were not enough Jewish organizations that you would feel accepted and welcomed in?
b) Some of us chose what neighborhood based upon what secular education our children can receive, to what consideration do we put on the availability of a Jewish education?
c) Do we attend services only when there is nothing competing that we have an interest in or are we willing to attend services when attendance means we miss attending our favorite concert or high school football game?
d) Do we not invite all of our children’s religious school classmates to their Bar/Bat mitzvahs but invite their entire soccer and little league teams?
e) Do we insist that our children attend each and every Bar/Bat Mitzvah they are invited to or do we let them sleep in instead or go play or practice with their travel soccer team or go to dance class?
f) Do we not have our children apply to or attend certain colleges because the percentage of other Jews attending is just too low even if a complete tuition scholarship is available them?
g) Do we require our children to attend religious school unless they have a secular school project or a friends birthday party or we have something else we want to do that prevents us from driving them?
h) We meet with our secular school teachers to see how our children doing in class do we do the same with our religious school teachers?
i) We school our children for at least 12 years until they are 17/18 years old (whether they want it or are interested or not), but do we do the same for religious school or do we celebrate the Bar Mitzvah because it means we no longer need to send them or do we allow confirmation and post-confirmation education participation to be at the whim/interest of our children themselves?
I am not the one to say what are the right or wrong answers or even if there are right or wrong answers. But depending upon how those and other questions like them are answered, can there be any surprise as to why Jewish affiliation and identification will likely decline over time? If we are interested in being Jewish and participating in Jewish life but only when it is convenient and only when nothing more important is competing and we find (through our choices and actions) so many more things to actually be more important, what does that say about the value we place on being Jewish in the first place?
Yes, acceptance is important and we have so much more work in that area for the intermarried and just about every other group. However it is how we value our Jewishness and prioritize it is what really makes the difference.