Choosing Outside the Chosen

although Rabbi Gellman expresses concern about the intermarriage issue and how it affects the Jewish population, he is wise not to utilize the scare tactics that so many parents and community leaders use when they push for marriage within the faith. threats and warnings are not going to increase rates of Jewish endogamy, and any sort of Jewish programming that has even the slightest hint of "hooking up single Jews with one another" can make people uncomfortable, even those who want to marry within the faith. they want to find someone on their own terms. Judaism has become less about rituals and more about concern with bloodlines and marriage. every religion teaches its preference for in-marriage, yet Judaism seems to take it far beyond the others. yes, marriage between Jews is preferable and wonderful. but using guilt and scare tactics to ensure marriage within the faith is inappropriate. it is more beneficial to highlight the positives of endogamy than the negatives of intermarriage. i agree with Rabbi Gellman when he says that Judaism isn't simply about food and humor. but i also think that Judaism isn't simply about who we marry either. a Jew is still a Jew regardless of who they marry and should not be treated as some sort of failure because they didn't meet a nice Jewish boy or girl.

and while we may not believe it, Orthodox Judaism is not immune to the influence of the outside world as demonstrated by a 3% intermarriage rate. it's small compared to the intermarriage rate among non-Orthodox Jews, but it shows that they are not as insulated as we assume (look at Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman. he grew up Orthodox and married a non-Jewish woman, yet he's still steadfast in his observance and his wife has been welcomed by several in the community even though she has chosen not to convert but instead to raise their children as Jews). every denomination is finding ways to deal with the intermarriage issue. although Orthodox Jews commonly admonish those who intermarry, there are some who are trying to work with the intermarried rather than against them. and given the decline in population and affiliation, that is probably a wise and bold move on their part.

With regards to intermarriage between The Chosen People and (by default) The Non-Chosen People, all I can say is this: My stepfamily is Jewish. I am not. I find no problem with different cultures blending and becoming stronger through love and intermarriage. I'm sorry if Mr. Gellman is worried that my stepfamily has become degenerated in some way because they have stooped down to my level. But I'll be glad when crusty old racists like him fade into the sunset.

And please...quit using the Holocaust Card to peddle your racism. It's demeaning to Jews and non-Jews alike.

The Jews were are and will always be Gods favorite people and they will never disappear no matter what you throw at em - i am just going with what the bible says as clear as day. Mess with Israel and you mess with God. Good luck with that.

If American Jews are a disappearing group, then it must be that the Jewish belief system is not offering what the people need or want. If you believe in supply and demand, then what the tenants of the Jewish faith supply is not in demand. All one need do is examine the rise in the Evangelicals of North America. The people who run these churches give the folks what they demand-religion lite. They give them Christian Rock and Christian Hip-Hop and Big Screen TVs in the chapel and preachers who look and act like movie stars. Their growth rate is phenomenal and, if their message isn't working, well they just fine tune the message until the crowds roll in through the front doors. In the end, religious belief is a human construct, subject to the whims of the times. If Jewish beliefs are to survive in the U.S., then the beliefs have to adapt. Most traditionalists will not like to hear this, but the reality is in the statistics cited by Mr. Gellman's article.

It is an interesting article but I'm not sure he is talking about a people or a religion and perhaps that is the problem.

The PBS special spoke more about the PEOPLE known as Jews rather than the practitioners of a religious faith. It makes one wonder whether we are asking the right question. Are we trying to preserve a religious group or a nationality? Some would say both but I don't think you can really find solutions if you are looking for an answer to both questions.

Do we mourn the loss of the Aztec religion or the people? The loss of the American Indian faith or the people? The ancient Greeks or their religion?

It seems that if we make the assumption that religious faith exists to serve the people then when no one cares to believe in that faith then its relevancy and its importance becomes non existent. If the best of that faith is transplanted or merged into society and other religious morals of the time it becomes unimportant and redundant. That is where it appears the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements may have failed. By making Judaism more main stream to accommodate those who wanted to maintain some form of Judaism in their lives they took much of what made being Jewish and merged it into Christianity. The large synagogues, choirs, organs, etc. all made the differences between the faiths for the lay person more and more blurred. What made an earlier generation or two more comfortable in their Jewish religious practices has made practicing Judaism to their children and grandchildren irrelevant. Combine that with the barriers between Jews and Gentiles being dropped in most aspects of American life and it became irrelevant to identify with ones Jewish ancestors.

Since television appears to the masses I assume that most of the Jews watching took great pride on Jews being Miss America, great baseball players, scientists, writers, musicians, comedians and actors. There was no discussion of the great religious thinkers as most of them wouldn't know who they are and wouldn't care.

There will, most likely, always be Jews but as the "modern" American Jew losses their identity among the masses the remaining traditional orthodox Jew will remain and will carry the religion forward. The American Jew that we know today will, in most likelihood, no longer exist.

I think the disappearance of the Jews in the United States would be great news. The United States functions well as a nation because immigrants are willing to learn English, assimilate, and adopt American values. What would have happened if all immigrant groups would have had the mentality that intermarriage and assimilation is undesirable? Instead of an attractive place to live, the United States would have gone down in history as a failed experiment in the coalescence of various peoples.

I find it astonishing that Newsweek is willing to publish an article like this. If a German-American would have written an article arguing that Germans in the United States shouldn't intermarry with others, not only would that article not have been published, but the Jewish interest groups would have done their best to ruin that person's career.

The sooner the Jews disappear as a distinct ethnicity in the United States the better.

I think the disappearance of the Jews in the United States would be great news. The United States functions well as a nation because immigrants are willing to learn English, assimilate, and adopt American values. What would have happened if all immigrant groups would have had the mentality that intermarriage and assimilation is undesirable? Instead of an attractive place to live, the United States would have gone down in history as a failed experiment in the coalescence of various peoples.

I find it astonishing that Newsweek is willing to publish an article like this. If a German-American would have written an article arguing that Germans in the United States shouldn't intermarry with others, not only would that article not have been published, but the Jewish interest groups would have done their best to ruin that person's career.

The sooner the Jews disappear as a distinct ethnicity in the United States the better.

The seoond half of Gellman's article is excellent, however the first half reminds me exactly of what Rabbi Niles Elliot Goldstein in his wonderful book, GONZO JUDAISM had to say about "hangdog, laychrymose" older men ("and they are invariably older and male") wringing their hands about the imminent demise of the Jewish people. Guilt and scare stories are not going to keep Jews involved, a vibrant, meaningingful (and yes affordable) Judaism, will. Amazing how Gellman proves his own point.

Enough of this endless trumpeting of the imminent demise of the American Jew! It is the most droll, useless and ethnocentric garbage that Jewish "thinkers" can possibly espouse and I am sick to death of reading about it. Stop whining and trying to guilt your fellow Jews into "denying Hitler a posthumous victory" by marrying Jewish and try investing your energy in making Judaism something that speaks to modern, rational people meaningfully.

America in general is becoming more homogenized. We our slowly losing our identities as "insiders" vs. "outsiders". While this is seen as a tragedy to those who still cling to their insider identity, it is seen by those who have embraced inclusiveness as a long overdue blessing. It's ironic that the argument made in this article are essentially the same as the argument made by the anti-Semitic skinheads in the 80's; "We're being assimilated! We're being assimilated!" The skinheads also see their loss of identity as a tragedy.

It's time for people of all groups who define themselves through their differences to the rest of the population to realize that the world is shrinking. Gone are the days where populations can live in isolation in order to maintain an illusion of superiority to the rest of the world.

It's your choice to view the blurring of your particular group's lines of demarcation as a tragedy. Your values aren't being lost. They're being assimilated; along with every other groups. "Us vs. them" is being replaced as the global paradigm. It's about time.

Substitute any other group but Jews and imagine a oped piece in Newsweek decrying marriage with outsiders.

Substitute any other group but Jews and imagine a piece in Newsweek decrying marriage with outsiders.

I dated a Jewish man years ago and found out that some Jews are not warm to the idea of Gentiles converting to Judaism. This idea of it being a race rather than just a religion is one that will, in the absence of a high birthrate, will serve only to make American Judaism dwindle down. Other religions welcome and encourage conversion to survive and thrive.

I dated a Jewish man years ago and found out that some Jews are not warm to the idea of Gentiles converting to Judaism. This idea of it being a race rather than just a religion is one that will, in the absence of a high birthrate, will serve only to make American Judaism dwindle down. Other religions welcome and encourage conversion to survive and thrive.

The Rabbi is once again decrying other points of view as propoganda, while engaging in the most most partisan speech.

Israel and it's ethnocentric policies are an abomination to anyone who believes in liberty and freedom. Religious belief is an aquired condition, not an inherent one. Someone who is a Christian today can be a Muslim tomorrow, but a semite is always a semite. Israel has long had immigration policies that gave preference to immigrants based on religious belief (Which is in itself fundamentally racist) that brought millions of peole to the middle east that where descended from a multitude of races. As the years passed Israeli's "percentage of semitisim" was eroded, until now it is essentially a mixture of ethnic and nationalist entities claiming they are all semites!!

The Palestinians on the other hand, due to their standard of living, and a thirty year occupation, have had little if any immigration. You must then realize quite easily that they are far more fundamentaly semetic than their occupiers are. After the Holocaust, the U.N. unilateraly decided the Jewish Diaspora deserved a homeland, which is an idea that I can, within limits accept. My only question is a simple one. If what the Germans did to the Jews in WWII warrants the establishment of a Jewish state, why wasn???t that state created inside Germanys former borders? From a historical perspective, what did the Palestinians due to deserve their fate? If Israel where "created" in what we now call Germany, justice would have been far better served. Plus then the only people the Israeli's would be capable of harassing, invading, and occupying would be the French, which I for one, would strongly support.

And while we are at it, can???t we just move the damn Kurds to the Falkland Islands?

IT is GOOD THAT EVERYONE BREEDS JEWS. IT IS VERY HEALTHY FOR A MULTI CULTURAL SOCIETY. HALF AFRICAN AND JEWISH SEEms TO BE A GROWING TREND. AS WELL AS BLACK MEN AND WHITE WOMEN. THIS IS ALSO VERY HEALTHY FOR A MULTI CULTURAL SOCIETY. OBAMA FOR EXAMple.

The only constant in the universe is change. I really don't care about my ethnicity and really don't care if my ethnicity survives. Hopefully, at least in America, old ethnicities will die out. Hopefully new mixed ethnicities will arise. I really wish that were happening in Africa and in the Middle East. Ethnic identities hvae brought nothing but war and genocide. To quote the African-American poet Margaret Walker, "Let a blood-stained truce be written in the skies, let a new race of man arise and take control."

Rabbi Gellman

It's very presumptions for me, a Roman Catholic, to make suggestions to the Jewish community... but I'm going to do so anyway. Would it not help to support Jews married to non-Jews to raise their children in the Jewish faith?

Three of my "sort-of-Christian but really uncommitted" friends married Jewish spouses. In all three cases, the Jewish spouse was basically told "if you marry this gentile, we give up on you". The sad thing is, NONE of the "sort-of-Christians" involved had any intention of raising their children with a committed Christian faith. Even from the most exclusively Christian point of view (which is not my POV) it would be a million times better to be a believing, praying Jew that a Christian-identified secular agnostic.

In one case, the Jewish fiancee said "I'll consider raising my children Christian if you will be a real Christian. That means pray with them everynight, take them to church every Sunday, talk to them constantly about what your Christian faith means to you". Her Christian boyfriend thought it over and agreed to raise the kids Jewish. A few years latter, the guy converted to Judaism- and I'd have to say, he never really took Jesus seriously until he was Jewish. A happy ending, definitely.

Anne E