by Paul Golin

March 19, 2009

I appreciate Andrew Silow-Carroll’s continued grappling with the complex issue of intermarriage in such a thoughtful and personal manner (Editor’s Column, “Swimming against the tide,” March 12). His views on why so many Jews intermarry (“because Americans marry Americans”), the absurdity of stereotyping intermarried Jews (“dime-store Freudianism”), and acknowledging the efforts of many intermarried families (“doing a heroic job of raising Jewish kids”) are refreshing to read anywhere, particularly in the pages of a Jewish newspaper.

Knowing how strong an ally he is for inclusion, I would like to respectfully challenge some of his other statements even though we usually find ourselves on the same side of the issue.

When he writes, “I care deeply about the chain of Jewish culture and feel the best way to keep it going is not only to marry a Jewish woman but to raise kids to appreciate Jewish culture in a positive…way,” he is conflating methods with goals. Marrying a Jewish spouse can be seen as a method to achieving the goal of raising strongly identified Jewish children. And yes, statistics support those who argue it is “the best” method. But the way to create an inclusive Jewish community is to recognize that there is a wide variety of methods to reach the same goal.

Communal expressions of the traditional view — in-marriage “best,” intermarriage “harder” — is no longer helpful when half of our married households are already intermarried. What is helpful is the beautiful (and perhaps more importantly, purposeful) way Silow-Carroll and his wife determined to observe Shabbat with their children as “a series of ‘thou shalts,’ instead of ‘thou shalt nots.’” Many participants in our Mothers Circle program, for women of other religious backgrounds raising Jewish children, take a similar approach. It’s a method of Jewish identity-building that can be promoted to Jewish households regardless of whether one or both spouses are Jewish. We should advance the practice for its inherent value, not as a potential intermarriage preventative.

There are often very real challenges for intermarried couples, which can certainly be part of the dialogue and I hope will be. But the column doesn’t mention any. Does that imply that the challenge is the marriage itself? Such an oversimplification would contradict the column’s other nuanced views on intermarriage. Nor does Silow-Carroll offer specific ways to “encourage Jews to marry other Jews,” which is difficult to do without alienating the already intermarried. The very reasoned recommendation to raise children who cherish Jewish culture and “want to maintain its traditions” is again the goal, not the method, and can be done by both in- and intermarried parents.

The majority of Jewish young people find little resonance in exhortations to “marry Jewish,” especially considering half come from intermarried parents themselves. The challenge, then, is to figure out what replaces an inward-looking Jewish community.

How do we not just tolerate but embrace the true diversity of Jewish households? And how do we excite our children about being Jewish, regardless of — and without putting down other — household configurations? The future lies not in promoting the one “best” method, which we know will never work for all people anyway, but in providing even more methods for achieving the shared goal of raising the next generation of Jews.

Paul Golin is associate executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute.

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