The Factors Behind the 52% Intermarriage Rate
Since
the publication of the 1990 National Jewish Population
Survey which found that the percentage of Jews marrying
non-Jews had risen to 52% among the latest (post 1985)
marriage cohort, many in the organized Jewish community
have seized on that figure as a blazing symbol of the
upcoming generation's disinterest in Jewish continuity.
As such, that one statistic has also served as a shofar
call to rally all Jewish communal efforts to reverse the
alarming trend.
JOI shares the concern of all thoughtful Jews that
the high incidence of intermarriage represents a difficult
challenge to the continuity of the Jewish people. However,
we see in that statistic something far more complex
than the disinterest of Jews in maintaining their continuity.
Intermarriage is not the result of American
Jewry's predilection of assimilation. Rather, it is
the by-product of other large scale transformations
in American family life affecting Jews and non-Jews
alike. These transformations include:
- removal of virtually all social barriers between
Jews and non-Jews in work, education and leisure
- later age of marriage
- geographic shift away from older areas of dense
Jewish concentration [NOTE: the incidence of intermarriage
is far greater in the West than the East, therefore
the focus on population shift]
- increased participation of women in the labor force
- increased incidence of divorce and remarriage
Each of these transformation in the American life has
increased the opportunity of social interchange between
Jews and their non- Jewish neighbors, and have correspondingly
increased the opportunity of Jews to meet and marry non-Jews.
More than anything else. the goal of JOI is to help
families and the organized Jewish community understand
these complex social forces, and help develop the community
resources and educational programs that will secure
the Jewish continuity of those intermarried families
whose marriages are the product of general American
social trends and not some innate desire to assimilate.
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