Survey Data Sparks New Debate Over Intermarriage Issues

Sue Fishkoff
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

SAN FRANCISCO

Intermarriage: Is it a disaster for the Jews, not great for the Jews or simply a fact of Jewish life?

Ever since the 1990 National Jewish Population Study showed more than half of new Jewish marriages involve a non-Jewish partner, many Jewish communal leaders have latched on to the issue with pitbull tenacity -- and they haven't let go, even after the 2000-01 NJPS showed intermarriage had leveled off.

Now, a new round of studies is prompting more questions: Does intermarriage necessarily mean the end of that family's connection to Judaism? Or is the Jewish community focusing on intermarriage to the exclusion of other, perhaps more telling, factors?

Most studies report the data in simple comparative fashion, which shows that intermarried families are much less Jewishly involved than inmarried families, from their beliefs to their practices.

But a provocative new study out of Brandeis University questions that research method and its conclusions.

"Adult Identity of Children of Intermarriage," from a study sponsored by the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute

The study -- "It's Not Just Who Stands Under the Chuppah: Jewish Identity and Intermarriage," by Leonard Saxe, Fern Chertok and Benjamin Phillips of the Cohen Center for Jewish Studies and Steinhardt Social Research Institute -- found that when one considers the Jewish background of the Jewish partner in an intermarriage, then the difference in the Jewish beliefs and practices of inmarried and intermarried families becomes much less glaring. And in some measures, like attachment to Israel, the gap almost disappears.

A second study casts further doubt on the deterministic effect of intermarriage. Set for release next month, the study by the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston will show that the children being raised Jewishly in the city's intermarried families look pretty much like any other non-Orthodox Jewish children.

The "Chuppah" study only considered factors from before an intermarriage occurs, primarily the Jewish education and home practice of the Jewish partner. But its conclusions have profound policy implications: Instead of writing off intermarried families or pressing the non-Jewish partner to convert, the Jewish community would do better to invest in quality Jewish education -- formal and informal -- to give the Jewish partner in an intermarriage the background and desire to create a Jewish home and raise Jewish children.

"The objective doesn't have to be conversion but the creation of positive, rich Jewish experiences," says Saxe. "Jewish education, Jewish home experiences, Jewish camp, Israeli experiences -- that's what leads to engagement in Jewish life, whether one is intermarried or not."

Saxe presented the study's findings with Chertok last month at the Union for Reform Judaism biennial in San Diego.

"The usual model says you get intermarried and you lose your Jewish identity. That's not true," says Chertok. "A far more powerful predictor of what you're going to do in your home are such things as did you have a Jewish education growing up? Were you raised with Jewish rituals in the home? What was your high school social network like?"

Chertok and Saxe drew the strongest audience reaction when they displayed two charts, one showing the Jewish involvement of intermarried versus. inmarried families without any controls, and one showing results after they were controlled for the Jewish partner's religious background.

Without controls, 78 percent of inmarried couples said they were raising their children Jewishly versus 39 percent of intermarried couples. Those figures are used by most Jewish researchers, noted Chertok and Saxe.

But when controlling the other factors, including the Jewish partner's religious upbringing, the gap closed, with 71 percent of inmarried couples and 51 percent of intermarried couples saying they're raising Jewish kids.

Similarly, the 53 percent of inmarried versus 12 percent of intermarried families who reported being members of Jewish organizations became 45 percent and 32 percent when the controls were applied.

The differences become even more striking when controls are applied to the data on the Jewish identity of the adult children of intermarriage.

A simple comparison, one used in most studies, states that 89 percent of adults who grew up with two Jewish parents identify as Jewish versus 24 percent of adults who grew up in an interfaith home.

When the background of those individuals was taken into account, the gap shrunk to 94 percent of the adults with two Jewish parents versus 76 percent from intermarried homes.

"Intermarriage is not deterministic," concludes Saxe. "If someone grows up with positive Jewish identity and Jewish educational experiences such as religious school, summer camp, Israel trips, one wants to raise Jewish children, regardless of who one falls in love with."

The Second Generation
Among those who are not convinced by the Saxe-Chertok line of argument is Steven Cohen, a professor of Jewish social policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. He has conducted several studies that all show the determinative effect of intermarriage.

Cohen's first question is how the researchers defined "being raised Jewish." But he also says that they need to look at the second generation: According to the 2000-01 NJPS study, just 13 percent of the grandchildren of an intermarriage -- that is, people whose grandparents were intermarried -- now identify as Jews.

On those grounds alone, declares Cohen, the Jewish community should "not grow complacent" about intermarriage, but should continue to combat it as a real threat to Jewish continuity. "In fact, intermarriage over two generations is more powerful than any other factor in predicting ritual observance and certainly in predicting whether the grandchildren will be Jewish."

Cohen's conclusion is supported, in part, by a new report on the U.S. Jewish population prepared for the 2007 American Jewish Yearbook by professors Ira Sheskin of the University of Miami and Arnold Dashefsky of the University of Connecticut.

Comparing data from 49 U.S. Jewish communities, Sheskin and Dashefsky note that, while some cities "have been more successful than others in convincing intermarried families to raise their children Jewish," it is nevertheless "clear that intermarriage has a negative effect on measures of Jewishness and Jewish continuity."

Intermarriage has a snowball effect, the Sheskin-Dashefsky study concludes, but the ball can roll either way, with much depending on the larger Jewish community.

Sheskin and Dashefsky just concluded a study in Portland, Maine, showing its intermarriage rate as the highest among the cities studied: 61 percent. But a very average 47 percent of its intermarried families are choosing to raise Jewish children. Yet in Detroit, with a low intermarriage rate of 17 percent, just 31 percent are choosing to raise children as Jews.

A community like Detroit's, Sheskin posits, may not feel outreach is a priority, given its low level of intermarriage. The result is that few intermarried families join synagogues.

Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, director of the Jewish Outreach Institute, an organization that encourages Jewish institutions to be more welcoming, says that it all comes down to what individuals believe will help them lead better, richer lives.

"When you're a parent, you make decisions on the basis of what's good for you and your family, not what's good for the Jewish community."