Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 7, 2013

Confronted with an unprecedentedly secular crop of youngsters, Jewish leaders are pushing marriage within the community harder than ever. Their favorite tool? Youth group.

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An acquaintance gave a few of us a ride after the annual post-Yom Kippur feast. Stuffed with bagels, lox, kugel, and every kind of pound cake imaginable, the four of us chatted happily about life in D.C., past trips to Israel, and guilt over skipping religious services earlier that day.

And then the conversation turned to dating.

Would you ever marry a non-Jew? Sharon asked from the backseat. Answers varied; one person said she wasnt sure, while another said she might consider marrying someone who was willing to convert. Debates about intermarriage, or marriage outside of the faith, are common in the Jewish community, but her question still struck me as remarkable. Here were four twentysomething women who hardly knew each other, already talking about the eventuality of marriage and apparently radical possibility that we would ever commit our lives to someone unlike us. This conversation seemed very un-Millennialas a whole, our generation is marrying later, becoming more secular, and embracing different cultures more than any of our predecessors. If the same question had been asked about any other aspect of our shared identitiesbeing white, being educated, coming from middle or upper-middle class backgroundsit would have seemed impolite, if not offensive.

Why Would a Millennial Become a Priest or a Nun?

Although many religious people want to marry someone of the same faith, the issue is particularly complicated for Jews: For many, faith is tied tightly to ethnicity as a matter of religious teaching. Jews do accept conversion, but it's a long and difficult process, even in Reform communitiesas of 2013, only 2 percent of the Jewish population are converts. Meanwhile, the cultural memory of the Holocaust and the racialized persecution of the Jews still looms large, making the prospect of a dwindling population particularly sensitive.

The lesson, then, that many Jewish kids absorb at an early age is that their heritage comes with responsibilitiesespecially when it comes to getting married and having kids.

In large part, thats because Jewish organizations put a lot of time and money into spreading precisely this message. For the Jewish leaders who believe this is important for the future of the faith, youth group, road trips, summer camp, and online dating are the primary tools they use in the battle to preserve their people.

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Link:
Convincing Millennials to 'Marry a Nice Jewish Boy'

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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