Customer Reviews

Embracing the Stranger: Intermarriage and the Future of the American Jewish Community

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This book takes an honest look at the growing number of intermarriages between Jews and non-Jews in America today, and what the Jewish community should be doing about it. Neither judgemental nor preachy, it is a cross between personal journal and anthropology, with the author giving her own thoughts along with the statistics. Also included are numerous interviews with Jews, intermarried and not, about their personal experiences.

I found the chapter "That's Entertainment" -- about images of Jews in the media -- to be useful as "back up" for what I've been saying for years: You rarely, if ever, see a happily married Jewish family portrayed on TV or in the movies. It's as if Hollywood thinks that nobody will be interested in a story about two Jews married to each other. (Imagine if they showed only black-white marriages on TV -- there's be an outcry from both sides!) The author traces the various portrayals of Jews in the movies and TV, and warns that these are the images which American Jewish youth are taking as models for themselves. With no positive portayals of Jewish family life, is it any wonder they marry non-Jews?

In the end, however, I found the author's stance to be far too permissive and somewhat pandering to the dominant culture. She does not, for example, see any problem with mixed-marriage couples having a Christmas tree, which she calls "just a decoration." And her conclusions in the last chapter are essentially Reform Movement, i.e., that intermarraige is here to stay anyway, so we might as well start blurring the lines between Jews and non-Jews in the synagogue rituals, etc. With this, I cannot agree. (And it may well be the reason this book went out of print so quickly.) Still, she did give me a lot to think about. She asks good questons, even if I don't agree with her answers.

The author treats intermarriage as essentially no big deal, and interfaith issues as nearly trivial, though she describes them in great detail.

But here's the truth: Only seven percent of Jewish-Jewish marriages end up in divorce (regrettable but true), while a whopping SIXTY PERCENT of Jewish-Christian ones do. Author Jaffe-Gill herself has now divorced two Christian husbands, one after the other -- does this sound like a recommendation?