Customer Reviews

Why Marry Jewish?

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I spent two and a half years of my life with a wonderful Jewish woman named Sharona. We had a very special relationship and got along great in every way. However, when we started to seriously contemplate marriage, things quickly changed. You see, I am Christian, and while I'm not necessarily so religious I grew up in a strong Christian home. And I have come to realize that being Christian is a big part of who I am. What is funny is that until Sharona and I had to really confront the issue of how we would raise our children, our differences of religion never caused any problems. In fact, we had mutual respect for each other's beliefs and even our families were accepting of us being together. But ultimately I realized that I wanted my children to grow up with the traditions I had, and Sharona felt the same way about hers. While we were both willing to compromise about things, you either Baptize the kids or you don't, and you either have some kind of Passover Seder or you don't. So either way, one of us was going to feel that our kids weren't getting what we wanted them to have (or getting what we didn't want them to have). In short, our differences regarding religious outlook went from being something we considered merely as interesting, as an afterthought, to something that became irreconcilable.

I applaud Doron Kornbluth for writing this compelling book. Doron writes in an appealing manner and backs up his points with impressive research. Unfortunately, when Sharona and I were beginning to grapple with our issues, we did not have such a comprehensive resource to rely on. I learned the hard way (only by having to finally face tough questions) that I want my kids to really appreciate their Christian faith, and for this reason I am now only dating other Christians. Doron's book could have saved me, and Sharona, a lot of pain. While we had a truly wonderful relationship, in retrospect the hurt just wasn't worth it. Saying goodbye to someone whom you love but whom you realize you just can't spend the rest of your life with is not fun. My hope is that others will figure out ahead of time, partly through carefully reading this book, what I learned the hard way.

This is the only book that I know of that proves a simple fact: If you marry someone of a different religion, your married life may likely be miserable, even if you don't care about your religion. This principle, so well researched and presented in the book, can just as well apply to Christians, Moslems, Hindus, or any other peoples. In fact, the author himself points this out and much of his evidence comes from the experiences of people in religions other than Judaism.
The logic is simple: Marriage is an attempt to merge together two independent individuals with their own life history and baggage. The more common ground between them, the better the chance that the marriage will work. The more differences, in how they view the purpose of life, the proper way of raising children, the proper format of a family celebration, which holidays to celebrate and how, the less the chances that the couple will be able to keep their union from splitting.
More convincing than the logic, however, is the massive array of evidence that the author presents to prove his point. The evidence is contemporary, some of it even from Internet chat groups. It is both statistical (overwhelming) and anecdotal. The chances today of a marriage staying together are not good, but when you combine that with the drastically worsened chances introduced by mixed marriage, things look far less than good.
One of the best features of this book is that it doesn't mention any of the heart-tugging, guilt-inspiring, arguments that we've all heard over the years, arguments that really don't convince us but just serve to make us feel bad.
This book tells you exactly what you can expect from marriage and proves rather entertainingly and professionally that if you want what's best for yourself, you'll marry someone of the same religion. Not because of loyalty, but because you deserve the best pleasure and happiness in your marriage.

Mr. Kornbluth's latest book, Why Marry Jewish, does an excellent job at tackling a very touchy subject within the Jewish community. His sharp insights combined with practical advice will certainly serve as a guide for an open-minded person who is looking for a rational approach to this rather emotional issue. Far too often, the issue of intermarriage only becomes an issue well after it is too late to do anything about it. The time for parents to deal with this issue is before their children start dating, not after they are heavily involved in a relationship. Mr. Kornbluth's approach is to pre-empt the issue and in doing so he will certainly save much unnecessary suffering and anguish.

The book reads very well, and it should be on the shelf of every Jewish parent and young adult as well. It serves as an excellent compliment to his previous two book, which are also "musts" for any Jewish home.

I really liked this book. .... I think it actually has helped me come to a decision on that subject - which would
be to marry a Jewish person. It was really something that I was
grappling with and going back and forth on but reading this book helped me feel like I made well-researched decision. It raises a lot of issues that I didn't think of right off the bat. I highly recommend it.

I think that this book is easy to read and presents cogent arguments against inter-faith marriage. Much of the information presented relates to religions other than judaism. I think that this book is especially useful for people who are only marginally jewish.

I am somewhat surprised at the number of books on the market that tell you how to best deal with the problems of intermarriage and the incredible paucity of material that explains the major advantages of Jews marrying Jews. If you think this book will be racist, narrow-minded or otherwise archaic, forget it. Most of the book could and does refer to Hindu-Muslim relationships, etc.

Whether you are Conservative, Reform or reconstuctionist, this book is ideal to get discussions going and bring out into the open everything that is going on beneath the surface.

I would add that even intermarried couples could benefit from reading it as they will better understand the situation that they are in

So many times in life we hear that we have to "Marry a nice Jewish boy or girl" and finally, Doron Kornbluth is able to prove to us that it makes a lot of sense to do just that! He doesn't lecture us about religion and try to convince me to "do the right thing" just because... like all of my teachers used to. He gives simple facts and figures as to what are the results of intermarriage and what he says makes a lot of sense.

Even if marrying a Jew is not so important to you, take the time to read this short, easy to-read book just to give yourself a chance to see a solid perspective on the whole deal. It was really worth the time!

Okay-- maybe we weren't the target audience for this book. My boyfriend is Jewish and I'm not. His parents want me to convert, and we're not sure if I should. We got this hoping to find a good argument for why intermarriage is problematic. Instead, we got a eye-roll worthy list of weak arguments. Our biggest disappointment with the book is that the Jews are known for being a learned community-- we thought the author would have put more effort into writing a book with sound arguments (considering his target audience). Further, we were almost in tears from laughing so hard at the statistics sections. Again, considering Jews are a very learned and math-oriented group of people, we thought his analysis of the numbers would be more rigorous. Instead, it's chock-full of sample bias and small sample sizes.

Even considering my rather negative view of anything that discourages marriage between two people in love, this book makes me want to write my own anti-intermarriage book that actually consults studies by social scientists.

It is "surprising" that it took until 2003 for someone to write a thosroughly modern, rational, interesting book attempting (very successfully, as it turns out) to get Jewish people to prioritze marrying another Jew. In the past, quasi-racist and guilt arguments were used (unsuccessfully, it seems) and I was glad to see none of that in Why Marry Jewish. On the contrary, the author draws on a wealth of well-documented academic and pop-culture sources to show that religion aside, it is smarter to marry another Jew. I heard the author speaking on the subject and his writing is as good as his speaking!

No matter how you feel on this important subject, this is a book to be read, discussed, and recommended

A large number of reports have spoken about this book in positive terms. They say that it is not a diatribe but a thoughtful humorous and fact- filled work which presents the case for Jews marrying Jews. The book points to the much higher divorce rate among intermarried couples, the great difficulties there are in deciding a clear religious way for the children of intermarriage. The book also stresses the positive value of being true to a tradition which one's ancestors risked and often sacrificed their lives to keep alive.
The book stresses the personal and individual dimension in promoting marriages between Jews. There are also important historical and communal arguments relating to the Jewish struggle for survival, and the American Jewish community's struggle to remain viable and important.
But the real bottom line is that marriages between Jews are far more likely to be stable, longlasting, good for the children than are those in which each partner has a tradition of their own they cannot fully express or transmit.