5
070
itermarnage
DR. D. DE SOLA POOL
University of California
Southern Regional
Library Facility
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UNITED STATES ARMY AND NAVY
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r
Intermarriage
oAn Ancient Problem
f f ROM one point of view, the gravest problem
H which Jewry is facing to-day is that of in-
^ , ^ termarriage between Jews and Christians.
This problem is not a new one in Jewish history, but
it is more general and, therefore, more urgent to-day
than it has ever been before. We, Jews, have always
been a small minority in the world, and because of
this, we have had to struggle consciously and sternly
for our survival. From the very beginning of our his-
tory, it was realized that marrying outside of the Jew-
ish fold carried with it a menace to our Jewish survival.
Already at the dim dawn of Jewish history, Abraham,
the founder of the Jewish people, had to decide between
his two sons, Ishmael, the son of a strange wife, and
Isaac, the son of a Hebrew wife. To insure that the
tradition which he was founding should be transmitted
in its purity to the next generation, Abraham sent
away Ishmael and chose Isaac as his true son, physi-
cally and spiritually. Isaac in his turn was faced with
the same necessity of choice between his two sons Esau
and Jacob. After Esau had married a Hittite wife
and thereby had put himself outside of the direct line
of Jewish tradition, Jacob became the natural and
inevitable heir of Jewish life and thought.
Later, when the Hebrew descendants of these patri-
archs had become a people, their integrity as a people
was threatened by the mixed multitude of Egyptians
who se ized the opportunity of escaping from Egyptian
bondage with them. This mixed multitude was the
cause of considerable trouble to the newly born Jewish
people on its weary pilgrimage to the promised land,
Palestine. Throughout the whole of Biblical history,
there is repeated testimony to the troubles which came
to the Jewish people and its individual leaders through
disregard of the prohibition of intermarriage. This
prohibition is expressed most explicitly in the follow-
ing words: "When the Lord, thy God, shall bring
thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and
shall cast out many nations before thee, . . . thou
shalt make no covenant with them, . . . neither
shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter
thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt
thou take unto thy son. For he will turn away thy
son from following Me that they may serve other
gods; so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against
thee and He will destroy thee quickly."
(Deuteronomy vii, 1-4).
Problem in Every Age
How great a menace the disregard of this prohibition
became, is made as clear in the latest parts of the Bible
as it is in the earliest Biblical history. Ezra saw that
the "people of Israel . . . have not separated them-
selves from the peoples of the land, ... for they have
taken of their daughters for themselves and for their
sons. . . ." (Ezra ix, i, 2.) This disregard of the
fundamental law of Jewish self-preservation had be-
come so serious, that Ezra and Nehemiah, the leaders
of the people, induced them to take the drastic measure
of divorce from their non-Jewish wives. So far was the
mixture of blood progressing, that these far-seeing lead-
ers saw that no steps less thorough than this could
succeed in preserving the integrity of the Jewish people.
Later, the rabbis, from bitter experience, set their
faces sternly against mixed marriages, and all the years
of subsequent Jewish history have borne witness to the
practical wisdom of their policy.
age Four
In Modern Times
Since the nineteenth century -when emancipation
brought about a free mixing of Jews and non-Jews, the
opportunity for intermarriage has grown. One of
the first results of emancipation of the Jews was an
enormous increase in the number ol intermarriages;
and since those first days of tolerance, all over the world
there has been a striking and most on;inous increase in
intermarriage between Jew and Gentile.
Heart Versus Head
Why in these days should Judaism still continue to
oppose intermarriage? It is argued that the strength
of the power of love is such that no consideration of
expediency can withstand it. If this were true, and
men married when they fell in love without allowing
their heads in some measure to control their hearts,
marriage would by now have become a thoroughly
discredited human institution. The experience of the
human race has decreed that between falling in love
and getting married, there shall be an appreciable inter-
val for reflection. This experience is summed up in
the proverbial saying, "Marry in haste, repent at
leisure." Every marriage is virtually an irrevocable
act, and a mismarriage can be rectified only by the
costly, tedious and painful processes of the divorce
court. The Jewish man who has fallen in love with
some fair non-Jewish maiden would therefore do well
not to overlook some of the practical considerations
involved in his taking the final step of marriage with
its lifelong obligations.
Radical Character
Deeply rooted in the nature of all of us are profound
race memories which centuries of race tradition have
woven into the very fibre of our natures. So enlight-
fage Five
ened and liberal a non-Jewish writer as George Eliot
recognised these inner essential differences between
Jew and Gentile. She describes one of the Jewish
characters in her novel "Daniel Deronda" as not of "a
nature that would bear dividing against itself; and
even if love won her consent to marry a man who was
not of her race and religion, she would never be happy
in acting against that strong native bias which would
still reign in her conscience as remorse." There is
at bottom an ineradicable race feeling which in our
own days is stirring the Czecho-Slovaks, the Arabs of
the Hejaz, the Poles, the Jews, and all other distinctive
racial groups, to assert themselves in their own right
and in their own individuality. It is these fundamental
differences between Jew and non-Jew which lurk be-
neath the surface, watching and working for the
opportunity which friction brings to break through and
aggravate any discord which may arise in a home based
on the union of Jew and Gentile.
A Divided Home
It is a demonstrable fact that this deep-lying incom-
patibility of nature in the parties joined in a mixed
marriage works strongly toward bringing domestic
division and disruption into that home. Happiness
in the home is an atmosphere created by sympathetic
feelings on the part of husband and of wife. Among
the strongest and deepest of these feelings are the race
feelings just mentioned, and religious feeling. One
can argue ill with feelings. A feeling is its own
justification and it seldom yields to logic. The feeling
which the Jew has toward Judaism and his Jewish
people is something which he can often hardly explain
to himself. His brain may tell him that he is not an
observant Jew, that he rarely attends a house of wor-
ship, that his beliefs are few, that he is far from living
fage Six
up to the religion as he was taught it as a child, and
that perchance he has few Jewish connections. Yet.
suffusing his whole being is a strong feeling of warm
sympathy with and pride in his religion and people.
Let anyone but insult Judaism, or the Jews, in his
hearing, and it will at once be seen how strong and how
real is his almost undreamed-of feeling for his religion
and his people. This latent feeling will co-exist in the
Jewish husband for Judaism and in the Christian wife
for Christianity, though perhaps neither will suspect
its existence. So long as the skies are fair and no clouds
cast a shadow over love's young dream, these feelings
will remain below the surface. But at the first threat
of trouble within the home, these feelings will struggle
for expression. The incompatibility of his feeling for
Judaism and of hers for Christianity will inevitably
serve to add fuel to the smoldering fires of domestic
discord.
The Evidence From Divorce
A striking and irrefutable proof of this is furnished by
the practical test of the figures of divorce in mixed
marriages, as compared with those in marriages which
are not mixed. Thus, in Berlin "during the ten years
i8gz to 1902, to each 1,000 marriages there were
divorces as follows: Jews, 3; Christians, 3.91; Jews
married to Christian women, 10.09; Christians mar-
ried to Jewesses, 11.16. Mixed marriages are thus
three to Jour times more likely to be dissolved than pure
marriages." (Fischberg.) Such figures, which can
be paralleled from other sources, constitute a clear
proof that a mixed marriage is far more likely to turn
out unhappily than a normal marriage between a
couple of similar race and religion.
fage Seven
Parents and Children
Another aspect of the mixed marriage which should
make a man pause before he enters into it at the call
of his heart without the control of his head, is the
thought of the division which the mixed marriage
brings between his new home and his parents and the
parents of his wife. Though both husband and wife
may be unobservant in their religious practise, his
parents and her parents are likely to have stronger
religious feelings. Both the Jewish and the Christian
parents will be apt to look with disfavor upon the
mate chosen by their child. No man worthy of the
name will, without further thought, enter into a union
which he knows will mean a lifelong sorrow to his
parents, and which may result in a complete break
between him and the father and mother who have
given him life. This is the ancient tragedy of Isaac
and Rebecca to whom the Hittite wife of their son Esau
was "a bitterness of spirit." "And Rebecca said to
Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters
of Heth. If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of
Heth, such as these, of the daughters of the land, what
good shall my life do to me?" (Genesis xxvi, 34, 35;
xxvii, 46.) It is the tragedy of the parents of Sam-
son, who said to him when he announced his intention
of marrying a Philistine wife: "Is there never a woman
among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all
my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the Philis-
tines?" (Judges xiv, 3.) The parent's heart too o r ten
breaks at the knowledge that the son on whom so many
of their hopes have been bestowed, is contemplating
a marriage that must mean a complete break with the
Jewish tradition for which they and the whole Jewish
people have struggled and suffered for centuries.
Wage Eight
Jewish Loss
Such a marriage usually forebodes a farewell to Judaism
and the Jewish people. The Jewish husband, married
to a Christian wife, will be unable to keep firmly to
his Jewish moorings. Even if he stands firm in his
general feelings towards his people and his religion,
he is likely to lead an increasingly less Jewish life. He
will hardly develop in the same Jewish spirit as if he
had married a daughter of his own people, who could
strengthen his Jewish feeling, and care for the Jewish-
ness of his home.
Loss of the Children
If the Jewish integrity of a man who enters into a
mixed marriage is threatened, it may be fairly said
that the fate of the children of a mixed marriage is
practically settled in advance. The Jewish law pro-
hibiting mixed marriages explicitly gives as its reason
the prospect that the non-Jewish wife "will turn away
thy son from following God. . . . and He will destroy
thee quickly." (Deuteronomy vii, 3, 4.) In the days
of Nehemiah, this forecast was vividly verified. For
Nehemiah observed that the children of mixed marri-
ages were speaking the foreign tongue of their non-
Jewish mothers. They were not growing up to speak
the language of the Jews, i.e., to think, talk and act
as Jews. (Nehemiah xiii, 23-27.) This result is
almost inevitable. For the children will take the course
of least resistance. The religion of the mother, Chris-
tianity, is the dominant religion of the land, and there-
fore comparatively easy to follow; the religion of the
father is the religion of a small minority,, set about
with difficulties of observance in a non-Jewish land.
To be a Jew means to set on oneself religious restric-
tions and social limitations. What chances are there
that the children of a mixed marriage will make any
serious attempt to keep the difficult Jewish seventh day
<Page Nine
Sabbath instead of the easy Christian first day Sun-
day? What prospect is there that the children of a
mixed marriage will care for Passover as much as they
care for Easter? What probability is there that the
children of a mixed marriage will celebrate Chanuka,
an obscure Jewish festival, instead of giving them-
selves up to the Christmas which all the world will be
celebrating? The religion of the minority struggles
every moment against absorption in the religion of the
majority. If the child's parentage gives him an equal
choice, he will almost inevitably choose the easy re-
ligion of the majority, and the fuller social opportunity
that is before the non-Jew.
The facts themselves prove this. "All statistical evi-
dence on the subject shows that about 75 per cent of all
the children born to Jews married to Christians are bap-
tized immediately at birth, and only 25 per cent are
raised as Jews." (Fischberg.) In Hungary, of the
4.069 mixed marriages contracted during the ten
years, 1895 to 1904, 85.13 per cent, declared that they
desired to bring up their children as Christians, and
only 14.87 per cent, decided in favor of the Jewish
religion. Similarly in New South Wales, where the
husband was Jewish, only 25.99 P er cent, of the chil-
dren were raised as Jews. In Copenhagen, out of 370
families of Jews married to Christians, 61 raised their
children as Jews, 288 as Christians. In Prussia, in the
year 1905, only 22.67 per cent. of the children of mixed
marriages were raised as Jews. These figures tend to
become more and more extreme as the years go on.
The Next Generation
Even in those cases where the children of a mixed mar-
riage are brought up as Jews, "this does not represent
the entire loss sustained by Judaism through inter-
marriage. A person who has one parent of Christian
Page Ten
origin, even if raised as a Jew, is more likely to marry
a Christian than a Jew, because socially he comes into
intimate contact with his Christian relatives and their
friends. It is also not so difficult for him to be bap-
tised, because he considers himself as much of Christian
as of Jewish origin. It is Ruppin's opinion that hardly
10 per cent, of the children resulting from mixed mar-
riages remain Jews for any considerable length of time.
Of these it is doubtful whether any Jews are left after
two or three generations." (Fischberg.)
Religious Objections
In the face of this disastrous effect of mixed marriages
on Jewish life, and more especially in the face of their
increasing frequency, it may be asked what is the mod-
ern Jewish attitude toward these facts. The Jewish
attitude towards mixed marriage is the same as the
historical attitude of the church. Many of the church
councils issued edicts prohibiting Christians to marry
Jewish wives. Every religious group is zealous for
its own integrity. But we Jews have an added reason
for zealously struggling to maintain ourselves as Jews.
For we constitute something more than a religious
group. We are also an historically distinctive people.
We came into existence and have been preserved as a
separate people by our religion Judaism. It is the
Jewish religion, with its unwavering emphasis on the
Jewish seventh day Sabbath, its distinctive Jewish
holy days and festivals, its wealth of ceremonial ob-
servances, and its sublime religious literature, which
has created the Jewish people with its strongly marked
identity. If, then, every people has the right to exist,
and every religion has the right to exist, we Jews pos-
sess the right to existence in double measure. For we
have both the material claims for survival of the race
and the spiritual claims for survival of the religion.
Page Eleven
The Jew who marries "out," therefore, is actually
marrying himself outside of his people, and is marrying
himself outside of his religion. He is committing a
double desertion, and is contributing to the weakening
both of his people and of his religion by his personal
defection.
United Jewish Feeling
There is no difference of opinion between orthodox Jews
and reform Jews in their attitude toward the mixed
marriage. It goes without say ing that orthodox Jewry
with its consistent emphasis on all distinctly Jewish
observances and its hope of a Jewish restoration in
Palestine, regards intermarriage as treason to the
Jewish people and to Judaism. But reform Jewry is
no less emphatic in its condemnation of intermarriage.
One of the early leaders of reform Judaism in America
has said that every mixed marriage is a nail in the
coffin of Judaism. In less figurative style, the reform
Rabbis of the United States, meeting in conference in
New York City, in 1909, passed a resolution declaring
"that mixed marriages are contrary to the tradition of
the Jewish religion and should therefore be discouraged
by the American Rabbinate." No Rabbi, even the
most liberal, will officiate at a mixed marriage unless
the non-Jewish bride or bridegroom has previously
accepted Judaism.
Value of a Conversion
Yet what does this conversion usually mean? If
experience had shown that mixed marriages usually
followed a convinced acceptance of Judaism on the
part of the non-Jewish element in the marriage, Jew-
ish feeling would no more oppose intermarriage than
Roman Catholic feeling opposes it when the promise
is given that the children will be brought up in the
Catholic Church. But almost uniformly, experience
Page Twelve
shows that a mixed marriage is contracted more or
less hurriedly; and when the non-Jewish element in
the union does undertake conversion to Judaism, this
conversion is in nine cases out of ten little more than
a superficial form. It is usually undertaken to please
the Jewish husband or wife, or to satisfy the Jewish
parents-in-law. Jewish tradition demands that a
proselyte, in order to be received into the fold of
Judaism, shall accept Judaism for its own sake, and
not for the sake of a love affair. The acceptance of
Judaism must be an acceptance of Jewish teachings
after a prolonged and intensive study of Judaism, and
a sincere adoption of Jewish life and Jewish observances
for all time to come. Of how many converts who have
accepted Judaism for the sake of a mixed marriage can
it be said that Judaism means anything at all to them
in their daily life? Of not more than the fewest of a
small number can it be said that their conversion is
sincere and that they constitute a real accession to the
Jewish people. Judaism and the Jewish people do not
seek converts. Fighting to maintain themselves at
all, they are not strong enough to take into themselves
any blood from the outside, unless this blood will unite
with and strengthen their own Jewish life blood, in-
stead of diluting it still further and making their
chances of Jewish life still weaker.
Crvil Marriage
It is this consideration which makes it apparent that
for a Jew to marry an unreligious Christian woman,
or an agnostic or unbeliever, is no less detrimental to
Judaism than for him to marry an observant Christian.
For the chances of her strengthening the Jewish
atmosphere in the home are just as small as in the case
of the believing Christian. The children are perhaps
even less likely to be brought up as Jews when neither par-
ent cares for religious life than when both or one of the
Page Thirteen
parties values the restraints, safeguards and inspira-
tion of religious training. The Jew has therefore set
hij; face consistently against a marriage which is not
solemnizec under religious auspices. He regards mar-
riage as the foundation of stable society, and he feels
that a step as basically important as is marriage for the
individuals taking it and for the society which it helps
build up, should be entered into under the most solemn
conditions, and not merely as a civil legal contract.
While the Jew, always a respecter of the law of the
land, regards civil marriage ; j s binding, he does not look
upon it with favor unless it is supplemented by a re-
lik ;us consecration. Centuries ago, the Rabbis de-
clared that carriages are made in heaven, and in this
spirit t -,e Jew holds that they should be solemnized by
the ir /ocation of the heavenly blessing. A mixed
marriage cannot be blessed sincerely by priest, clergy-
man or rabbi, and the augury for married life is ill when
the nuptial ruy cannot be made a day of religious
consecration.
The Struggle for Jewish Survival
When the universa 1 conscience of Jewry is so firmly
set against intermar iage, it is not because the Jew feels
himself to be in any sense super^- *o the non-'ew, any
more t!' in he feels himself to .iferior to the non-
Jew. [ ; : is no feeling of narr^\v separatism, racial
pride or unreasoning exclusiveness, that makes the
Jew oppose the mixed marriage. The rf tson for his
attitude is to be found in the fundament instinctive
desire for Jewish sur /al the in-dnc. ^e protest
against Jewish extinct, i. Deep down extricably
interwoven into the very fibre of our being, is this
instinct for self-prtservat'on, both in our own persons
as members of the Jewi c i people, and in our children
whom we would see grov up in the same people as has
been ours, our parents' an J our ancestors' for thousands
Page Fourteen
II llll
A 000 049 642 2
of years. This is a natural and glorious pride of race,
which disputes no one else's claim to a similar pride
in his own race, but which rather justifies each man in
such pride in his own race and traditions The man
who will destroy the line of this tradition in his own
family; the man who will heedlessly bring division
between himself and his own .parents and act in a way
that brings reproach upon them, be they living or dead;
the man who will enter into an all'ance which will
probably involve his children's growing up alien from
him in spirit and perchance despising him as a Jew ; the
man who will enter into what should be the most en-
during, most intimate and most sacred human ur ,-n,
knowing that that union is threatened ,U tl e outset
by deep-lying and deeply founded differenc -s, the
man who will be untrue to his people and its idt als and
will desert it in its hour of need, is one whom the con-
science of Jewry rightly excludes from fellowship,
equality and honor. He is one who is denying his
parents and all t, e past which has made him what, he
is ; he is sacrificing the happiness of years for momen-
tary happiness, and he 'is cutting on , from hims:lf his
own natural future and accepting a future bound up
with a faith that is not his own.
Duty to the Jewish People
No reason n>ed be r en why the Jewish pt .>ple and
the Jewish religion demand their own future. Their
existence to-day is their justification. But especially
in these da r s of the rights of minor races and of free-
dom of co r cience, there is no question of the right of
a people, i -yev.T, small, to r intain itself as a people,
any more' nan there can be a question as to the right
of any group of men to worship God as their conscience
dictates.
Yet , in apparent conflict witr chis right of the people as
a whole, there stands the right of the individual who is
Page Fifteen
contemplating marriage outside of the fold. Into the
larf,e question of ho\v far the individual is justified in
seeking his own ends .-it the expense of the welfare of
his people we cannot enter here at length. But the
Jew, struggling for survival in a worlcK which is not
Jewish, has lived as a rrar:yr people for centuries.
This struggle for survival is arid must be one which calls
for sacrifice from each individual Jew. An ideal which
is not strong enough to call forth sacrifice is an un-
worthy ideal. The man who will not undergo hardship
and face difficulties and even persecution for the sake"
of his religion is an unworthy adherent of that religion.
The man who will not undergo hardship for the welfare
and integrity of his people is unv orthy of his people.