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Intermarriage / Conversion
Introduction
1) Why Should I Marry A Jew?
a - I'm Not Really That Religious, So it Really
Doesn't Matter.
b - I've Found the Perfect Partner. Why Do You Want
to Disturb My Personal Happiness?
c - What About Giving My Children the Best of Both
Worlds and Letting Them Choose?
d - You Don't Seem to Understand, I'm in Love With
Mary/John!
e - What If My Partner Agrees to Convert?
f - I Would Consider Myself a Racist to Only Date
Jews.
g - Even If I Intermarry, I Still Intend Bringing
My Children Up Jewish.
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The Jews are disappearing, fast. The greatest civilization the world has
ever known is being endangered because most Jews in the world today do not
regard marrying a fellow Jew as important. The world is quickly losing one
of its greatest sources of morality, creativity and energy.
It
is probable that your grandparents and if not, your great grandparents and
many of their parents' and their parents' parents gave up a great deal so
that you could be Jewish. You are throwing away a gift that they gave all to
make sure that you could have. In fact, you will be throwing away 3,700
years of the greatest spiritual and ethical tradition which the world has
ever known.
One doesn't know how
important something is to him until it is taken away. A Jew might not
realize how important being Jewish means to him until someone makes an
anti-Semitic remark or until someone tries to raise his child to believe in
Jesus.
Besides, who says being Jewish is simply a matter of religion. Throughout
history, many Jews who were not religious at all were willing to give their
lives for the Jewish nation, for Jewish principles or so their children
could remain Jewish.
You may be entering college or in the middle or otherwise single away from
home. These are years when religion is least important in people's lives.
This is also the time when you will probably meet the person you will
marry. Like most people, when you begin to raise a family and educate
children, religious values will take on much more significance.
In
intermarriages, the issue of Jewish identity emerges sooner or later, even
where the couple thought they had it figured out in advance.
Today, many couples live together without getting married. What pushes most
to eventually marry is having children. Most people see the family structure
of being married as the best option for their future kids.
Sooner or later the question of how you are going to raise your children is
going to arise. Will they be Christian, Jewish, a combination of both or
nothing?
If
you are like most Jews, the thought of raising your children as Christians
probably bothers you. We see our children as extensions of ourselves.
There has been a deeply rooted survival mechanism that has been ingrained in
every Jew that tells us not to convert to another religion. If becoming a
Christian in any way bothers you, you won't want to raise your children to
be Christians.
So
you probably will want your children to be raised as Jews. Will your
partner understand this and agree to this? Many Jews are walking around
with a misconception that non-Jews today are flexible when it comes to
religion. A recent Gallop Poll showed that 90% of Americans identified with
some religion (93% of those that did, identified as being Christians, 2% as
being Jewish).
More importantly, how will the children feel about
being Jewish when only one of the parents is Jewish? ("Mom, you expect me
to go to Hebrew School and have a Bar Mitzvah when you can't even convince
Dad to be Jewish?")
Is
this really fair to your children? Aren't you really asking them to choose
between Mommy and Daddy or between two sets of grandparents? If you think
back to your childhood you'll see clearly that your parents let you choose
what color dress you'd wear today not whether or not you should go to
school. The message the child picks up when he is allowed to choose is that
it is really not that important. When given the choice between Christianity
or Judaism, the child is most likely to choose neither.
You may be feeling at this time in your life that religion is not that
important. So you will be satisfied in raising the child with nothing.
Chances are that after you have children you or your partner will change
your mind. What will you do now? What if you want to circumcise your son
and your partner refuses? What will you do if your daughter wants to join
the Sunday School at church to be with her friends?
Even should you as parents agree to bring up the child with both religions -
that is terribly confusing for and therefore unfair to the child. Children
need a sense of identity. Only a super-genius and spiritual giant like
Abraham could figure the whole thing out himself. Besides, Judaism and
Christianity are very different religions. One cannot be both a Jew and
Christian. Moreover, a great deal of Judaism is dependent on the family
experience, on experiencing the warmth of Shabbat together, on having a
Passover Seder, on discussing what your moral and spiritual traditions are -
this can't be done when one of the parents is doing this as an outsider -
unless you reduce Judaism to a meaningless set of different customs. But
that's a lie - that's not what being Jewish means. Your kids will know
whether you are presenting them authentic Judaism or not.
And beyond the family there is the community-experience which has shown that
bringing up a kid in two faiths doesn't mean that he will belong to two
communities - it usually means that he will belong to none. He will have no
community to share his joy and his sadness, to celebrate his successes and
commiserate with his disappointments.
If
you really love this person you will want what is best for him or her.
Chances are they are not aware of how differences in religions can cause
problems later on in the marriage. Do you love your partner enough to
consider that marriage may be the wrong thing?
What is really going on in your mind is that you don't want to give up this
feeling of closeness that has developed. Think for a moment. If something
happened and the relationship ended, would you be capable of having an
intimate relationship with someone else? If the answer is "No," perhaps you
should develop yourself into a more loving\loveable person. Realize that
the joy you feel now is the joy of intimacy, and it is not necessarily
limited to this particular partner.
You need to first decide what your life goals are and then find someone who
matches, rather than find a partner and then try to rearrange two lives to
suit each other's needs.
And what if she doesn't? Out of every one hundred
marriages between Jews and non-Jews, less than ten involve conversion.
Asking someone to give up their religion and adopt another one is a lot to
ask.
One should not enter into a relationship with someone thinking one can
change the partner. Chances are something is gong to be compromised, often
the relationship itself.
I hope that you reserve
the right to determine who will be the mother or father of your children.
You don't have to marry anyone you don't want to.
We
can generally assume that we will marry someone who we first date.
Therefore, if one wants to be selective as to who one marries, one must
first be selective of whom one dates.
It
is important to be aware of the many difficulties that arise from entering
into serious relationships with people that you do not wish to marry. You
or your partner are going to get hurt. Since the process of dating often
unwittingly advances from casual friends to serious partners, you ought to
be selective as to whom you date.
There are many reasons
why people intermarry - they may have dated many Jews before and found them
all shallow and insensitive, finally they meet a non-Jew who is deep and
caring. They usually believe that they have to marry the person they love -
this is a one time opportunity. They usually think that the problems of
higher divorce rate and other marital problems with intermarried couples
won't happen to them.
TO A MALE:
If you don't marry a Jew your children will not be
Jewish. Patrilineal descent is only recognized by Reform, which has only
about 2 million out of 18 million Jews world wide. The chances are pretty
good that your kid will meet someone not Reform, and be shocked to find out
that his/ her fiancee does not consider him/her Jewish. You can't imagine
the trauma that people like that go through - who could be so selfish as to
maybe cause their kids that sort of pain.
TO A FEMALE:
Even if you bring up your kids Jewish they are unlikely
to remain so. Statistics show that less than 10% of the children of
intermarried couples identify themselves as Jews. The grandchildren of such
couples are almost never Jewish. Don't fool yourself that you are going to
be different - you're playing around with other people's lives.
TO A MALE OR FEMALE:
Even if your spouse says that he doesn't mind you
bringing up the kids Jewish, that has a good chance of changing when you
actually have children. Children arouse one's identity - you'll suddenly
feel more Jewish at the very time that he is beginning to feel more
Christian. You will want to circumcise the child, he will regard it as
barbaric; your spouse will want to take the kid to church on Christmas
(never mind whether he ever goes now), you'll feel very uptight about that.
Often these conflicts spill over into the broader family network, requiring
you to choose between your spouse and parents or siblings. The older you
get, the more important these relationships become. That's one reason why
intermarriages have over a 50% divorce rate, as opposed to only 20% for all
Jewish, marriage - you're
getting involved in a marriage that is probably going to fail. Your children
are going to forever suffer because of that.
RELATED
ARTICLES:
Intermarriage...Why Not?
Will Your Grandchildren
Be Jews?
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