I have been following this thread with a lot of interest, wondering whether I had anything to contribute. It’s very relevant to me: Both kids have long-term SOs who are very much not Jewish, both are clearly contemplating marriage, and both are old enough so that’s a reasonable thing to do. One won’t move so fast, but the other would already be married if everything was up to him. Both SOs, like my children, are members of large, extended families to which they are close. In all cases, religious identity is a significant part of the family relationships, although less so in our family.
I was raised as a Jew, although not an orthodox one. My father was anti-religious in general, but he never contemplated marrying a non-Jew. My mother cared very much about her Judaism, although beyond her family her social circles were always primarily WASPy. My sisters and I were brought up with the expectation that we would marry Jews, but it was not heavy-handed. In any event, I cared about having my children be Jewish. Like many in my generation, I think, I felt a need not to be a party to the Shoah, not to continue the work of the Nazis and the Inquisitors by letting the Jewish People wither and die.
From within Christianity, religion is a personal, individual choice, and it makes eminent sense to say, “It’s his (or her) life, let him live it as he chooses.” That is not the paradigm in Judaism; it is older, much more communitarian and tribal. From within Judaism, no one chooses to be a Jew. One is born part of the Jewish People, and one’s choices are only to associate with other Jews or not, to obey the commandments or not. (Traditional Judaism has a lot of trouble with the concept of conversion. Far from being a matter of choice, the rabbinic theory supporting conversion is more or less the theory supporting sex-change operations: you determine that somehow a Jewish soul got trapped in the body of a non-Jew by accident, and then you correct the injustice by recognizing the person as a Jew. There is an actual rabbinic court proceeding for that.) A great deal of Jewish religious practice can only occur in the context of an active Jewish community. While there is a tradition of individual prayer and study, many rituals as basic as saying Kaddish for a dead parent or spouse requires a minyan of 10 adults (males, if you are traditional).
If the Jewish People does not reproduce itself, there will be no more Jews. There’s no way consistent with the religion to expand the number of Jews except to give birth to them and raise them. Almost seventy-five years after the Shoah, the Jewish population remains much smaller than it was before the Nazi campaign.
My four Jewish grandparents had five children and twelve grandchildren among them, nine of whom were raised as Jews. Of those nine, only two married other Jews (and mine is the only such marriage that lasted more than a couple of years). One other married a woman who converted, and one of my Episcopalian cousins married (and divorced) a Jewish woman. In our children’s generation, only half have been raised as Jews, and if my kids marry their SOs, the marriage rate with Jews in their generation will be at one in six, and counting. My wife’s family is similar. Her grandparents have only four Jewish great-grandchildren, counting our children, and there could easily be no Jewish children in the generation to come.
I love and respect my children, and they are doing what I raised them to do, which is to make their own choices. There’s no question of freezing anyone out. I am a big fan of both potential children-in-law. I would not say what I have said here to my children or their partners. And this post gives a misleading impression of what I actually feel – yes, I have moments of feeling guilty and sad about my family’s losing its connection with the Jewish People over four generations (and angry that this leaves the field of defining Judaism to the ultra-orthodox, with whom I have many fundamental disagreements). But I am also happy with the choices they are making, and proud of them.
