Hanukkah Menorah and Christmas Tree

When Marc and Chelsea walked down the aisle at their wedding in August 2010, the groom wore a kippah and a prayer shawl; the bride wore a white, strapless dress. The bridal couple was married under a chuppah followed by the singing of the Lord’s Prayer and gospel songs. A Christian priest and a Reform rabbi blessed the couple. This is one of the many thousands of mixed marriages performed annually in the USA. And it still is a wedding like no other: The bride is Chelsea Clinton, daughter of the former US President and current US Secretary of State. The groom is Marc Mezvinsky, the Conservative Jewish educated son of a former US Congressman. This marriage provoked criticism from conservative circles in Israel and the USA. The ultraorthodox Israeli Yated Neeman newspaper commented on the circumstance that this interfaith marriage was accepted without any major criticism as “spiritual Shoah.” The daily Yediot Achronot newspaper called it a threat to the Jewish community. In the USA itself, the orthodox synagogue associations swept the topic of the marriage between Mezvinsky and Clinton aside with the remark that this marriage was not even valid. The marriage itself is not even the primary problem here but the uncertainty about the education of the future offspring. Their concern is that every mixed family carries the risk that Judaism will lose a few future representatives.
Paul Golin commented on this: “The daughter of a former US President marries an orthodox Jew. That is unbelievable. We are integrated to a degree never seen before in history without having to sacrifice a part of our Jewish identity.” Golin, 43, is the Associate Executive Director at the Jewish Outreach Institute (JOI) in New York, which is the largest advocacy organization in the USA for interfaith marriages. “The JOI was founded because we realized that interfaith marriages have become the biggest demographic challenge for the Jewish community in the past decades,” Golin says.



Changing Situation
The world's Jewish population is somewhere between 13 and 14 million according to the 2010 World Jewish Population Report of the North American Berman Institute. Furthermore, the report also states that this number has remained almost constant since the 1970s. However, its distribution has shifted significantly: Forty years ago, four times more Jews lived in the diaspora as compared to Israel. Today, this number is eight million compared to about six million in the Jewish state. The report does not explicitly answer the question as to which role the number of interfaith marriages plays in the shrinkage of the diaspora, but this can be deduced from the data: According to the report, the number of interfaith marriages has increased globally outside of Israel in the last 40 years but at a different rate. In Russia and some of the other former Soviet states, this ratio is between 70 and 80 percent; however, it is at an average of 10 percent in the Eastern Asian and Mediterranean region. In the USA and most of the Western European countries, about the half of marriages with Jewish participation are interfaith marriages. This has consequences: In the USA, home to where the vast portion of the Jewish diaspora that numbers about five million, only one-third of the children from interfaith marriages is raised Jewish. This means a decrease in the number of Jews, no matter whether this figure is measured ethnically or culturally.
This is a result of Jews integrating into their surrounding majority society, says Paul Golin. “It is not just due to Jews suddenly deciding to marry non-Jews. The increased openness of the majority society in dealing with Jews was more important.” Golin not only speaks as a representative of the JOI, but also from personal experience: He is married to a Buddhist Japanese woman. He wants his children to grow up knowing Jewish traditions, but that requires commitment. According to Golin, about one million of the roughly six million Jews in the USA live in interfaith marriages and just onethird of Jewish adults are associated with a synagogue or any other Jewish community institutions; more than half are secular. “The most important consequence from an increased number of interfaith marriages is that Judaism must now be acquired. It is now longer placed in the cradle.”

Interfaith Marriages in Switzerland
Work has also started in Switzerland. Whereas the Jewish Reform movement in the USA has united the majority of Jews due to its openness towards interfaith marriages, the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG) – the umbrella association of Jewish communities – generally has a conservative orientation. The SIG registered the ratio of 50 percent of interfaith marriages and notes that this development has changed and will change Judaism. However, it is perceived as a threat.
About every two months, the SIG organizes nationwide singles events in different Swiss cities. The last of these
Ready2Meet weekends took place in December 2011: 143 guests and 17 nationalities were counted, most of them between 25 and 40 years old and primarily women. The SIG committed 45,000 Swiss Francs to these events. The results? “It’s hard to tell,” says Evelyne Morali, Member of the Board and Department Manager. “All that we can do is to create a platform. We cannot measure whether any partnerships or even marriages arise from this. But every marriage that results is worth the effort.”
This topic is so important to institutionalized Swiss Judaism because its numbers are so small. Less than 20,000 Jews live in Switzerland according to the last census. The majority of the congregations fear that they will face a shrinking membership if the inner-Jewish marriage rate continues to fall. This is not so much about the normative elements of the Halakha and loss of faith as mundane everyday family life. Will Jewish traditions still be maintained if one of the parents is not Jewish and also not willing to convert? Does a non-Jewish father still go to the synagogue with his children? And is there suddenly a Christmas tree in the house instead of the Hanukkah menorah in December? An additional factor is that the congregations – which are partially recognized as public entities and therefore liable for taxes – are dependent on membership dues.

Different Conclusions
Madeleine Dreyfus knows these fears. She has examined this topic within the scope of the Transformation of Swiss Judaism research project. “I do not have the impression that interfaith marriages have a tendency to turn away from Judaism,” she says. Instead she has noticed a “high awareness of tolerance” on the part of the non-Jewish partner and furthermore an “increased interest” in questions about ancestry on the Jewish side. “I understand the concern of the SIG for the future of Judaism, and I even share it to some degree. The question is what measures should be used to carry Judaism over to the next generations.” Instead of applying pressure on family planning from above, she advocates emphasizing the incentive of Judaism's “spiritual wealth.”
Paul Golin goes even one step further and poses the rhetorical question of why anyone should follow Jewish tradition at all. “Why should I say prayers in Hebrew? The majority of people who meditate in the USA without an Asian ancestry are Jews.” He asks whether we should therefore assume that Jews find the same “spiritual benefit” in mediation as in praying at the synagogue.
Golin's rhetorical thought experiment poses the question of how far people can remove themselves from tradition yet still preserve a Jewish identity. “Judaism in the 21st century has changed completely when we compare it to the turn of the previous century,” he says. In the meantime, the Bat Mizwa has been introduced and the Hanukkah Festival of Lights has surpassed the Passover week in importance for many families in the USA because “December has established itself as the month of family celebrations, even in Jewish families, due to the Christian Christmas,” says Golin – and promptly defends against the possibility deducing a general tendency from this observation. “There is no valid general description for the majority of Jewish families or for Judaism as a whole,” he says. No least common denominator? “None,” says Golin – except: “The knowledge – and the pride – of being Jewish is what unites them. And I believe that this is enough motivation to pass on this knowledge to our children in whatever shape or form.”●

Andreas Schneitter is a journalist and lives in Basel.