Sylvia Barack Fishman on inter-marriages and conversion

This week's guest is Sylvia Barack Fishman, author of the new monograph, Choosing Jewish: Conversations About Conversion (Read some highlights here, or the full study here).

Her latest book is Double Or Nothing - Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage (Purchase it here). Barack Fishman is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Life in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department at Brandeis University, as well as co-director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and is a Faculty Affiliate of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies (Read her full bio here).

If you want to ask questions you can send them to rosnersdomain@haaretz.co.il.

Dear Sylvia

I just read our full dialog and the many reactions it received, and instantly knew what was bothering me - so much talk for so slim a chance of real success.

Do you really believe inter-marriage is a trend that can be reversed? Do you really believe conversion can be something meaningful enough in numbers?

Shmuel

That tone of despair is not only an ineffective strategy, but also an inaccurate perception of reality. Looking at intermarriage rates among American Jews ages 25 to 40, more than three-quarters of children of two Jews marry Jews - whereas three-quarters of children with only one Jewish parent marry someone who isn't Jewish. The overall intermarriage rate is raised by second and third generation intermarriage - children of intermarriage overwhelmingly marry "out." But is it really "out" if they've grown up with two religious heritages or with no religion at all? Some wonder if such unions should be computed as "intermarriage."

Intermarriage is not a tidal wave. Some groups are affected much more than others, although of course in a free society no population is immune. Among Jews who live in neighborhoods with very few Jews, who aren't involved with Jewish activities - including but not limited to religious rituals - on a regular basis, who have few Jewish friends, who don't visit Israel, who don't read Jewish books and newspapers, who don't know Hebrew, intermarriage is high. In contrast, rates of intermarriage are relatively low among Jews who live among many other Jews, who are involved with Jewish culture and the arts, who speak Hebrew and make frequent trips to Israel, who have many Jewish friends, who celebrate Shabbat and Jewish holidays. Intermarriage rates are lowest among Jews who have extensive formal Jewish education. Their children too receive extensive Jewish education. A.B. Yehoshua may not approve, but in America regular religious observances are closely linked with speaking Hebrew and visiting Israel.

A very good piece of news is that intermarriage is not connected to low levels of secular education and occupational achievement. In a pattern that is exactly opposite of the 1940s and 1950s, today the higher the levels of secular education an American Jew gets, the higher status his or her career is, the more likely to be married to a Jew. Moreover, except for the ultra-Orthodox, who comprise only 25 percent of Orthodox Jews, in the United States religiously observant Jews have educational and occupational levels just as high as less observant Jews, and Sabbath observers have the highest levels of "spousal parity" - husbands and wives with matched levels of achievement.

Today American Jews don't have to give up anything if they want to be highly identified Jews. That helps to even the playing field. The most effective strategy is not to concentrate on "reversing the intermarriage trend," but instead to raise the levels of cultural capital for all American Jews, regardless of their religious orientations.

What's at stake is the reshaping of American Jewish communal norms. Jews in a free society will marry other Jews (1) if they find them attractive, (2) if Jewishness matters to them, and (3) if marrying another Jew is a valued as a worthwhile by their social networks. We have much more impact on communal norms and values than we do on erotic appeal. We need to figure out, as individuals and a community, how to talk about why Jewishness is precious and matters to us. We can have an effect if we speak with integrity, but that takes a lot of soul searching. We also need to advocate for the creation of exclusively Jewish homes. That's difficult in a pluralistic society, but having those conversations can make a difference. Research shows that Jewish education, family Jewish involvements, and Jewish friendship circles dramatically increase the likelihood that our children will marry Jews, or will encourage a non-Jewish spouse or romantic partner to become a Jew by choice. Think of "Pilates," and strengthen the core.

Dear Sylvia

Here's another mail from a reader on which I want you to comment: I think the process of conversion to Judaism should be simplified. I know of a number of cases where the non-Jewish partner backed off after the difficulties they encountered in their effort to convert. If conversions were made easy, then the emphasis would be put on the rearing of the children. If that is done, then the second generation will be Jewish. All you have to do is look at the fast growth of the Muslim religion.

Conversion to Islam is extremely simple. The children are brought up as Moslems and they remain in that religion and pass it on to their children.
Naim S. Mahlab
Montreal


Ah, if all Jews did things the same way, this question would be much easierto respond to! In the United States today conversion is simplified inliberal and secular environments. Potential converts study basics of
Judaism, but required times can range from a few months to years of study.
Orthodox and Conservative and many Reform conversions involve traditional
rituals of immersion in a mikveh (ritual bath) and an actual or symbolic
circumcision for men, but some do not. Barriers to conversion depend on
where the potential convert lives and whether the conversion is traditional,liberal, or secular. Israel and Canada are more consistently traditional than the United States.

For most of Diaspora history conversion into Judaism was less common. First, a foundational Jewish belief that "the righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come" meant non-Jews didn't need Judaism in order to be "saved," to whatever extent Judaism discusses salvation. For those concerned with reward and punishment, eternal rewards were earned by everyone observing the seven Noahide moral and ethical laws incumbent upon human beings. Thus, there was no salvational reason to encourage non-Jews to become Jewish. Only during one Hasmonean period, the reign of King Johanan Hyrcanus (134-104 B.C.E), did Judeans engage in mass conversions of their neighbors, a single episode of Jewish proselytism which seems the exception that proves the rule. This history contrasts starkly with the behavior of religious groups routinely asserting that a person's soul can only be saved by believing in their religion.

Second, for many centuries being Jewish was a great practical disadvantage. Scattered in Diaspora communities, Jews were sojourners dependent on and subject to the good-or bad-will of others. Jewish life was often one of dangers, difficulties, and forced migrations. For a non-Jew to convert into Judaism, in many times and places, meant death for the Jewish community performing the conversion, according to Muslim or Christian rulings. At the same time, Jews were often offered a brutal choice between death or forcible conversion into Islam or (more often) Christianity. Very few non-Jews wanted to marry Jews or become Jewish. Some Jews baptized into Christianity betrayed and persecuted Jewish communities. So Jews developed visceral negative feelings about what sociologists call "religious switching."

Third, rabbis historically wanted to make sure that a person who converted
into Judaism would be a sincere Jew: one who would, like the biblical Ruth, share the Jewish destiny ("where you go I shall go"), religion ("your God shall be my God"), and ethnicity ("your people shall be my people"). They wanted the potential convert to know that it is hard to be a Jew. They asked what motivated non-Jews to opt for a disadvantageous change of status, and expressed anxiety that proselytes might be converting into Judaism in order to "gain something" financial. At the same time, these rabbis felt that being a Jew was a great privilege, and wanted to make sure potential converts recognized that.

Today, of course, the situation has changed dramatically. Rates of
intermarriage are high partially because so many non-Jews want to marry
Jews. Some-but not all--Orthodox rabbis erect ever-higher barriers,
demanding (unlike most historical halakhic authorities) that potential
converts commit to the whole of rabbinic law before conversion takes place. Research shows that conversion-any kind of conversion-makes the family dramatically, measurably more connected to Jews and Judaism. Sociologically, the answer is clear: Conversion is "good for the Jews," and Naim Mahlab has a point.

Dear Sylvia,

My next question is actually one which came from a reader: As a Brandeis alum, I'm glad to see you at Rosner's Domain. It seems, from my experience, that it is Jewish summer camps which have the most profound effect on sustaining Jewish identity. It certainly makes sense. If a child identifies the best months of the year - summer vacation - with Judaism, he or she is likely to have a strong lifetime commitment. Day school obviously provides a more rigorous education. But, for me, it stands to reason that having kids identify Judaism with fun is even better than identifying it with school.

This is the brilliance of Birthright. Send a kid abroad for the summer, without his parents, and he's bound to love the place he's sent to. Am I right? Is there data that proves or disproves the idea that for American Jews, a Jewish camp experience - followed in college by a trip to Israel - is a powerful way to cement identity and preserve the Jewish future?
MJ Rosenberg

The good news is that there are several strategies that can dramatically improve the chances that a Jewish kid growing up in an open society will identify with Jews and want to create a Jewish home of their own. MJ Rosenberg is certainly correct that Jewish summer camps can have a powerful effect. Adults often offer deeply felt testimonials about Jewish summer camps changing their lives. For many, that's because camping creates an effective experiential bubble. Jewish summer camps are influential partially because they isolate children and teenagers and provide them with Jewish experiences-undiluted by sometimes apathetic families or the distractions of their everyday lives. Teens in Jewish summer camps, for example, don't skip Jewish activities to play on the Little League team-Jewishness and sports aren't scheduled to compete with each other, as they often are during the year.

Teens whom I've interviewed have talked enthusiastically about Shabbat experiences in summer camp, for example, as they and their friends "got all dressed up and sang a lot in the dining hall." Many teens noted that they are "more religious" in summer camps than at home. In contrast to the Jewish reinforcements children and teens get in Jewish summer camps and youth groups, they can sometimes feel isolated and self-conscious about their Jewish identity in non-Jewish summer camps.

Many teens who choose to hang around with other Jewish teens have visited Israel, some multiple times. Those that have not have the "birthright Israel" option on their radar screens for college, and those who have taken family trips look forward to a peer Israel experience as comprising a different way to see Israel. Some Israel trips are offered through their schools or synagogues.

Teenagers enrolled in a teen Jewish school often had the additional "value added" of being able to take a trip with their friends through their Jewish school and talk about being "really excited" about this prospect. Honestly, not every kid is "bound to love the place" as M.J. Rosenberg suggests, but most of them do, and being Jewish becomes bound up in a connection to the Jewish State.

birthright Israel has an amazing, well-documented impact on Jewishness for years after going on the trip. Evaluation studies done by the Brandeis University's Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies show that the trip upgrades both Jewish attitudes and behaviors, and that those upgrades are sustained over time. Here too, the "bubble effect" no doubt has an influence. Being together with other Jewish kids makes them want to continue to be together with Jews and to learn more about what it is to be a Jew.

And this brings us back to the most effective strategy of all-formal Jewish education. As I noted in an earlier entry in this column, statistically, being in a Jewish classroom for more than six years, continuing through the teen years has the broadest and deepest permanent impact of all, even more than camps, youth groups, or Israel trips. Note that I'm not talking here exclusively about day schools-supplementary schools also have an impact. I believe that this is not only because of whatever it is kids learn, but also because they are together with other Jewish kids not only for ten days or a month or two, but every single week for the whole school year. That having been said, the best effects of all come from multiple Jewish activities. The more, the more.

Dear Professor,

"Recently," you write in your study, "popular publications urging the most inclusive approach to mixed marriage have proliferated." Is this a problem? David Ellenson and Kerry Olitzky suggested this last Friday in the Forward that "Our community has become so focused on whether or not the community should open its doors to those who have intermarried that we have forgotten that people make decisions based on what they deem best for themselves and their families, rather than on what they regard as best for a community. For these persons, appeals to continuity and survival will not provide decisive grounds for joining the Jewish community."

So what approach would you choose as the Jewish community is struggling to cope with the inter-marriage phenomenon?

My answer to Rabbis Ellenson and Olitzky is that Jewish leaders can help to reshape Jewish countercultural norms. This is necessary, because American culture not only accepts, but actually promotes mixed marriage, and the interweaving of two religions within that marriage. I am emphatically not recommending badgering or harassing anyone, including mixed married Jews and their spouses. I am recommending educating toward an embrace of Judaism as the one religion in a Jewish home.

Mixed married families are dramatically less likely to transmit Jewish culture to the next generation. Even when both families are exactly equal in their Jewish activities, families with two Jewish parents are more than three times as likely to raise children who identify as Jews and create Jewish homes than families with only one. This is why working toward conversion, always remembering that conversion is a process, not a magic wand, is a critical goal for Jewish leaders and educators - and families - today.

Part of the reason conversion makes such a big difference is the fact of intermarriage itself: Mixed married families tend to have very low levels of "ethnic capital."

Ethnic capital is a term sociologists use to describe how distinctive an ethnic group is. Ethnic groups that are not distinctive do not survive in an open society, so ethnic capital is really the key to cultural survival. Among all religious groups - not only Jews - identity is far more stable when there only one religion in a household. It is not only the non-Jew who affects ethnic capital, of course: Statistically, as a group Jews who marry across cultural lines are frequently not as attached to Jewishness as Jews who marry Jews, and they bring little ethnic capital to the household.

Concern about these issues is not the result of insensitivity to individual feelings, love, and personal choice. Rabbis David Ellenson and Kerry Olitzky are certainly correct that "people make decisions based on what they deem best for themselves and their families, rather than on what they regard as best for the community." However, what people deem as best for themselves is profoundly affected by their communities. Social networks are powerful creators of communal norms.

Not the individual alone, but the cultural environment establishes the "worthwhileness" of particular activities and particular personal decisions. Personal behavior is deeply influenced by perceptions of what other people are doing and thinking, as Malcom Gladwell has convincingly argued. Individuals are often unaware of the influence of their social networks, and believe themselves to have embraced these values independently.

Gladwell shows that societal expectations go over a "tipping point," and from that time forward, the once-transgressive behavior is viewed as normative and persons will be pulled toward the changed standards, all other things being equal. Indeed, once the threshold has been passed, previously normative behaviors are often viewed as socially undesirable.

For those concerned about Jewish cultural transmission, it is clear that a laissez faire approach cannot succeed. Jews are a tiny minority group - about two percent of Americans - embedded in a large, dominant, primarily Christian (eighty percent of Americans) culture.

Jews must be willing to be different, and Jewish leaders and educators should have as a goal - not as a brickbat - helping them want to be different, and to value the creation of homes where the only religion is Judaism.

One of the most interesting things you found in your new study, is that "when parents did encourage children to date and marry Jews, their children were much more likely to marry either a born-Jew or a Jew by choice" - but most of them just don't do it. So educating the parents is actually the first mission you'd take on?

Yes, Jewish education for parents - and for the whole family - is one of the most effective strategies for raising Jewishly committed children. Every stage of life counts - and all forms of Jewish education are interrelated and influence each other, beginning with early childhood and stretching across the life cycle to adult educational activities. Part of this whole educational process is talking about interdating and intermarriage. But that conversation isn't very effective when it stands alone - and it often doesn't take place when it stands alone. Conversations about creating Jewish homes most effective when they are part of a context of lifelong, family-wide Jewish engagement.

Early childhood education, for example, has an impact not only on the children who spend their days in environments that teach them Jewish cultural and ceremonial fundamentals, but also on their families. Families that have children enrolled in Jewish early childhood education increase their own Jewish activities when compared with families with children of the same age in other educational settings.

Teen Jewish education also turns out to be critical not only for the teenager but for the parents as well. What is not often recognized is that stopping Jewish education after bar/bat mitzvah interrupts and undermines this entire process. Each additional year of formal Jewish schooling - including supplementary schools - past the bar/ bat mitzvah year had more of a measurable effect on adult Jewish connections than the year before it. Thus, Jewish education during the age 16 to 17 year has a more substantial effect on adult Jewish connections than Jewish education from 15 to 16, and so on.

This impact of Jewish education during the teen years occurs not only because of curriculum - the cognitive transmission of information about Jewish subjects - but also because of social factors: the at least once weekly classroom provides a setting for the creation of Jewish peer groups. The number of Jewish friends in one's teenage close friendship circles was one of the best predictors of the strength of Jewish engagements when one reaches adulthood. So teens in Jewish classes learn, and also become part of a social network that values Jewish engagement. And, as with early childhood and school-age education, teen Jewish education has an impact on the rest of the family. It is not only that familial Jewish activity influences the maturing child - it is also that the child's going or not going to Jewish school influences familial Jewish activity. Within a year of a child or teenager's terminating their formal Jewish education, the whole family's level of Jewish activities declines measurably.

Adults who are involved in Jewish activities that they really love - whether that means taking Jewish classes, studying with a friend, reading Jewish books, learning about Jewish music, literature, or film, have an enormous impact on their children. Interestingly, many parents say they start doing these things because their children or teenagers are learning so much and they want to keep up!

The parental Jewish connections that have the greatest impact on children and teens are those in which adults (1) are involved in Jewish activities on a regular basis; (2) care deeply about their Jewish activities; and (3) are able to articulate their engagement with Judaism sincerely and frequently. Research shows that if cultural transmission is the goal it's not enough for parents to walk the walk - they also need to talk the talk!