Why Non-Marriage and Intermarriage are not Inevitable

This paper documents clearly and dramatically how closely marriage and parenting are bound together with Jewish identity. This paper focuses on social dimensions of Jewishness and their impact, based on recent qualitative research as well as survey data. Social dimensions of Jewishness are significantly correlated with both religious and ethnic expressions of Jewishness. Drawing on her qualitative research and Steven M. Cohen’s statistical data, Sylvia Barack Fishman will demonstrate the making of an ethnoreligious “virtuous circle,” in which specific background factors and experiences help to create the conditions for adult Jewish connectedness and the creation of the next generation of Jewish families. These factors strongly correlate with the greater likelihood that one will marry and Jews and raise children who are “Jewish by religion.” Raising children who are Jewish by religion measurably increases the Jewish connections of the parents; Jewish adults raising Jewish children have the highest levels of Jewish connectedness, while Jews those raising non-Jewish children have the lowest levels. This influence is bi-directional—from early childhood through the school years and, most importantly, through the teenage years as well, the Jewish education of children influences the whole family, as qualitative research has shown for decades. Not least, marrying a Jew continues to comprise one very important expression of “doing Jewish.” Inmarriage continues to be the most powerful vehicle conveying family members to more intensive Jewish connections.