The number of mixed couples has increased in recent years in Israel, with several thousands of them being Jewish-Muslim mixed couples. Studies which examined how Jewish women and Muslim men in mixed families cope with their mutual life, found that the Jewish women display both at the interpersonal aspect and in the raising children aspect full assimilation into Arab culture (Abadi, 1991; Abu-Raiya, 2000; Asadi, 1984).
Following these findings, the present study examines, through in-depth interviews with 12 Jewish Israeli middle-class women married to Muslim Israeli men, the coping strategies used by the women regarding their daily mutual life and their children`s education.
The findings differ from previous studies, showing that the interviewees have a wide range of coping strategies: on the one end, there are few women who display full assimilation into Muslim culture. On the other end, there are families in which a complete assimilation of Jewish culture is done by the husband. In between, there are families in which mutual acculturation of both spouses occurs either through daily confrontations or through respectful, democratic negotiations based on acceptance and tolerance towards the other culture.
These findings imply that the existence of these intercultural families, and the ongoing negotiations that occur within them, reveal cracks in the rigid ethno-national-religious boundaries which prevail among the social groups in Israel. In addition, the negotiations that take place in these families regarding children education present a rising of multicultural discourse that encourages ethno-national-religious tolerance and mutual respect in the Israeli society.