Impact and Consequences
In the early 19th century, in some less modernised regions of the world, exogamy was extremely rare - less than a tenth of a percent (0.1%) of the Jews of Algeria, for example, practiced exogamy. But in the early 20th century, even in most Germanic regions of central Europe there were still only a mere 5% of Jews marrying non-Jews. However, the picture was quite different in other locations; the figure was 18% for Berlin, and during the same period, nearly half of all Jews in Australia intermarried.
In more recent times, rates of intermarriage have increased generally; for example, the US National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01 reports that, in the United States of America between 1996 and 2001, nearly half (47%) of Jews who had married during that time period had married non-Jewish partners. The possibility that this might lead to the gradual dying out of Judaism, much like the historic fate of Arianism, is regarded by most Jewish leaders, regardless of denomination, as precipitating a crisis. For this reason, as early as the mid 19th century, some senior Jewish leaders denounced intermarriage as a danger to the continued existence of Judaism.
In the United States of America, other causes, such as more people marrying later in life, have combined with intermarriage to cause the Jewish community to decrease dramatically; for every 20 adult Jews, there are now only 17 Jewish children. Some religious conservatives now even speak metaphorically of intermarriage as a silent holocaust. On the other hand, more tolerant and liberal Jews embrace interfaith marriage as an enriching contribution to a multicultural society. Regardless of attitudes to intermarriage, there is now an increasing effort to reach out to descendants of intermarried parents, each Jewish denomination focusing on those it defines as Jewish; secular and non-denominational Jewish organisations have sprung up to bring the descendants of intermarried parents back into the Jewish fold
Read more about this topic: Interfaith Marriage In Judaism
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