Interfaith Marriage in Judaism - Later Laws and Rulings

Later Laws and Rulings

Although most of the rabbis in the Talmud considered the Deuteronomic law to refer only to marriage to Canaanites, they considered all religious intermarriage to be prohibited at least rabbinically. Christian rulers regarded unions between Jews and Christians unfavourably, and repeatedly prohibited them under penalty of death.

Gradually, however, many countries removed these restrictions, and marriage between Jews and Christians (and Muslims) began to occur. In 1236 Moses of Coucy induced the Jews bespoused by such marriages to dissolve them. In 1807, Napoleon's Grand Sanhedrin declared that such marriages were valid and should not be treated as anathema. In 1844, the 1807 ruling was extended by the Rabbinical Conference of Brunswick to include any adherent of a monotheistic religion; but they also altered it to forbid marriages involving those who lived in states that would prevent children of the marriage from being raised Jewish. This conference was highly controversial; one of its resolutions called on its members to abolish the Kol Nidre prayer, which opens the Yom Kippur service. One member of the Brunswick Conference later changed his opinion, becoming an opponent of intermarriage.

Traditional Judaism does not consider marriage between a Jew by birth and a convert as an intermarriage. Hence, all the Biblical passages that appear to support intermarriages, such as that of Joseph to Asenath, and that of Ruth to Boaz, were regarded by the classical rabbis as having occurred only after the foreign spouse had converted to Judaism. Some opinions, however, still considered Canaanites forbidden to marry even after conversion; this did not necessarily apply to their children. The Shulchan Aruch and its commentaries bring various opinions as to when intermarriage is a Torah prohibition and when the prohibition is rabbinic.

A foundling - a person who was abandoned as a child without their parents being identified - was classified as a non-Jew, in relation to intermarriage, if they had been found in an area where at least one non-Jew lived (even if there were hundreds of Jews in the area, and just 1 non-Jew); this drastically contrasts with the treatment by other areas of Jewish religion, in which a foundling was classified as Jewish if the majority of the people were Jewish, in the area in which the foundling was found. If the mother was known, but not the father, the child was treated as a foundling, unless the mother claimed that the child was an Israelite (the claim would be given the benefit of the doubt).