Can Jews marry non-Jews?
Judaism in Five Minutes - Sarah Imhoff
Samira K. Mehta [+]
University of Colorado, Boulder
Samira K. Mehta is the Director of Jewish Studies and an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States; The Racism of People Who Love You: Essays on Mixed Race Belonging; and is currently completing a book called God Bless the Pill: Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion.
Description
While there is evidence that interfaith marriage has existed since biblical times, the Jewish solution to “marrying out” has long been conversion of the non-Jewish spouse. As Jews acquired more rights, both through post-Enlightenment emancipation and through colonization of the Americas, more Jews began to marry non-Jews, a move which was part of an assimilation into the dominant culture. When, in the late twentieth century, interfaith marriage rates began to climb at unprecedented rates, the Jewish community began serious outreach to interfaith couples, though that outreach often reflected communal concerns more than the needs of the couples.