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 itermarnage 
 
 DR. D. DE SOLA POOL 
 
 University of California 
 
 Southern Regional 
 
 Library Facility 
 
 JEWISH WELFARE BOARD 
 UNITED STATES ARMY AND NAVY 
 
 Co-operating with and under the supervision 
 
 of War Department Commission on Training 
 
 Camp Activities 
 
 NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS: 149 FIFTH AVENUE, N. Y. 
 

 
 r 

 
 Intermarriage 
 
 oAn Ancient Problem 
 
 f f ROM one point of view, the gravest problem 
 
 H which Jewry is facing to-day is that of in- 
 ^ , ^ termarriage between Jews and Christians. 
 
 This problem is not a new one in Jewish history, but 
 it is more general and, therefore, more urgent to-day 
 than it has ever been before. We, Jews, have always 
 been a small minority in the world, and because of 
 this, we have had to struggle consciously and sternly 
 for our survival. From the very beginning of our his- 
 tory, it was realized that marrying outside of the Jew- 
 ish fold carried with it a menace to our Jewish survival. 
 Already at the dim dawn of Jewish history, Abraham, 
 the founder of the Jewish people, had to decide between 
 his two sons, Ishmael, the son of a strange wife, and 
 Isaac, the son of a Hebrew wife. To insure that the 
 tradition which he was founding should be transmitted 
 in its purity to the next generation, Abraham sent 
 away Ishmael and chose Isaac as his true son, physi- 
 cally and spiritually. Isaac in his turn was faced with 
 the same necessity of choice between his two sons Esau 
 and Jacob. After Esau had married a Hittite wife 
 and thereby had put himself outside of the direct line 
 of Jewish tradition, Jacob became the natural and 
 inevitable heir of Jewish life and thought. 
 
 Later, when the Hebrew descendants of these patri- 
 archs had become a people, their integrity as a people 
 was threatened by the mixed multitude of Egyptians 
 who se ized the opportunity of escaping from Egyptian 
 bondage with them. This mixed multitude was the 
 cause of considerable trouble to the newly born Jewish 
 people on its weary pilgrimage to the promised land,
 
 Palestine. Throughout the whole of Biblical history, 
 there is repeated testimony to the troubles which came 
 to the Jewish people and its individual leaders through 
 disregard of the prohibition of intermarriage. This 
 prohibition is expressed most explicitly in the follow- 
 ing words: "When the Lord, thy God, shall bring 
 thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and 
 shall cast out many nations before thee, . . . thou 
 shalt make no covenant with them, . . . neither 
 shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter 
 thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt 
 thou take unto thy son. For he will turn away thy 
 son from following Me that they may serve other 
 gods; so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against 
 
 thee and He will destroy thee quickly." 
 (Deuteronomy vii, 1-4). 
 
 Problem in Every Age 
 
 How great a menace the disregard of this prohibition 
 became, is made as clear in the latest parts of the Bible 
 as it is in the earliest Biblical history. Ezra saw that 
 the "people of Israel . . . have not separated them- 
 selves from the peoples of the land, ... for they have 
 taken of their daughters for themselves and for their 
 sons. . . ." (Ezra ix, i, 2.) This disregard of the 
 fundamental law of Jewish self-preservation had be- 
 come so serious, that Ezra and Nehemiah, the leaders 
 of the people, induced them to take the drastic measure 
 of divorce from their non-Jewish wives. So far was the 
 mixture of blood progressing, that these far-seeing lead- 
 ers saw that no steps less thorough than this could 
 succeed in preserving the integrity of the Jewish people. 
 Later, the rabbis, from bitter experience, set their 
 faces sternly against mixed marriages, and all the years 
 of subsequent Jewish history have borne witness to the 
 practical wisdom of their policy. 
 
 age Four
 
 In Modern Times 
 
 Since the nineteenth century -when emancipation 
 brought about a free mixing of Jews and non-Jews, the 
 opportunity for intermarriage has grown. One of 
 the first results of emancipation of the Jews was an 
 enormous increase in the number ol intermarriages; 
 and since those first days of tolerance, all over the world 
 there has been a striking and most on;inous increase in 
 intermarriage between Jew and Gentile. 
 
 Heart Versus Head 
 
 Why in these days should Judaism still continue to 
 oppose intermarriage? It is argued that the strength 
 of the power of love is such that no consideration of 
 expediency can withstand it. If this were true, and 
 men married when they fell in love without allowing 
 their heads in some measure to control their hearts, 
 marriage would by now have become a thoroughly 
 discredited human institution. The experience of the 
 human race has decreed that between falling in love 
 and getting married, there shall be an appreciable inter- 
 val for reflection. This experience is summed up in 
 the proverbial saying, "Marry in haste, repent at 
 leisure." Every marriage is virtually an irrevocable 
 act, and a mismarriage can be rectified only by the 
 costly, tedious and painful processes of the divorce 
 court. The Jewish man who has fallen in love with 
 some fair non-Jewish maiden would therefore do well 
 not to overlook some of the practical considerations 
 involved in his taking the final step of marriage with 
 its lifelong obligations. 
 
 Radical Character 
 
 Deeply rooted in the nature of all of us are profound 
 race memories which centuries of race tradition have 
 woven into the very fibre of our natures. So enlight- 
 
 fage Five
 
 ened and liberal a non-Jewish writer as George Eliot 
 recognised these inner essential differences between 
 Jew and Gentile. She describes one of the Jewish 
 characters in her novel "Daniel Deronda" as not of "a 
 nature that would bear dividing against itself; and 
 even if love won her consent to marry a man who was 
 not of her race and religion, she would never be happy 
 in acting against that strong native bias which would 
 still reign in her conscience as remorse." There is 
 at bottom an ineradicable race feeling which in our 
 own days is stirring the Czecho-Slovaks, the Arabs of 
 the Hejaz, the Poles, the Jews, and all other distinctive 
 racial groups, to assert themselves in their own right 
 and in their own individuality. It is these fundamental 
 differences between Jew and non-Jew which lurk be- 
 neath the surface, watching and working for the 
 opportunity which friction brings to break through and 
 aggravate any discord which may arise in a home based 
 on the union of Jew and Gentile. 
 
 A Divided Home 
 
 It is a demonstrable fact that this deep-lying incom- 
 patibility of nature in the parties joined in a mixed 
 marriage works strongly toward bringing domestic 
 division and disruption into that home. Happiness 
 in the home is an atmosphere created by sympathetic 
 feelings on the part of husband and of wife. Among 
 the strongest and deepest of these feelings are the race 
 feelings just mentioned, and religious feeling. One 
 can argue ill with feelings. A feeling is its own 
 justification and it seldom yields to logic. The feeling 
 which the Jew has toward Judaism and his Jewish 
 people is something which he can often hardly explain 
 to himself. His brain may tell him that he is not an 
 observant Jew, that he rarely attends a house of wor- 
 ship, that his beliefs are few, that he is far from living 
 
 fage Six
 
 up to the religion as he was taught it as a child, and 
 that perchance he has few Jewish connections. Yet. 
 suffusing his whole being is a strong feeling of warm 
 sympathy with and pride in his religion and people. 
 
 Let anyone but insult Judaism, or the Jews, in his 
 hearing, and it will at once be seen how strong and how 
 real is his almost undreamed-of feeling for his religion 
 and his people. This latent feeling will co-exist in the 
 Jewish husband for Judaism and in the Christian wife 
 for Christianity, though perhaps neither will suspect 
 its existence. So long as the skies are fair and no clouds 
 cast a shadow over love's young dream, these feelings 
 will remain below the surface. But at the first threat 
 of trouble within the home, these feelings will struggle 
 for expression. The incompatibility of his feeling for 
 Judaism and of hers for Christianity will inevitably 
 serve to add fuel to the smoldering fires of domestic 
 discord. 
 
 The Evidence From Divorce 
 
 A striking and irrefutable proof of this is furnished by 
 the practical test of the figures of divorce in mixed 
 marriages, as compared with those in marriages which 
 are not mixed. Thus, in Berlin "during the ten years 
 i8gz to 1902, to each 1,000 marriages there were 
 divorces as follows: Jews, 3; Christians, 3.91; Jews 
 married to Christian women, 10.09; Christians mar- 
 ried to Jewesses, 11.16. Mixed marriages are thus 
 three to Jour times more likely to be dissolved than pure 
 marriages." (Fischberg.) Such figures, which can 
 be paralleled from other sources, constitute a clear 
 proof that a mixed marriage is far more likely to turn 
 out unhappily than a normal marriage between a 
 couple of similar race and religion. 
 
 fage Seven
 
 Parents and Children 
 
 Another aspect of the mixed marriage which should 
 make a man pause before he enters into it at the call 
 of his heart without the control of his head, is the 
 thought of the division which the mixed marriage 
 brings between his new home and his parents and the 
 parents of his wife. Though both husband and wife 
 may be unobservant in their religious practise, his 
 parents and her parents are likely to have stronger 
 religious feelings. Both the Jewish and the Christian 
 parents will be apt to look with disfavor upon the 
 mate chosen by their child. No man worthy of the 
 name will, without further thought, enter into a union 
 which he knows will mean a lifelong sorrow to his 
 parents, and which may result in a complete break 
 between him and the father and mother who have 
 given him life. This is the ancient tragedy of Isaac 
 and Rebecca to whom the Hittite wife of their son Esau 
 was "a bitterness of spirit." "And Rebecca said to 
 Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters 
 of Heth. If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of 
 Heth, such as these, of the daughters of the land, what 
 good shall my life do to me?" (Genesis xxvi, 34, 35; 
 xxvii, 46.) It is the tragedy of the parents of Sam- 
 son, who said to him when he announced his intention 
 of marrying a Philistine wife: "Is there never a woman 
 among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all 
 my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the Philis- 
 tines?" (Judges xiv, 3.) The parent's heart too o r ten 
 breaks at the knowledge that the son on whom so many 
 of their hopes have been bestowed, is contemplating 
 a marriage that must mean a complete break with the 
 Jewish tradition for which they and the whole Jewish 
 people have struggled and suffered for centuries. 
 
 Wage Eight
 
 Jewish Loss 
 
 Such a marriage usually forebodes a farewell to Judaism 
 and the Jewish people. The Jewish husband, married 
 to a Christian wife, will be unable to keep firmly to 
 his Jewish moorings. Even if he stands firm in his 
 general feelings towards his people and his religion, 
 he is likely to lead an increasingly less Jewish life. He 
 will hardly develop in the same Jewish spirit as if he 
 had married a daughter of his own people, who could 
 strengthen his Jewish feeling, and care for the Jewish- 
 ness of his home. 
 
 Loss of the Children 
 
 If the Jewish integrity of a man who enters into a 
 mixed marriage is threatened, it may be fairly said 
 that the fate of the children of a mixed marriage is 
 practically settled in advance. The Jewish law pro- 
 hibiting mixed marriages explicitly gives as its reason 
 the prospect that the non-Jewish wife "will turn away 
 thy son from following God. . . . and He will destroy 
 thee quickly." (Deuteronomy vii, 3, 4.) In the days 
 of Nehemiah, this forecast was vividly verified. For 
 Nehemiah observed that the children of mixed marri- 
 ages were speaking the foreign tongue of their non- 
 Jewish mothers. They were not growing up to speak 
 the language of the Jews, i.e., to think, talk and act 
 as Jews. (Nehemiah xiii, 23-27.) This result is 
 almost inevitable. For the children will take the course 
 of least resistance. The religion of the mother, Chris- 
 tianity, is the dominant religion of the land, and there- 
 fore comparatively easy to follow; the religion of the 
 father is the religion of a small minority,, set about 
 with difficulties of observance in a non-Jewish land. 
 To be a Jew means to set on oneself religious restric- 
 tions and social limitations. What chances are there 
 that the children of a mixed marriage will make any 
 serious attempt to keep the difficult Jewish seventh day 
 
 <Page Nine
 
 Sabbath instead of the easy Christian first day Sun- 
 day? What prospect is there that the children of a 
 mixed marriage will care for Passover as much as they 
 care for Easter? What probability is there that the 
 children of a mixed marriage will celebrate Chanuka, 
 an obscure Jewish festival, instead of giving them- 
 selves up to the Christmas which all the world will be 
 celebrating? The religion of the minority struggles 
 every moment against absorption in the religion of the 
 majority. If the child's parentage gives him an equal 
 choice, he will almost inevitably choose the easy re- 
 ligion of the majority, and the fuller social opportunity 
 that is before the non-Jew. 
 
 The facts themselves prove this. "All statistical evi- 
 dence on the subject shows that about 75 per cent of all 
 the children born to Jews married to Christians are bap- 
 tized immediately at birth, and only 25 per cent are 
 raised as Jews." (Fischberg.) In Hungary, of the 
 4.069 mixed marriages contracted during the ten 
 years, 1895 to 1904, 85.13 per cent, declared that they 
 desired to bring up their children as Christians, and 
 only 14.87 per cent, decided in favor of the Jewish 
 religion. Similarly in New South Wales, where the 
 husband was Jewish, only 25.99 P er cent, of the chil- 
 dren were raised as Jews. In Copenhagen, out of 370 
 families of Jews married to Christians, 61 raised their 
 children as Jews, 288 as Christians. In Prussia, in the 
 year 1905, only 22.67 per cent. of the children of mixed 
 marriages were raised as Jews. These figures tend to 
 become more and more extreme as the years go on. 
 
 The Next Generation 
 
 Even in those cases where the children of a mixed mar- 
 riage are brought up as Jews, "this does not represent 
 the entire loss sustained by Judaism through inter- 
 marriage. A person who has one parent of Christian 
 
 Page Ten
 
 origin, even if raised as a Jew, is more likely to marry 
 a Christian than a Jew, because socially he comes into 
 intimate contact with his Christian relatives and their 
 friends. It is also not so difficult for him to be bap- 
 tised, because he considers himself as much of Christian 
 as of Jewish origin. It is Ruppin's opinion that hardly 
 10 per cent, of the children resulting from mixed mar- 
 riages remain Jews for any considerable length of time. 
 Of these it is doubtful whether any Jews are left after 
 two or three generations." (Fischberg.) 
 
 Religious Objections 
 
 In the face of this disastrous effect of mixed marriages 
 on Jewish life, and more especially in the face of their 
 increasing frequency, it may be asked what is the mod- 
 ern Jewish attitude toward these facts. The Jewish 
 attitude towards mixed marriage is the same as the 
 historical attitude of the church. Many of the church 
 councils issued edicts prohibiting Christians to marry 
 Jewish wives. Every religious group is zealous for 
 its own integrity. But we Jews have an added reason 
 for zealously struggling to maintain ourselves as Jews. 
 For we constitute something more than a religious 
 group. We are also an historically distinctive people. 
 
 We came into existence and have been preserved as a 
 separate people by our religion Judaism. It is the 
 Jewish religion, with its unwavering emphasis on the 
 Jewish seventh day Sabbath, its distinctive Jewish 
 holy days and festivals, its wealth of ceremonial ob- 
 servances, and its sublime religious literature, which 
 has created the Jewish people with its strongly marked 
 identity. If, then, every people has the right to exist, 
 and every religion has the right to exist, we Jews pos- 
 sess the right to existence in double measure. For we 
 have both the material claims for survival of the race 
 and the spiritual claims for survival of the religion. 
 
 Page Eleven
 
 The Jew who marries "out," therefore, is actually 
 marrying himself outside of his people, and is marrying 
 himself outside of his religion. He is committing a 
 double desertion, and is contributing to the weakening 
 both of his people and of his religion by his personal 
 defection. 
 
 United Jewish Feeling 
 
 There is no difference of opinion between orthodox Jews 
 and reform Jews in their attitude toward the mixed 
 marriage. It goes without say ing that orthodox Jewry 
 with its consistent emphasis on all distinctly Jewish 
 observances and its hope of a Jewish restoration in 
 Palestine, regards intermarriage as treason to the 
 Jewish people and to Judaism. But reform Jewry is 
 no less emphatic in its condemnation of intermarriage. 
 One of the early leaders of reform Judaism in America 
 has said that every mixed marriage is a nail in the 
 coffin of Judaism. In less figurative style, the reform 
 Rabbis of the United States, meeting in conference in 
 New York City, in 1909, passed a resolution declaring 
 "that mixed marriages are contrary to the tradition of 
 the Jewish religion and should therefore be discouraged 
 by the American Rabbinate." No Rabbi, even the 
 most liberal, will officiate at a mixed marriage unless 
 the non-Jewish bride or bridegroom has previously 
 accepted Judaism. 
 
 Value of a Conversion 
 
 Yet what does this conversion usually mean? If 
 experience had shown that mixed marriages usually 
 followed a convinced acceptance of Judaism on the 
 part of the non-Jewish element in the marriage, Jew- 
 ish feeling would no more oppose intermarriage than 
 Roman Catholic feeling opposes it when the promise 
 is given that the children will be brought up in the 
 Catholic Church. But almost uniformly, experience 
 
 Page Twelve
 
 shows that a mixed marriage is contracted more or 
 less hurriedly; and when the non-Jewish element in 
 the union does undertake conversion to Judaism, this 
 conversion is in nine cases out of ten little more than 
 a superficial form. It is usually undertaken to please 
 the Jewish husband or wife, or to satisfy the Jewish 
 parents-in-law. Jewish tradition demands that a 
 proselyte, in order to be received into the fold of 
 Judaism, shall accept Judaism for its own sake, and 
 not for the sake of a love affair. The acceptance of 
 Judaism must be an acceptance of Jewish teachings 
 after a prolonged and intensive study of Judaism, and 
 a sincere adoption of Jewish life and Jewish observances 
 for all time to come. Of how many converts who have 
 accepted Judaism for the sake of a mixed marriage can 
 it be said that Judaism means anything at all to them 
 in their daily life? Of not more than the fewest of a 
 small number can it be said that their conversion is 
 sincere and that they constitute a real accession to the 
 Jewish people. Judaism and the Jewish people do not 
 seek converts. Fighting to maintain themselves at 
 all, they are not strong enough to take into themselves 
 any blood from the outside, unless this blood will unite 
 with and strengthen their own Jewish life blood, in- 
 stead of diluting it still further and making their 
 chances of Jewish life still weaker. 
 
 Crvil Marriage 
 
 It is this consideration which makes it apparent that 
 for a Jew to marry an unreligious Christian woman, 
 or an agnostic or unbeliever, is no less detrimental to 
 Judaism than for him to marry an observant Christian. 
 For the chances of her strengthening the Jewish 
 atmosphere in the home are just as small as in the case 
 of the believing Christian. The children are perhaps 
 even less likely to be brought up as Jews when neither par- 
 ent cares for religious life than when both or one of the 
 
 Page Thirteen
 
 parties values the restraints, safeguards and inspira- 
 tion of religious training. The Jew has therefore set 
 hij; face consistently against a marriage which is not 
 solemnizec under religious auspices. He regards mar- 
 riage as the foundation of stable society, and he feels 
 that a step as basically important as is marriage for the 
 individuals taking it and for the society which it helps 
 build up, should be entered into under the most solemn 
 conditions, and not merely as a civil legal contract. 
 While the Jew, always a respecter of the law of the 
 land, regards civil marriage ; j s binding, he does not look 
 upon it with favor unless it is supplemented by a re- 
 lik ;us consecration. Centuries ago, the Rabbis de- 
 clared that carriages are made in heaven, and in this 
 spirit t -,e Jew holds that they should be solemnized by 
 the ir /ocation of the heavenly blessing. A mixed 
 marriage cannot be blessed sincerely by priest, clergy- 
 man or rabbi, and the augury for married life is ill when 
 the nuptial ruy cannot be made a day of religious 
 consecration. 
 
 The Struggle for Jewish Survival 
 
 When the universa 1 conscience of Jewry is so firmly 
 set against intermar iage, it is not because the Jew feels 
 himself to be in any sense super^- *o the non-'ew, any 
 more t!' in he feels himself to .iferior to the non- 
 Jew. [ ; : is no feeling of narr^\v separatism, racial 
 pride or unreasoning exclusiveness, that makes the 
 Jew oppose the mixed marriage. The rf tson for his 
 attitude is to be found in the fundament instinctive 
 desire for Jewish sur /al the in-dnc. ^e protest 
 against Jewish extinct, i. Deep down extricably 
 interwoven into the very fibre of our being, is this 
 instinct for self-prtservat'on, both in our own persons 
 as members of the Jewi c i people, and in our children 
 whom we would see grov up in the same people as has 
 been ours, our parents' an J our ancestors' for thousands 
 
 Page Fourteen
 
 II llll 
 A 000 049 642 2 
 
 of years. This is a natural and glorious pride of race, 
 which disputes no one else's claim to a similar pride 
 in his own race, but which rather justifies each man in 
 such pride in his own race and traditions The man 
 who will destroy the line of this tradition in his own 
 family; the man who will heedlessly bring division 
 between himself and his own .parents and act in a way 
 that brings reproach upon them, be they living or dead; 
 the man who will enter into an all'ance which will 
 probably involve his children's growing up alien from 
 him in spirit and perchance despising him as a Jew ; the 
 man who will enter into what should be the most en- 
 during, most intimate and most sacred human ur ,-n, 
 knowing that that union is threatened ,U tl e outset 
 by deep-lying and deeply founded differenc -s, the 
 man who will be untrue to his people and its idt als and 
 will desert it in its hour of need, is one whom the con- 
 science of Jewry rightly excludes from fellowship, 
 equality and honor. He is one who is denying his 
 parents and all t, e past which has made him what, he 
 is ; he is sacrificing the happiness of years for momen- 
 tary happiness, and he 'is cutting on , from hims:lf his 
 own natural future and accepting a future bound up 
 with a faith that is not his own. 
 
 Duty to the Jewish People 
 
 No reason n>ed be r en why the Jewish pt .>ple and 
 the Jewish religion demand their own future. Their 
 existence to-day is their justification. But especially 
 in these da r s of the rights of minor races and of free- 
 dom of co r cience, there is no question of the right of 
 a people, i -yev.T, small, to r intain itself as a people, 
 any more' nan there can be a question as to the right 
 of any group of men to worship God as their conscience 
 dictates. 
 
 Yet , in apparent conflict witr chis right of the people as 
 a whole, there stands the right of the individual who is 
 
 Page Fifteen
 
 contemplating marriage outside of the fold. Into the 
 larf,e question of ho\v far the individual is justified in 
 seeking his own ends .-it the expense of the welfare of 
 his people we cannot enter here at length. But the 
 Jew, struggling for survival in a worlcK which is not 
 Jewish, has lived as a rrar:yr people for centuries. 
 This struggle for survival is arid must be one which calls 
 for sacrifice from each individual Jew. An ideal which 
 is not strong enough to call forth sacrifice is an un- 
 worthy ideal. The man who will not undergo hardship 
 and face difficulties and even persecution for the sake" 
 of his religion is an unworthy adherent of that religion. 
 The man who will not undergo hardship for the welfare 
 and integrity of his people is unv orthy of his people. 
 
 But we Americans have given our own answer. We 
 have willingly limited out individual right to eat as 
 we wished in accepting the national limitations of 
 voluntary food control. We have given up our right 
 to unlimited freedom of speech and freedom of the press 
 in our voluntary acceptance of a censorship on speech 
 and on the press for the national good. We have will- 
 ingly placed our businesses under Governmental con- 
 trol, allowing the Government to determine prices, 
 the right of shipment and many other of our individual 
 rights. We have regarded ourselves as at the service 
 of the state, and have been ready to devote our all, 
 even our lives, for our nation. Surely then, we cannot 
 argue against the right of a people to control in some 
 measure the acts of the individuals constituting that 
 people, when those acts are opposed to the welfare of 
 the people as a whole. The Jewish people and Judaism, 
 at all times fighting for survival, have the right to claim 
 the loyalty and the self-sacrifice of every individual Jew. 
 
 Page Sixteen