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Fr iday, January 31, 1964—THE DETROIT JEWSH NEW S-32

What Do You Tell Your Daughter?
Ttveens Ponder Interfaith Dating

By CHARLOTTE HYAMS
Your 15 year - old daughter
approaches you one evening
and announces: "Joe wants to
take me to a party. Can I go?"
"Joe? Joe Miller?" you re-
ply, "the nice boy from Hebrew
school?"
"No," she answers. "You
don't know him. He's not Jew-
ish."
What do you say? "Definitely
not!"?
She'll retort, "But you're al-
ways preaching brotherhood.
What's wrong with one date?
If I don't go, the kids will say
I'm prejudiced."
Do you show what a "mod-
ern" parent you are? "All right,
dear, you can go with Joe"?
But you know what it can
lead to. "The probability of
intermarriage is much higher
when there is interfaith dat-
ing," said the expert.
And you, like thousands of
other Jewish parents, grope for
an answer.
And your daughter, like
thousands of other Jewish girls,
gropes too.
Some of them are lucky. They
can hash out their problem at
a BBG meeting, at the Jewish
Center . . . or at Sunday school.
Most who have no such affil-
iation, who have no Jewish
leader to look to, must find
the guidance at home. And,
where there are no Sabbath
candles, no holiday observ-
ances, no Jewish books, is the
subject of interfaith dating
worth mentioning at all?
In a Sunday school class,
where the 12-year-olds have
scarcely cast aside one kind of
doll only to take up whispered
discussion of another kind, the
question of "interdating"
reared up recently. The girls
wrote their opinions.
All a g r e e d they weren't
"quite ready" for dates as yet—
to say nothing of marriage.
But just in case they were
asked . . .
"My father would break my
neck before he'd let me date
a non-Jew," said one girl. But
she herself felt that "you
should be able to go out with
a non-Jewish boy because if
he's willing to ask you on a
date he can't have that much
against you."
"You just can't cut out the
rest of the world," wrote an-
other student. "Just because a
boy is gentile doesn't mean
that he isn't nice and that you
can't like him if you don't get
too serious."
Although most of the girls

replied they felt interdating
was proper, several showed
reservations. "A few dates
wouldn't be too bad," wrote one
girl, "but if the dates go on and
on to marriage, it wouldn't be
right unless conversion took
place to Judaism."
A few were firm in their op-
position to interfaith dating.
"I feel that it is not right to
interdate because it can lead
up to marriage," was the opin-
ion of one student. "And if
no one converts, where are you
going to go to church or shut?
And your children, where are
they going to go? Sunday
school on Sunday and on Sat-
urday, shul? Or on Sunday,
church? Are they going to be
a Jew or Christian?"
One reply was an adamant
"No!" And she went on to ex-
plain, "I guess I think Jewish
girls should not date other re-
ligions because I was brought
up that way."
* * *

I Mixed Marriages Reach
16 Pct. Among Rio Jews

RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA)-
Of nearly 250 Jewish marriages
performed here during 1963, 16
per cent were mixed marriages,
a survey conducted here by
Rabbi Moses Zinguerevitch dis-
closed.
About one-third of these
mixed marriages, the rabbi said,
were entered by Jews from the
Ashkenazic community, the re-
mainde• by Sephardim. Most of
the mixed marriages, he de-
clared, end in separation.
Mixed marriages here are al-
ways performed only by civil
authorities. No rabbi in this
country will perform a cere-
mony in which a Jew marries
a non-Jew.

Tel Aviv, Haifa Host
Aviation Conference

HAIFA — The sixth annual
Conference on Aviation and
Astronautics will take place in
Tel Aviv and Haifa Feb. 24-25,
it was announced by H. Jerome
Shafer, chairman of the confer-
ence committee.
Sponsors of the conference,
the department of aeronautical
engineering of the Technion,
Israel Institute of Technology;
the Israel Society of Aeronauti-
cal Sciences; Israel Astronauti-
cal Society; and the department
of civil aviation of the Ministry
of Transport, expect more than
200 persons from all fields of
aviation and astronautics in
Israel to participate.

Dr. Erich 'Rosenthal Discusses
an `Old Problem, New Threat

The answer to the problem of
intermarriage in the United
States? There is none—at least
none the speaker would com-
mit himself to.
This was the conclusion
reached in Dr. Erich Rosen-
thal's discussion of "Intermar-
riage: Old P r o b le in, New
Threat" Sunday night at the
Jewish Center.
Dr. Rosenthal is the sociol-
ogist whose report on intermar-
riage in the 1963 American
Jewish Year Book created a
sensation in communal circles.
"You want to to stop inter-
marriage?" Dr. Rosenthal
asked his audience of 560.
"Go to Williamsburg."
The Queens College associate
professor said he found that
the more Jewish students re-
ceiving higher education, the
greater the number of inter-
marriages. "A college education
frees the young person from
parochialism; the world is
opened to him."
For this reason, Dr. Rosen-
thal said, such groups as the
Amish and the Williamsburg
children to "liberal" colleges,
Hassidim refuse to send their
but rather to "safe" schools.
(There was. a qualifier, how-
ever. Among all graduate stu-
dents, the intermarriage rate
declined.)
He pointed to the fact that
70 per cent of offspring of
mixed marriages are lost to
Judaism. "But the threat to in-
marriage can be stemmed by
Jewish education," he said.
In his study of the Jewish
populations of Washington,
D.C., and Iowa, Rosenthal
found that while religious
education had no effect on
the intermarriage rate among
native-born Am erica ns of
foreign parentage, such train-
ing greatly reduced the rate
in the third and subsequent
generations.
Interfaith dating at an early
age, he added, raises the proba-
bility of intermarriage.
Rosenthal admitted Judaism
is victim of a conflict in values.
On one hand, it speaks out vig-
orously for integration; on the
other hand, it shunS such uni-
versality for a closed society.
In fact, "the increase in
`voluntary segregation' in in-
dustrial cities in the North
has been motivated by the
fear of intermarriage," he
said.
Jewish mixed marriages have
been considerable since Jews
first came to this country, Dr.
Rosenthal pointed out. Colonial

Federation to Honor Hebrew Schools'. Anniversary

•

Jews (Sephardim) died out
through intermarriage with non-
Jews, marriage with Ashkenazim
or failure to marry at all. "And
by the Civil War, half the
Central European Jews here
had disappeared."
Asked in what denomination
was found the most intermar-
riage, Rosenthal replied, "After
all, it all depends on the Jewish
education; you can't blame any
particular denomination."
"Don't look to rabbis to
stem the tide," he warned.
"They're not the gate keeper
to control the inflow and
outflow."
Would active Jewish centers
help? "Any activity which
makes for group cohesion stems
intermarriage," he answered.
In the South, Rosenthal said,
it is tradition for a man who has
intermarried to convert his
family to Jewish life. "To be
respected," he explained, "a
family must belong to a con-
gregation. There is a two-way
traffic, you see," he said.
In his presentation, Rosen-
thal touched briefly on other
points in his study. In Iowa,
for example, it was discov-
ered that the intermarriage
rate mounts considerably in
smaller communities, where

Hebrew Corner

Second Largest
Bank in Israel

A new immigrant who comes to
Israel opens an account in a bank. It
is not difficult for him, for there are
many branches of banks in every city
and settlement.
Among the banks in Israel the Dis-
count Bank stands out as it is the
second largest in the State; the bank
has branches in every settlement,
and it has reached even to New York,
where it has a branch.
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire
The Bank is a veteran in Israel.
to The Jewish News)
It was founded in 1935 by a group of
Israeli
and foreign investors, who,
The first walkie-talkie appa-
already in the days of the British
ratus ever made in Israel was Mandate, were eager to assist in the
handed over to the Israel Army economic development of the Yishuv.
Within a short time this bank became
Signal Corps Tuesday by Tadi- an important factor in the financial
of the country.
ran, the electronics manufactur- life
The customers of the bank come
ing firm which produced it.
from all walks of life: Farmers, in-
Deputy Defense Minister dustrialists, constructors and mer-
chants. The Bank gives loans to large
Shimon Peres said that the enterprises, to public companies and
manufacture of such com- to official bodies, and also to the
small craftsman and citizen. Person-
munications equipment can nel numbering today 1,500 people
be regarded as an important serve the people that have accounts
in the bank, whose number is over
milestone in Israel's elec- 200,000. The active money of the
bank reached 700,000,000 Israeli
tronics industry.
pounds at the end of 1962.
The device which has a range
The bank also has two special
of about 15 miles is based on branches: one for diamond trading,
financing, import and export; and a
the standard American com- second branch for dealing in stocks
munications equipment, but the and bonds.
In April, 1963, the bank offered
range was increased by Israeli its shares to the public, and the
offer
was exceptionally successful.
research.
The demand was four times as large
Aluf Mishneh Z Shale, chief as the offer, and their price on the
Tel-Aviv exchange at the end of
of the signal corps, accepted the May
1963 was 400% of the face value.
device on behalf of the army.
Translation of Hebrew Text
( ■ )Published by the Brith Ivrith Olamith

First Walkie-Talkie
Produced in Israel
Goes to Signal Corps

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This historic photo of children attending the United Hebrew Schools, at play, was
taken not too long after the United Hebrew Schools was founded in 1919. The United
Hebrew Schools will celebrate 45 years of providing after-school Jewish education at the
38th annual meeting of the Jewish Welfare Federation, at a dinner, 6:30 p.m., Tuesday,
Feb. 4, at the Jewish Center. The 1964 recipient of the Fred M. Butzel Memorial
Award, for distinguished communal service, Max M. Fisher, will be honored at the meet-
ing and will be presented with the award citation. Fisher, president of the Federation,
will review Federation's achievements during the year past and members of the Fed-
eration's Board of Governors will be elected.

the marriage market is more
limited. The lowest rate
shows up in the large com-
munity like New York.
He cited three reasons for
the growing number of mixed
marriages from generation to
generation. These are 1) accul-
turation in public schools; 2)
decline in Europeanization and
3) a different sense of identi-
fication between first and sec-
ond generation.
A lower intermarriage rate
was found among the self-
employed. But the danger now
lies, Rosenthal said, in the
greater number of Jews em-
ployed by large corporations.
The lecture was sponsored by
the Detroit Section of National
Council of Jewish Women and
the National Foundation for
Jewish Culture, under whose
grants Dr. Rosenthal published
the study, the Jewish Commu-
nity Center, Jewish Community
Council and the American Jew-
ish Committee.

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