18 Friday, April 14, 1918 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS The Finest In Musical Entertainment ERIC ROSENOW AND HIS ONTINENTAL 398-3664 Call Martin lattin and learn about Investing Dianionds 550-0140 Ado Wm pis Intermarriage in Israel Source of Concern A small village in West- ern Galilee, only recently linked to the national water grid and still without paved roads and electricity, is home to 2,500 Beduin and Nava, a pretty, blue-eyed blonde Ashkenazi who is married to Yousef, a tracker for the army. In a rambling old apart- ment house in Nazareth lives the Jewish widow of a former Arab Knesset member. Her cousin-by- marriage and close friend is a left-wing American im- migrant married to a Rakah activist. Down the block, in the home of her in-laws, Spanish-born Batsheva lives with her husband Saleh, a construction worker. According to The Jerusalem Post, there is at least one Jewish girl living in most of Israel's }nisi Mot kinalatio IMO* Mewl Isnastalire Arab villages; in Baka el Garbiyeh there are 21. In Acre, there are at least a dozen mixed couples; in Jaffa, twice that number. There are small colonies of Druse married to Jewish women in both Eilat and Beersheba. And in Tiberias lives a Circassian soccer star and his once Jewish, now Moslem, wife. None of the government ministries knows exactly how many Jewish Israelis have married non-Jewish Israelis since the estab- lishment of the state. The most complete statis- tics available come from Dr. Yosef Ginat, assistant ad- viser on Arab affairs to the prime minister and a lec- turer at Haifa University. Two years ago, for the In- stitute for Interdisciplinary Research of Jewish Families, he questioned the mayors and community leaders of every minority Jack Lelswitz IsinsSalke - Tax Shelter NOW! Retirement Income Later! 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Most of the couples had met informally at work or around the neighborhood, though one couple had been introduced by friends, an- other had met at a left-wing summer camp, two had been active in the Rakah — New Communist Party, several had attended university to- gether, and several more had served together in the army. _ the Druse are either in the security forces or work for the government. None of the Moslem Arabs considered them- selves enemies of the state, though most had voted for Rakah as a protest against their "status as second class citizens." All the Druse and Beduin supported the Zionist parties. Not one of the non-Jewish women agreed to be inter- viewed, but Dr. Ginat says they are well educated, as are their husbands. In Haifa, for instance, lives a Moslem nurse married to a well-known surgeon. Because there is no civil marriage in Israel, many of the Jewish women marry- ing Moslems (50 percent ac- cording to Ginat) convert to Islam, a fairly uncompli- cated procedure. None of the women converted out of religious conviction. For most, it was simply a way to marry legally without In a good number of having to leave Israel. cases, the Jewish woman One hoped it would lead had not known she was to greater acceptance by dating a non-Jew until the Arab community; after she was emotionally others did it for the sake and physically involved. of their children. "One day I met the man of my dreams on the beach," reports one American im- migrant. "Only later did it become clear that Dani the Iraqi from Haifa was really Hani the Druse from Daliat el Cannel." Most of the women were from the Oriental com- munities (85 percent, ac- cording to Ginat's survey), and were high-school drop- outs from broken or un- happy homes. But there were also sev- eral new immigrants from the West — all profession- als, several Ashkenazi women (mostly married to Beduin), and several sabras born and raised in a kibutz. The men, mostly from villages but also from mixed-population cen- ters, ranged in occupa- tion from construction worker to professor. Many of the Beduin serve in the army, and many of DISCOVER IT'S NO FAD - IT'S THE TREND CALL NOW Reserve Your Space In Our NEW CLASS JACK BARNES DANCE CENTER 851-2400 600 Students Can't Be Wrong Many of those converted said they were literally "forced" to do so by the Reli- gious Affairs Ministry. Several women reported that when they applied to convert, although they were over the age of 18, the Ministry notified their par- ents. None of the Druse or Be- duin who converted to Judaism (about 50 percent of those discovered by Ginat) think that their par- ents were advised. In fact, one Druse claims that to this day his parents don't know he has converted. According to Ginat, some five to 10 percent of all mixed couples opt for civil marriage. The most popular place for this is Cyprus, where an Israeli emigre will make all the arrangements. There is also the Mexican marriage by proxy for those who don't want to leave Is- rael. For approximately $900 (payable in Israeli pounds) Tel Aviv lawyer Yosef Ben-Menashe can produce a Mexican wedding certifi- cate which is recognized by the Interior Ministry. Most couples who chose to maintain their separate re- ligions, however, settled for common law marriage. Except for Druse- Jewish couples, and the marriages between Arab women and Jewish men, most mixed couples (75 percent according to Ginat) settle in an Arab village or in the Arab neighborhoods of mixed population centers, close to their inlaws. Reasons range from "my husband is an Arab and wants to live among his own kind," to "we could live bet- ter materially in the vil- lage," to "we agreed to raise the children as Arabs." Few of the Jewish women, however, all of whom learned to speak Arabic, like living among Arabs. "You have to follow their customs," complains one. "In the evening, all the men get together in the coffee houses and discuss while the women sit at home alone. I have virtually no friends here, no woman I can talk to about books or movies. Mostly I just watch TV." "Although I con- verted," says another, "they still call me "the Jew'7 As might be expected, Ginat's research discovered that the number of mixed marriages reported an- nually decreases after a war. Thus, in 1964 there were 26 marriages between Jews and non-Jews, but in 1968 only three. Similarly, in 1973 there were 15 mixed marriages, and in 1974 only nine. For those who converted to Islam, army service for their sons does not come into question. For those who remained Jews, it is a prob- lem. One Haifa family, who raised their children to be neither Jews nor Ar- bas, report that while the older son opted out of the army, the younger ones decided to be drafted. Jewish society is much more acceptant of the Druse-Jewish mixed mar- riages than of others. For one thing, the Druse serve in the Israel Defense Forces (some of the Druse were actually born in Syria and crossed into Israel in 1948 to fight with the Jews). The families tend to live among Ashkenazis ("Orien- tal Jews are very intoler- ant") and most bring their children up as Jewish, even in cases where the father has not converted. Of those Druse who have converted, most did so before meeting their wives, and most are trad- itional. Despite the problems in- volved in mixed marriages, the couples interviewed in- dicated that if they could turn back the clock, they would go through with their marriages again: But several women indi- cated they would try to live in the city, instead of in the village, and one said she would not again convert to Islam. Weizmann Editor Replaces Weisgal JERUSALEM — Barnet Litvinoff has been ap- pointed to succeed the late Meyer Weisgal as editor of the Weizmann papers. Twelve of the projected 23 volumes have been com- pleted. Litvinoff believes Zionist history will be re- written when the project is completed because "all the half-truths and folklore which have gone into Zionist history will have to be changed."