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72
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1990
Rate Of Intermarriage
Highest Ever, Says Study
New York (JTA) — A
group of Brandeis Univer-
sity demographers who re-
cently studied marriage
trends in eight U.S. Jewish
communities has concluded
that intermarriage is at an
all-time high and that the
American Jewish leadership
must take bold, creative
steps in response.
They are recommending
that the Jewish community
actively encourage conver-
sion among intermarried
couples and couples con-
templating intermarriage.
The study, conducted by
Brandeis University's
Maurice and Marilyn Cohen
Center for Modern Jewish
Studies, found that 29 per-
cent of Jewish marriages to-
day involve a spouse who
was not born Jewish.
By comparison, the rate of
intermarriage was 5 percent
a generation ago.
Today's rate, the highest
in American Jewish history,
shows no signs of slowing or
even leveling off, according
to the researchers. In fact,
younger Jews are intermar-
rying at much higher rates,
indicating that the problem
is likely to worsen in future
generations.
Moreover, conversion is
becoming less popular
among couples that inter-
marry. In four out of every
five intermarriages in recent
years, the non-Jewish spouse
did not convert.
This trend has ominous
consequences for Jewish
identification, since the
study also found that couples
with a non-Jewish spouse
are much less likely to
observe Jewish rituals and
give their children a Jewish
education than couples in
which the non-Jewish spouse
has converted.
As a result, the resear-
chers recommend that
"without diminishing the
passionate commitment of
the American Jewish com-
munity to pluralism or re-
ligious freedom, the com-
munity should advocate
conversion" of non-Jewish
spouses.
The findings and recom-
mendations were contained
in a Cohen Center report
titled "Intermarriage and
American Jews Today: New
Findings and Policy Implica-
tions."
The authors, Drs. Sylvia
Barack Fishman, Mordechai
Rimor and Gary Tobin of
Brandeis, and Dr. Peter
Medding of the Hebrew Uni-
versity in Jerusalem, pre-
sented their research last
week at a daylong con-
ference on intermarriage co-
sponsored by the Cohen
Center and the American
Jewish Committee's Jewish
Communal Affairs Depart-
ment.
Their research was based
on data from Jewish popula-
tion studies conducted bet-
ween 1985 and 1989 in eight
communities: Baltimore;
Boston; Cleveland; Dallas;
Essex and Morris counties,
N.J.; Rhode Island; San
Francisco; and Worcester,
Mass.
The intermarriage rates
varied greatly from city to
city, reaching a high of 40
percent of all married Jews
in San Francisco, compared
to 11 percent of all marrying
Jews in Rhode Island.
The rates were 32 percent
in Dallas, 29 percent in
Worcester, 21 percent in
Cleveland, 20 percent in
Boston, 15 percent in
Baltimore and in the two
New Jersey counties
studied.
The Cohen Center report
Younger Jews are
intermarrying at
much higher rates.
looked at three groups:
"inmarrieds," in which both
spouses were born Jewish;
"conversionary marriages,"
in which one spouse con-
verted to Judaism; and
"mixed marriages," where
one spouse remains non-
Jewish.
The study found that
younger Jews who_ inter-
marry today are more likely
to marry spouses who do not
convert to Judaism.
In Dallas, for example, the
non-Jewish partner con-
verted in 52 percent of the
intermarriages among peo-
ple 55 to 64 years old. But in
intermarriages involving
people between the ages of
18 and 34, the non-Jewish
spouse converted only 17
percent of the time.
In some places, like
Boston, fully one-third of
young married Jews have
non-Jewish spouses. But
such mixed marriages ac-
count for only 1 percent of
' marriages there involving
Jews over age 55.
Nearly half of the Jewish
men in Boston who wed in
the 1980s are in mixed mar-