Accounting for jewish intermarriage: An assessment of national and community studies

Abstract

ing the journal entries under specific ledger rubrics pertaining to in come (i.e., factors in producing the social phenomenon) or outlay (i.e., consequences of the phenomenon), (3) preparing a balance sheet of income and expenditures based on ledger rubrics (i.e., describing relationships of items to income and expenditures in relatively abstract ways, such as a propositional inventory or path diagram), and (4) discussion of an overall profit-and-loss statement (i.e., evaluating the corpus of research findings in terms of theoretical and policy implications). The bookkeeping metaphor permits a clarification of the relationship between codification and theoretical and policy development. That is, codification, like keeping accounts, does not per se yield theory or policy; rather, it enables the social scientist to confront her or his theoretical or policy stance with empirically based propositions. This act of confrontation implies that theory and policy development integrates ideas and values drawn from diverse sources into a conception of how the phenomenon "works' and that, at most, the corpus of findings functions as but one of these sources. Thus, having prepared a profit-and-loss statement, the social scientist asks, "In which way does this corpus of research findings indicate a profit (i.e., support) for a particular theoretical or policy stance or a loss (i.e., lack of support)?" The organization of this paper follows the procedure dictated by the bookkeeping metaphor. It first presents an accounting of the trends in Jewish intermarriage and a general diagrammatic balance-sheet of the fac tors in intermarriage. It then turns to the elements in this balance-sheet to produce a particular accounting for what has occurred, and it concludes with a "profit and loss" statement. TREND ACCOUNTS OF INTERMARRIAGE Trends in intermarriage with non-Jews have been regarded by some ob servers as leading to an early demise of the Jewish family. Other observers are more cautious in their assessment. To shed light on these varying as sessments, this section is devoted to a discussion of long-term projections of intermarriage as well as a depiction of contemporary trends. Long-Term Trends in Intermarriage Over the long run counted in generations, among Jews, each successive generational cohort of descendants from an original cohort of immigrants to the United States tends to intermarry with non-Jews to a greater extent than those of previous generations did. This tendency has been apparent throughout American history. Erich Rosenthal (1978) suggests that histori cally as each new wave of Jewish immigration is integrated into American society, intermarriage rates rise. The earliest American Jews were the This content downloaded from 157.55.39.107 on Wed, 30 Mar 2016 04:57:46 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms FARBER and GORDON 49 Sephardim, whose ancestors had been dispersed in the period of the Spanish Inquisition. By 1840, this group was greatly reduced in size be cause of both intermarriage with Jews from Western Europe and intermar riage with non-Jews. (Celibacy also played an important role in the di minution) (Stern, 1961). The second major wave consisted mainly of German-Jewish families, who began arriving in the decades before the Civil War. Their numbers, too, have declined; apparently "about half of them are no longer identifiable as Jews today" (Rosenthal, 1978). The third and by far the largest wave was made up of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the decades between the pogroms around 1880 and World War II. This group's grandchildren and great-grandchildren have now reached marriageable age. Having been exposed more to American popular culture than to traditional Jewish injunctions, they, too, are inter marrying at high rates. A fourth (but minor) flow of immigration occurred among Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany in the 1930s and among the remnant of European survivors of the Holocaust in the late 1940s. Some of the refugees settled in Latin America, from which a small secondary immi gration flow occurred. The children of the refugee-survivor generation have now reached adulthood, and indications are that they are intermarry ing at rates more similar to those of the first-generation children of earlier immigrants than to those of contemporaries who are grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants. Finally, the fifth and most recent trickle of immigration comes from Israel and the Soviet Union. As the children of this group mature, they may yield still different pictures of paths of social integration in American society. Insofar as the major streams of immigration from oppressed lands have been in large measure diverted from the United States to Israel, it is unlikely that in the foreseeable future American Jewiy can count on large groups of migrants to replenish losses sustained through out-marriages, conversions, or simply lapses in