Jewish-Gentile Intermarriage in Chicago

Abstract

I N A STUDY of Jewish intermarriage in Chicago, the writer found that the people who intermarried fell into fairly well-defined classes, though in some cases an individual might intermarry for more than one reason and therefore represent a combination of types. Also, the writer does not maintain that all members of these classes in the population intermarry, but rather that those who do, can be classified according to these types. The data of this study are based on i83 cases of Jewish intermarriage between Caucasians living in Chicago, plus seven cases of nonintermarriage, i.e., cases of Jews who were friendly with, or thought of marrying, a Gentile, but did not because of social controls operating against it. These latter cases functioned as a kind of control, by means of which were checked the hypotheses as to the conditions under which intermarriage does not take place. The data were gathered by the investigator between I937 and I938. An attempt was made to get a representative sample of the Jewish population by means of class and ecological criteria. Cases were taken from the poorest people in the slums on the one extreme and from the well-to-do living in the suburbs on the other. However, the writer knows of no way of determining whether his small sample is actually representative of the population because information regarding religious affiliation does not appear on marriage licenses in the United States. Certainly the cases that the investigator interviewed personally were not selected in a completely random fashion because they were gathered by asking acquaintances and the people interviewed for other cases of intermarriage. The material procured through social agencies is also not random, for by the very nature of the case, the clients of such agencies tend to be from the poorer classes. However, since cases were obtained from all areas where Jewish people live, and from all classes, there is at least a presumption in favor of considering the sample sufficiently representative of the totality of Jewish intermarriages in Chicago for the purposes of this investigation. It is on this supposition that the generalizations will have to rest, pending a more exhaustive inventory of intermarried couples. The fact that only a small number of cases have been used was unavoidable because the investigator could not afford to continue the study beyond enough cases to give what he hopes are suggestive hypotheses. The generalizations are not presented as verified propositions. Data on eighty-seven of the cases were gathered through interviews. The material on the other ninety-six cases was obtained from the case records of the following agencies: Chicago Home for Girls, Chicago Relief Administration, Illinois State Training School for Girls, Institute for Juvenile Research, Jewish Children Bureau, Jewish Social Service Bureau, and United