Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Intermarriage in America vs. American intermarriage

This Israeli news program about intermarriage in the U.S. raises an interesting question: if the goal was to show how there's something specific to America about the phenomenon of Jews marrying out, if the point was to show America's "love affair" with the Jews, what's there to make of the fact that in the two main couples profiled, the non-Jewish spouse is not from America? The husband's (at least originally) Irish and the wife is Japanese; their current nationality is not specified, just that they live in the States.

Not to read too much into two perhaps poorly-selected examples, but might the fact that the gentiles in question are from abroad mean that American Jews feel a connection with foreigners, that America's Jews, however many generations American, remain on the margins of American culture? Just a thought.

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