Jewish-Jewish intermarriage under attack

Jeffrey Goldberg has brought our attention (and Helen Rosner, via Facebook, my attention) to an ad campaign, sponsored by the Israeli government but being shown in the States, urging Israelis to... divorce their American spouses, Jewish or otherwise, and return home? Presumably asking them not to marry Americans and settle in America in the first place, but then there's the fact that they're being aired here, not there.

Analyzing these ads properly would mean writing (yet another) dissertation on the question of Jews and intermarriage, but I'm thinking one, for me, is enough. So you're getting this in blog-post form, complete with tangential musings.

-Anti-intermarriage arguments - including ones against international but same-faith marriage - are doomed to failure because intermarriage is a symptom (or, in more neutral terms, a result), not a cause, of whichever feared demographic or cultural shift. In this case, Israelis are living in the U.S. anyway, because this is where they've found work in hummus, New York real estate, theoretical physics, or something else entirely. Once here, they meet Americans, often American Jews. Often, Israelis arrive here already married to other Israelis, in part because of the IDF, so if they're arriving for grad school or a postdoc (sorry, my anecdotal evidence tilts towards academia), they're a good bit older than the rest of the cohort. But if they do marry Americans, it's because they were already in America for reasons other than the theoretical allure of theoretical American spouses. Individual and structural forces unrelated to marriage were at work. But it's easier, simpler, and more emotion-tugging to discuss complex issues in terms of marriage and family, so that's how we get to these commercials, and anti-intermarriage discourse more generally.

-Herzl's notion that Israel's existence would normalize Jews, making them a people like any other, may have failed in international-relations-and-perceptions terms (Israel as the Jew of the world, and all that), but it did succeed in one area, which is in how American Jews perceive of Israeli Jews. Israeli women are somehow immune to negative stereotypes about (American, but potentially also British, French...) Jewish women. It's not precisely that they're "shiksas" (although, Bar Refaeli), but more that the salient thing about them is that they're foreign. That, and because of the different ethnic mix, while they certainly look Jewish, they often don't look Jewish in American terms, which is looking Ashkenazi. Israeli men, meanwhile, are imagined to be physically stronger and less intellectual/neurotic than their American Jewish equivalents. Again, it's related to a much older (and also socially constructed, etc., etc.) Sephardic-Ashkenazi divide, but it's also something relatively new.

And my understanding from the approximately ten trillion Israel-American Jews (varying degrees of each identity) I know is that it cuts both ways, but especially in terms of American Jewish women having not the best reputation among Israelis, the "JAP" stereotype being if anything greater among this set than among American Jews.

-The ads themselves are despicable, or would be if they weren't so ridiculous. The "Christmas" ad - and I say this as someone who periodically holds forth on why Christmas shouldn't be a national holiday in the U.S., and who's long tried to explain to the mystified why non-celebration of Christmas is such a big deal for some Jews, and as someone who's a big ol' Zionist who periodically threatens to up and move to Tel Aviv - makes Israel look a whole lot less appealing as a destination. If this is my takeaway, what would others' be? Its message is ostensibly that America is the dangerous land of assimilation, but it ends up reading as, Israel is a dying country, Judaism a dying faith, and the vibrant future requires Jews to stop worrying and learn to love Christmas. I mean, is the ad targeted at the nostalgic elderly, and if so, why show it in the States if it's aimed at Israeli grandparents?

And, it's a bit like when the grandfatherly Israeli man who led my Birthright Israel brigade ordered the young men assembled to note how attractive the young Jewish women around them were. In that it immediately makes one think the reverse, or else why would this need to be so painstakingly pointed out? That there need to be ads telling Israeli expats/emigrants to get misty suggests that Israelis are on the contrary delighted to be living abroad.

-It's maybe kind of refreshing - and I say this as someone who's incredibly against natalism, that is, government policies that interfere with individuals' childbirth decisions in order to increase, decrease, or alter the nation's demographics - that Israel isn't taking the straightforward "Jewish babies" approach, and is specifically concerned with the production of Israeli babies. But, as Goldberg notes, the idea is obviously that American-Jewish babies are as good as Episcopalian anyway.

-Everyone loves a good story of Jews opposing sweeping categories of Jewish-Jewish marriage. Like with the Syrian Jews, who apparently consider other Jews unacceptable marriage partners. Why does everyone love this kind of story? Because there's something in it for everyone. Think Jews are insular? These stories tell you nothing you didn't know. Think Jews get lumped into one box too often, and that the immense diversity of "Jews" needs more attention? These stories show that Jews are not one unified bloc after all.

-But are these ads even about the dangers of intermarriage? It seems like they could just as easily be about the threat of emigration, period. After all, an Israeli couple that moves to the States will send its kids to American schools, where those children will hear about Santa Claus, whether the parents like it or not.

-I know that the proper, politically-correct response here would be to say that there is of course vibrant Diaspora Jewish life, and that Israel needs to respect the existence of non-Israeli Jews. My own thoughts are... this, but not entirely. It seems possible - probable? - that over the course of who knows how many generations, the only Jews left will be ultra-orthodox or in Israel. If this bothers you, do something about it, but that something shouldn't be telling those already in committed relationships with non-Jews - or in milieus in which the default is a non-Jewish spouse - to marry in. If nothing else (and I could think of some other good reasons), because this approach is futile.

-While my overall stance re: Zionism - which I was reminded of by David Schraub - hasn't much changed since I first began thinking about this issue, my understanding of Israel has somewhat. No, not in terms of realizing that the Israeli government does icky things, or that religious extremists over there have too much power. This much I've long since understood, so I never had some kind of idealized vision of Israel. Rather, I've become increasingly aware through my own daily life of how thrilled so many Israelis - even ostensibly rah-rah-Israel Israelis - are to get out. To move to New York, to be academics in America, etc. They want out, but who wants in? I keep thinking that Israel would work just fine if those who believed in it (including yours truly, blogging from the Whole Foods, where the shuttle has dropped me for two hours, time I might have spent tilling the kibbutz fields) actually lived there. But it takes a big catalyst to up and move there, so if those whose default is to live there are moving here? For Israel to work, Jews don't merely have to live there. They - we - have to want to live there, and follow through.

-What with having stolen away a man from a foreign country myself (and never mind that he'd in all likelihood be living in the States regardless), I'm trying to picture a Belgian ad warning young Belgians of the dangers of moving to America and marrying an American. I could totally create this ad. It would show a Belgian at an American supermarket, looking at the sad bread selection, then going on Skype and watching his or her family tuck into a fresh loaf from the bakery. That's all you'd need.