Judaism

Nothing could guarantee, however, that the Jewish family would maintain the reputation it has had for stability and durability. In this century, Jews have maintained high rates of marriage and childbearing (even if at a low birth rate) and relatively low rates of divorce. By nearly every measure, Jews have exemplified U.S. ideas of the normal family (see Fishman 2000 for a compact account of recent statistics). Yet, near the end of the twentieth century, survey research prompted one scholar to claim that U.S. Jewish life had "progressively weakened demographically as a result of low fertility, high intermarriage, significant dispersion, and assimilatory losses." In the 1990s there was intense debate about the meanings of these changes. In particular, there has been significant attention to the question of intermarriage, which increased dramatically in the decades after World War II—over 50 percent according to some interpretations of statistics. The consequences for Jewish continuity, a widely used phrase toward the end of the twentieth century, signifying as much fear as optimism, were the subject of increasing attention. "The majority of all new Jewish households formed in the United States in recent years involved a non-converted non-Jewish spouse. ... [And] while only 16% of households established before 1965 consisted of a born Jew with a non-Jewish spouse, this percentage increased to 69 for those families established between 1985 and 1990. Thus, in less than one-third (31%) of the households are there children who are exposed to parents who were both born into the Jewish religion" (Klaff 1995).

Accordingly, for many scholars, and religious and lay leaders in Jewish life, intermarriage poses the most significant single threat to the Jewish family and to the prospects for Jewish continuity altogether. Although intermarriage among ethnic groups generally tends to yield little family conflict, religious differences are a likely source of tension, particularly so in the matter of childrearing and what is to be provided for children in religious education and other resources for identification with Judaism. In any case, empirical studies of the family consequences of intermarriage are often limited by the difficulties in establishing consistency among research subjects' expressed views about religious beliefs and observance, and the meaning of Judaism for their day-to-day lives (e.g., Heller and Wood 2000).

Although Jews might regret increasing intermarriage, they do not see it necessarily as a threat to Judaism and the Jewish family. Indeed, in the popular film Keeping the Faith (1999) even though the cosmopolitan young rabbi marries a non-Jewish woman, the title appears to be anything but an irony. For many Jews, intermarriage is not as great a threat to the Jewish future as is a general decline in U.S. spirituality and the inability of many Jews— particular those in the first half of life—to relate to religion. What is called Jewish Renewal (Lerner 1994) offers a vision of Judaism that accepts an adaptive role for the Jewish family in regulating behavior on behalf of rededication to Jewish social and communal values including recognition of new family styles in our post-halahkic time.

Loyalty to the traditional Jewish family can "result in the fear that as traditional families change, and as more and more people live in alternative, or non-traditional, structures, individuals will become isolated, community weakened, and the Jewish future threatened" (Ackselberg 1992). Because only a minority of U.S. Jews live in the traditional nuclear family, there must be recognition of the legitimacy of other forms: "Giving the nuclear family first class status makes everyone else second class . . . [and] those whose intimacy constellations differ from the norm need not be on the margins of organized Jewish communities" (Ackselberg 1992). The goal is a more egalitarian and democratic Jewish community, with women participating fully not only in leading the family but in matters of spirituality and religious ritual in the home and the synagogue. Moreover, in the most liberal views of the future of the Jewish family, new structures, including single women bearing children (or raising them as adoptees) or homosexual unions of men or women should have the advantage of holy purpose in their households.

Critics of the newest ideas about the Jewish family, although accepting change, offer the success of traditional values, or the durability of Jewish history and culture as the best argument for keeping the past active in the present. Thus: "We will educate our children and adults to be understanding of other configurations and considerate of the people in them, but the Jewish [family] ethic will be what it has been in the past—not because of its historical roots, but because of the real personal and communal needs it serves" (Dorff 1992). Seen from another perspective, the twenty-first century Jewish family will continue to be a location for different ideas about what it means to be Jewish and to be a part of a Jewish household and family. Neither the decline in traditional Jewish beliefs shaping Jewish family life nor ideas about family structure representing radical breaks with tradition should be understood as defining the future. Not surprisingly, the Jewish past can still be invoked on behalf of its contributions to finding what new forms of family life can be made in the image of Judaism (Harman 1999).