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Explaining Irish-Jewish marriage
Ben Schuman remembered how every year his family would cram into his Irish-Catholic grandmother’s small Rochester, N.Y., home for the holidays. On Christmas Eve, Schuman’s father would light the Hanukkah menorah that sat on the living room table. Next to the table stood a short Christmas tree, surrounded by presents wrapped in paper decorated with menorahs and dreidels.
Schuman, son of a Jewish father and an Irish Catholic-converted-to-Jewish mother, would sing with his family the Hanukkah blessings in Hebrew as his Catholic grandmother looked on. As the flames from the Shamas, the middle candle on the menorah, and the other candles burned, his grandmother would bake Christmas cookies for the following morning. Schuman recalled enjoying the cookies as his family opened their Hanukkah-wrapped Christmas presents on Christmas morning.
“It was never an issue why we celebrated Christmas,” said Schuman, 24. “There was no intent to separate.”
For Schuman, being Irish and Jewish often meant balancing two different faiths and two different cultures. Raised Jewish in Queens, Schuman’s wavy blond hair, blue eyes and pale skin made his appearance different from what many consider a typical Jewish look.
But the “typical Jewish look” in America is changing. The latest study of the country’s 5.2 million Jews in 2001 found that 47 percent of Jews who married from 1996 to 2001 had spouses from other faiths, up from 38 percent in the 1980s. Two-thirds of children raised in interfaith marriages were not raised Jewish, according to the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey, the latest survey of American Judaism.
There has been concern over intermarriage in Judaism for as long as there have been Jews, but the debate today over how to handle it is more urgent than ever. The major Jewish denominations are divided.
In the more progressive Reform movement, Jews wage the debate over whether Rabbis should officiate half-Jewish weddings, and how to welcome parents who aren’t Jewish but are raising their children Jewish into the congregation. In Conservative Judaism, interfaith weddings are not allowed, and there is debate over what to do with Jewish children who do not have Jewish mothers. To answer the seemingly simple question, “Who is a Jew?” often depends who you ask.
Lily Corwin Berman, a history and Jewish studies professor at Pennsylvania State University, said the issue has the potential to create a schism in the Jewish community, particularly because the Jewish leadership is uncomfortable addressing the issue.
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