I just wanted to add, that I don’t want anyone to think I’m bashing Judaism, or people’s cultures. Not at all.
But the whole “Oh, you can’t marry outside your race/religion/culture because then you’ll ruin your culture and such” has always been, to me, a weak argument. And it’s often one used by bigoted individuals, as an excuse to oppose inter-racial/faith/culture relationships.
When, if you get right down to it, we’re ALL a product of cultures mixing, somewhere back down the line. There’s always going to be someone who decides to follow a different path, and we have to accept that.
The only thing that is certain in the future, that will never change, is that, well, things change.
Where am I only repeating things I was told by others? I do repeat some things mom told me about me Zeyde Izzy. But where am I only repeating things told by others?
Why do you think this? As a man with a Jew beanie and a sliced penis, I can tell religion tends to be pretty irrational.
** This will be important later.
I’m not accusing you or anybody else of antisemitism. From a purely logical standpoint all religions tend to be equally nuts.
I grew up in northern Virginia. In a high school of 2000 students, there were 20 Jews. Besides the occasional taunt or the classmate who thought I killed Christ, there was always a sense of being unwanted, unwelcomed, and an outsider.
They explained that sometimes people hate other people who are different and that this was a bad thing.
So they were only vowing to exterminate half of us?
The average Jew thinks Israel is important and must continue to exist, but with as little violence as possible. Many wish a horrible painful death on Sharon as well as Arafat.
[QUOTE]
Of course you didn’t. I’m just wondering what you were hoping to archieve with that snippet of info. [Torah in Hitler’s museum of extinct cultures]
Everybody who objects to one aspect of that Torah is trying to snatch it away from you and make you worship the Yellow Happy Panda and prance around naked in the forest?
[QUOTE]
No, I was pointing out for that myself and most Jews the fear of extinction is a very real thing.
I never said there was. Genetics do not enter into it.
Exactly. Sammy Davis Jr was every bit as much a Jew as I am.
Again, genetics don’t matter. The problem is parents of different religions. Which religion, if any, are the kids taught? Judaism is “diluted” when a Christian parent and a Jewish one compromise with things like a Hannukah Bush. Judaism is diluted when the children attend Easter mass as well as a Passover Seder.
But you said earlier that you haven’t met very many Jews. As a Jew who has met plenty of others, I can tell you that the kids of an interfaith marriage who consider themselves to be Jews are very much in the minority.
If they’ve been raised without any religion or raised as Christians, inertia alone will do it.
Which drives home my point that these people are no longer Romans or Vikings. The Romans and Vikings are very much dead.
Child-mutilation? I’ve already been through one Pit thread on circumcision. I don’t feel like being in another.
Yeah, he gets brought up a lot. After the Holocaust, some Jews considered simply abandoning Judaism. Other Jews argued ‘If you do this, you grant Hitler another victory.’
Guinastasia
I’d roll my eyes but I’m very tired at the moment. Yes, it’s a cliche that bigots will say ‘But would you let your daughter marry one?’ Just because I wouldn’t doesn’t mean I go to meetings of the Ju Klux Klan. I don’t care what religion somebody is (with the exception of Scientology :shudder:) unless they are planning to marry a Jew.
I compare intermarriage to the Holocaust because the end result is the same- no more Jews.
Oh bullshit. You can’t prove that in every single case, and the same could be said for ANY interfaith marriage.
Why should you care even then? It’s between those two individuals. Period.
Hell, for that matter, perhaps someone with two very devout Jewish parents will chose not to follow the religion. What about that?
As for children not choosing to stay in the faith because they were raised by parents of two different faiths-I know of quite a few who did.
And I know of people who were raised by parents BOTH of whatever faith who chose to have nothing to do with their parents’ beliefs whatsoever.
Look, maybe it’s a Jewish thing, maybe I’m talking out of my ass. I don’t know. But it’s just the whole, “Oh, but you have to stick to your own kind” when it comes to marriage that has always rubbed me the wrong way, no matter who was saying it.
I’m sorry to leave this discussion like this, but unfortunately I have to run.
I’ll be away from my den for the rest of the week, but if this thread is still going on, maybe we can pick up where we left?
As a Christian, my daughter had better bring home a nice Christian boy who doesn’t drink. For me it’s not about “culture,” it’s about whether or not my descendants will end up in heaven or hell. (The alcohol thing, of course, doesn’t play into eternity.) I’d like to be able to watch my grandchildren grow up in a Christian home with both a Christian mom and dad, and if she marries outside the faith that’s a lot less likely to happen. You’re right; most of the time when a religious person marries a non-religious person, the one that’s religious is the one that gets watered down, rather than the non-religious person being drawn towards God. That’s why both your book and my book tell us NOT to marry outside the faith.
There are some out there who say they are Christians; maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. They show up at church on Christmas and Easter, almost never read the Bible and pretty much follow whatever rules they feel like following. And let’s say some of them have no problem with their kid marrying outside the faith. To me, this isn’t a big loss because their kid was never raised in a devout home to begin with and probably was never going to grow up to raise their kids with much Christianity thrown in, much less be devout about it.
Same with Jewish people. A rabbi in Israel is just as Jewish as some atheist surfer guy in California whose mom was Jewish but has never been to temple and doesn’t speak a lick of Hebrew. For Jews who are deeply religious, as you seem to be, I can see why you’d freak out if your kid married a Gentile, and I agree it’s not about being a bigot. But there are a lot of Jews out there who don’t even believe in God; they’re Jewish only because of the womb they came out of.
What is the difference if a Jew like I’ve described marries a Gentile, or another atheist Jew? Oh sure, under Jewish law their kids will be Jewish, but if both of their parents are atheists and they never take their kids to temple, what are the chances that their kids will grow up to become, and produce, devout Jews? Slim to none. Regardless of who they marry in this scenario, the result is pretty much the same; non-religious descendants. They might be Jewish, but in name only, which doesn’t really count since what we are going for here is religious descendants.
Now if you’re a devout Jew and your kid brings home a Gentile, yeah, I can see being upset, as I would be if my daughter brought home a non-Christian. In the end, though, they are still our kids. It’s okay to be upset about it, but is NOT okay to treat their spouse like dirt and disown your child.
God doesn’t disown us the second we do something He doesn’t like.
I don’t believe it will happen in every single case. I believe it will happen in the majority. I’ll go cite hunting in a bit. The same could indeed be said of any interfaith marriage. While I would be saddened by the assimilation of the Mormons, the Bahai, etc it isn’t something I’ve seen my relatives and other Jews worry about all my life.
I care about how many Jews are in the next generation.
I’d be rather depressed about that as well.
I’ve known a few as well. But of the children of a Jew and a gentile that I’ve known, most have lost any sense of Jewish identity.
There’s a Jewish band by the name Safam (it’s Hebrew for mustache. When asked why they picked that name, they reply “It just kind of grew on us”). One of their songs is Just Another Foreigner. It tells of a tourist meeting Jews from communities around the world. The chorus includes the line “But, these strangers are my brothers.”. My family wouldn’t care if I married a woman from Argentina, Ireland, Japan, France, etc so long as she was Jewish. If I were to marry a Ukrainian or German woman who wasn’t Jewish, my family would not accept her even though my mother’s side of the family is Ukrainian and dad’s side is German.
In conversation with a good friend of mine who happens to be Orthodox, and holds a degree in Jewish Studies: “If a woman has a halachic conversion (halacha is the body of Jewish law), then she is Jewish. It is against Jewish law to treat her any differently than a born-Jew. It is forbidden ever to remind her of her prior status as a non-Jew. If the mother believes otherwise, she is acting contrary to halacha.”
Also, it brought up a question for you, Doc. Do you believe that a female converted Jew should not marry a male born-Jew?
Maimonides and Zev Steinhardt have already weighed in on the issue of the status of a person who converts to Judaism. Short version-A convert is every bit as much a Jew as somebody who was born Jewish. The only issue with conversion is if a rabbi believes the person wants to convert only to satisfy their fiance’s family. Most rabbis will not convert somebody who wants to do it only so they can marry a Jew. However, if the rabbi is convinced that study of their fiance’s religion and culture has led to a sincere desire to be Jewish, they will begin the long and dificult conversion process. After that, the person is Jewish. Should they marry another Jew, my only response would be “Mazel tov!”
Well, of the children of a Jew and a gentile that I’ve known, most maintain their Jewish identity.
I also know children of observant Jews who have little trace of this Jewish identity.
I’d like to see those cites. Please also provide information about how many children of two Jews maintain this Jewish identity, for the sake of comparison.
Agreed 100%, though I would add a caution that just because someone found out about Judaism through a romantic relationship does not necessarily imply that they are converting to please their SO’s family. If I had not dated Mr Neville, I might never have considered the idea of becoming Jewish, but after I learned more about it, I found that it was the right faith for me. I would have converted even if I hadn’t married Mr Neville. My point is, I believe it is possible to come to a sincere desire to be Jewish even if your initial interest in Judaism comes from having a Jewish SO.
But I don’t think the right way to preserve Jewish culture is to let your kids grow up not practicing any Judaism, and then to scream and holler at them and the gentiles they end up dating. Jewish culture is not and never should be just a matter of “thou shalt not marry non-Jews”. Keeping non-practicing Jewish men from marrying gentile women is not, IMO, sufficient to preserve it, even if it means the kids would be technically Jewish.
Oh boy, what a thread. I suppose I’ll start from the bottom and work my way up…
Firstly, the primary ground rule. The reason Jews (at least Orthodox Jews) don’t intermarry is primarily the same reason that we keep kosher, don’t wear sha’atnez (wool-linen mixtures) and fast on Yom Kippur; because God said so. That is the primary reason that comes before all others. As with any of the other 610 commandments, one is certainly entitled to try to find reasons for them, but when it comes down to brass tax, there is simply one reason we do them: because we believe that we were commanded to by the Almighty.
That being said, while many non-Orthodox Jews will no longer keep the Sabbath, will no longer keep kosher and will no longer practice many of the other rituals and rites of the religion, they still adamantly oppose intermarriage to the core of their beings. There are probably several reasons for this, including the collective memories of forced conversions and the fact that in most cases, within a generation of two of an intermarriage, none of the descendants of the intermarried will be Jewish any more.
To relate a personal experience: I have a cousin who married a non-Jew, the first of our generation and the first descendant of my mother’s parents to do so. We saw it coming of course; he had been dating her for a long while. For me, personally, it was agonizing; especially because the woman he married was a warm, caring, likeable person. I am not the confrontational type - I sometimes tend to take the “stick my head in the sand and pretend the problem isn’t there” route. Of course they knew that we would not be attending the wedding - that went without saying (attending the wedding of a Jew to a non-Jew is forbidden under Jewish law), but I simply kept my mouth shut - choosing not to say anything (having been brought up on the premise of “If you can’t [or won’t] say something nice, then don’t say anything at all”). After all, my feelings on the matter were well known within the family without my having to say a word; despite the fact that I never snubbed her or treated her unfriendly in any way. Eventually, it came back to haunt me. Shortly before the wedding, I got a call from my aunt (my cousin’s mother), wondering why I never called to wish the couple “Mazel Tov.” I told my aunt my feelings on the matter (which she well knew) and that I didn’t feel - for religious reasons - that this was an occassion that I should be celebrating. She continued to press the issue and insisted that I contact them. I, being stupid and having no backbone, eventually gave in and agreed to contact the couple. I ended up writing a heartfelt letter explaining my position to them. I explained the religious exception that I had, and that I would not have even written the letter or said anything had I not been “forced” into doing so. I apologized to the bride for hurting her feelings since she was really an innocent bystander in this. I wished them well and told them that I certainly didn’t want any harm to come to them. I certainly didn’t intend to hurt them in any way; but that’s the way it came off. In short, it caused a brew-ha-ha in the family for a while, but the rifts have pretty much healed since then. Since we’re not (on the whole) a screaming-and-yelling family, there never were any heated words spoken in this whole affair - there were simply words.
To this day, I’m certain that I did not handle that as well as I should have. What I should have done was simply tell my aunt no and kept my big mouth (or pen) shut. Sure, there might have still been some hurt feelings, but there was simply no other way around it. I was being asked to accept something that was anathema to me - this upcoming marriage. My aunt was hoping that I would simply ignore all my beliefs and put aside my core feelings in the phone call I was to make and, to my discredit, I should have made clear to her that that was what was going to happen. But I didn’t, so I suppose my letter caught my cousin and his wife by surprise.
That being said, there is one thing that we, as Jews, have learned over the millenia - that there are people who want to wipe us out. It doesn’t make a difference if they are Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, Christian Crusaders, Inquisitors, Maurauders, Nazis or anyone else. As a result, Jewish survival is rated very high on our list of “to dos.” In fact, when faced with death as the alternative, just about all the Jewish laws go out the window (so to speak) so that Jews and Judaism can survive.
As I said earlier, when a couple intermarries, it is not all that long before their descendants either cease to be Jewish or cease identifying as Jews. Those people are lost to the Jewish nation. Intermarriage rates are very high around the globe and this poses a real threat to the Jewish population worldwide. An excellent case for this is brought by Alan Dershowitz in this book “The Vanishing American Jew.” Although Dershowitz is speaking from a secular point of view (he is not religious at all), he expresses concerns about the Jewish ethnicity and culture disappearing from the United States (and the world at large). He is all the more concerned about it because his son ended up marrying a non-Jew who has no intention of converting to Judaism.
I understand your concerns Guinastasia. I cringe whenever I read or hear of someone saying that blacks and whites shouldn’t marry because people should only marry “their own kind” and “keep the races pure.” That kind of talk repulses me; but then I am forced to consider my own opinions regarding Judaism. WRT Judaism, however, the case is different, I believe, for several reasons. Firstly, someone can convert to Judaism if there is a real bona-fide reason to do so. It’s not a lifetime bar as race would be to some people. Secondly, we’re not opposed to all interfaith marriages, only those between Jews and non-Jews. If a Christian wants to marry a Buddhist, fine by me, all the more power to them. Another factor to consider is the purpose of marriage in Judaism. One of the purposes of marriage in Judaism is to set up a Jewish home where Jewish values are cherished and revered and where Jewish customs, rituals and laws are observed. It is the basic unit within the Jewish community. One cannot effectively do this when one marries a non-Jew. One cannot have a Jewish household which awaits the messiah and yet have a part of it that celebrates the birth of such a messiah every winter. One cannot have an authentic Jewish household where one part of the home prays and asks for forgiveness for our sins on Yom Kippur and the other half celebrates the resurrection of the messiah who died for the forgiveness of people’s sins. Such a household cannot be an authentic Jewish household and as such, defeats the purpose of marriage within Judaism.
We’re not a bunch of racists or raving Gentilephobes. We’re simply people who have core beliefs and when asked to put aside those beliefs to make others feel better simply cannot do so.
To answer some points brought up:
Generally there is no bar to marriage between a convert (of either sex) or someone born a Jew. The only exception is that a Kohen cannot marry a female convert.
We’re not talking about “a few happily married couples.” We’re talking about intermarriage rates that are over 50-60% in some countries. If those numbers keep up, we’ll see a large decline in the Jewish population a s a whole and the Reform and Conservative Jewish populations especially. A study was done in the early 1990s about Jewish intermarriage. Dershowitz quotes this study in his book. The study projected what would happen to 100 Jews of each major denomination after four generations – how many Jewish great-grandchildren there would be from the original 100 Jews. The results were staggering. Of the 100 Reform Jews, only 13 would remain Jewish after four generations. Only 5 of the original 100 unaffiliated Jews would still be Jewish. The rest? They’d be lost to the Jewish nation as a whole.
Dershowitz notes that the Orthodox (with their low intermarriage rate and high birthrate) do increase in numbers over the generations. But, he says, that will simply result in the Jews in the United States (the area of focus in his book) becoming a small insular Orthodox community - much like the Amish today, but the vast majority of Jews simply disappearing.
If it were only “a few happily married couples” it wouldn’t be so big a deal. But it’s far more than that.
I’ve posted this before elsewhere on these boards, but it bears repeating here. The main measure of success that I will use in my life is not how much money I made, how well I perform in my career, how well I lived, how many houses I owned or even whether or not people liked me. The main measure of success for me, is that my children grow up to be good people and Torah-observant Jews. That’s my main goal in life. If I fail in that, then it really doesn’t make a difference what else I do in my life… I will have failed in my primary goal. If I succeed there, then anything else is simply gravy.
I certainly have to live MY life as a good Jew, but if I don’t properly transmit those values to my children and my children’s children, then my success as a Jew is incomplete, since the transmission of our beliefs and values to our children is a vital part of being a good Jew.
I don’t know of anyone who does this. I certainly don’t condone it.
As for Antigen, I’m afraid I don’t really have an answer to your dilema. Your sister should not have been treated the way she was. But hopefully, we’ve at least been able to make you see where her boyfriend’s mother is coming from. It would be best if you advised your sister not to expect her blessing and to simply avoid her potential mother in law whenever possible. It’s a far from ideal solution, but there really isn’t an ideal solution at all.
I agree completely. By age three, my niece new that when it was time for shabbat, she and mommy would light candles and say prayers. She’s got a stuffed dreidel in her room. We’ve been singing her lullabies in Yiddish and Hebrew since she was born. Besides the usual books, she has plenty of childrens books about Jewish holidays. She calls her grandparents bubbt and zayde. She absolutely loves gefilte fish.
I believe the proper way to preserve Judaism is by gently ensuring kids have a Jewish identity.
Cowgirl A site may take me a while as I am having computer problems. This is not an attempt to backpedal or dodge the question. Anybody who reads my Live Journal has seen entries on my computer troubles and thinly-veiled descriptions of them.
Amen! There are far too many Jews who, having grown up in a religious or semi-religious household, have inherited their culture and some degree of importance of Judaism in their lives from their parents. But then when they grow up, they turn around and don’t practice Judaism in thier homes, don’t show up in a synagouge except for Bar Mitzvahs, Rosh Hashannah (if that) and Yom Kippur, don’t reinforce their beliefs with Jewish education; and expect their children to somehow (through osmosis?) have the same commitment to marrying Jews that they had. Did Antigen’s boyfriend’s mother ever express concerns the first time he dated a non-Jew? Did she ever sit him down and explain to him how important it is to marry a Jew? Did she practice any of the rituals of Judaism with her son on a regular basis? Did she provide him with any form of a Jewish education beyond Bar Mitzvah lessons (if that?)? If not, how did she expect him to hold the value of marrying Jewish that she did? What positive steps did she take to reinforce his feelings for Judaism and his commitment to raise a Jewish household?
(And that’s not to say that that’s the only cause for Jewish intermarriage. As it turns out my cousin’s family was very active in their Reform Temple and participated in Jewish causes. But it is a major factor IMHO.)
Zev Steinhardt, thank you, I think I understand better. I still don’t agree with it, or think it’s right, but I can understand and accept the belief.* (And yes, I definitely agree that it’s sad to see a culture that is dwindling and often under attack)
The mother in law-to be’s behavior is still disgusting, and in the end, she needs to realize that her son is going to have to make his own choices. She can do all she can to try and raise her son as a Jew, and to try and ensure that her grandchildren will be Jewish.
BUT…if her son does choose otherwise, it’s ultimately his choice. If, ultimately, he decides something else, she will have to accept that.
*This is not an attack on Judaism-there are a lot of religions that I don’t always like certain customs. Like I always say-if I agreed with everything in a religion, I’d be in that religion. Thus, that is why I simply consider myself a theist and that’s it.
Agreed on both counts. One thing that I hope you took from my story above is that even when one is faced with a situation that they think is wrong on moral, religious, political or whatever grounds, that when one protests it or makes a statement about it, it should be done with the utmost care for feelings and should be done in as pleasant and peaceful a way as possible. There is really no reason to be rude, vulgar, obnoxious or unpleasant.
True. But that doesn’t mean that she has to accept it peacefully. But her behavior should conform to what I posted above.
If that was the goal of Antigen’s sister’s boyfriend’s mother, she failed in it a long time ago. In the OP, Antigen described both her sister and her boyfriend as “not particularly religious”. That, to me, says that the boyfriend isn’t living a very Jewish life or likely to raise his kids Jewish in any meaningful way, regardless of who he marries.
I don’t see making a public scene at synagogue as being something that would give anyone a more positive view of Judaism as a way of life. It’s more likely to further alienate the boyfriend from Judaism. And Jewish law considers that a very serious sin:
“Unethical and unkind people who pretend to be religious commit the sin of khillul ha-Shem, the desecration of G-d’s name. The consequent alienation from religion of people who might otherwise become or remain religious is underscored in the Talmud: “…If someone studies Bible and Mishnah [the Oral Law] … but is dishonest in business and discourteous in his relations with people, what do people say of him? ‘Woe unto him who studies the Torah … This man studied the Torah; look how corrupt are his deeds, how ugly his ways’” (Yoma 86a)” (The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism by Prager and Telushkin)
The Jewish lack of tolerance (for fear of the religion dying out) for Jews marrying outside of their faith is no different from other religious groups eg exclusive brethren who excommunicate their children if they do this.
Given the ‘global village’ phenomena, especially marked in the US, it is unlikely that a large number ethnic/cultural groups will survive and thrive within the next 200 years or so. Something like 5 languages die out every week and we know that language and culture cannot be separated.
There is little we can do to stop this, unless you live in an exclusive community with no outside contact - and even this doesn’t always stop people from leaving eg Amish.
Fair enough, Zev. It makes perfect sense to me.
I guess I just find the notion that a parent would actually consider their child dead, going so far as to put up a tombstone for them, if they married outside the faith, as just heinous. To me, it’s really no better than fundamentalist Christians who disown their children for being gay, or try to put them in “conversion therapy”. I think THAT’S what threw me, and that’s what I was reacting to.
As for culture dying out, I don’t think they die out so much as evolve. Since the Romans and Vikings were brought up, one should keep in mind that both, the Romans especially, usually appropriated THEIR culture from others. Most of the Roman gods were Greek gods with different names, or some gods from Celts, or people from the middle east. So it’s not like they were very unique or different from the start. Change is inevitable, like I said.
Either way, it’s really sad that this woman may end up driving her son even further away from his own culture, like you said.
Antigen, over 50 years ago my parents faced the exact same dilemna. Nice Jewish boy going out with nice Catholic girl.
Not that either was particularly religious - a long-standing family joke is that dad only go through his bar mitzvah because his brother held up phonetic cue-cards for him. Except it wasn’t a joke to them, as they were orthodox. Mom… well, the excommunication wasn’t official.
When they married it wasn’t just a prayer for the dead and a torn garment - dad’s family sat shiva on him, dragged a coffin into the parlor, the whole nine yards (so, zev, yes, it does happen).
Mom’s family was convinced she’d be divorced with a bastard child within a year or two, because “those people” practiced divorce. (yes, I know it doesn’t make sense - apparently the fact the marriage wasn’t in a Catholic church would make the children bastard in their eyes)
By the way - mom DID convert, sent the kids to temple, etc. (all the Hebrew and Yiddish I’ve ever learned I learned from my formally Catholic mother) Never did any good. Dad’s family still insisted mom wasn’t Jewish and we weren’t Jewish and never could be and never would be. Meanwhile, the Gentile relatives kept insisting we were Jewish. As a child, it was all quite confusing.
Mind you - my actual relationship with grandma was quite warm. Despite holding a funeral for her son on his wedding day, she kept in contact with us and it wasn’t until I was in my teens that I knew about all this, or how much hatred my mother and grandmother had for each other. I will say this for them - they never let their loathing for each other spill onto us kids. I can’t recall either ever saying a bad word to me about the other, or interfering with our relationship with the other. But then, both were highly unsual women.
Anyhow - my eldest sister considered herself Jewish, and the older she got the more involved she became in the community. Maybe if other Jews in the area had been more accepting of my mother’s conversion and of us “halfbreeds” we would have followed… but they weren’t, and made it painfully clear that we weren’t Jewish in their eyes, and never could be no matter what we did. So, in an effort to keep their faith as they thought they should they drove all of us away. No, I don’t understand… but I’ve been around long enough to know that not everything people do has a rational explanation.
Then, to save their marriage, my parents moved away from both families. To this day I refuse to live close to my relatives because that pushing away still goes on - to the Gentiles we’re Jewish and will always be Jewish, even if we converted to Catholicism, and to the Jews we’re Gentiles and always will be, despite being born to a woman who converted under an Orthodox Rabbi, and even if we went through the conversion process ourselves (which we shouldn’t have to, from all that I’ve read and heard).
I still can not understand all this on a emotional level.
On the other hand, I was raised in a very warm and loving family. My parents are still madly in love, and if all goes well will celebrate their 50th anniversary this year.
And the really puzzling thing to me (not that I would change it one bit) is that virtually every other Jew I’ve ever met or dealt with has been very warm and welcoming and understanding.
So it’s all very complicated, involving faith and emotions and history. Antigen, your sister and her boyfriend could have as wonderful and loving a marriage as my parents have had - and they feel their marriage and family has been worth the pain becauseof the joy they’ve had. But yes, there WILL be complications and they will not end (at grandma’s funeral Cousin Marsha pulled a “The goyim shouldn’t be here!” fit and I’ll give the rabbi credit - he told her to shut up and sit down or leave). Jews are pretty much like everybody else in most ways, and many do not have a complete understanding of all their religous laws, and some are ruled by emotion and prejudice.
So I don’t really have an answer, just my own personal experience. What happens is really up to your sister and her potential husband.
IANJ but if I was, and my parents were upset that I was marrying a gentile for the reasons eloquently stated above, my thoughts would be
“So you’d rather I be Jewish than be happy, huh?”
This would not please me, and would cause a major rift with my (hypothetical) parents. (My actual parents are not Jewish, and would be thrilled with anyone I chose to marry, provided he made me happy. Which is good, because they wouldn’t have any choice in the matter anyway. Perhaps if I was raised in a religious Jewish family, my thoughts would be different.)
Same goes for those who say their life would be wasted if their decendents weren’t Jewish. What if they were good, happy, well-adjusted, loving people? Unimportant?
For those of you who are arguing against intermarriage, I have a hypothetical (extreme, for the purposes of discussion only) :
Imagine that your beloved son had two choices for a wife. One was Jewish, and also selfish, thoughtless, abusive to your son, etc. The other was not Jewish but as sweet as can be.
Would you really prefer that he choose the former?