I recently made chit-chat with a Jewish woman who let it slip that she was none too pleased about this phenomenon. Just off the top of my head, there are some prominent examples of Jewish men with Asian wives or girlfriends: there’s Mark Zuckerberg who recently married his Asian girlfriend. Shia LeBeouf’s girlfriend is Asian. It’s a very actually a very common pairing.
Is there an undercurrent of displeasure (or even resentment) about this sort of thing? Are Jewish women having problems finding Jewish husbands?
There is a limited supply of eligible Jewish men in many areas. Being Jewish is part religion and part ethic group and many, even the more worldly ones, prefer to marry their own to keep the group identity intact. There is still pressure in many Jewish families for their younger members to only date and marry other Jews. I can see how competition from another group would be looked down upon in such circumstances.
I think the Jewish women are the fortunate ones however. Their kids get to be Jewish no matter who they marry. It is not automatically true for Jewish men without some extra steps.
My best friend in middle school/early high school was Jewish. I went to synagogue with her family once and there were several Asian families there. It’s possible some of these Asian women Jewish men happen to be dating are Jewish themselves (I don’t know anything about Mark Zuckerberg’s wife).
Shia’s girlfriend isn’t Asian, I also have no idea if she’s Jewish or not,
…is not always true (or, rather, it’s not true that ethnic Jew = only white people), not only in a global context, but also in the U.S., as can be attested to by the many JOCS (Jews of color–black, Asian, Hispanic, etc.), some of whom I know personally, who were “born”* Jewish (and not all–actually, not a whole lot–have at least one white, Jewish parent).
*I’ve always hated that phrase “born Jewish”. What utter bullshit. You’re *born *human; you are *raised *Jewish.
Also, this…
..is not always true. In Reconstructionist Judaism, for instance, patrilineal descent counts just as much as matrilineal descent. (I know that this isn’t the case in Orthodox Judaism, and I’m guessing that it’s not (yet) the case in Conversative Judaism. I don’t know if Reform Judaism has begun to move in this direction, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it does in the foreseeable future.)
I think the key point is that a lot of people have a Jewish identity, that they wish to perpetuate, that is ethnocultural not religious. (Most self-identified Jews I have known are very secularized, and many are explicitly atheist.)
Also, remember that ‘race’ definitions are subjective. Some people would say that no ethnic Jews are white.
I know all that but the points still stand socially speaking. There is a (mostly white) Jewish culture in the U.S. that is much a social club as a religion. Believe me, I have run up against that barrier when I have dated Jewish women. You can only get so far before they tell you they love you but their mother would not approve. I also know that someone from any racial or ethnic group can be as Jewish as long as their ancestors converted at any point in the past but that is relatively rare. It doesn’t work like Christianity or other, larger religions that have a focus on converting large numbers of people quickly.
You are black Jew? That is pretty cool and rare. I thought it was really interesting when I watched a documentary recently about Jewish people in Africa (Ethiopia) that claimed for thousands of years that they true descendants of Jewish people that fled from the middle-east and are possibly a legitimate lost tribe of Israel. People were skeptical but they had variations on all the old ceremonies and language and still do to this day. DNA evidence confirmed it. You can’t get any more Jewish than that.
Well, in the interest of fighting ignorance, multiple studies have shown that Ethiopian Jews have no genealogical ties to the rest of the world’s Jewish population and are most closely related to other Ethiopians. Wikipedia has multiple cites. Studies on other diaspora Jewish populations of the world shows those populations to be more closely related to each other than to the host population.
Whatever, though. It doesn’t mean they’re not Jewish.
There *are Asian Jews—the Bukharan Jewish community from Uzbekistan. You can’t say that people from Central Asia are not Asian. I understand there’s a considerable community of them in the New York City area. They make some great music. I used to have a recording, and they’ve played at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. They aren’t of recent Russian origin either, but have lived in Bukhara since ancient times, therefore are genuine ethnic Asians. How you like them olmalar?
There’s a Jewish community in India, too (and one in China, though that was mostly immigrant).
But if we’re restricting ourselves to America, a few years ago there were several articles about Asian-Jewish Bat Mitzvahs. Why? Because if you’ll remember that initial boom in adoption of baby girls from China, of whom a certain amount were adopted out to Jewish families, those girls were turning 13. And were attending Chinese school AND synagogue.
Family story alert: I have a cousin who married a Chinese woman (who converted to Judaism because she liked the faith). She’s an amazing lady- lovely, beautiful and extremely smart. My grandmother, since the day they got married, has not been able to refrain from saying how ‘lucky’ this woman got, snaring a wonderful Jewish husband.
Me, I think he lucked out. After all, he married a doctor.
Jewish women may not like this phenomenon, but I haven’t heard them expressing much anger about it.
The people I DO hear fuming about white males marrying Asian women are Asian males. They’re the ones who feel as if they’re being left behind. They probably wouldn’t mind Asian womens dating/marrying white guys if white women were equally willing to date/marry Asian men. But in general, that doesnt happen.