why do jews get a pass when it comes to racism?

Great Debates
1

Many jews will only marry other jews. Or, if you are willing to convert, a jew might marry the party that converts (assuming it is ok with the jewish family, jewish person in the relationship, or whoever is putting pressure on the jew to not marry a non-jew).

I have had some personal experience with this. I met a woman who was jewish (did not know it at the time, and if I did, I honestly would not have cared.) After the standard flirting period, a few lunches and clear signals given off by both parties, I asked her out. Her response? She would love to go out, but she must be honest with me and let me know it will never lead anywhere, because her father (she mentioned him specifically, I don’t know if this is the standard procedure in jewish families).

I looked at her totally bewildered. I think my answer was along the lines of “seriously? Who cares about that”?

Apparently a LOT of jews do, not just my friends parent(s). So, we got into quite a long discussion about this, since religion has never mattered to me one way or the other. If you are a good person, and have a good heart, that’s all I really care about. What it boiled down to is this. In her family, she claimed that it’s traditional for a jew to marry another jew. This boiled down to “cultural differences”, but that’s just code for non-jew.

If I, for example, would say I wouldn’t marry a black girl because my family is white, and when pressed said the reason is nothing more than cultural differences, I would be called a racist. And rightly so.

I do know some jews married to non-jews, but that is the exception. Most friends of mine that weren’t jewish before the wedding converted, much to the irritation of their own families. The jewish family basically says, “you aren’t good enough to marry me unless you are a jew.” Well, that’s just plain old racism if you ask me.

In the two marriages I can think of where no conversion has taken place, I believe they celebrate both religious traditions. But in no instance to I know of a jew converting to another religion.

So can jewish dopers help me out here? Why no major backlash? (In truth, I’ve seen no backlash). Please let’s not get into a debate about this not being a racial issue because jews are not a race. For this debate, Yes they are! Most jews I know are not very religious, either, making this excuse doubly frustrating and annoying.

If I love you in every way but won’t marry you because you aren’t of the same religion, color, or whatever, doesn’t that make me an elitist and a racist by definition?

2

Marrying outside the race/faith is a hot button in most families, not just Jewish ones. I don’t consider it “racism” unless it’s “I won’t do business with…” or “I wouldn’t rent an apartment to…” “I wouldn’t marry a…” is pretty much within anyone’s purview and they don’t need anybody’s permission to draw the line wherever they want.

3

That’s not even close to being racism, and your gloss of “you aren’t good enough to marry me unless you are a jew. [sic]” is weird.

Edit: Although, to be fair, not nearly as weird as your blanket contention that “Jews get a pass when it comes to racism.”

4

Another thing to consider is that when Jews marry gentiles, their children tend to choose the flashier, less-demanding lifestyle for themselves in terms of religion and lifestyle. “What Hitler failed at with the Holocaust, America succeeded at with intermarriage” is how I heard it.

5

How many Amish people do you imagine marry outside their religion? Is that racist?

6

Who are “jews”?

Are they like “Jews”?

7

The ones that do are forever out of the Amish way of life. They are kicked out, never to return. I’m not even sure what the Amish are in terms of religion, but if they wouldn’t accept someone in their world because they weren’t amish, same thing.

8

The topic for debate is even weirder when you consider the numbers of Jews who do marry gentiles. Roughly 50% at upper estimates, and still significant at lower estimates.

Not that the whole ‘A Jewish girl didn’t want to go out with me because I’m not Jewish, that elitist racist!’ isn’t interesting.

9

I think everyone has the right to marry whoever they want. And that includes the same sex folks that get so much flack.

And I agree that this is a hot topic in some families. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t meet the definition of racism, does it?

Or doesn’t this meet any definition of racism? How is this different than some white family (or black family) having disparaging remarks about another person’s color “due to cultural differences.”

If you ever catch a History Channel show on integration in the south or a KKK rally, they talk about a mixing of the races (both white and black) resulting in the destruction of both white and black culture. A mongrel race would be the result.

Now that sounds racist to my ears. To say the same thing about religion (leave out the mongrel rhetoric) seems just as wrong to me.

10

Finn, you are not going to bait me. That conversation actually happened in my life, and I don’t need to explain myself to you. You are the only one who has answered this with some ulterior motive assumed. Everyone else is actually trying to give a thought out answer. So, unless you care to discuss this reasonably (which I highly doubt, knowing your history), I am not going to take your posts seriously.

I find it hard to believe you speak for all jews. Or any jews, for that matter.

11

No.

Because “I want to marry someone who comes from the same culture as I do and/or who will support raising our children in the same cultural/religious tradition as I would like” is not the same thing as “Dem darkies is bad.” No, not even if a Jewish girl won’t date you. Then again, if being with her was really that important to you, you could always convert and agree to raise any potential children as Jews.

Does it make sense to you to claim that people are being “racists” and they will allow you to convert to their “race” and then everything is nifty? (or NFTY, if you prefer and you get the joke).

12

Jews “convert” all the time, not necessarily ***to ***a different religion, but ***from ***Judaism. I was raised Jewish, and at a certain point, decided that I no longer believed in Judaism. I didn’t “convert” to another religion, I had just developed a personal belief system that could not be considered “Jewish.” So you may not know any Jew actually converting to another religion, but you may know plenty who are no longer Jewish (in the religious sense). It happens every day.

And by the way, this practice of demanding that one’s son or daughter marry within the faith often extends into same-sex couplings as well.

13

Prior to WW-II few Jews had the option of inter-marrying, regardless what individuals or the group on average may have thought of the idea. When a cultural tradition gets forced on a group like that, I give them a pass on sustaining the tradition even when much of the bias that created it has abated.

I’ve been reading a bunch of books by this guy. Really interesting fiction based on the politics and strategy of WW-1. But holy cow, the casualness of the antisemitism is even more shocking than the deliberate stuff you’d find on stormfront.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search.html/?default_prefix=author_id&sort_order=downloads&query=594

Hitler took blaming the Jews to new extremes, but they were just the easiest target, as few viewed them in a positive light in 1930.

14

Well, even if we ignore the weird ‘Jews get a pass when it comes to racism’ and the argument about how a Jewish girl doesn’t want to marry the OP unless he’s also Jewish, so she’s an elitist racist… we’re not looking at anything all that noteworthy here. Numerous groups have an in-group dynamic where members show a predilection, especially in matters of courtship and procreation. This is even more foreseeable in a population that’s an extreme minority and that values its cultural heritage and can shrink rapidly if its children aren’t brought up in the group’s culture.

That people show a preference in terms of who they marry is… underwhelming.

“I believe that a love of learning is essential in a personal and societal context, so I would not marry someone who was not committed to expanding their intellectual horizons and would not raise our children with a love of learning.”
“I believe that the Christian faith is essential in a personal and societal context, so I would not marry someone who was not a committed Christian and who would raise our children as Christians.”
“I believe that political viewpoint X is important, and I could not imagine marrying someone and having children with them if they did not share my outlook.”
“I believe that X is good and desirable in any potential mate for me, and I would want it to be inculcated in my children.”

It’s really not complicated.

15

It’s no more or less bigoted than when any other religious or ethnic group does it, which is often. If you give the people who do it a pass, then that is up to you, but I certainly would not. I know hundreds, if not thousands of Jews, and the responses to this situation differ a great deal. Many would be fine with it, some would raise their eyebrows or say something once. There might be a few who would cause a problem if their children wanted to marry outside, but they sure as heck don’t say anything about it around me. Suggesting that all or even many Jews (at least in the US) are bigoted this way isn’t supported by the evidence.

16

You can’t use the word “bigoted” to mean whatever you want it to.
Choosing a mate who has a similar culture/philosophy/religion/political outlook/love of Star Trek to you, and wanting your children to be brought up in the same tradition has nothing to do with bigotry.
Bigotry does not mean having a preference of what type of person you want to spend your life with or how you believe your children should be raised.

And absent any other information, simply showing in-group tendencies does nothing, at all, to support a charge of bigotry. In point of fact, absent supporting information, it makes such a charge look casually spurious.

17

I’m a Jewish woman who married a Gentile, and although he eventually converted (under no conscious pressure from me), I won’t lie and say it wouldn’t have been nice if he had been Jewish from the start. And I certainly wouldn’t have married him if he hadn’t been willing to come to festivals, parties, seders and some services with me. Jewish practice and socialising is a major part of my life, and I wouldn’t want to marry anyone who wasn’t interested in participating in it with me in some way. Otherwise I’d hardly ever see them. :smiley:

And FWIW I totally agree with FinnAgain in post #14. People make decisions about partners based on in-group/out-group signifiers like education, politics and hobbies all the time.

18

There are plenty of documented examples of Jewish racism, and this isn’t one of them. And they don’t get a free pass for the ones that are, even if they claim to have “marched on Selma” or something.

Also, isn’t it possible that “Daddy won’t let me marry a gentile” might be her polite way of saying “I’m really not that into you”?

19

It’s just the way things are with some (most?) minorities. Besides Jews, I believe Indians and Chinese (at least first-generation) also tend to marry within their own race/culture for fear of what the family might think, and they plainly state things like: “I will only marry an Indian”

What’s not clear is why the above behavior gets a pass, while if some German-American said “I will only marry a German” or if a Caucasian American said “I will only marry a Caucasian”, they would be viewed in a very bad light.

Maybe it’s expected that minorities have valid reasons to want to maintain their identity and minimize the dilution of their race/culture, while majorities have no such needs?

20

Ding ding ding.