Let’s stick to the topic please. We’ve had countless threads about Israel. You can start another one or add this to any of those.
People who are religious care about it. Some of them anyway.
It takes more than being a good person and having a good heart to maintain a marriage. If religion is important to one person and not the other it can cause conflict down the road. What kind of religious upbringing do you give any kids? It’s easy enough to say both but that’s not necessarily satisfactory to all parties.
I’m an atheist and I don’t think I’d ever marry someone who was a devout follower of any religion. Not because I think I’m better than them but because I don’t think we’d be compatible in the long run. Love is not enough.
Odesio
Edit: On another note I have seen other people’s marriages negatively affected by the poor relationship between a spouse and the in-laws. It’s just one more area of stress that people might want to avoid.
It’s not racism.
If someone says, “I’m Jewish, and wish to marry only a Jew,” then they’re open to marrying an age-and-sex-appropriate version of Jackie Mason or Sammy Davis Jr. – by which I mean that Jews are found in many different shades of skin color and national origin. A desire simply to marry a Jew is not remotely racist.
It might be bigotry, which is a broader term that encompasses religious prejudice as well as racial prejudice, but I don’t agree that’s a useful description either.
Others have spoken of the desire to maintain a cultural and religious identity. But there’s more than that: from a religious standpoint, for an Orthodox Jew, there is no such thing as a marriage to a non-Jew. In the same way that this observant Jew is bound to observe kasruth laws concerning food, they are bound to observe this definition of marriage. An Observant Jew is not bigoted (or racist!) if he refuses to drink a glass of wine that’s been poured by a Gentile. He’s observing the law against drinking stam yaynom, grape wine that was made without the supervision of a rabbi, or wine which may be yayin nesach, intended to be used for idolatrous purposes.
There’s nothing bigoted about it.
This is silly. To start with, ‘white culture’ is hopelessly broad and amorphous. A white man from Moscow doesn’t necessarily share all that much other than the color of his skin with a white woman from San Fransisco.
Further, beyond the fact of your false equivalence, there’s nothing inherently bigoted in a parent saying, for example “we believe Christianity is a very important part of a person’s life, and we want you to marry another Christian and raise your children as Christians too.” Preference for in-group dynamics doesn’t necessarily mean scorn for out-group members. Hell, if there’s a guy who’s attracted to redheads with green eyes, we can’t logically conclude that he’s “bigoted” against brunettes.
Often immigrant/minority communities want their children to marry within the same cultural group because they want to see their culture preserved and passed on, or they view it as beneficial to have similar life-experiences and a shared cultural outlook, or what have you. This isn’t the same thing, at all, as someone who thinks that there should be no “racial mixing” and whites should only stay with whites.
This isn’t off topic at all, and demonstrates the selection-bias inherent in the OP’s argument. Someone who, for instance, strongly believed in school prayer, the death penalty and wanted to make abortion illegal would most likely not be a good match with someone who wanted all religion out of the governmental sphere, thought the death penalty was barbaric and thought that abortion was a basic medical/human right. And we wouldn’t really bat our eyes at that.
It’s also something that you don’t generally read because of how obvious such incompatibility is. Significant philosophical divergences are often enough to sink a relationship. Someone who, for instance, thinks that women belong in the home won’t find a good relationship with a dedicated career-oriented woman, but you don’t see many women with profiles on online dating sites that say “partners must be okay with me working”, either.
Does this kid get a free pass at ignorance for thinking Jews are a race?
ETA: some may read the above and think that the entire faith is bigoted, that these rules mean that Jews think themselves better than other faiths. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As long as a person is a “good person” ( by which I mean that all men are bound to obey the seven Noahide laws) he stands as high befoe G-d as the Chief Rabbi of Isreal, in Jewish thinking. Jews are bound to obey these extra laws because of the covenant they have with G-d – it’s an extra burden that they have assumed as a tribe
Eh… Jews have been a ‘nation’ for much longer than the categories of race or ethnicity existed. It’s hard to categorize Jews, especially since you can convert into the group, something you can’t really do with many other races (but was probably the case with certain Native American tribal groups, kinda). It’s also the case that someone can be culturally/ethnically Jewish while being an non-observant atheist. It isn’t necessarily incorrect to view Jews as a racial grouping.
Minority cultures are under pressure to assilimate that majority cultures are not. The two are not comparable.
Well that does it for me then, one conversation is all it takes to say Jews are racist.
Unless maybe she said “I won’t marry jew no matta wot”.
I guess if you subscribe to that sort of mad science.
Enough drops makes you good enough for Hitler and all that.
Disclaimer: Would not marry a non-Jew.
It’s not mad science. In fact it far predates the modern scientific method entirely. Jews have looked upon ourselves as a people, a nation, a group, a whatever, for millennia. That we don’t really fit into modern socially constructed and socially mediated ethnic/racial classifications is somewhat to be expected, since our definition predates the first glimmer of those categories themselves by thousands of years.
Now that’s also not fair. The issue of “who is a Jew?” is one that’s discussed and argued over within the Jewish community itself. When I was in high school I participated in a weekly program at HUC in Manhattan, and I can tell you that the issue was one that was debates among the teens who were part of the program, with the Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Orthodox guest speakers, etc…
Just because there’s a concept of “the Jewish people” doesn’t mean that we should have any truck with Hitler’s view that one grandparent made you a Jew.
Heh, my mother - a Jew - married a non-Jew, and I - also a Jew - did as well. :eek:
The notion that Jews wanting to marry other Jews (a) unusual for an ethnic grouping, (b) is an attitude more prevelent with Jews than in other ethnic groupings, or © “racist” or “bigoted” is, of course, silly in the extreme.
Particularly when the OP bases it on once case of being rejected - it just sounds like sour grapes and confirmation bias. ‘Blacks are more likely to be violent criminals - I know this because a Black man mugged me’.
To add some flame to the “race or not” debate, arent’t there specific genetic markers for Ashkenazi Jews, at least?
My mother-in-law, a nice lady for the most part, intelligent and fairly quick on the uptake on most subjects, has a deeply held and in most cases invisible racism within her. I was totally unaware of it (she has black friends, socializes with all kind of folks with no problem) until the discussion of a cousin of her husband came up. The girl in question dates black men almost exclusively, and has a mixed child. Mother-in-law states that “that sort of thing shouldn’t be allowed”, and that it is wrong.
I was blown away. That is racism, pure and simple.
That being said, I have a hard time agreeing that someone saying that a woman having a half non-Jewish child is somehow wrong isn’t racism. It is. Clearly, and by any normal standard we would use.
And yet, for some reason it’s something I think we would tend to blow off, as so many are doing here. It’s an interesting thing, from a sociological viewpoint.
I personally wouldn’t care, and I have no problem with any sort of racial/cultural mixing, of any sort. I have a daughter, and I could care less if she dates black guys, brown guys, Jewish guys or Black Mass Satanists, as long as she is happy and treated well.
I completely agree that there is such a thing as a Jewish people. 100%. I’m part of that group. So is Woody Allen.
If this thread were about Jewish ethnocentricity, then that would be different.
It isn’t. It labels Jews as a race - a label that I’m oppposed to.
The example demonstrates the difference. Jews by and large do not think that having a ‘half Jewish baby’ is wrong, because there is no such category. You are either Jewish (100%) or non-Jewish (also 100%). Jews wish their descendents to also be Jews. Every culture in the whole world pretty well does this.
When I was born, most Jews believed that your Jewish-ness descended matrilinially. Thus, if your mom is Jewish, you are Jewish (I fell into this category - my mom is Jewish but my dad is not).
Nowadays, many non-Orthodox Jews think Jewish-ness can descend either matrilinially or patrilinially - it’s a mater of parental choice.
The point here is what is important is whether the kids are raised “as Jews”. In the olden days, this was tied to sex of the mom, but by and large for the non-Orthodox, it is now a matter of choice.
It is no more “racism” than Catholic persons wishing their grandkids were also raised Catholic. It is wanting your (grand)kids to have something (religion, culture) that you have. Nothing “racist” about it - to equate the two is to misuse the term.
You mean this? Y-chromosomal Aaron - Wikipedia
That’s political, though. I’m talking about basic bigotry and prejudice on an everyday, personal level. I am not Jewish, but have fairly close ties in the local Jewish community, and I hear bigoted comments in their direction all the time. I also live in a mixed-race community, and I find political correctness in language is far more inhibiting on the way people talk about other minorities than it is on the way people talk about Jews. It’s like because people have a perception that Jews are successful, it’s all right to talk smack about them.
No, it isn’t. Not by any normal standard we ever use, and certainly not “clearly” so. Racism is the belief that there are (generally negative) defining characteristics of any ‘race’ and/or mistreating someone because of their race.
It’s not any more an instance of “racism” for someone to want their child raised in their culture/religion than it’s “bigotry” for health-nut parents to want their children to be raised eating right and exercising.
Because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with in-group selection of partners for mating and child rearing, and it’s distinctly different from racism. That’s why a man who loves intellectual endeavor and wants to marry an intelligent woman and teach their children to love learning is also not a “bigot”. Just like Christians/Muslims/Zoroastrians who believe that their religion is important and want to marry a spouse who shares their religious convictions, and raise their children in a religious household, are not “bigots”. Just like someone who enjoys their ethnic culture and wants to marry someone else from it is not a “racist”.
The endogamous attitude mentioned in the OP is more religious bigotry than “racial,” but it’s still bigotry. Of course it is. How is it not? I don’t know that it’s more prevalent among Jews than among other religions. Christians and Muslims do it at least as often (how many “Christian singles” dating services are there?), but I would argue that an a priori declaration that people outside of one’s religious group are automatically unsuitable for marriage certainly is bigoted.
I realize we’re getting to a semantic level here, but is deciding you want to marry someone who shares a cultural trait with you the same as declaring that others are ‘unsuitable for marriage?’