OK. I agree that neither extreme can be said to be a rule. It’s perfectly possible to imagine a given Jew motivated by bigotry when he declares he won’t marry outside his religion, of course. So it certainly could be bigotry, but it doesn’t have to be.
Yes. We’re talking about parents imposing stnadrds on who their kids marry. How does this contradict me? Are you suggesting that girl was lying? Even if she was, so what? The premise for discussion still stands - is it “bigoted” to forbid your kids to marry outside of your own religious group? Of course it is. I’m amazed that anyone is trying to defend it. No one would defend it if it was a Muslim father forbidding his daughter to marry a non-Muslim.
What if he forbids his daughter to marry outside of her religion?
No, we’re not. The comment was “in her family, she claimed that it’s traditional for a jew to marry another jew.” Even if it was a parent having a preference that their grandparent be raised in their religion/culture, that still wouldn’t be “bigotry”.
And no, the Argument From Nuhn Uhnnh! does not bridge that logical gap.
Just like your “whites only” analogy doesn’t hold true since the WO country clubs don’t have a policy whereby blacks can convert to being white and then be accepted as full members of the group, and that’s ignoring that fact that preference for in-group dynamics does not necessitate scorn for out-group membership.
Seriously?
After a guy has apparently been Nice Guying a girl and asks her out, she immediately starts talking about how they can’t get married, and you think that the most likely explanation is “religious bigotry”? If she’d said “I’m going to be washing my hair that weekend” would you think she was a crazed beautician?
Yet again:
Telling your children that you’d want them to raise your grandchildren within your faith/culture is not bigoted. Especially when conversion is explicitly considered as a viable way to bridge any potential gaps.
I too, am intrigued by the OP’s deliberate decision to not capitalize this proper noun.
It’s possible I’m making it too complicated. But I don’t think this is quite the same as separate but equal.
Right. I agree the father is being controlling and I don’t have a problem calling his behavior bigotry. I suppose I’m more interested in the girl’s actions because I don’t think that’s so clear cut. Who you marry is your business.
This isn’t what we’re talking about. We’re talking about parents flat out forbidding their kids to marry outside their own religious group, not just politely expressing a preference. And demanding conversion is bigoted too.
And in the interest of fairness, FinnAgain, I am sure you know that not everyone accepts a convert as a ‘real’ Jew (or probably Christian or whatever). And Diogenes the Cynic, the father can “forbid” the marriage but can’t actually stop her from marrying a non-Jew, short of kidnapping her.
Then he’s being an observant Jew. Deuteronomy 7:3:
The girl could just be blowing a guy off, as Finn suggests, or she could be afraid of her father, and not really following her on heart, or she could be a bigot. We don’t knowfrom the information given.
I think that people who set up absolute religious standards for who they themselves will marry are, at the least, narrow-minded (and saying their partners can convert is not less bigoted. They’re still imposing a demand on what the other pesron must believe religiously). “I’d like to marry a nice Catholic boy” is one thing. “I absolutely refuse to marry anyone who is not Catholic unless they convert” is bigoted.
Not everyone Jewish or not everyone not-Jewish? Jewish people are commanded to accept (and love) converts - after the mikveh immersion they are explicitly to be “considered Jewish in all respects”.
There is quite a bit of controversy at the moment around some strands of Judaism not accepting conversions made in other strands, but there is nothing that means converts aren’t “real” Jews, as you have claimed. If someone were to convert within this woman’s strand of Judaism, whatever it was, they would be Jewish to her and her family.
Non-Jewish people saying “Oh, you’re not really Jewish then” to converts is annoying and patronising, but Jewish people can hardly be blamed for that!
Yet again, again:
Your idea that “We will accept you as one of us as long as you have a sincere desire to become one of us” is bigoted strains credulity to the point where it’s just gotten a double hernia.
That evidently isn’t what you’re talking about. The rest of us are discussing this thread. I already quoted that the OP said that what was actually at issue was that her family had a tradition of marriage within the faith. As always, the Argument From Nuhn Uhnnh! is a waste of photons.
Evidently you’ve created an elaborate strawman. Or can you quote anybody, at all, who’s said that they’d disown their children if they married outside of their faith? All we actually have is some vaguely worded claims that “her father” had something to do with it, and an explicit claim that it was a family tradition. We also have the near-certainty that the OP was getting the brush off from a girl who was telling him that she might be interested in having him as someone she played around with, but she wasn’t interested in any sort of commitment.
And as you still have only your dogmatic and erroneous assertion to support a claim that environmentalist parents who didn’t want their daughter marrying, or outright yelled at their daughter and tried to convince her not to marry a strip-miner would be “environmentalist bigots.”
Yes, the Bible expresses a lot of bigoted standards. So what? what is your point? If people defend homophobia by quoting Leviticus, does that mean they aren’t really bigots? I fail to see your point here. It’s not bigoted if it’s in the Bible?
Correct on both counts, although as a general principle an Orthodox conversion will have very wide, if not near-universal, acceptance. The issue arises when a Reform rabbi does a conversion; it may not be accepted among Conservative or Orthodox followers.
No, it’s bigotry to say we will NOT accept you as long as you don’t conform to our own personal superstitions," which is what we’re actually talking about.
No, what the OP said was that the girl claimed any relationship she had with a goyim could “never go anywhere” because of her father.
Speculating on the girl’s motives in the OP doesn’t really mean anything, since it doesn’t alter the fundamental issue of parents forbidding their children to marry outside their religious group.
Huh? I have no idea what you’re talking about here. I didn’t say anything about environmentalists or strip miners.
“Goyim” is plural - “-im” is a plural suffix in Hebrew. “A goy” or “goyim”.
Ok.
In my first post in this thread, I utterly dismissed the idea that this could be called racism, because the word doesn’t reach this conduct.
I was a bit more gentle with the notion of it being bigotry, because while I admit that the word can fit the conduct, I don’t agree it’s the most useful way to describe what’s happening.
In my opinion, when we speak of bigotry, we speak of – and imply – a pervasive animus. But that’s not what’s going on in most cases of fighting against interfaith marriages. I can easily cite statistics that show that most Jewish interfaith marriages result in less involvement in Jewish traditions for the children. When a couple says that they’ll raise children with both Christmas and Chanukkah celebrations, the underlying message is, in my opinion, “Religion is an a la carte cafeteria line; pick and choose what pleases you and go with it.” This is contrary to Jewish observant tradition (and, indeed, to Christian tradition).
A father forbidding his daughter to marry outside his faith is not necessarily motivated by a general animus against other faiths, but by the more positive quality of seeking to maintain his faith and its traditions. This is not fairly described as bigotry; it’s not a useful word to capture what’s happening.
I’m not blaming Jews for that collectively. I’m just pointing out, for the sake of accuracy, that it’s not always as simple as ‘once you convert, you’re good.’ Maybe it’s supposed to be that way, but it doesn’t always work out that way. I was thinking of a friend of mine from high school. Her mother had converted to Judaism when she married my friend’s father, but even 20 years later the father’s parents didn’t really accept the mother as Jewish.
I don’t consider restricting whom one will marry, or even date, racism. It is each person’s right to determine that for himself or herself, subject only to the willingness of the other party. Moreover, declining to marry unless one’s partner converts to one’s own faith is religious bias, not racial bias.
No, it does not. I prefer not to define racism down. Every person should be free to decline to marry or date others for whatever reason they choose. It only becomes racism when persons attempt to force their beliefs on others.