JewishGentileCouples.com

Culture change doesn’t come easily.  It is slow and almost imperceptible.  But it can be seen, especially by people who have been observing for a long time.

Manhattan, New York, has long been a fount of American Jewish culture.  I use the word “culture” to mean all the stuff we learn, especially while growing up, about how to be and do and think about what we define as “us.”  

It was art imitating life, when the January 10 episode of The Simpsons featured a Jewish-Gentile couple wedding. The storyline focused on the marriage of Krusty the Klown (aka Herschel Krustofski) and his Gentile princess bride.

Some in the American Jewish community didn’t see the humor. Perhaps it was because it just happened to air around the same time that the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia released findings from the "2009 Jewish Population Study of Greater Philadelphia." The demographic realities of that study did not give community leaders cause to smile.

The Hebrew month of Nisan begins March 16 and concludes on April 14.  In the middle of the month, at the first site of the full moon on March 30, begins the first night of Passover, or Pesach.

From generation to generation, this night is set apart to memorialize God's deliverance of our ancestors from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12:14).  Everyone who comes to the table is welcome to take part in the meal and the joyous celebration. 

Many prominent Jewish voices have cast intermarriage as one of the great threats to Jewish survival in America. One editorial cited it as one reason why "particularly young Jews – have been falling by the wayside…"¹ A study on the Jewish population of greater Philadelphia, just released in January, suggests more attention is needed to the impact of intermarriage on "a steep decline in Jewish children in the area."²