#melina.001 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

delfiore · 1 year

Text

—DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT. (1/3)

pairing: natasha romanoff x android!reader

synopsis: you are sent to gain intel on the black widow by the organization that made you. a relationship with her makes you realize the joys of being human.

word count: 1.9k

a/n: this idea has literally been in my draft for almost two years now lolz

PART II, PART III

When you were activated, you were fully aware of your mission. You gained access to the instructions in nanoseconds; find information on the mind control mechanism used by the Red Room, and retrieve concrete formulaic data.

Tony Stark rarely opened interviews for a lab assistant, but you were invited right away for your ‘excellent display of scientific knowledge and skills in the laboratory’.

You anticipated your moments to be present in the lab. You knew Stark was working on improvements for Black Widow’s electro shock weapon. You stood a little straighter, looked a little too focused on reorganizing Stark’s projects, just to conceal your interest in the woman.

When she entered the lab, you let her eyes linger on you a little, before looking up. Her eyes were greener than you had thought.

Mission Log 001

First contact made. No sign of hostility. Amicable acquaintanceship expected.

FD700-16.

You went on your first date with Natasha a couple of months after your first meeting, all the while you made sure to play your part well. She took you to a fair down by the piers, where you pretended to miss your shots when trying your luck at the shooting range, so that she could display her skills and win you a teddy bear. By the end of the night, Natasha had felt comfortable enough to hold your hand as she walked you home.

“Tonight was fun,” she laughed quietly, the way lovesick teenage girls do.

“Yeah, it was,” you sighed.

All of your research told you the Black Widow rarely showed her true self to people. Even amongst her own Avengers teammates, Hawkeye was the only one she truly trusted. And yet, she grabbed your hand gently, and leaned in to kiss your cheek, and giggled when she pulled back.

“Goodnight.” She said, her voice as soft as the night’s winds.

You watched her leave for a moment before going back inside.

Your maker entrusted you to succeed. You were reminded of it everyday by the engraving on the sole of your foot that read ‘Property of VULCAN’. And you will.

You learned that Natasha liked to used sly comments to deflect personal questions. She could be very charming when she wanted to, but also genuine. You needed to appear harmless. So you opted for brighter colors in your outfit for the date in which Natasha asked you if you wanted to be in a relationship with her.

“Would you maybe . . . wanna be my girlfriend?” There was an unusual meekness to her demeanor that you haven’t really seen since your first date, but it made you all the more fascinated with your subject, and how multi-faceted she could be. Is this what all humans are like?

How do I be more like them?

“If not you, then who?” You let her swoop you into a feverish kiss.

For a moment, you felt at ease, light, human.

Mission Log 063

Subject has made advances and suggested a romantic relationship. Relationship established.

FD700-16.

You played along being her lover, all the while sending detailed information about her back to headquarters, where your maker, a man you only knew as Caesar, would receive them.

She also told you about her sister, and her adoptive parents one day when she came back from visiting them. She said they would be thrilled to meet you. You smiled and said you’d love to come to hear all the embarrassing stories about her when she was a kid.

They served you all the wonderful Russian delicacy when you came to visit which you were grateful for, and for the fact that you were made with a sense of taste and a digestive system. Yelena defended you from her parents when Alexei and Melina kept asking you too many questions. Her family was a weird bunch, but they worked together. You almost felt like you belong.

Mission Log 078

First contact made with agents from 1992-1995 Ohio mission.

Alexei Shostakov (adoptive father)

Melina Vostokoff (adoptive mother)

Yelena Belova (adoptive sister)

FD700-16.

Every touch, every hug, every kiss you shared with Natasha, you acted to perfection. It was imperative that she be convinced you loved her for you to gain her trust. You let her glide her hands anywhere she wanted along your body, touch you with the intensity she deemed right.

For the first time, you were shown the way humans show affection on a deeply personal and intimate level. This was what sexual intercourse was, you thought. You were aware that you would never be one of them, but you didn’t hold back sighs and moans of content when Natasha kissed you and touched you in all the ways that stimulated all the right nerve endings.

Though when Natasha lay naked beside you, her eyes closed as she slept soundly did you get the chance to really look at her without worrying about how she would look at you. And if you knew anything about beauty, you’d say it was her.

Caesar was getting impatient to find more information on the chemicals from the Red Room, so you needed to hurry on your search of the location of the file.

You tried to slip the conversation in as smoothly as you could, whenever it was just you and Natasha, whenever her guard was down. She never suspected a thing, and told you that the formula had been copied onto a disk, which has since been destroyed.

“I just think that it’s horrible.” You mumbled. “The key to weaponizing free will all contained in a tiny disk.”

“Okay, little Detective.” She chuckled and kissed your forehead. “I’m gonna crash now.”

You nodded and snuggled back into her arms.

“I love you.” She murmured.

You bit down on your teeth and held her closer.

Perhaps you loved her too.

“Close down for the night, will you?” Stark said before grabbing his coat.

“I will, Mr. Stark.” You nodded with a smile.

You watched him walked through the door of the lab. Once you were sure he was out of sight, you found a place to sit down, pretending that you were resting so as not to raise F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s suspicion.

Mission Log 085

The formula had been duplicated onto a disk, but subject thinks it has been destroyed.

Standby until further useful information is acquired.

FD700-16.

The next day, you woke up to a distressing message from Caesar:

“Advancing on Avengers Compound on the 25th. Retrieve the disk before then, or you’re shut down.”

The 25th was next Saturday. There was a coldness that ran down your back, a chilling dread at the pit of your stomach. Dread, fear. These feelings couldn’t have been in your original program, you were built to be fearless, but Caesar also built you to learn. Just like you learned to love Natasha.

Your Natasha.

She looked so peaceful in her sleep. It was a rare occurrence to see her let down her guard like this. She had just returned from a mission that took two weeks, and you convinced her to get a full night’s sleep instead of working on reports right away.

You let your fingers glide along her fringes, moving them out of her shut eyes, down to her cheekbones, then ghosting ever so slightly over her lips. You had become so familiar with her plump lips, and the way they behave like creatures in their own rights. Most of the time, you wished to press your own against them, and the pillowy sensation of it gave you what one could only describe as bliss.

“Morning,” she mumbled sleepily.

It was just the two of you here, the morning was early and still. Caesar could never take it away from you. You made sure to store this in your secret compartment, in which you only kept the most important files. Funnily enough, it was full of her.

You knew this day would come, you’d have to do what you were sent here for. But it didn’t hurt any less. You wanted to laugh: you have learned to hurt.

Mission Log 085

Give me two weeks. I’ll have it before then.

FD700-16.

At breakfast, you barely had the stomach to eat anything. You needed to come up with a plan to find the disk without Nat noticing. Every scenario you calculated resulted in the biggest catastrophes, none of them a happy ending.

Happy endings are for humans, not androids.

You felt a hand press against your thigh, and Nat was looking at you with a concern smile. “You okay, honey?” She asked. You felt tears pricking at the corner of your eyes. In a twisted scenario you conjured, void of the logical algorithm you were installed with, you saw yourself happy with Natasha. You wanted to throw your arms around her neck, and cry and confess everything, hoping that she had the heart to forgive you.

Instead, you only smiled, and intertwined your hand with hers. “I’m fine. Just a bit sleepy,” you lied.

A couple of days passed, and still, you heard nothing back from Caesar. You could only hope that he heeded your request.

The time not spent worrying about Caesar’s next move, you spent thinking of a way to extract the information you needed. You thought about texting Yelena or Melina to ask about it, but it would seem way too suspicious for Natasha to ask about something so important over text. So you opted for sweeping through her laptop. Sometimes what you seek lies right under your nose.

And rewarded you were. You found a lead in a file buried deep inside harmless looking files, titled ‘Photos’. The file needed decoding, but nothing that you couldn’t handle in a few minutes. You hovered your pinky over the USB hub, and when the tip of it morphed into a port, you quickly copied the file over.

“What are you doing?” Your blood ran cold. Natasha was walking over to you, unalarmed. Thankfully you were sitting against the bed frame.

“Just shopping around for ideas for Saturday night,” you shrugged casually, retracting your pinky. “What are you wearing?”

She let out a quick laugh. “You know I don’t care for Tony’s parties, so whatever’s on top of the pile.”

“And somehow you always manage to look gorgeous. Don’t you think it’s a little unfair?” You teased, setting the laptop aside.

A blush crept onto Nat’s cheek, as she found your hand to press a light kiss to it. When she looked back up at you, there was a tenderness in her eyes that made your knees buckle.

“I love you,” she confessed, “I never thought I’d ever be so happy. But you, you just—“ She shook her head with a smile, “you might have saved me.”

You were at a loss for words. There was an uneasy feeling bubbling in your stomach; pain, guilt, anger, you didn’t know. You loved her too, so much, and this moment should have been beautiful.

“Hey, don’t cry,” Nat cooed softly, wiping away at the corner of your eyes.

You only brought your arms around hers and kissed her deeply, afraid your words might fail you. Natasha, I’m not human, I’m a machine, I’m a spy, I was sent to ruin everything, you wanted to blurt out.

I’m not worthy of your love.

“I love you too,” you said instead. “So much.”

As much as a machine can love.

You spent the day tangled up in Natasha’s arms, warm and loved, until you receive Caesar’s message:

“New objective - FD700-16:

Eliminate Natasha Romanoff. Effective immediately.”

PART II, PART III

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff imagine #natasha romanoff imagines #natasha romanoff x you #natasha romanoff angst

466 notes · View notes

bluewatsons · 4 years

Text

Ira M. Sheskin, The Facts about Intermarriage, 8 J Jewish Identit 149 (2015)

Intermarriage has developed into one of the most important issues for the Jewish community and has clearly reached significant percentages nationally and in most American Jewish communities. It has been linked, among other indicators of Jewishness, to lower levels of synagogue participation and affiliation, less participation in Jewish organizations, less performance of Jewish ritual, lower levels of philanthropy in Jewish causes, lower levels of Jewish education, and lower attachment to and fewer visits to Israel.1 Of further concern for the American Jewish community is that a much lower percentage of Jews with a non-Jewish spouse say they are raising their children as Jews, whether by religion or by any other form of Jewish identification.2

The precise intermarriage rate is a matter of some controversy, as it is dependent on definitions of who is considered an “authentic” Jew, what is considered an intermarriage, who is included in the sample from which the rate is calculated, and other methodological and substantive considerations.3 The recently released Pew Research Center report (“A Portrait of Jewish Americans: Findings from a Pew Research Center Survey of U.S. Jews”) suggests that the intermarriage rate (examining intermarriage rates by year of marriage) has increased over the past five decades (although not over the past two decades), with the overall rate (the percentage of married Jews married to a non-Jew) at 44 percent in 2013.4 The Pew study is unable to analyze these rates by community, however. As Leonard Saxe et al.5 and Ira M. Sheskin6 note, significant variation exists across Jewish communities in intermarriage rates and in the percentage of intermarried parents who are raising their children as Jews.

In previous decades, the majority of documented intermarriages were between Jewish men and non-Jewish women.7 Though Sergio DellaPergola8 suggests that this trend is not strictly linear, recent results produced by Steven Cohen from the 2013 Pew study9 found that before 1970, three times as many Jewish men intermarried as women, but that between 2000 and 2013, slightly more Jewish women intermarried than men.10 When the Jewish spouse is a woman, Keren R. McGinity11 contends, there is an increasing tendency for their Jewish identity to remain intact or strengthen, and their children are more likely to be raised as Jews.12 Furthermore, Naomi Schaefer Riley13 finds that children of interfaith couples (not only intermarried Jews) are twice as likely to be raised in the religion of their mother as their father, reinforcing findings of Linda Sax14 and Christian Smith and Melina Lindquist Denton.15 Jennifer Thompson16 explains the historical and cultural reasons for this tendency. Harriet Hartman and Moshe Hartman’s17 analysis of the National Jewish Population Survey 2000–01 (NJPS 2000–01),18 supports this contention by showing that for the majority of dimensions of Jewish identity, intermarried Jewish women have stronger Jewish identity than intermarried Jewish men. Furthermore, their Jewish identity has more of a relationship to their secular behaviors (such as age at first marriage, fertility, employment status, and occupational status) than does the Jewish identity of intermarried Jewish men.

In this paper, we pursue the following topics:

Geographic variations in intermarriage rates among local American Jewish communities; by seeking to understand the reasons for the variation, we touch on the issue of how different communities define “authentic” Jews and embrace them in the Jewish community;

Temporal changes in intermarriage rates among local American Jewish communities; we consider the characteristics of communities that have seen an increase in intermarriage rates;

Intermarriage, in-marriage, conversion, and Jewish engagement;

Differences in Jewishness between intermarrieds when the male is Jewish and when the female is Jewish;

Raising children as Jews;

Changes between younger/older heads of households comparing Jewish husbands and wives in intermarried households; and

Explaining the likelihood that a child of intermarriage will be raised Jewish; in this analysis, and the following conclusions to the paper, we consider the manner in which our data shed light on issues of authenticity and intermarriage, as well as suggest questions for additional research.

Data Sets and Definitions

Two data sets are employed in this paper. The first includes data from fifty-five communities (Table 1) on intermarriage rates and variables that may be related to explaining variations in intermarriage rates by community.

The second is the “Decade 2000” data set, which combines the results of twenty-two local Jewish community studies,19 conducted by Ira M. Sheskin as the principal investigator, between 2000 and 2010. It includes the results of 19,800 twenty-minute interviews, and is a random sample of 547,000 Jewish households in the twenty-two communities although it is clearly not a nationwide random sample of all American Jews. For the analyses included in this paper, the data were weighted by the number of households in each of the twenty-two communities. We are thus able to provide updated quantitative documentation for many of the trends noted above. The 1971, 1990, and 2000–01 National Jewish Population Studies20 and the more recent Pew study were not designed to sample this variety of communities, and have much smaller samples.

Three different types of marriage are defined in this paper:

In-marriage: A marriage in which both spouses were born or raised Jewish and currently consider themselves Jewish.

Conversionary In-marriage: A marriage in which one spouse was born or raised Jewish and currently considers himself/herself Jewish and the other spouse was not born or raised Jewish but currently considers himself/herself Jewish. For most purposes in our presentation, conversionary in-marriages are combined with non-conversionary in-marriages.

Intermarriage: A marriage in which one spouse currently considers himself/herself Jewish and the other spouse does not currently consider himself/herself Jewish.

Note that intermarriage rates may be reported based on married couples or individuals. As an illustration, imagine that two weddings occur. In wedding one, Moshe (a Jew) marries Rachel (also a Jew), while in wedding two, Abraham (a Jew) marries Christine (a non-Jew.) Thus, there are two married couples, one of which is intermarried. In this illustration, the intermarriage rate for couples is 50 percent. Another method of calculating an intermarriage rate, however, is to note that there are three Jews (Moshe, Rachel, and Abraham) and one of the three (Abraham) is married to a non-Jew (Christine.) In this illustration, the individual intermarriage rate is 33 percent.

The intermarriage rates reported in local Jewish community studies are based on persons who currently consider themselves Jewish. Persons born or raised Jewish who have converted to another religion or attend services of another religion on a regular basis (irrespective of formal conversion) are usually not interviewed as Jews in most local Jewish community studies. Thus, all intermarriage rates are based on persons currently Jewish, not all persons born or raised Jewish.

Note as well that the rates reported in this section are for all existing married couples, not for marriages that have occurred recently (in the past five years, for example) as are often reported in both the 1990 and 2000–01 National Jewish Population Surveys and the 2013 Pew study.

Findings

Geographic Variations in Intermarriage Rates among Local American Jewish Communities

The intermarriage rate varies greatly among local American Jewish communities in the United States. Table 1 presents the intermarriage rates from all 55 local Jewish community studies conducted between 1993 and 2011, courtesy of Sheskin’s Comparisons of Jewish Communities: A Compendium of Tables and Bar Charts.21 The individual intermarriage rate varies from 5 percent in South Palm Beach, Florida to 44 percent in East Bay, California, and Portland, Maine. The percentage of married couples that are intermarried varies from 9 percent in South Palm Beach, Florida to 61 percent in East Bay, California, and Portland, Maine.

To examine the reasons for spatial variations in the intermarriage rates among the fifty-five communities, we considered nineteen other community variables and examined simple correlations between these variables and the intermarriage rate in each community. We then developed a multiple regression model to select a small group of variables that explain the most variation in intermarriage rates among the communities. These included population variables, demographic variables, Jewish engagement variables, and other variables.

Population Variables: Because a larger Jewish population size implies more potential for marrying someone who is Jewish, we expected that Jewish community size (R=-.156, p=.255)22 would be negatively related to intermarriage rate, but this correlation, while negative, is not statistically significant. On the other hand, the percentage Jewish in the local community (R=-.463, p=.001) was related to intermarriage rate. Finally, the density of the Jewish population (the percentage of Jewish households clustered in the top three “Jewish” zip codes) (R=-.321, p=.020) is related. Thus, it is not size of the Jewish community, but percentage Jewish and the tendency for Jews to cluster in space that impacts intermarriage.

Demographic Variables: As intermarriage seems to be increasing among the more recently married,23 the percentage of young people (age eighteen to thirty-four) in the community (R=.475, p=.000), and the percentage of older people (age sixty-five and over) in the community (R=-.626, p=.000) were found to have significant correlations with the intermarriage rate in the community. The percentage of persons with a four-year college degree or more (R=.478, p=.000) was found to be significantly correlated with the intermarriage rate. This may also be related to age, as younger cohorts are more educated than the older cohorts. (More on this below.) Median household income (R=.101, p=.463) was not significantly correlated with intermarriage rate.

Jewish Engagement Variables: The percentage of households who are synagogue members (R=-.335, p=.013), the percentage of respondents identifying as Orthodox (R=-.350, p=.009), and the percentage of respondents identifying as “Just Jewish” (R=.384, p=.004) display the expected relationships. We also considered the percentage very familiar with the local Jewish federation (R=.165, p=.329) as a proxy for the strength of the organized Jewish community, but this relationship is not significant. Finally, the percentage of respondents who are extremely/very attached to Israel (R=-.547, p=.001), the percentage who are not attached to Israel (R=.627, p=.000), and the percentage of households in which someone has visited Israel (R=-.689, p=.000), indicators of strong ethnic identity with the broader Jewish people, all showed significant relationships.

Other Variables: Next we considered the region in the United States, as intermarriage has been shown to be more common in the West. Indeed, a community being located in the West (R=.413, p=.002) was statistically significant. Location in the Northeast (R=-.139, p=.311), the Midwest (R=-.041, p=.766), and the South (R=-.169, p=.219) were not statistically significant.24 Finally, the Pew study shows that no significant increase has occurred in intermarriage rates since 1995. Consistent with this finding, the correlation with year of study (R=.151, p=.270) is not significant.

Multiple Regression: Although the size of the correlations and their statistical significance provide indications of the most important community variables related to the intermarriage rate in a community, many of these characteristics are themselves interrelated. To determine the net effects of each of the variables and their relative importance, we entered them into a multiple regression model, as explanatory variables for the intermarriage rate. (Table 2) Multiple regression analysis allows us to determine which of these variables have the strongest relationship to the intermarriage rate, when the other variables are held constant; that is, it gives us a measure of the relationship between the variable and the intermarriage after accounting for the impact of the other influences in the model. For example, communities in which there is a larger percent Orthodox are likely to have a higher percent of the community as synagogue members. Does the percent belonging to a synagogue have a stronger relationship to the rate of intermarriage in a community than percent Orthodox, or vice versa? The regression provides us with a number of ways of determining the strength of the relationship. First, it calculates a “standardized coefficient” (Beta, or β) that allows us to compare the strength of one relationship with the strength of a second relationship. Second, it gives us a level of statistical significance, calculated from the unstandardized regression coefficient and the extent of standard error associated with it. Generally, relationships that have less than a 5 percent chance of occurring randomly are considered statistically significant, and relationships with a 5 percent (or greater) chance of occurring randomly are not considered statistically significant. In Table 2, we only present regression coefficients that have a significance or p (for probability) < .05. Finally, the regression analysis tells us the percent of variance all of these variables together explain in the dependent variable, in this case, rate of intermarriage, with the R2 measure; in this regression, R2=.884, which means that collectively the variables in the model explain 88.4 percent of the variation in intermarriage rate across the fifty-five communities; this is actually a very high rate of explanation.

A very high percentage (88.4 percent) of the variation in the intermarriage rate can be explained by just five of the nineteen variables. The most important variable is the percentage of the Jewish population age sixty-five and over (β=- .478), which is negatively associated with percent intermarried; the second most important variable is the percentage of households who had someone visit Israel (β=-.467). Later studies show more intermarriage (when other variables are controlled) (β=.292). Intermarriage is more common in communities with a high percentage of the Jewish population characterizing themselves as Just Jewish (β =.250) and less common in communities with a high percentage Orthodox (β=.182). Of course the data do not enable us to determine the direction of influence of the relationships (that is, for example, intermarried Jews may be more likely to identify as Just Jewish, raising the percentage intermarried in those communities, rather than the percentage Just Jewish in the community attracting intermarried couples to the community.)

Importantly, Jewish population size and the percentage Jewish in the area are not related to the extent of intermarriage when other variables are controlled. Having a household member who has visited Israel seems to be more important than the level of emotional attachment to Israel. Synagogue membership is less important than Orthodox affiliation or lack of identification with one of the “denominations” (Just Jewish.) Relationships with the indicators of the socio-economic status (education and income) of the community are not statistically significant when other variables are controlled.

Temporal Changes in Intermarriage Rates among Local American Jewish Communities

For twenty-three of the communities, two studies are available for comparison, within a time span of six to twenty years (Table 3.) In all but one of these communities, the intermarriage rate for couples has increased, but for more than half of communities that increase is less than ten percentage points.

Few significant relationships between the nineteen independent variables and the percentage increase in intermarriage rate were found. Simple correlations were calculated between the same nineteen variables used above and the increase in intermarriage rate in percentage points. Only four variables proved significant. Two negative relationships are seen: the percentage of households in which someone visited Israel (R=-.766, p=.004) and the percentage of households that are synagogue members (R=-.469, p=.024). Two positive relationships are seen, the percentage of young people (age eighteen to thirty-four) in the community (R=.368, p=.084); and a community being located in the West (R=.413, p=.002).

Intermarriage, In-marriage, Conversion, and Jewish Engagement

Because some of the variables associated with the intermarriage rate in a community are related to Jewish engagement (the percent who are synagogue members, visiting Israel, identifying as Orthodox or as Just Jewish), and because of the relationship between Jewish engagement and intermarriage found in previous studies, we explore further the relationship between marriage type and Jewish engagement.

Table 4 presents a profile of 1) 9,272 in-married households in which both spouses were born Jewish, 2) 959 in-married households in which one spouse is a Jew-by-choice (“conversionary” in-marrieds), and 3) 2,988 intermarried households. While there are many existing analyses of these three groups, the advantage of the one presented herein is the large sample size of each of the respective groups. Most previous studies of these groups are based on much smaller sample sizes, particularly for the conversionary in-married.25 For intermarried households, Table 4 presents separate profiles for cases where the female is Jewish (IFJ households) (sample size is 975) and for cases where the male is Jewish (IMJ households) (sample size is 2,013.)26 Again, no previous research has been based on such large samples from such a diverse group of communities. For example, many local Jewish community studies have compared the two types of in-married households and have concluded that conversionary in-married households are much more likely to be like households containing a marriage between two born/raised Jews than like intermarried households. But the sample size for conversionary in-married households in all these studies has been much smaller.

Considering the difference between conversionary in-married households and in-married households composed of two born/raised Jewish spouses, allows us to address questions raised about the authenticity of conversionary Jews. If actions speak louder than words, our results should put to rest such questions. The pattern is clear: conversionary in-married households resemble in-married households with two born/raised Jewish spouses much more than they resemble intermarried households. To take just a few examples: 18 percent of conversionary in-married households and 20 percent of in-married households with two born/raised spouses are Just Jewish compared to 58 percent of intermarried households. Eighty-seven percent of conversionary in-married households and 89 percent of in-married households with two born/raised spouses always/usually attend a Passover Seder compared to 56 percent of intermarried households. Sixty percent of conversionary in-married households and 54 percent of in-married households with two born/raised spouses are synagogue members compared to 18 percent of intermarried households. Finally, 43 percent of conversionary in-married households and 50 percent of in-married households with two born/raised spouses donated to the local Jewish Federation in the past year, compared to 16 percent of intermarried households.

As mentioned above, a number of studies have found that intermarried households are less likely to engage in Jewish-related behavior, whether it is participation in religious holidays, ritual observance, attendance at synagogue services, participation in cultural activities, having close friends who are Jewish, and/or being emotionally attached to Israel.27 Indeed, this is one of the reasons that intermarried households are considered by some to be beyond the boundaries of “authentic” Jews, especially if the perception of authenticity is linked to the practice of the Jewish religion. The 2013 Pew study found much higher intermarriage rates among Jews who professed no religion (79 percent), as compared to Jews who profess that Judaism is their religion (36 percent.)28 Again, we caution that the data from these studies cannot determine the direction of influence: we cannot know whether professing no religion precedes or results from intermarriage.

Table 4 shows that the Decade 2000 data set reinforces these findings. In terms of denominational self-identification, intermarried Jews (58 percent) are much more likely to say they are Just Jewish than in-married Jews (20 percent.) When intermarried Jews do identify with a denomination, it is much more likely to be Reform (26 percent) than any other denomination. The intermarried (39 percent) are less than half as likely to publicly proclaim their Jewishness by having a mezuzah on the front door as the in-married (89 percent.) In terms of other religious behavior, the intermarried compared to the in-married are significantly less likely to attend a Passover Seder (56 percent compared to 89 percent), light Chanukah candles (65 percent compared to 87 percent) or Sabbath candles (8 percent compared to 32 percent.) Only 3 percent of the intermarried keep a kosher home, compared to about 20 percent of in-married couples. Seventy-two percent of the intermarried always/usually/sometimes have a Christmas tree, compared to 5 percent of the in-married. Only 9 percent of the intermarried attend synagogue services once per month or more, compared to 30 percent of the in-married. Over half (52 percent) of the intermarried never attend synagogue services, compared to 18 percent of in-married couples. Only 11 percent of the intermarried attended adult Jewish education in the past year, compared to 32 percent of in-married couples.

Twenty-seven percent of the intermarried read the local Jewish newspaper, compared to 66 percent of in-married couples. Forty-one percent of the intermarried used the internet for Jewish-related information in the past year, compared to 50 percent of the in-married. Eighteen percent of the intermarried are synagogue members, compared to nearly 54 percent of the in-married. Only 6 percent of the intermarried are Jewish Community Center (JCC) members compared to 16 percent of the in-married. Only 18 percent of the intermarried participated in the local JCC in the past year, compared to 38 percent of the in-married. Only 8 percent of the intermarried are members of other Jewish organizations compared to 43 percent of the in-married. Similarly, only 13 percent of the intermarried volunteered for any Jewish organizational activity in the past year, compared to 37 percent of the in-marrieds.

Only 31 percent of the intermarried feel very much/somewhat part of the local Jewish community, compared to 65 percent of the in-married; 60 percent of the intermarried are not at all familiar with the local Jewish federation, compared to only 36 percent of the in-married. Only 26 percent of the intermarried have an adult who visited Israel, compared to 64 percent of the in-married. Only 31 percent of the intermarried are extremely/very attached to Israel, compared to 61 percent of the in-married. Philanthropic activity is also considerably different: 84 percent of the intermarried contributed nothing to the local Jewish federation in the past year compared to 50 percent of the in-married, and 72 percent of the intermarried contributed nothing to any other Jewish charity compared to 33 percent of the in-married.

While some of these differences might be attributable to different levels of Jewish education as a child, in fact, less difference exists than expected in terms of having received formal Jewish education as a child. Table 5 shows that 78 percent of the intermarried had some kind of formal Jewish education, compared to 94 percent of the in-marrieds, although only 7 percent of the intermarried attended Jewish day school, compared to 17 percent of the in-married. Only 29 percent of the intermarried attended or worked at a Jewish overnight camp as a child compared to 45 percent of the in-married; 31 percent of the intermarried participated in a Jewish youth group as a teenager compared to 56 percent of the in-married; and 15 percent of the intermarried participated in a Jewish college organization (such as Hillel), compared to 38 percent of the in-married. Thus informal Jewish educational experiences were considerably less for the intermarrieds than the in-marrieds, reinforcing Phillips and Fishman’s insights from NJPS 2000–01.29

Differences in Jewishness between Intermarrieds When Male is Jewish and Female is Jewish

Given the difference in raising their children Jewish, reported above, and the tendency for Jewish women to be more Jewishly identified than Jewish men,30 we next ask if intermarried Jewish women are more Jewishly identified than intermarried Jewish men. Hartman and Hartman,31 using NJPS 2000–01data, found such to be the case. The Decade 2000 data set confirms this finding.

Comparing intermarried couples in which the wife is Jewish (IFJ) to intermarried couples in which the husband is Jewish (IMJ), Jewish husbands are more likely than Jewish wives (58 percent compared to 48 percent) to identify as Just Jewish as opposed to one of the mainstream denominations; Jewish husbands are less likely to have a mezuzah on their front door than Jewish wives (35 percent compared to 44 percent); to participate in a Passover Seder (49 percent compared to 64 percent); to light Chanukah candles (59 percent compared to 73 percent); to attend synagogue services once per month or more (7 percent compared to 11 percent); to attend adult Jewish education in the past year (9 percent compared to 13 percent); and to use the internet for Jewish-related information in the past year (38 percent compared to 45 percent.) Relatively little difference is seen for always/usually light Sabbath candles, keep a kosher home, and always/usually/sometimes read the local Jewish newspaper.

Jewish husbands are less likely to be synagogue members (15 percent compared to 20 percent), to have participated in a JCC program in the past year (20 percent compared to 16 percent), and to be other Jewish organization members (6 percent compared to 11 percent.) Jewish husbands are less likely to have done volunteer work for a Jewish organization (10 percent compared to 16 percent) and for a non-Jewish organization (42 percent compared to 48 percent) in the past year. Jewish husbands are less likely to feel very much/somewhat part of the Jewish community (27 percent compared to 36 percent.) Jewish husbands are less likely to be very/somewhat familiar with the local Jewish federation (38 percent compared to 42 percent.) Little difference is seen on JCC membership, visiting Israel, being extremely/very attached to Israel, donating to the local Jewish Federation in the past year, and donating to other Jewish charities in the past year.

Overall, the picture is clear: women who intermarry are more likely to maintain a Jewish identity than is the case for men who intermarry.

There is one area in which intermarried Jewish men have more “Jewish capital” than intermarried Jewish women have, and that is in terms of having formal Jewish education as a child. This is probably related to preparation for Bar Mitzvah, which is more common for Orthodox Jewish boys than Jewish girls and for older respondents among the non-Orthodox. As we have seen, however, it does not translate into greater Jewish engagement for Jewish men in intermarriages when they are adults.

Raising Children as Jews

Of central importance to the question of intermarriage is whether intermarried couples are raising their children Jewish. We focus our attention on this now, and then turn to some explanations for our findings. According to the recent Pew study,32 only 20 percent of Jews married to non-Jews are raising their children as Jewish by religion, 25 percent are raising their children partly Jewish by religion, 16 percent are raising their children as Jews, but not by religion, and 37 percent say they are raising their children as not Jewish. (In comparison, 96 percent of Jewish parents married to a Jewish spouse say they are raising their children Jewish by religion.)

For this part of our analysis, we again use primarily the Decade 2000 data set, where we can probe more easily the individual characteristics of intermarried individuals. In our sample, 48 percent of the parents in intermarriages are raising at least one of their children as Jewish, 18 percent are raising at least one of their children as part Jewish (but none as Jewish only), and 34 percent are not raising their children as Jewish. Note that our data do not stipulate Jewish by religion. The question asked was: “Are your children being raised Jewish?” The permissible answers were “yes,” “no,” and “part Jewish.” This may contribute to the greater percentage indicating they are raising their children as Jewish in our sample (66 percent) as compared to the Pew sample (61 percent.) Furthermore, our data may include children from previous marriages, which may not have been the same marriage type as the existing marriage in the interviewed household. Another variation with the Pew study is that our sample includes data as far back as 2001, compared to the Pew data from 2013. In addition, the Pew data cover the entirety of the country, whereas our data are from twenty-two local Jewish communities. Note also that the indicator in our studies is about how children are raised, and includes no information about how the children themselves identify, especially when they become adults.

We also considered whether the gender of the Jewish spouse affects whether the children are being raised Jewish. As we noted in the introduction, considerable literature suggests that children are more likely to be raised in the religion of the mother. Thompson,33 however, suggests that while mothers are responsible for the religious upbringing of the children, some raise the children in the religion of the father.

In our sample, children of Jewish mothers who are intermarried are considerably more likely to be raised as Jews. Over 82 percent of the intermarried Jewish mothers are raising at least one child as (at least partially) Jewish, compared to 57 percent of the Jewish fathers. Conversely, less than 18 percent of the Jewish mothers are raising their children as not Jewish, while over 40 percent of the Jewish fathers are. These findings reinforce previous research that suggested large differences between Jewish wives and Jewish husbands in intermarriages.34

Change Between Younger/Older Heads of Households Comparing Jewish Wives and Jewish Husbands in Intermarried Households

While year of marriage is not a variable in the Decade 2000 data set, we do have the age of the head of household, which can be used as a proxy for generational change. Table 6 shows that among both older and the younger couples, children of Jewish mothers are much more likely to be raised Jewish than children of Jewish fathers. However, the percentage being raised as Jewish who have Jewish mothers is actually lower among the younger households (64 percent compared to 72 percent in the older households), and the percentage of Jewish mothers who are raising their children as “not Jewish” in the younger households is slightly greater than in the older households (18 percent compared to 15 percent.) In contrast, children of Jewish fathers in younger households are more likely to be raised Jewish than are children of Jewish fathers in older households (39 percent compared to 36 percent); conversely, fewer are being raised as not Jewish in younger households than in older households (41 percent compared to 47 percent.) The differences are small, however, and they do not reverse the overall finding that children of Jewish mothers are more likely to be raised as Jews than are children of Jewish fathers in intermarriages.

This difference does not seem to be related to the Jewishness of the Jewish mothers. On nearly every indicator of Jewish behavior, Jewish mothers in the younger households are more Jewishly engaged than are mothers in the older households. (Table 7) This is true for nearly all of the indicators of religious practice/Jewish behavior, synagogue and JCC membership (but not in other Jewish organizations, which is lower for the younger households), for feeling very much a part of the Jewish community, for Jewish philanthropic behavior, and having had formal Jewish education. There is less emotional attachment to Israel (as there is in the wider Jewish population), and fewer donations to the local Jewish federation and other Jewish charities (which may be because financial stability is less certain for younger couples.) Neither of these would likely explain differences in raising children as Jewish compared to the trends in the other indicators of Jewish engagement.

These same trends are apparent for Jewish fathers in intermarried households, but the gap in Jewish engagement between Jewish fathers and Jewish mothers remains on almost all of the indicators. Jewish fathers are more likely to have had formal Jewish education, but this has not really changed between older and younger households, and Jewish mothers’ likelihood of having had Jewish education has increased.

Explaining the Likelihood That a Child of Intermarriage Will Be Raised as a Jew

In the following analysis based on logistic regression, we analyze influences on intermarried couples raising their children as Jewish. (Table 8) Logistic regression is very much like multiple regression analysis, explained above, but it differs in that the dependent variable may be dichotomous. The dependent variable in this case is raising at least one of the children as Jewish.35 As in multiple regression analysis, there are unstandardized regression coefficients and standardized regression coefficients (exp[B]). The former coefficients allow us to compare the strength of relationship between the dependent and independent variables from one model to another (that is, with a different set of variables included in the model); the latter coefficients enable us to compare the strength of the relationship between the dependent and independent variable in any particular model, by telling us what the “odds” are of a child being raised as Jewish when the effect of this variable is considered after accounting for the impact of the other influences of the other variables in the model. We present four models in Table 4, progressively adding sets of variables to see how they affect the relationship between gender of the Jewish parent and the likelihood of raising a child as Jewish. Logistic regression provides us with a statistic that is similar to multiple regression’s R2 (Nagelkerke R2), that is, it tells us how much of the variance in raising a child Jewish is explained by the variables in the model, as well as an odds ratio (exp[B]) that gives us the likelihood of a child being raised Jewish under various conditions.

We first look at the effect of the mother being Jewish, as opposed to the father being Jewish, with no other variables considered. (Model 1) We can see that there is a significantly greater likelihood for children to be raised Jewish if the mother is Jewish. In fact, the odds ratio (exp [B]) suggests that there is 3.552 times as great a likelihood of the children being raised Jewish if the mother is Jewish than if the father is Jewish.

We then controlled for four composite measures of Jewish engagement, to see if these explain the greater likelihood of children being raised Jewish if the mother is Jewish. The four measures are factors indicating 1) religious observance of halachic rituals, such as keeping kosher and lighting Friday night candles (Ritual Observance Engagement in Table 8); 2) observance of religious celebrations, such as attending a Passover Seder, lighting Chanukah candles, and synagogue membership (Religious Public Engagement; 3) Broad ethnic engagement, such as Jewish organization membership (other than a synagogue), visiting Israel, and donating to Jewish charities; 4) Local community engagement with services and the JCC.36

We also controlled for identifying as Reform/Reconstructionist, Conservative, or Just Jewish. The latter three indicators of affiliation were not statistically significant influences on raising children Jewish, but all four factors indicating different types of Jewish engagement were. While none was as important as the gender of the Jewish parent, engagement in religious celebrations and ritual observance were strongly associated with raising children Jewish. They did not explain the likelihood, however, that a Jewish mother would be more likely to raise the children Jewish. In fact, the likelihood of a child being raised Jewish if their mother is Jewish is strengthened when we control for Jewish engagement (that is, given the same levels of Jewish engagement, Jewish mothers are 4.335 times as likely to raise their children as Jews than are Jewish fathers.)

In the next step of the model, we controlled for age of the household head and year of the study. We did so because Cohen’s analysis of the Pew data suggests that the likelihood of raising children Jewish is greater for Jewish fathers than mothers, a reversal of the findings in earlier years.37 Neither of these variables reached statistical significance at the .05 level, however; nor did the control of these variables change the greater likelihood of children being raised Jewish by Jewish mothers, or the influence of Jewish engagement on raising children Jewish.

Finally, we controlled for whether this marriage was a remarriage for either of the spouses, the number of children in the household, and household income. We thought that remarriage might complicate the family dynamics and perhaps diminish the likelihood of a child being raised Jewish; that the expense of raising children as Jews (e.g., sending them for Jewish education, synagogue membership, etc.) might mean that with more children or with lower incomes, the likelihood of raising a child as Jewish would be diminished. None of these variables were statistically significant at the .05 level.

We conclude from this analysis that children are more likely to be raised Jewish when it is the mother in the intermarried couple who is Jewish, and when the household reflects greater Jewish engagement. The relevance of the gender of the Jewish parent does not seem diminished in later years or among younger households, though we recognize that our indicators are only proxies of actual year of marriage. In the following discussion of the results, we suggest that part of the reason for the importance of the gender of the intermarried parent lies with the perceived authenticity of the Jewishness of their child.

Conclusions

This research has made several contributions to the understanding of intermarriage among contemporary American Jews. Two data sets were employed in this paper. The first includes community-level data from fifty-five communities on intermarriage rates and variables that may be related to explaining variations in intermarriage rates by community. The second was the Decade 2000 data set, which combines the results of twenty-two local Jewish community studies completed from 2000 to 2010.

First, we looked at the variation in intermarriage among fifty-five Jewish communities, and analyzed some of the possible factors associated with this variation. It is here that we get some hint at the influence of others’ perception of “authentic” Jews. One of the characteristics of communities that have higher percentages of intermarried couples is a lower percentage of self-identified Orthodox and a higher percentage of Jews self-defining as Just Jewish, that is, not affiliated with any particular denomination. This may reflect the rejection on the part of Orthodox of accepting intermarriage, and the discomfort many intermarried couples feel in the established denominations. Therefore, as we have shown, the majority of intermarried households do not self-identify with one of the major denominations, but rather as Just Jewish. This percentage is somewhat greater among the Jewish spouses in intermarried households who are men rather than women, again reflecting the greater acceptance of Jewish women and their children as Jews. A sizeable minority of intermarried households identify as Reform, which has embraced intermarried couples as part of its community and widened the acceptance of children of Jewish men or women as Jews, beyond the halachic acceptance only of children of Jewish women as (authentic) Jews. Further, the percentage intermarried is lower in communities with higher percentages of elderly (age sixty-five and over), among whom intermarriage is less common and less accepted than in the younger population.

Similarly, the percentage of intermarried households in the Jewish community is more likely to have increased where there is a higher percentage of young people (age eighteen to thirty-four) in the population and in the West, which is more likely to be accepting of behavior beyond the established norms. In contrast, intermarriage is less likely to increase where the Jewish population has a higher percentage of synagogue membership (the vast majority of which are affiliated with a mainstream denomination), and where a higher percentage of the households have someone who has visited Israel, also a conservative expression of commitment to the broader Jewish community. Since intermarried couples are much less likely to exhibit either of these behaviors than in-married couples, they seem to gravitate to less normative communities where others also may not conform to established Jewish behavioral norms.

Interestingly, our analysis also shows that the presence of intermarried households is not a function of how big (or small) the Jewish community is, nor the percentage of Jews in the wider community, but rather the variables described above.

A second major contribution of our study is in understanding and documenting the relationship between Jewish engagement and intermarriage. In previous studies, it has been shown that intermarried households are less Jewishly engaged than in-married households, and our analysis reinforces this finding, but with our large sample we are able to show differences in the Jewish engagement of conversionary in-married households, in which one of the spouses is a Jew-by-choice, and in-married households with two born Jews as spouses; we are also able to analyze the difference between intermarried households in which the Jewish spouse is female as compared to male. First, we establish the strong similarity between conversionary households and in-married households in which both spouses were born Jewish, on a wide variety of indicators of Jewish engagement. We then show the stronger Jewish engagement of Jewish wives as opposed to Jewish husbands in intermarried households. Following a pattern exhibited in comparing Jewish women and Jewish men in the broader population of Jews, Jewish wives in intermarried households engage in more ritual observance and holiday celebrations; are more likely to be synagogue members and members of other Jewish organizations; to feel part of the Jewish community and be more familiar with its local Jewish federation. The intermarried Jewish women are also more likely to self-identify with one of the mainstream denominations than are the men.

It is no surprise, then, that intermarried Jewish women are more likely to raise their children as Jews than are intermarried Jewish men. We show, however, that it is the behaviors associated with Jewish engagement which are related to raising children Jewish, rather than affiliation with the mainstream denominations per se, although the greater likelihood of raising a child in an intermarriage as Jewish is also related to having a Jewish mother even when Jewish engagement is held constant. It may well be that this is related to the wider community’s acceptance of their children as authentic Jews which reinforces the willingness and desire to raise their children as Jews, at least partially. In contrast, the perception that the wider community does not accept their children as authentic Jews if their mother is not Jewish may contribute to the greater difficulty of Jewish fathers in intermarriages raising their children as Jewish, as Thompson’s38 and McGinity’s39 work address. It may also be that mothers have a greater influence on their children’s religious identification due to gender role socialization, as has been found in other religions in the United States, as well.40

Our analysis shows that the gap between Jewish mothers and fathers in terms of Jewish engagement and raising their children Jewish persists among younger households as opposed to older households, and thus does not reinforce Cohen’s analysis of the recent Pew data which suggests otherwise. It does show that Jewish fathers in younger households are more likely to be raising their children as Jewish than are Jewish fathers in older households, but the differences are small. This finding may be attributed to a growing acceptance of their children as (authentic) Jews by the wider Jewish community; and it may also be related to greater acceptance of Jewishness as an option among the broader non-Jewish community, so that the non-Jewish spouse is more willing to raise the child at least partially Jewish. Finally, in recent generations, fathers have been taking a more active role in the raising of children and thus it is not surprising that they are contributing more to the religious upbringing of their offspring.

While our analysis has the advantages of a large sample size and community diversity, this last point brings up one of the limitations of the data. The local community surveys were not designed to analyze this topic in depth and therefore one of the missing variables is year of marriage, which would have allowed us to more directly test the suggestions of the recent Pew survey. Further, we cannot identify which children are from the current union, and which are from previous marriages, which is particularly important when considering intermarriage, and a higher percentage of intermarriages are remarriages than are in-marriages.41 Because part of the sample is drawn from lists of Distinctive Jewish Names (DJNs)42, Jewish women who are intermarried may be underrepresented, limiting the numbers—even in this large sample—that could be analyzed in depth. We also have limited information about the non-Jewish spouse, so we cannot analyze whether and how the characteristics of the non-Jewish spouses have changed over time.

Perhaps even more importantly, the results of our analysis raise questions that would best be answered through in-depth qualitative interviews. How much does the perception of acceptance by the wider Jewish community impact raising a child of intermarriage as a Jew? Has this perception changed over time, and does it differ for intermarried Jewish women and men? Are non-Jewish spouses in more recent intermarriages more likely to accept and even embrace raising their children as Jewish? Is this accommodation equally true for both non-Jewish mothers and fathers?

We thus see our research contributing to an ongoing understanding of intermarriage and its implications, and hope that new research is designed to answer more directly the questions we raise.

Table 1. Intermarriage, Community Comparisons

Table 2. Multiple Regression of Percent of Couples Intermarried in Community (only coefficients significant at p<.05 shown)

Table 3. Changes in the Intermarriage Rate for Couples, Local Jewish Community Studies

Table 4. Profiles of Different Marriage Types

Table 5. Profiles of Different Marriage Types

Table 6. Raising Children as Jewish in Intermarried Households by Gender of the Jewish Spouse and Age of the Household Head

Table 7. Profiles of Jewish Engagement of Intermarried Couples by Gender of Jewish Spouse and Age of Household Head

Table 8. Logistic Regression of Raising Child as Jewish by Intermarried Parents Unstandardized Coefficients (Standardized Coefficients, Exp(B) in Parentheses)

Endnotes

Fern Chertok, Benjamin Phillips, and Leonard Saxe, It’s Not Just Who Stands Under the Chuppah: Intermarriage and Engagement (Waltham, MA: Steinhardt Social Research Institute at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Brandeis University, 2008); Steven M. Cohen, A Tale of Two Jewries: The “Inconvenient Truth” for American Jews, Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life, 2006, accessed March 23, 2014, http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=2908; Harriet Hartman and Moshe Hartman, Gender and American Jews: Patterns in Work, Education and Family in Contemporary Life (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2009.)

Cohen, A Tale of Two Jewries; Sylvia Barack, Fishman, Double or Nothing? Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2004); “A Portrait of Jewish Americans: Findings from a Pew Research Center Survey of U.S. Jews,” Pew Research Center, October 1, 2013, accessed February 23, 2014, http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=18058.

Charles Kadushin, Benjamin Phillips, and Leonard Saxe, “National Jewish Population Survey 2000–01: A Guide for the Perplexed,” Contemporary Jewry 25.1 (2005): 1–32; Bruce A. Phillips, “New Demographic Perspectives on Studying Intermarriage in the United States,” Contemporary Jewry 33.1–2 (2013): 103–119.

As the Pew authors emphasize, when intermarriage data derive from a single point in time (rather than being data collected at the time of marriage), well after many marriages occurred, as is the case with the Pew data, the data will underestimate intermarriage rates at earlier dates for two reasons. First, some intermarriages (like all marriages) have already ended in divorce (or death), and second, non-Jewish spouses may have converted after marriage and the Jewish spouse is thus no longer intermarried.

Leonard Saxe, Benjamin Phillips, Theodore Sasson, Shahar Hecht, Michelle Shain, Graham Wright, and Charles Kadushin, “Intermarriage: The Impact and Lessons of Taglit-Birthright Israel,” Contemporary Jewry 31.2 (2010): 151–172.

Ira M. Sheskin, How Jewish Communities Differ: Variations in the Findings of Local Jewish Demographic Studies (New York: City University of New York, North American Jewish Data Bank, 2001); and Ira M. Sheskin, Comparisons of Jewish Communities: A Compendium of Tables and Bar Charts (Storrs, CT: Mandell Berman Institute, Berman Jewish Data Bank, and The Jewish Federations of North America, 2013.)

Keren McGinity, Still Jewish: A History of Women and Intermarriage in America (New York: New York University Press, 2009.) McGinity suggests that studies relying on distinctive Jewish names (DJNs) for sampling overlooked Jewish women who had taken their non-Jewish spouse’s names. These results are confirmed in this paper.

Sergio DellaPergola, “Go to School, Work, Marry, Have Children: Jewish Women and Men in the U.S., France and Israel,” Berman Jewish Policy Archive, accessed February 23, 2014, http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=18497.

Unpublished data produced for the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry list-serv, February 14, 2014, and cited here with permission.

Joshn Nathan-Kazis, “The New Face of Jews Who Marry Out: It’s Female,” Jewish Daily Forward, February 21, 2014, 1.

McGinity, Still Jewish.

Fishman, Double or Nothing.

Naomi Schaefer Riley, Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.)

Linda Sax, America’s Jewish Freshmen: Current Characteristics and Recent Trends among Students Entering College (UCLA: Higher Education Research Institute, 2002.)

Christian Smith and Melina Lindquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.)

Jennifer A. Thompson, Jewish on Their Own Terms: How Intermarried Couples are Changing American Judaism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014.)

Hartman and Hartman, Gender and American Jews.

Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz, et al., Strength, Challenge and Diversity in the American Jewish Population (New York: United Jewish Communities, 2003.)

The communities in the Decade 2000 date set include Atlantic County, Bergen County, Detroit, Hartford, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Lehigh Valley, Miami, Middlesex, Minneapolis, New Haven, Portland, Rhode Island, San Antonio, St. Paul, Sarasota, South Palm Beach, Tidewater, Tucson, Washington DC, West Palm Beach, and Westport. For a full description of the Decade 2000 data set, see Harriet Hartman and Ira Sheskin, The Influence of Community Context and Individual Characteristics on Jewish Identity: A 21-Community Study (Storrs, CT: North American Jewish Data Bank, 2011), JewishDataBank.org, accessed February 23, 2014, http://www.jewishdatabank.org/Studies/details.cfm?StudyID=713.

Fred Massarik and Alvin Chenkin, “United States National Jewish Population Study: A First Report,” in American Jewish Year Book, Morris Fine and Milton Himmelfarb, eds. (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1973), 264–306; BJPA.org, accessed February 23, 2014, http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=1361; Barry Kosmin, et al., Highlights of the CJF 1990 National Jewish Population Survey (New York: Council of Jewish Federations, 1991); and Kotler-Berkowitz, Strength, Challenge and Diversity.

Sheskin, Comparisons of Jewish Communities, Section 12, Table 1.

The Pearson correlation coefficient (R) varies from -1 to +1. A value of R = 0 indicates that no relationship exists between two variables. A value of R = +1 indicates that a perfect positive relationship exists between two variables. A value of R = -1 indicates that a perfect negative relationship exists between two variables. In a positive relationship, as the values of one variable increase, the values of the other variable also increase. In a negative relationship, as the values of one variable increase, the values of the other variable decrease.

The p value tests whether a particular value of R is statistically significantly different from 0, in which case we can conclude that a relationship exists between two variables. P gives the exact probability of being wrong in concluding that a relationship exists.

As an example, we conclude that a negative relationship exists between the intermarriage rate and the percentage Jewish in a community (R = -.463). That is, in Jewish communities in which Jews form a higher percentage of the overall population, lower percentages of households contain intermarried couples. In reaching this conclusion, we are 95 percent certain that we are taking 1 chance in 1,000 of erring in our conclusion (p=.001).

Pew Research Center, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” 9.

See Ira M. Sheskin, Geographic Differences Among American Jews, United Jewish Communities Series on the National Jewish Population Survey 2000,” Report Number 8 (2005), www.jewishfederations.org.; Reinventing Our Jewish Community: Can the West Be Won—A Report of the Jewish Communities of the Western United States and the Council of Jewish Federations (New York: Council of Jewish Federations, 1994.)

The New York Jewish Population Survey (2011) is an exception to most community studies, in that it includes 2 percent (n=120) converts in its sample as well as 5 percent non-born-Jewish adults who identify as Jewish but have not formally converted (Jews by personal choice, n=300). The Pew (2013) sample (Pew Research Center, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” 119) also includes 2 percent (n=79) Jews by religion who formally converted and another 1 percent Jews by personal choice who had not formally converted (n=34). Still, these numbers do not approach those included in the current data set. See Steven M. Cohen, Jacob B. Ukeles, Ron Miller, Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011—Comprehensive Report (New York: Jewish Community Study of New York and UJA-Federation of New York, 2011), www.bjpa.org, accessed June 12, 2012, http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=14186; Pew Research Center, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans.”

Note that it would be wrong to conclude from these sample sizes that Jewish men marry out at a much higher rate than do Jewish women. While all twenty-two surveys included at least some random digit dialing, all but four of the studies included some sampling by Distinctive Jewish Name (DJN) or from the local Jewish Federation mailing list. (Table 1) Since women often adopt the surname of their husband, DJN sampling is biased toward intermarriages where the husband is Jewish. If one were to examine only those married couples in households sampled via RDD, 55 percent (N= 820) are IMJ and 45 percent (N=674) are IFJ. The results in the “All Intermarried” column of Table 4 reflect the application of weights so as to weight up the IFJ households and weight down the IMJ households to reflect the percentages found in the RDD surveys.

Chertok, Phillips, and Saxe, It’s Not Just Who Stands Under the Chuppah; Cohen, A Tale of Two Jewries; and Hartman and Hartman, Gender and American Jews.

Pew Research Center. “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” 36.

Benjamin T. Phillips and Sylvia Barack Fishman, “Ethnic Capital and Intermarriage: A Case Study of American Jews,” Sociology of Religion 67.4 (2006): 487–505.

Hartman and Hartman, Gender and American Jews.

Pew Research Center, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” 8.

Thompson, Jewish on Their Own Terms.

Fishman, Double or Nothing?; McGinity, Still Jewish.

The data preclude us from determining which of the children are products of a particular couple; i.e., the children who are not being raised Jewish could be from a previous marriage.

For a full explanation of these factors, see Harriet Hartman and Ira M. Sheskin, “The Relationship of Jewish Community Contexts and Jewish Identity: A 22-Community Study,” Contemporary Jewry 32.3 (2012): 237–283.

Unpublished data reported by Steven Cohen and cited with his permission.

Thompson, Jewish on Their Own Terms.

Keren McGinity, Marrying Out: Jewish Men, Intermarriage, and Fatherhood (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014.)

McGinity, Marrying Out; Schaefer Riley, Til Faith Do Us Part; Smith and Denton, Soul Searching.

Hartman and Hartman, Gender and American Jews.

Ira M. Sheskin, “A Methodology for Examining the Changing Size and Spatial Distribution of a Jewish Population: A Miami Case Study,” in Shofar, Special Issue: Studies in Jewish Geography, Neil G. Jacobs, 17.1 (1998): 97–116; Harriet Hartman and Ira M. Sheskin, “Estimating the Jewish Student Population of a College Campus,” Journal of Jewish Communal Service Volume 88.1 and 2 (Winter/Spring 2013): 95–109.

0 notes