Cultures have come and gone through the ages, often disappearing due to assimilation. How many languages go extinct each year? None of them have TV ads guilt-tripping the next generation into preserving their ways. What if they did?

There is no such thing as "half-Jewish," no matter how you slice it.

Either you chose to be or you chose not to be. I know all of the halakhic requirements; I get that. But if you boil it down, you either are or you aren't.

It's a denigrating term that is insulting both to people who chose to be Jewish (you're only "half" Jewish) and people who chose not to be (you're *still* "half" Jewish).

Wow, gross.

The Judaism I learned growing up had a big dose of humanism in it. (Or maybe it was the other way round.) Sounds to me like the Israeli government ought to be reminded that humanism is part of our heritage.

This is beyond offensive. As a Jewish woman who is a granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors and married to a non-Jew I find this ad to be absurd. You fall in love with who you fall in love with. I grew up speaking Yiddish to my grandparents in a very culturally Jewish home in NYC. And I carry this background in me with pride and share it with my husband as he shares his Greek background with me. But neither of us is religious in the traditional sense and we have created a home where all ideas, rituals and traditions that have meaning to us are practiced and observed. I believe that we have to bring down the walls that divide us and see the divinity in each other. At the end of the day my husband and I share strong ethical values and a similar world view. We don't need one religion or another to define what is moral or right for us. Holocaust survivors always talk about never forgetting what happened to the Jews so that it doesn't happen again to anyone, and I take that charge very seriously. I know who I am and I don't need a Jewish husband to confirm that for me.

Um, when did "assimilation" and "intermarriage" become synonyms? This ad, at least the way Haaretz describes it, says nothing about intermarrying or the children of intermarrying, as the writer claims. It talks about assimilation--losing one's connection to the Jewish people by becoming part of the broader culture and leaving Judaism behind. Those are two different things. One can intermarry and not assimilate or assimilate but not intermarry. You're reaading a lot into a 30 second ad you haven't even fully heard in English.

Thanks, Israel! Now I know what I have in common with Jaycee Dugard! But I guess I've been kidnapped even longer (60 years!).

Even though I was raised Methodist, and am presently somewhat spiritual but not religious, I always felt something like brotherhood with Israelis, not least because I would not have fared well under Nazism.

Increasingly (and this increases it considerably), not so much.

Eric, the ad cites the stat -- 50 percent -- of Jews who intermarry in the Diaspora. It clearly conflates intermarriage with assimilation and loss of Jewish identity.

On the other hand, the ad tacitly acknowledges that all these presumably flawed half- and quarter-Jews are nonetheless fundamentally Jewish. How? By directly appealing to their Jewish sense of guilt.

This smells like yet another coalition government sop to the Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox,) for whom anyone who does not share their bizarre beliefs and 17th Century Polish merchant uniforms can't possibly be a Jew. It's as though the Enlightenment never happened...but come to think of it, for them it didn't.

The moral of this story: in the eyes of the Israeli government, my daughter (the product of a half Jewish, half Gentile marriage), is somehow less of a person.

My daughter will be raised to appreciate her Jewish heritage. But if the government of Israel is seeking to score points somehow with me or my family, they are laughably off base. Screw all of them.

Intermarriage does lead to the loss of Jewish identity - perhaps not for the Jewish spouse, but usually for the children and virtually always for the grandchildren. That's just a documented, demographic fact.

Jews who are in intermarriages are often terribly defensive about their decision - of course I'm still Jewish! - but, as a statistical matter, few of their children and virtually none of their grandchildren will identify themselves as Jewish.

This ad is saying to Israelis, let's try to strengthen the emotional ties of young Jews to the Jewish community, so that they and their descendants remain Jewish.

Now, American Jews who have married non-Jews and are in denial about the fact that their own children and grandchildren won't be Jews are likely to be offended by this. But the advertisers don't care about you. You've made your choice. You've chosen to assimilate, and that's fine. Just don't get your back up about a program that's designed to persuade others to make a different choice.

Oh, and Etaoin Shrdlu, you are so wrong you're not even facing in the right direction. The Haredrim don't care about non-orthodox Jews who intermarry - they think that non-Orthodox Jews are apostates who are already outside the pale. This is a campaign to try to maintain the Jewish identification of secular Jews.

And this differs from straight-up racism how, exactly?

Bloix:

You make some serious assumptions about those statistics. As someone whose father is a Rabbi who ended up changing congregations over disagreement over intermarriage I can tell you that this kind of add is the exact reason why so many children of intermarriages stray from Judaism. The other Rabbi at my old congregation spent every Saturday berating our congregation for not being connected enough to their heritage, for betraying their ancestry by intermarrying and citing the statistics you have. It pushed families that were ready to expose their children to Hebrew school and Jewish upbringing away from it, because they feared their children being ridiculed.

Children of intermarriage would likely be more connected to their heritage if congregations and Jewish authorities were more welcoming to them rather than treating them as though they have to prove themselves.

This campaign is offensive, disgusting, and alienating. I'm a non-Jewish woman who married a Jewish man seven years ago. (We have no children, yet.) Seven years ago, I made a solid commitment to observe Jewish holidays, traditions, and other life events. And for the last six months, I've been taking a conversion class. My interest in conversion was inspired by loving exposure to the traditions of my husband and his family, as well as the welcoming attitude of the conservative rabbi at his childhood synagogue who is teaching the course. Long before I met my husband, I left the Christian faith in which I was raised because I was frustrated at the provincial, narrow-minded, bigoted views of my particular church. I have been attracted to Judaism appeal to honesty, logic, and rationality. Rather than underscore a love of Judaism, garbage like this ad makes me sincerely concerned that I'm getting myself into a lot more of the same. Instead of threatening and belittling Jews who marry non-Jews, why not welcome the non-Jews and confidently show them the beauty of the Jewish faith????

Sorry to post again, but I thought it was important to also bring up this point:

How many children of 2 Jewish parents also "stray away" from Judaism or are "lost"? Why make lack of cultural connection about who you love or who your parents are?

Awkward Silence - did you view the ad? I don't see how it could lead American Jews to assimilate, as it's not addressed to American Jews. It's addressed to Israeli Jews, and it encourages them to support the Masa program. It makes a demographic argument, not a personal argument.

Convert-to-be: the sponsors of the ad aren't attacking people like you. They adore people like you. The problem for the makers of the ad is that most Jews who marry non-Jews don't marry people like you - they marry non-Jews who don't want to leave their own religions, or who have no religion at all.

Awkward Silence - did you view the ad? I don't see how it could lead American Jews to assimilate, as it's not addressed to American Jews. It's addressed to Israeli Jews, and it encourages them to support the Masa program. It makes a demographic argument, not a personal argument.

Convert-to-be: the sponsors of the ad aren't attacking people like you. They adore people like you. The problem for the makers of the ad is that most Jews who marry non-Jews don't marry people like you - they marry non-Jews who don't want to leave their own religions, or who have no religion at all.

As I read the article, this is the product of an organization with a loose affiliation with the Israeli governmennt, not a government agency.

I suspect that this was the result of some well-intentioned idea, terribly executed by some individual staff members, rather than the expression of some government policy.

As an intermarried Jew who is planning to raise my children as Jewish, I too think that the idea of attacking potential intermarriers is a strategic error - but I can't get terribly offended by this, even though i think it's heavy-handed and counterproductive.

Bloix, I watched the ad and am aware of who it was directed to. I was however primarily responding to your assertions about what intermarried Jews are like with their children.

Also, I don't see why it would be any different for an intermarried Israeli couple as opposed to an American couple in terms of feeling isolated or outcast by other Jews. In fact, I imagine (and I have Israeli relatives and have visited so I'm not speaking from nothing) that it might be more difficult and that children of intermarriages might feel even more pressure and judgment in Israel. So again, I would suggest that it might be smarter to take the tactic of welcoming and inviting these "lost" Jews instead of making it seem like something is wrong with them.

SqueakyRat- what you're arguing is that Jews should be okay with assimilation. That's a legitimate argument, but when a group has a world-wide population of 13 million, acceptance of assimilation means the end of the existence of the group in 100 years or so. Jews have managed to stick around for 3000 years because they work so hard to prevent assimilation, including intermarriage.

So if you want to conclude that the continued existence of Jews as a distinct group is racist, well, go ahead. But Jews who would like there to be Jews 100 years from now will disagree with you.

AS- there's no comparison between an intermarried couple in Israel and one in the US. A child of an intermarried couple is an Israeli. He or she may face discrimination but s/he's part of a secular jewish culture - he's not in danger of drifting away. A chlid of an American intermarried couple is part of a secular non-Jewish culture. As a matter of demographic fact, most such children identify with the majority culture, and as matter of statistical probability, most such children do marry non-Jews. By the next generation, the children are 1/4 Jewish and they don't identify as Jewish at all.

By the way, I'm not trying to defend this ad. I'm merely pointing out that Dana, and many others, who think that ad is pointed at them simply don't understand it. Take Sam, who says forthrightly that he's not going to raise his kids Jewish (he'll raise them with a respect for their heritage, which is not the same thing at all.) Sam and his kids are lost to the Jewish community. That's not bad for Sam and it's not bad for his kids - they'll be just fine as assimilated Americans - but there are Jews who think it's bad for the Jews.

Oh, and some people here may have come over from LGM. Well, it's Farley's blog and I've been calling him out for a long time now, so I can't complain. And I'm writing under a pseudonym so it's not like I'm really being slandered. But Farley's post there completely misunderstands the ad. And I do tend to lose my temper when non-Jews criticize Jews out of ignorance and arrogance, which is what I felt in reading Farley's post.

As a 100% Jewish man, that racist ad and accompanying attitude makes me want to go out and join Jews for Jesus while marrying a schicksa of another color.

Well, NewsNag, lots of Jews would think that a Jewish man who could contemplate joining Jews for Jesus for any reason is not a 100% Jewish man. And I'm really not clear on the accusation of racism.

Mixing politics and sectarian religion is always a losing cause, isn't it?

I agree with Ms. Goldstein. I grew up attending a conservative synagouge too and was required to attend Hebrew school three days a week. I well remember hearing over and over again about the responsibility to marry Jewish.

I represent only myself but my story is this: I am married to a non-Jew. I don't belong to a Jewish community. I find myself alienated by organized religion. And what is more, am deeply uncomfortable with politicians who make policy appeals based not on religious morality, but on THEIR religious morality. To be a real (Jew, Christian, Mulism you must. . . .)

This is what I expected from Likud and Netanyahu. No surprises here.

I might add, I am the product of 2 Jewish parents (one of whom converted to the faith from Catholicism). Judaism was strong in our home, it just never registered with me.

I don't think this is a statement about Judaism as much as it is a statement about the American Jewish culture I experienced. And that culture was obsessed with the Holocaust. It seemed as though that was the basis for retaining one's faith. Let us not let the Nazis win by making sure the Jewish people survive.

Do I understand this mindset? Yes, of course. Is it healthy? In my opinion, no. I found fear and dogmatism were carrying the day, not spirituality. The faith I was taught was not alive. But I am speaking only for myself.

Jeremy, the point of the ad is that Jews who spend a year in Israel are more Jewish-identified than those who don't. The whole point is that young Jews who don't have the opportunity live in a lively, youth-oriented, secular Jewish culture - whose only experience is the home, the synagogue and the rabbi - are less likely to stay involved in Jewish life. You're a walking poster child for the argument expressed in the ad.

This whole thing is driving me nuts. People who don't speak Hebrew, and never heard of Masa, are making comments that make no sense at all.

My Jewish grandparent married a non Jewish spouse. Of the twelve grandchildren, two of us identify as Jewish and the rest do not. Of that interfaith marriage (an odd term to use for two profoundly nonreligous people) my parent was the only child to marry a Jewish spouse (also profoundly nonreligious), and both of us grandkids who ID as Jewish (but not religious) spent time in Israel and NO TIME with the American organized Jewish religious community -- which has never felt very welcoming to me.

I haven't watched the ad so that ad might be really annoying or insulting. But I like the message that secular folk who identify as Jewish, like me, should be accepted as equally legit Jews compared with the Orthodox gatekeepers who think three out of four grandparents can still not be enough to be Jewish. People like me don't get counted much, since we don't join synagogues even when conveying secular Jewish values across many generations.

Eric is right on. This ad has *nothing* in it about intermarriage. lehitbolel=to assimilate. The Jewish Agency does not want Jews in the diaspora to assimilate. Stop the presses!

What's the downside? One less religion in the world? Sounds OK to me...

Anyone else have a JDate ad on the top of the page?

Awesome.

I can't help thinking of the last government that was so concerned about reconnecting assimilated jews with their heritage.

Dana your opinion is completely valid (you don't need me to tell you that)and ads/programs like this often have the opposite effect from what they are designed to do. You claim the right to define or reject your Jewish identity and I fully support you. Now let's cut through the BS and be honest. If all American Jews marry non-Jews who will not convert, or raise Jewish children or involve Jewish life in the home...will there be more American Jews. Those of us who are intermarried are free to care or not care about that. But we can't pretend it's irrelevant to other Jews or that they don't get to have a different view on group survival.

I think you are making a mistake in thinking that the ad, at least as you present it, is doing anything more than what your shul did. (Which is not to defend the shul thing, I married a non-jew and am one of those assimilating jews being objected to).

Note that Netanyahu's slur against Axelrod and Emmanuel was pointedly not on racial lines.

As Bloix is trying to stress, the fact that there are jews today is largely due to the prohibitions on intermarriage. And if one thinks it is important that there be jews in 100 or 200 years than the empahasis on the prohibition is not arbitary or silly or racist. Obviously it did not convince me, but not everything that I don't find compelling is arbitrary, silly, or racist.

Jeremy, the point of the ad is that Jews who spend a year in Israel are more Jewish-identified than those who don't. The whole point is that young Jews who don't have the opportunity live in a lively, youth-oriented, secular Jewish culture - whose only experience is the home, the synagogue and the rabbi - are less likely to stay involved in Jewish life. You're a walking poster child for the argument expressed in the ad.

Yes, and the message MASA is sending to the secular Israeli public is that intermarriage is evil and a large percentage of Diaspora Jews are not really Jewish. In other words, I see an implication that Diaspora Jews need to be made more like Israeli Jews so that they don't "assimilate." This attitude is extremely insulting to Diaspora Jews, many of whom wish to express their Jewish identity in different ways than the one approved by the rabbis (of all denominations) or the Zionist leadership. This sort of attitude is not on the part of Israelis going to strengthen the identification of Diaspora Jews with Israel

For all that, I can see the benefits of a long-term Israel program on Jewish commitment of Diaspora Jews. I have personal experience on the matter. But it shouldn't be some sort of indoctrination program, or Diaspora Jews will be turned off, exactly the opposite of what MASA wants.

And what Dana and others don't understand is that this ad is not addressed to them. It's not trying to guilt-trip them or ostracize them because the makers of the ad don't expect them to see it. It's in Hebrew on Israeli TV, for heaven's sake.

The target audience is Israeli Jews, and it argues (on behalf of the non-profit educational foundation, Maras), "you should welcome young American Jews into your country and your lives, you should support our efforts to bring them here and you should make them feel wanted, because by doing so you will strengthen their life-long attachment to the Jewish community."

Israeli Jews often feel alienated from young American Jews, who to them seem rich, pampered, and naive (especially since they don't do military service). And Israelis often sneer at Americans who come to Israel for a brief time with no intention to settle there. There is still a strong sense that Jews have an obligation to live in Israel and that Jews who don't make that choice are unworthy of serious consideration.

This ad argues that Israelis should put aside those feelings and show more affection and understanding to young Jews who come to Israel for a year to study. The idea is that attitudes formed in adolescence last into adulthood, that Jews outside Israel are an important part of the Jewish community, and that Israel should support that community. The tag line of the ad says: "one year in Israel, a lifetime of love."

Now, you can hate the ad all you want, but to say that it's trying to guilt-trip Jews who marry non-Jews is absurd.

This sort of attitude is not on the part of Israelis going to strengthen the identification of Diaspora Jews with Israel

Somebody needs to invent a copy-editing utility for comment posts. Sorry about this. This sentence should have been written as:

"This sort of attitude on the part of Israelis is not going to strengthen the identification of Diaspora Jews with Israel"

Oops, that was me. But to respond to "conservative apikoris" - look, you choose to call yourself an apostate, so you're starting off by proclaiming your alienation from the Jewish community. But to take your point - the argument Masa makes (not Maras, I'm feeling dyslexic this morning) is that Jews who marry non-Jews tend to drift away from the Jewish community, and that their children and grandchildren have very little sense of affiliation.

I can see how someone might be insulted by this, but it happens to be true. Sometimes facts are insulting. Many young Jews don't really want to admit that, when they marry a non-Jew, they're making a choice. It's a perfectly fine choice, from my point of view, but it's a choice nonetheless, and pretending that it isn't one in order to feel better about it is just denial.

And so it continues. Israel's uber-right will continue to push away anyone who does not agree with them 110%.

They will continue to get huge votes of support in Congress and consider that proof that they have cast iron support from the US. What they will ignore is that the support is a mile wide and an inch deep. Last time AIPAC had a motion it got support from less than half the Jewish members of Congress.

Bloix,

Where we disagree is that I cannot accept that Judaism and developing a connection with the state of Israel are synonymous.

I had multiple opportunities to make the trip (for free, no less) and could not do so. And the reason was that I did not want to go there and listen to arguments against inter-marriage. I did not want to go and be treated to Zionism and warnings that Jews are declining.

Now, you can make a compelling case that it is necessary to remind Jews of the risk of declining numbers. I accept that. But what kept coming up in the literature and in the experiences of those who made these trips was the constant refrain that Judaism was about the state of Israel. That to be a Jew meant to give one's allegiance to the state of Israel.

I have an issue with that. But if you want to make the case that this puts me on the outside of Judaism, I think my life and my choices have already shown that.

But I am not a poster child for the advertisement because you can't reach me by suggesting that my faith will be strengthened by visiting the land of Israel. You have to reach me through the power of the faith, not through the geography of an ancient homeland.

I might add that my father, who lived in Israel back in the 1970s and was a fervent supporter, never pushed my making the journey as he was repulsed by the invasion of Lebanon in 1981, the prime ministerial leadership of Sharon and Netanyahu, and the apologia for human rights abuses many in the Jewish community have made and continue to make.

But he is still Jewish. And still observant. He just wants to separate his faith from the imperatives of a nationalist politics.

Dana,
Even if I grant you that the ad is referring to intermarriage and not just assimilation, aren't you going a little far by saying that this ad is somehow saying that the children of intermarried are "illegitimate"? Is that really what they're saying? Isn't this at heart a positive message to those who intermarry? Isn't it saying, hey, we don't want to lose you? Come to Israel, we will accept you even if you are intermarried--we just want you to make sure you are aware and connected with your Jewish roots? What's wrong with that message? Can't the Jewish people try to engage Jews who aren't connected with the community? Or is that somehow illegitimate?

Perhaps it is the assimilationist in me talking, but I have never liked (and deeply resented) the prohibition against intermarriage. It seems to me a weakness to say that to ensure the continuation of a faith you are not allowed to inter-marry. If you want to find love, you must find it here. Or you must look here.

Coming from a home where my mother converted completely negates all of this. It makes it, for me, a farce.

Now, if you want to argue that what is really at issue here is that Judaism is having trouble with modern marriage, a marriage of personal fulfillment, I think you are onto something. Most of us are looking first for fulfillment. This makes us more modern than the prohibition against intermarriage allows. I have to say, this insular approach does not play well in a world which seems designed to break insularity.

Jeremy, no one is trying to reach you. Masa is certainly not trying to reach you, and I don't think you need reaching. You're an adult, you've made your choices, and you're fine.

What Masa is arguing is that there are young Jews in the generation after you who, if they were to spend a year at university in Israel, would form a bond with secular Jewish culture that will last a lifetime. It's not about faith - most Israeli Jews aren't observant. It's about the secular culture. In the US, that culture persists to some extent in New York, but nowhere else - in most of the US, the only Jewish community is the synagogue. But Israel, the Jewish community is the street, the office, the classroom, the night club.

It's true that Israeli Jews - particularly secular ones - do think that Israel is central to the continued existence of the Jewish world. That's why they live in Israel instead of in Santa Barbara. They make a sacrifice to live in Israel - up to and including their lives and the lives of their children - and they tend to feel under-appreciated by what they view as spoiled Americans. And Americans of course don't much like the Israeli attitude. There's a lot of tension in the relationship of the two communities, and you express that tension pretty convincingly.

Eric- no, it's not a positive message to those who want to intermarry. It views intermarriage as a disaster - not for the individuals who choose to intermarry, but for the continued existence of the Jewish community.

Your error is the mirror image of the one that Dana and many others here make - this ad is not directed at you or at Americans at all. It's directed at Israeli Jews (for most of whom intermarriage for themselves is not an option, or even a temptation). The message is, let's bring young Americans here so they will see what a wonderful thing Jewish life can be, then they will form a lifelong bond with the Jewish people and they will freely choose to marry other Jews.

The ad's implied discussion of intermarried Jews and their children is not accepting and its not condemnatory. It's mournful. The metaphor is one of run-aways who reject their parents (not abduction -the posters say "lost," not "stolen"). These Jews and their children are lost to us, it says. Not that we reject them - to the contrary, they have rejected us. And in the main that's true - if not necessarily in the first generation, then almost certainly by the next.

First, get rid of religion! It causes nothing but problems, always has always will...

Second, study the animal trait, through scientific research, that causes us to separate from or fear those who are of different ethnicity from ourselves so we can finally understand how to get along!

Uh, how did so many Jews with origins in the Middle East get blue eyes today? Intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews has been going on for centuries, if not millenia. The important thing is the religious and intellectual heritage, not the genetic one. Netanyahu is such a tool. Geesh.

Bloix, we all understand the message. It's unfortunate, alienating and condescending.

I agree that the message is that American Jews need to be brought to Israel in a preventative effort to be saved. And I agree that the ad does "mourn" those Jews and their families that have been lost. But my point, as the non-Jewish spouse, is that there is no reason to be mournful.

When I intermarried, I didn't necessarily intend to convert, but as I said I am about six months into my conversion classes now. I was someone with no faith. But because I and my marriage was welcomed and appreciated by my in-laws, rather than mourned or treated with suspicion, I was able to see the beauty in Judaism rather than be made defensive and angry by it. If more congregations (and the authors of this ad) took a welcoming approach to what is the reality in a global society of interfaith marriage -- rather than a "mourning" approach -- more interfaith families would feel welcome in Judaism and not feel the need to leave. There would be less of a problem of lost children and lost families; these families become lost because a lot of them never acceptance or embrace in the Jewish community, as we see here.

Ads like this cause the "problem" rather than help it. My husband had and has a strong Jewish identity. As a child, he went to Jewish summer camp every year. He was very religious. All of his friends were Jewish, in a state that does not have a lot of Jews. While in high school, he was a national officer in his Jewish youth organization. He participated in March of the Living. He has been to Israel several times. And he picked a college that has a strong Jewish presence. It's not that my husband didn't have a Jewish identity and didn't realize "what a wonderful thing Jewish life can be."

Convert-to-be, I'm not defending this ad - I'm explaining it. Once someone understands it, I'm not disagreeing with any characterization they may want to put it.

My concern is that most people here (and elsewhere, as on LGM) utterly misunderstand it, so their comments about it are wildly inaccurate (like Dana's belief that this is about "policing" of intermarriage, and like the conclusion of many that the ultra-orthodox are behind it).

As for you and your husband, CTB, the makers of the ad would not mourn for you, they would adore you - you are a cause for rejoicing, a veritable eshet chayil:

Strength and honor are her clothing, she smiles at the future.
She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the lesson of kindness is on her tongue.

Translation:

We need a future generation of unquestioning Israel supporters in the USA.

Bloix,

I should add that having read your posts, I appreciate your insights.

The thing about racism is that many racists think they don't think they are hating or fearing "the other", they are just defending their culture (or their neighbourhood or their womenfolk or their precious bodily fluids).

As in "I'm no racist. I don't want to hurt colored people, I just don't want them moving next door to me."

But you have to seriously consider whether a culture that defines acceptability based the fact that someone's parents may have been affiliated with a particular religion is a culture that can or should be preserved.

There are a lot of things about the modern world that are not a la carte choices. You can go one way like the Lubavitchers or Amish or Al Qaeda and slink back to the 17th or 13th century while spewing scorn on all those who don't follow. But you can't demand, accept and benefit from the fruits of a modern pluralist society and then preserve the right to your own historical/cultural vendettas.

Actually neumann you can "accept and benefit from the fruits of a modern pluralist society and then preserve the right to your own historical/cultural vendettas." Thai is what living in a pluralistic society is also about. Nothing wrong with favoring intermarriage is only legitimate if there is nothing wrong with favoring intra-marriage.

look, you choose to call yourself an apostate, so you're starting off by proclaiming your alienation from the Jewish community.

Hey, I'm an apikoris not a goy.

http://cj-heretic.blogspot.com/2005/02/tale-of-great-apikoris-of-brooklyn.html

I'm as Jewish as any other Member of the Tribe, and I don't appreciate having me and my community dumped on just because we don't believe exactly the same things as other Jewish communities.

Maybe Israelis should spend a year in the diaspora o they can understand the Jews there better.

Interesting that they don't use the term "miscegenate." Somehow I hear Dave Chappelle shouting "Whaite Powah!" in the background.
As a person who went back to the home country I have to say it didn't make me any more Norwegian. I think if Norway were under Quisling again it might start making similar kinds of claims, though, that the Norwegian Volk must return to the homeland and all those other racially based ideological nostrums would come to the fore. But my relatives fixed Quisling's wagon and made commitments to peace, social justice and welfare. If only Israel and the US were so mature.

Apologies for being dense, C-A, I didn't get the joke. It's pretty funny, actually.

Did my late grandmother pay to run that ad?

My late father gave up on religion at least ten years before he met my mother, and joined her in Buddhism because it made more sense to him, not because she persuaded him to do so. My father became an atheist because: 1) religion made no sense to him, 2) he felt too many religious folks he knew were hypocrites, and 3) he didn't appreciate his mother forcing it on him.

I consider myself to be a secular Jew, and I married one as well. My only sibling is in a relationship with a secular Jewish man as well. Maybe walking the walk on tikkun olam works better than nagging and lashon hara.

You can grow your religion in a lot of ways, and essentially all religious traditions want the children raised in the faith. There is something peculiarly xenophobic about hostility towards spouses from another tradition. After all, you break even if half the time you gain a convert and half the time the other faith does. If your faith is really compelling you gain.

What looks truly repellent from the outside is the idea that intermarriage itself is uniquely bad, as opposed to the perfectly rational desire to have the children raised in the tradition or having people retain their religious connection even if they marry someone from another one.

Well, Marc, there's a hell of a lot about Judaism that looks repellent at first blush to many non-Jews. You're not the first non-Jew who doesn't much like what he sees in Judaism. It's not a warm and cuddly religion.

You know, tolerance doesn't mean being understanding of stuff that you already agree with. It means making an effort to understand why the people who hold beliefs that you don't agree with think the way they do. If you still don't like it, well, at least you've made the effort.

Sorry, that was me again.

All of the discussion of "secular/halachisch" "culturally assimiliated/non-assimilated" is beside the point in the context of the notion of "Jewish" that has currency in Israel.

In Israel, the distinction is primarily a racial/ethnic one based on ancestry. The Law of Return and the various other Israeli statutes discriminating between Jews and non-Jews take the same approach. Many of the Jews that Israel - in its effort to deal with the "demographic problem" - has opened its doors to have slightly less of a connection to Jewish history, religion, and culture than someone whose only exposure to Judaism is having seen Yentl once.

It isn't about culture, and it isn't about religion. It is, quite simply, about nationalism, from the notion that someone who develops an "assimilated" identity as "lost" to the overarching theme that an identity and a culture are something to imposed by fear and shaming devices regardless of whether that identity holds any meaning at all for the person in question.

We've heard nationalist calls for people to come to some "home" they've never seen before all too often. Seldom have they been anything but disturbing. I, for one, don't really see myself calling a place "home" that would place a man like Lieberman in a state institution that isn't a prison or a mental hospital.

Elise, you reject Jewishness as a legitimate national characteristic. You're not alone in that, and it's a fair position to take. But you have to understand that it's not much of a persuasive argument. "Dear Jewish people, I've decided that you really don't exist, so please stop pretending that you do." And Dana's argument is not much more persuasive: "Dear Jewish people, the efforts you make to perpetuate your existence offend me. Please stop, and just accept that you'll disappear in a generation or two." Again, a legitimate position, but not much of an argument. By taking the position you've adopted, you cut off the possibility of discussion with Jewish-identified Jews. "I don't accept that you exist" does not provide any ground for dialog.

@Bloix
and "I don't accept that you exist since you married that shiksa whooore and forget about your bastard kids" does not provide much ground for dialog either.

I'm just sayin'...

neumann, you're not just saying. You're being intentionally offensive. You're making it clear that you're not interested in a conversation. We can try this again, not for you, because you're not listening, but for anyone who may still be hanging around.

Calvin Trillin tells a story about how he found himself listening to an Episcopal priest reciting the service of Holy Matrimony at his daughter's wedding. He leaned over to his wife (the famous Alice) to say it seemed odd that he would have Episcopalian grandchildren, and she replied, What did you expect?

Now, Alice was a wonderful human being, and Calvin Trillin is a lovely man and a very fine writer, but the fact is that somehow he went 25 years without ever confronting the fact that his children were not Jewish and that his grandchildren would not be Jewish. And I don't mean they're not Jewish because there mother wasn't Jewish - they're not Jewish because they weren't raised as Jews and they don't identify themselves as Jews. That's not a problem for them, it's not a problem for me, but as a demographic matter it's a real problem for the Jewish people.

Dana and nuemann and many others seem to think that no one has any business discussing this problem because acknowledging the truth is too hurtful to them personally - we should all be like Trillin and ignore it - but the only person who's willing to express the necessary consequence of that attitude is Grumpy, up top, who says, better to disappear than to make people feel bad about their choices. That's a legitimate point of view, but it's not one that most Jews are willing to accept.

And in any event, this ad - remember the ad? - is not about making people feel bad about their choices. It's about giving young Jews a positive experience of Jewish life and culture. Dana interpreted it through her experience of American Jewish life, which bears no resemblance to Israeli Jewish life, and managed to misunderstand it completely.

Bloix:

Since you seem to have responded to things not actually contained in my comment, rather than addressing the arguments I did in fact make, the only thing I would like to point out is that, being a "Jewish-identified Jew" (by which I assume you mean someone Jewish who identifies as such, though, as with your comments generally, your syntax leaves much to the imagination) myself, I can reassure you that I have no trouble "dialoguing with Jewish-identified Jews".

The assertions you make in response to things I have written in your imagination are no more persuasive when speaking of Jews than they were when speaking of Germans, Tutsis, Serbs, or anyone else who has used supposed threats to an even more supposed national existence to justify racism.

@Bloix

Thanks for condescending to everyone else commenting. Much appreciated. Just because not everyone accepts your definition of the terms of discourse does not mean they are not participating in the discussion.

It is interesting that you consider my comments to be offensive. What I am saying is that xenophobia is not an unalloyed good, and that if a culture depends on xenophobia directed against both "the other" and its own members who dare to associate with "the other" I think you have to question what about your culture is worth preserving. A culture that exists only through - and in support of - bigotry and exclusion loses more than a bit of its own soul.

What I find "offensive" is your appointing yourself the arbiter of who is jewish enough in being "jewish identified".

And as elise so elegantly points out it is a short runway to the nastiest elements of ethnic cleanliness.

Admittedly my tendencies are to inclusive not ascriptive associations where people are involved in common values or belief or goals rather than common ancestry.

So call me offensive all you want.

Elise compares Jews to Nazis and Jewish efforts to protect their existence to the genocide of others. Like PHB, above, she is my enemy. I have nothing to say to her.

Neumann, what was offensive about your comment was the sneering "shiksa whoore" comment. Nothing I said denigrated non-Jews, and nothing in ad under discussion denigrates non-Jews. But the sneer in your voice - directed at me - came right through the screen. It was intended to offend me, and it did.

You know, I do try to be careful in what I write, and if you think I've appointed myself the arbiter of who is or is not Jewish-identified, you simply are refusing to read.

So let's try again. Jews who marry non-Jews may themselves remain Jewish-identified - that is, consider themselves Jews - for their entire lives. Think Calvin Trillin. But more often than not, their children don't think of themselves that way. And their grandchildren virtually never think of themselves that way.

We've got 125 years of a substantial Jewish presence in America, and the demographic data over many generations shows that those are the facts. None of the people who profess to be offended by my condescension can bring themselves even to acknowledge them.

"And this differs from straight-up racism how, exactly?"

Or antisemitism for that matter.

That question from SqueakyRat is yet to be answered by any of the apologists for that ad.

This is so offensive; that others deem themselves "pure" and don't acknowledge that people have always mixed (even in the Bible)-- is absurd. It's hierarchichal B.S.

"Elise compares Jews to Nazis and Jewish efforts to protect their existence to the genocide of others. Like PHB, above, she is my enemy. I have nothing to say to her."

Once again, Bloix finds it easier to invent other peoples' arguments than to respond to the ones actually made.

Obviously, I did not "compare Jews to Nazis." I compared racism to racism, propaganda to propaganda.

The only way Bloix' misrepresentation makes any sense at all is if we indulge the deeply antisemitic assumption that all Jews swallow this tripe (outside of Israel, which is off the charts in a lot of ways, I have yet to meet a single one, myself included).

One can certainly understand why someone who writes such unparallelled nonsense prefers to hide behind a pseudonym.

Elise,yes, you compared "racism to racism." You compared hacking people to pieces with machetes to guilt-tripping young women over their boyfriends. You compared gunning all the men in a village down into a mass grave to asking people to be nice to young co-religionists from another country. You compared setting up mechanized death chambers to expressing concern about demographic trends. And since you certainly can tell the difference, you choose not to recognize the difference.

That's not a problem for them [i.e. Jews who intermarry, it's not a problem for me, but as a demographic matter it's a real problem for the Jewish people.

It's only a problem for the Jewish people beacause the leaders of the Jewish people (and a lot of the ran-and-file) are way to picky about accepting who is a Jew. The Reform are on the right track with the patrilinieal descent. (and it's more than that, technically, you have to be active in the community to be counted as a Jew, and that includes people who are halachically Jewish according to the Orthodox, and if you start up with Jesus or Buddha or whatever, well, then you aren't a member, either, no matter who your grandparents were.)

The racism is pretty obvious in Israel -- it's pretty much impossible to have a conversion to Judaism accepted by the authorities unless the convert is willing to become very, very Orthodox (they call it "hareidi"), and there are rabbis who have retroactively nullified conversions becuase the person wasn't religiously observant enough for their taste. There are also rabbis who write about gentiles being inherently inferior to Jews, and many fear that Orthodox Judaism may eventually evolve into a sect that no longer accepts converts. Sure, some say that these rabbis are fringe groups, yet they are influential enough in Israel that people take them seriously.

The secular Israelis are particularly messed up on this account. They may be atheists, but even so, to them, the only real expression of Judaism is the most right wing Orthodox. So they can't understand how someone could marry a gentile, yet still be an active Jew.

You compared hacking people to pieces with machetes to guilt-tripping young women over their boyfriends.

Actually, the classic guilt-trip is guilt-tripping young men about their girlfriends. In orthodox Judaism, the reigio-national stus comes from the mother. So my sister could marry a gentile guy, and her blond, blue-eyed nordic kids are 100% Jewish according to the strictest Orthodox Law. (That said, she found Orthodox and Conservative sysnagougues very judgemental about her choice, and ended up becomming active in a Reform congregation.)

If I, on the other hand, were to marry a gentile woman, mt kids would be 100% gentile, no matter how much Talmud I taught them.

The whole thing is silly. If someone comes to a rabbi and says he or she wants to be a Jew, the Jewish community is crazy in turning them away. Even if some, or maybe most, are duds as converts, the net accretion in numbers will always be positive, and certainly better than the current state of affairs.

Just one other thing. I'm not even sure if the program is effective at what it claims to do. The tag line of the ad trasnlates roughly to:

"A year in Israel -- Love [of Israel] for life."

In my case, it only lasted for about 25 years. That was becuase the year in Israel made me somewhat knowledgeable about what was going on there, and once I noticed how the Israelis were sabotaging Oslo (even Labor, who made the agreement) and the right-wing nuts were taking over, I started getting very disillusioned very fast. If the Israelis want to keep us American Jews as useful-idiot supporters, they would be better to keep us away or on Potemkin-village deluxe tours.

It's a joke to call Obama's policy "aggressively" two-state...

E.g.

The problem for the makers of the ad is that most Jews who marry non-Jews don't marry people like you - they marry non-Jews who don't want to leave their own religions, or who have no religion at all.