This is an interesting example of the obvious, actually. From Jewish News of Northern California:
How do young adult children of interfaith marriages feel about their Jewish identity? Do they identify as Jews, “half-Jews” or mixed? How do they feel about Israel? Do they care about finding a Jewish partner, or passing some kind of knowledge about Judaism on to their children?
These are questions that, until now, had been largely unanswered for Jewish demographers.
Although anyone with a real commitment to Jewish continuity knows that the answer to most of these questions is "no."
But Ruth Decalo, senior director of programs and training at the Jewish Outreach Institute in New York, who recently presented findings of an interfaith study to a small group of Jewish professionals at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco. JOI has been a frequent presence in the Bay Area this past year, as it regularly consults with Jewish organizations to help make them more welcoming to the unaffiliated.
The news was both good and bad. While Decalo summarized the study by saying that most respondents did not have a sense of Jewish community and had a low sense of identification with Israel, they did identify with anti-Semitism, even if it was obtained through popular culture, such as viewing “Schindler’s List” or reading “The Diary of Anne Frank” in high school.
Aren't you glad there was some "good" news there?
A full 70 percent of those interviewed said their Jewish identity or dual identity was important to them, even if they didn’t know exactly how to define that. Some 76 percent said they wanted to transmit Jewish identity to their children, even though 64 percent said that being with a Jewish partner was not important to them.
Why didn't they ask them if being with a Gentile partner was important? And why is it a given that "My blah blah identity is important to me" is a meaningful statement? What will the next generation say about its one-quarter Jewishness? A Jew is a person born to a Jewish mother or someone who converted in accordance with halachah. Intermarriage is the negation of Jewish continuity. An approach that tries to promote any other definition of Jewish identity and continuity is a way-station on the path to Jewish oblivion. No Torah, no continuity. See, I told you this was a fundamentalist blog.
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