The Maccabaean

IN TERMARRIAGE is perhaps the bitterest problem that has troubled Jewry in exile. The Ghetto furnished a partial solution to the problem, both socially and religiously. When the Jewish community lived its own life

entirely within Jewish social confines, intermarriage was comparatively rare. For intermarriage takes place, as a rule, only within the common segment of intersecting social circles. Intimately bound up with this social segregation was the religious isolation of the Jew in the Ghetto. Sabbath observance, the festival regulations, the daily regimen of the periods of the Sefira, the "Drei Wochen" and the Selichoth, the continual segregation through the dietary laws and the innumerable other ritual observances of traditional Judaism, all worked in practise as constant separatist forces of immeasurable, sentimental and religious strength and further served to make intermarriage of rare occasion in Ghetto communities. In addition, the predominant power of the Church outside the Ghetto walls in its turn rendered intermarriage of rare occurrence, both because of the strength of mutual religious intolerance and because of the fact that civil marriage without sanction of the Church was hardly recognized.

These conditions no longer exist, and the intermarriage problem has become of the utmost gravity. The fall of the Ghetto walls has broken down the physical isolation of the Jew, and in emancipated communities Jews have freedom of social intercourse with their non-Jewish neighbors that is limited only in certain directions by social anti-Semitism. But this social prejudice is not strong enough to prevent Jews and non-Jews meeting freely in the streets and market places, on land and water, at work and at play, in close enough social contact to make relatively large a measure of intermarriage inevitable. EFspecially in centers where the Jewish community comprises only a very small portion of the total population is the percentage of intermarriage of necessity very high. Together with this growing social intermingling has gone a growing ignorance of and disregard of traditional Judaism with all its sentimental and religious safeguards against intermarriage. When the young generation of Jewry associates freely and without prejudice with the young generation of Christendom, working and playing together seven days in the week without any religious observances to hold them apart, eating and feasting together without any ritual prescriptions to curb them, passing the door of both synagogue and church

without stepping aside to enter and worship, intermarriage is but an incident in the natural and inevitable sequence. Whether it comes in one or two or three generations, ultimately it must find its place in the course of development. Throughout Australia and in scattered and small communities in North and South America, the percentage of intermarriage is appallingly large. And in larger cities, also, such as Copenhagen or Hamburg, sometimes more than half of all the marriages contracted by Jews or Jewesses are mixed marriages. Intermarriage is thus endangering the very existence of the Jews as a separate people.

What can Zionism add to the solution of this problem of intermarriage? It would seem to be clear that Zionism when regarded only as a national movement gives no assurance of diminishing the number of intermarriages. Paradoxical though it be, non-religious Jewish nationalism tends to increase rather than to decrease mixed marriages.

In self defense, Jewish communities in the past have always been compelled to refuse recognition to mixed marriages, and the one who contracted a mixed marriage virtually cut himself off from participation in Jewish life. "This non-recognitjon of an intermarriage, though rigorous and hard in practise, confirmed that ingrained repugnance to intermarriage which ensured our survival. It was a drastic measure dictated by the instinct of self-preservation. But the modern Jewish nationalist movement, in giving recognition and honor to men who have intermarried, has virtually proclaimed to the Jewish youth that an intermarriage is no bar to Jewish leadership. With national leadership accorded to such men, the inference has been not illogically drawn that marriage is entirely a personal matter not affecting the Jewish people as a whole. We cannot with grace read any pioneer of Zionism out of the movement because of his marriage with a non-Jewish wife. But we can frankly and boldly recognize the preposterous absurdity of acclaiming as leaders of Jewish nationalism men who by their marriage have well-nigh negated every desire for or probability of national Jewish survival in themselves and their offspring. We can and should frankly and boldly recognize the demoralizing effect of honoring such men as Jewish leaders through its ominous weakening of the popular Jewish sentiment against intermarriage.

We should have sufficient strength of conviction to make it an uncompromising principle of our movement that henceforward anyone who by his marriage has shown treachery to the Jewish people shall not be eligible to leadership, whether in the international, the national or the local Zionist organizations. Such a principle will be denounced by some as narrow, medieval, harsh, bigoted and inquisitorial. Yet we cannot compromise with intermarriage. Facts, figures and common observation prove that through intermarriage the very existence of the Jewish people as a separate entity is endangered. Must not all Jews, especially those who believe in Tewish