Besides Ruth was a gentile & was more loyal & decent than most Jewish girl. She looked after her mother in-law even after her husband had died. She then married Boaz who she had children with.
She was dedicated to God & looked after her mother-in-law who was Jewish…..

I think it’s very racist in many ways. Relationship is built on love, trust & understanding. So if you with so one who has no love for you, trust or there is no understanding then what are you doing together. But if you are in relationship that has all these things then for sure there will be compromise.

If you are Jew and you believe in your faith so much so, but fall in love with a gentile “deeply”, it is your minds eye that needs to see if that gentile will take from your faith or will give. There after it is God’s gift to us – CHOICE – Whether or not you are strong enough to stand your ground or you just give in. But like I said the Jewish community has intermarried alot and there has been many men & women that have converted & lived a Jewish life in the jewish faith & have been strong than Most Jews from birth.

Yes I do believe & understand the being Jewish is for a lot of Jewish people a great responsibilty. By this I mean keeping the faith & people together & trying to live a life give by God in the Torah as well as also trying to live a life you face with today. Being Seventh Day Adventist I was denied alot of things because I had to keep the Sabbath Holy. This ment no sports medals, no going out with my friends who were all secular & it ment feeling out & different. This feeling has been discribed to be by alot of my Jewish friends & family. So understand this feeling, but, I strongly believe that if you in love & your partner (including you) feeling strongly about God & his laws, then there is no reason that one shouldnt convert & get married.

Rahab was not Jewish, she married Salmon & lived a life of faith from the moment she left Jericho.
So though I understand the importance of preserving the Faith & God’s laws, I think it’s very wrong to say do not marry outsiders at alot, because gentiles can also be good people & be faithful to God.

So think about that……
But in the same breathe dont ever forget where you come from & your faith.

PS
For Jews, “marrying within the faith” isn’t a cultural preference or prejudice. Rather, it is one the commandments G-d gave us at Mount Sinai. A Jew who marries a non-Jew transgresses a Torah prohibition.
The practice of not “intermarrying” is in fact one of the oldest features of Judaism. It dates back to Abraham telling Eliezer, his servant, not to find a wife for his son from the Canaanites. It continues with Isaac’s command to his son Jacob not to marry the “daughters of the land.” The practice is mentioned in the Bible as a legal prohibition, and is also part of the covenant that Ezra the scribe had the Jews make when they rebuilt the Temple after the Babylonian Exile.
In all the above cases the underlying idea of the prohibition seems to be ideological. As Jews, we have a unique identity that is connected to our purpose in the world. We are the “chosen people.” We were chosen to propagate the ethical monotheism of Judaism.
In the words of Leo Tolstoy:
“The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religious. The Jew is the pioneer of liberty. The Jew is the pioneer of civilization. The Jew is the emblem of eternity.”
We were chosen as a permanent protest group against idolatry and immorality. Intermarriage is therefore antithetical to the Jewish purpose and to the Jewish identity.
Being Jewish isn’t a cultural affiliation or a tradition. It’s being part of the Chosen People. That means a commitment to the responsibility given to us by G-d at Sinai. Someone who understands this will obviously choose a partner who is likewise committed. Otherwise, it’s entering a relay race, but choosing a partner who’s running towards a different finish line.
Whom you marry affects every single aspect of your life. It affects your community. It affects your children. It affects all future generations. The Jewish home is the single most important establishment in Jewish life. It outweighs any synagogue or temple, even the Holy Temple built by King Solomon. By marrying a non-Jew one thereby ends over 3,000 years of Jewish continuity, effectively cutting oneself and one’s offspring off from what it means to be Jewish.
There have been many other arguments offered against intermarriage. Below is a summary of some of the most famous.
1. Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, 12 million were left afterwards. Today there are only 13 million Jews in the world. Where are the rest that by natural increase should number close to 20 million? The answer is that the silent holocaust of assimilation has caused them to disappear as Jews.
2. Intermarriages are twice as likely to end in divorce as same-faith marriages (75% divorce rate!). Some reasons for this are the different identities of the spouses and the differences in culture and family. For example a Jew will naturally turn his head at the mention of “Israel” and “Jew.” A gentile who converts in a superficial and insincere conversion only for the sake of marriage does not create a new identity that is now Jewish.
3. One is granting a victory to anti-Semites who seek to destroy the Jewish people. Think of what has been sacrificed in the past by our own ancestors to keep their Judaism. And think of the heritage that is being sacrificed for the sake of personal reasons.
Ultimately, however, all Jews must have a sense of pride in their own identity. We cannot define ourselves by foreign ideologies, nationalities or religions. As a great author once wrote:
“Pride is faith in the idea that G-d had when He made us. A proud man is conscious of the idea, and aspires to realize it. He does not strive towards a happiness, or comfort, which may be irrelevant to G-d’s idea of him. His success is the idea of G-d, successfully carried through, and he is in love with his destiny People who have no pride are not aware of any idea of G-d in the making of them, and sometimes they make you doubt that there has ever been much of an idea, or else it has been lost, and who shall find it again? They have got to accept as success what others warrant to be so, and to take their happiness, and even their own selves, at the quotation of the day. They tremble with reason before their fate.”
Let us not live by the “quotation of the day” but rather by our own heritage, the Torah. When Jews study Torah, and identify as Jews they are really just returning to their true selves.
“Who lets Untruth exist without protest, Himself becomes supporter of Untruth.”

Birth rates are declining everywhere but population decline hasn’t really kicked in yet in most places.

The population decline is happening all over the world. Even in poor countries like Mexico and India the birth rate is declining sharply as women become more educated and get access to birth control.

So its not really a strictly Jewish phenomenon.

Consider, for instance, what would happen if we assumed that all of these groups had the same spectacular intermarriage rate as the Orthodox (3%), but still had the birthrates quoted in the article. For simplicity assume that everyone marries wthin their own denomination, and that none of the offspring of intermarriages count as Jews. By the fourth generation, we would have:
O: 2991
MO: 385
C: 69
R: 58
U: 49

Now, consider what happens if we keep the current intermarriage rates, but assume every couple is as prolific as the haredi with 6.2 kids. We get after 4 generations:
O: 2991
C: 821
R: 340
U: 73

Remember, this is assuming that all of the intermarriage kids do not identify as Jews, an assumption that clearly underestimates them; at least a [I]few[/I] of them are likely to come back into the fold. If we assume that even a measly 15% of the intermarried kids end up as Jews, and all couples still have 6.2 kids:
O: 3022
C: 1060
R: 541
U: 193

The take home message: intermarriage rates obviously do make a difference here, but the population can actually withstand very high rates of intermarriage as long as the birth rate stays very high. On the other hand, if birth rates drop below replacement, no amount of kvetching about intermarriage will prevent population loss.

Sorry about the dianetics comparison. As for myth, it really is important for me at least to be clear that my Jewish observance, or lack thereof, is not about laziness, or readiness, or boredom, but about what I believe. Some people say that Judaism does not require Christianity’s leap of faith. I disagree. The details of the leap are much different of course, but (Orthodox) Judaism really does require a leap of faith to believe that the events of the Torah, particularly the events regarding God’s interaction with humans, are true. So in order to make it clear that I do not believe in those things, I refer to those things as myths. Sorry if it offended you.

Yes, I appreciate you acknowledging our differences in the Mosaic outlook.

Take care.

Jewlicious is a community of the best kind; diverse and mostly tolerant of what other people believe. I use the qualifier of mostly, because there have been a few posts that I think dance dangerously close to negating the commitment of the differently affiliated. Even this happens not because of any hatred of another group but out of personal, passionate beliefs.

As someone who is “kinda Conservadox, I guess,” (which is unfortunately fairly accurate) there are things about Orthodoxy that make me uncomfortable, and things about Shabbat and traditional observance that are difficult for me right now, which I’ve discussed before, hereand elsewhere, probably more openly than I ever have in my extra-blogular life. In fact, that whole discussion had its roots in a post that started here on Jewlicious, as an outgrowth of the Jewlicious at the Beach conference, which united Jewish students and presenters of all stripes.

So, to paraphrase Shakespeare:
If we bloggers have offended,
think but this and all is mended:
that we have just slumbered here
while these comments did appear.
Our love of Jews was of pure intent…
offense may be taken, but none was meant.

Here’s to a solid ten percent. Whatever that means to you.