I will out myself much to the chagrin of certain people here, including those I agree with on other topics, but I am guilty myself of marrying a non-Jewish woman. I think about it nearly every few days, I feel guilty, yet I don’t regret it because I am happy every day with my wonderful wife and our life, and there were many times in my life where I thought that could never be possible. Perhaps it was bad timing as I never dated any Jewish girls I fell in love with and I never went to Israel and missed out on all of those hot girls we see on the net!

My wife and I plan on raising our children Jewish, joining my sister’s congregation (for the children, not for us, as I find Shul boring except for Yom Kippur when I go out of respect for my relatives who have passed and cry like a little girl), having a Bris, Bar/Bat Mitzvah’s, etc. Being Jewish and having Jewish children is critical for me, and I’m sorry Sen, but I do feel especially proud of being a Jew and nothing else. Yes, I know, I’m screwed up in the head, but I’m alright with that.

I have to disagree with ben David on this point:
“The common denominator of successful transmission of Jewish identity is a sense of a binding religious/moral covenant, a living relationship with G-d as defined by the Torah.”

As some of you know, I am an immigrant from the FSU and came here when I was 4 years old. My father’s Bar Mitzvah consisted of his father patting him on the back and saying, “today you are a man”. Judaism was very hard to understand and practice in the FSU, but my parents were damn proud of the fact and chose to write “Evrey” on my birth certificate instead of “Russian”, and to this day, I glow when I think of that.

When we came to this country, despite my parents being die hard athiests, capitalists, and Zionists, they signed me up for a Yeshiva, not knowing just HOW Jewish one can be in America. Two years later, they put me in public schools and I have not been happier since. I still went to sunday school, but I was definitely raised reform. The orthodox lifestyle was torture on me at that early age, but to this day, I have a strong love for the Orthodox because I believe, (socialism aside), that they and their propensity for large families, are the bedrock of our future.

To this day, being an Atheist/Agnostic when my wife is listening, I feel more Jewish than ever. I constantly learn about our history, our people and our traditions and my wife is very supportive and interested too. I am as cultural/ethnically Jewish as they come and spend my time at the JCC, reading Jewish authors, watching Jewish themed movies, etc. However, I would never expect my wife to convert as I would never convert myself away from Judaism, nor do I believe in g-d, so I have a hard time being a hypocrite and expect her, who does believe in g-d, to believe in our laws to the point where she has to do something I consider ceremonial so that I can ensure that my children are Jews.

Furthermore, when I was ready to propose (we have been friends for a long time) to the woman I fell deeply in love with, I struggled with this and sought many opinions from those I considered knowledgeable. One point that rings in my mind (or that I obviously use for justification), is that there are many Jews who are Halachically Jewish whom are not good people. Was my goal to simply marry a Jew (for the team) or to marry someone I could trust and love and raise good children with, who maybe considered half-Jews or not officially Jewish, but raised to be Jews?

The answers are not easy my friends. But in the end, I have no regrets, but only challenges ahead, like explaining to my in-laws that we’re going to party like its 1999 when we snip my son’s foreskin off in front of all of our friends and family.

Lastly, my best friend from childhood, who was raised conservative Jewish also ended up intermarrying a child of Korean Christian missionaries. Their relationship requires much more compromise than mine and I do not envy him, but I do respect his choices and his wife. Personally, I think that if Jews can be identified as Jews outside of Halachic definition, then we should use intermarriage to our advantage and not to our detriment. I understand that using our enemies’ definition of who is a Jew is unacceptable, but when you poll Americans of whether Ben Stiller and Adrian Brody are Jews, most will say, hell yeah. I think Judaism, like being black or Italian, is the dominant ethnicity in a lot of cases. That’s my 2 cents.

Critical exegesis suggests that the later re-interpretation of the ban more or less could be summed up as, “The mother is always known.” Declaring biblical figures that intermarried converts in retrospective was vital to maintain the ban on intermarriage in the diaspora situation and likely also reflected a legal situation in which Jews were not permitted to marry Christians.

Communal pressure, or family pressure for that matter, are weak tools when it comes to preventing intermarriage among Jews. Violence isn’t on the table and rhetoric isn’t working. Many of the same people who are so-called “leaders” in the Jewish community and some of whom are simply very active and caring members of the community who wish for it to thrive and grow, have seen their own children intermarry.

In other words, you have little to worry about because Jews are doing precisely what you’re suggesting.

Hey, I thought my e-mail address was invisible! Oh, right: you’re part of Jewlicious, not a visitor.

Yes, that’s my real name. We always have spelled it with one “n”. From what I understand the more common German spelling is with two. That’s an interesting factoid about the name, though. What’s the connection with Levy?

I use “Teutons” in the sense most Americans understand it: another word for Germans.

And are you saying I digress a lot?