Gender, Intermarriage, and Jewish Identity

It is well-nigh impossible, if not downright irresponsible, to give a sermon about Dinah without bringing up the subject of gender.

Dinah, the only daughter born to Jacob and Leah, upon “going out to see the daughters of the land,” is seen, taken, and humbled by Shechem, son of Hamor, the chief of the neighboring Hivite tribe. Shechem is drawn to Dinah, speaks to her heart and requests that his father arrange for them to be married. Upon hearing the news that their sister has been defiled, Jacob’s sons are distraught, claiming that an outrage has been committed in Israel, a thing not to be done. Shechem’s father Hamor is unaware of Dinah’s brothers’ acute hostility and seeks not only to arrange the marriage between Dinah and Shechem, but between all the children of Jacob and Hamor. Speaking with guile, Dinah’s brothers explain that any such marriages would be contingent on the circumcision of every male of Hamor’s tribe. Three days later, as the Hivite men are recuperating and most vulnerable, Dinah’s brothers, led by Simeon and Levi, kill them all, plunder the town, and take Dinah home, together with all the wealth, wives, and children of Hamor. Jacob castigates Simeon and Levi for their violent actions, for having brought trouble upon his household, though it is they, not Jacob, who get the final word by way of the hanging rhetorical question with which the narrative ends: “Should our sister be treated like a whore?”

The tale is not a pleasant one, found infrequently in Hebrew school curricula or bnei mitzvah speeches, but it as much a part of our sacred texts and tradition as any narrative concerning our matriarchs and patriarchs: a full chapter of this week’s Torah reading. (Genesis 34) Over the centuries, scholarly debate has revolved around the question of what exactly was the outrage, the defilement that was committed against Dinah. What was the thing “not to be done”? The language is ambiguous. There are those who contend that the outrage was rape – a claim which, while altogether possible, has been challenged, most famously by Anita Diamant, who notes the tender affections exchanged between Dinah and Shechem. There are those who claim that the offense was not sexual assault, but sexual relations outside of marriage, an explanation, which –while also plausible – becomes less so upon considering that the brothers’ demand and Shechem’s kinsmen’s consent to circumcision does nothing to address any violation of Dinah’s chastity.

In my mind, the most plausible explanation for the brothers’ outrage is situated in matters of gender and tribe. My professor at the University of Chicago, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, z”l, taught me that in order to appreciate the narratives of Genesis, one must understand that the Bible reflects a world that is patrilocal in residence, patripotestal in authority and patrilineal in descent. To say that in English: In the Ancient Near East, geography, power, and identity were shaped by the beit av, the house of the father. One takes on the identity of the patriarchal home in which one dwells. That is why, earlier in Genesis, Abraham was able to take Hagar the Egyptian as his concubine: The child, Ishmael, would be considered Abraham’s, not Hagar’s. The same pattern is present with Jacob and his many wives. Conversely, it is one reason why last week Jacob fled his father-in-law Laban’s house: He feared that the longer he stayed, the more likely it would be that the faith of his wives would be defined by the idols of his father-in-law, and not by him. Biblically speaking, with regard to intermarriage, gender matters; an Israelite man marrying a non-Israelite woman is far less threatening to the Jewish future than the other way around because identity is determined by way of the male line.

Which is why Dinah’s brothers were so outraged. The fact that Dinah married a non-Israelite is neither interesting nor outrageous. Who else was she supposed to marry? There were only twelve other eligible Jewish men at the time, and she was related to all of them. The outrage was that she was taken into the beit av of another tribe, thereby becoming a member of that family – a breach of covenantal faith that Jacob’s sons could not countenance. This understanding explains why Dinah’s brothers’ demand that the sons of Hamor be circumcised was not laughed off. Everyone understood that the relationship between Dinah and Shechem could only be sanctioned if her brothers were assured that the home in which Dinah lived would bear the faith of Jacob, not Hamor. The threat, to be clear, was not intermarriage; Genesis had no prohibition against intermarriage. Lest we forget, our story concludes with all the captive widows of Hamor’s house entering Jacob’s house, the presumption being that they became members of Jacob’s tribe. The threat, the violation, the outrage, the defilement was a reflection of the Bible’s understanding of the interface between gender and intermarriage. In a world where identity is transmitted through the father, Dinah’s entrance into the house of another paterfamilias was an unthinkable threat to Jewish continuity that demanded a response.

And if, at this point, you are befuddled both by the discussion at hand and by the direction of this sermon, let me make it clear. The Dinah story spotlights the critical role of gender vis-à-vis discussions of intermarriage and identity transmission, a discussion that is as important to understanding contemporary Jewry as ancient Israel – with one critical caveat. Today the situation is flipped. Today the transmission of Jewish identity both legally and culturally has shifted from the father’s line to the mother’s line. When and why the legal flip happened continues to be debated by contemporary scholars – a sermon for another day. But the fact that it did flip is well documented. By the time of the Mishnah in 200 CE, the matrilineal principle had become the legal rule and the norm – a norm shared by Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews until as recently as 1983, when the Reform Movement began to recognize Jews of patrilineal descent.

I believe that this question – the role of gender vis-à-vis matters of intermarriage and identity transmission – is a necessary, albeit third-rail, conversation for us to have as a Jewish community. Seventy-two percent of non-Orthodox American Jews will marry someone not-born Jewish, a proportion trending generationally, as evidenced by the most recent Pew Research poll documenting that eighty-two percent of married Jews with one Jewish parent have a non-Jewish spouse. And no different than biblical times, intermarriage is a fact of Jewish life and gender plays a significant role. In the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey, Jewish women married to non-Jewish men were nearly twice as likely to raise their children Jewish as Jewish men who were married to non-Jewish women, a difference of forty-seven to twenty-eight percent. Similarly, the 2005 survey of the Boston Jewish community observed:

“Intermarried households where the Jewish parent is female are significantly more likely to raise their children as Jews. Jewish mothers married to non-Jews are near-universal in reporting that they raised their children as Jews. In contrast, Jewish fathers in interfaith relationships are much less likely to report that they are raising their children as Jews.” (Preliminary Findings, p. 12)

Seventy percent of the respondents with Jewish mothers indicated that their Jewish parent encouraged them to “identify with the Jewish religion,” as compared to forty-five percent of respondents with Jewish fathers – trends consistent with more recent surveys regarding the millennial children of intermarried parents. (Keren McGinity, Marrying Out, p. 222) Speaking as but one non-Orthodox congregational rabbi, I find the statistics are altogether supported by over twenty years of anecdotal experience. While exceptions abound, including some in this room today – in the context of cisgender heterosexual marriages, a topic to which we shall return – it is far more likely that a child born to a non-Jewish father and a Jewish mother will be raised Jewishly than the other way around.

And it is here, before we begin to formulate a policy prescription, that we who are committed to the Jewish future must ask the really, really prickly question of “why?” Jewish law aside, why are we more confident, with statistical support, that a child born to an intermarried Jewish woman will identify Jewishly more readily than the child of an intermarried Jewish man? Answers abound, but given that I am not unaware of the fraught ground upon which I tread, I will begin gingerly with an answer both oblique and ridiculous, by urging you to watch a clip entitled “Man Park” from last week’s Saturday Night Live, a comedy sketch premised on the truth that in heterosexual relationships it is the woman, not the man, who takes the lead on all matters of socialization. The joke is that to make friends, men, like dogs, need parks to run around in. Notwithstanding first-, second- and every wave of feminism, the plans we make, the couples with whom we dine, the places we live, the communities we join, and the rhythms of our lives – Jewish lives included – are often, though not always, determined by the female partner.

Religious identity is but one of many spheres whose contours are more likely, but not necessarily, shaped by the female partner. If we dare to really peel away at this gendered onion, then we must also take note of the systemic societal inequities that we all know exist between men and women, inequities exacerbated by the pandemic, which is only hardening historically received gender roles. It doesn’t take a PhD in economics to understand why, as long as women are not paid the same as men for the same work, men will continue to predominate in the role of the provider and women in the domestic and thus religious sphere. The feminization of religious life over the last fifty years extends beyond the home and into Jewish institutions themselves, a trend informed by the gendered manner by which society values – or more precisely, devalues – volunteerism. There are a variety of reasons why Jewish identity, independent of Jewish law, has shifted to women – some having to do with the strengths of women, some having to do with society as a whole, some having to do with inherited definitions of manhood.

Men have a hard enough time, as the joke goes, asking for directions. If you are a man who, despite having attained an educational and economic status beyond the wildest dreams of Jewish generations past, has a hard time decoding Hebrew letters, never mind saying kiddush or leading a discussion with your children on the Torah reading, it takes a courage, humility, and patience on a heroic magnitude to pause, seek help, and learn those basic skills so that you can be positioned to take point on the Jewish life of your household. And while we might understand and even sympathize with the impediments preventing men from taking the lead on their family’s Jewish life and living, the consequences of them not doing so are devastating: generations of children raised without the shaping educational influence of fathers on their Jewish character.

So where do we go from here? Given the statistics, one could, I suppose, argue that a new policy on intermarriage should emerge – one that is data-driven and results-oriented – whose success is measured by way of Jewish futures created: “Rabbis, you may officiate at weddings of Jewish women to non-Jewish men because the children of those marriages will be more likely be Jewish.” One could, I suppose, make exactly the opposite argument, proposing that it is Jewish men marrying non-Jewish women for whom a rabbi should be present. After all, is it at all surprising that such couples are disinclined to raise their children Jewishly when Jewish law and the Jewish community tells them that the mother, and thus the children, are not Jewish? Are we not living a self-fulfilling prophecy? Is it not these couples, more than anyone else, who would be the most immediate beneficiaries of a warm embrace from an inclusively minded clergy?

While all ideas deserve a fair hearing, allow me to offer my own thoughts. What if all of us here in this community decided to take personal agency for our own identities and shared Jewish future? What if Jewish men married to non-Jewish women and Jewish women married to non-Jewish men as well as Jewish men and Jewish women married to each other were to agree that when it comes to raising Jewish children, there is no fairy dust? If Jewish identity and Jewish continuity is the desired outcome, then it is an outcome that will only happen by way of intentionality, effort, humility, and hard work. What if we stopped talking about Jewish men married to non-Jewish women and Jewish women married to non-Jewish men and treated all adults alike as stakeholders accountable for the decisions they make? What if we created a synagogue and society that valued the volunteer hours of women and men equally, that valued domestic roles whether filled by men or women, that sought to create an equitable society, that celebrated lifelong learning for women and men, that met people where they are and empowered them to be shapers of the Jewish identities of their children? What if we stopped thinking that a Jewish family is defined by two Ashkenazi heterosexual partners and acknowledged that we have Jews both single and married, straight and queer, Caucasian and of color, born Jews and Jews-by-choice, cisgender and trans? What if we stipulated that our success as a Jewish community will not come about by putting up impediments to Jewish engagement, but by creating a community where the riches of our tradition and covenantal possibilities are made as accessible as possible? This is not a free-for-all, there are boundaries – a community that stands for nothing falls for anything. But to be a big tent means that we must be willing to house all those seeking entry. Every sincere soul seeking admission deserves to be treated with the infinite dignity befitting a person created in the image of God.

I have now said much more than I had planned on saying, things which I have thought about for some time, opening a conversation, hopefully, that will be unpacked, discussed, debated, and acted upon. The Dinah story bears many lessons: gender, tribal identity, intermarriage, fear of the “other,” among others. Its most enduring lesson, tragically, comes from Dinah herself. Not a word do we hear from her. Of her voice, her feelings, her love, her fear, her pain, her hopes, we hear nothing, not one word. Maybe the first step in our communal conversation is not so much to speak and to do, but to listen. To acknowledge all the “Dinahs,” all the muted voices in our midst seeking to be heard. There are a whole lot of people who don’t fit into neat boxes, who love the Jewish people, who have our best interests at heart and seek to be part of shaping our future. Let’s do what should have been done way back then – if we listen more and speak less, so that maybe, just maybe, together with all the inhabitants of the land, we will arrive shalem, whole and at peace with the Jewish future.

References:

Alper, Becka A. and Alan Cooperman. “10 key findings about Jewish Americans.” Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, May 11, 2021, https://pewrsr.ch/3w2sQmX

Cohen, Shaye J. D. The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Cohen, Steven M., et. al. 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey. New York: United Jewish Communities, 2001, https://www.jewishdatabank.org/databank/search-results/study/307

Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. “Patriarchal Family Relationships and Near Eastern Law.” The Biblical Archaeologist, vol. 44, no. 4, The American Schools of Oriental Research, 1981, pp. 209–14, https://doi.org/10.2307/3209666

The 2005 Greater Boston Community Study: Preliminary Findings. A Report by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute, Brandeis University for the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston, 2006, https://www.jewishdatabank.org/content/upload/bjdb/449/C-MA-Boston-2005-Summary_Report.pdf

“Man Park.” Saturday Night Live, Season 47, Episode 6. November 13, 2021.

McGinity, Keren R. Marrying Out: Jewish Men, Intermarriage, and Fatherhood. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.