Both Ellen and Gabe had children with and married people who were not Jewish, a practice termed "intermarriage" (or "outmarriage"). Gabe and Lara, accordingly, were the children of one Jew and one non-Jew. All three interviewees had specific experience with some or all of intermarriage, dating non-Jewish people, and growing up with only one Jewish parent.
Intermarriage and other romantic relationships between non-Jews and Jewish people are often regarded poorly by Jewish commentators. After a Pew Research Center survey found that rates of intermarriage were rising dramatically,1 commentators like Jack Wertheimer and Steven Cohen wrote that "American Jews now stand on the precipice of a demographic cliff" caused in part by intermarriage.2 In their analysis, intermarriage eroded organized Jewish life by producing offspring who were insufficiently connected to Judaism. Back in 1956, Herbert Gans similarly wrote that intermarriage was "one of the most effective disintegrating forces in any society."3
However, in the responses from my interviewees, children with only one Jewish parent felt a pull towards Judaism. Both Gabe and Lara, though they did not attend synagogue, have bar/bat mitzvahs, or attend specifically Jewish educational services as children, desired to learn more about Judaism and keenly identified as Jewish people. Meanwhile, my only interviewee who did all three of those things during her childhood, Ellen, became less attached to any Jewish community for the bulk of her life, choosing instead to make community elsewhere.
Family attitudes towards romantic relationships with non-Jews
Perhaps reflecting the increasing trend towards intermarriage shown in recent studies — or perhaps because both Lara and Gabe had one Jewish parent and one non-Jewish parent — only Ellen recalled her family saying anything about romantic relationships with non-Jews. When she ended up eloping with a man named Jeff, her dad threatened to disown her, at least in part because he was not Jewish.
Well, I— I lived with this guy Jeff for a while. And my father told me he was going to disown me [because] Jeff was not Jewish, and I was young. I was under 21.
― Ellen, (0:28:24)
In fact, Ellen's parents actually switched synagogues when she was a young teenager to help guide her towards Jewish boys. However, the switch backfired, ultimately turning Ellen off of religious Judaism as a whole until much later in her life.
So he would not— he did not want me to date people— boys that weren't Jewish. That was a big deal. So they moved to this other synagogue that was reformed, and I absolutely hated it and refused to go to it. So that was kind of it for me with synagogue until much later in my life when I was with Gampy.
― Ellen, (0:11:08)
For Gabe, there was no family pressure towards marrying a Jewish person. Not only was his father not Jewish, his mother had married another non-Jewish man when Gabe was still young. In fact, Gabe grew up going to Christian church with his father, a part of his life that I describe in the page about synagogue.
This transcript has been redacted.
― Gabe, (1:14:16)
Like Gabe, Lara felt no pressure from her family to only date Jewish people or to only ever marry someone who is Jewish. In fact, Lara actively rejected stigmas against intermarriage, saying that it was just another way to divide society. She remarked that children of a Jew and a non-Jew might even benefit from their dual heritage by having a foot in the door for learning about multiple cultures.
Yeah, I don't think intermarriage is a bad thing at all. I don't— I don't like that we use reasons to separate each other. [...] I think that if anything, [children of intermarriage] are gonna be able to grow up and know a lot more about a lot of stuff. So that's nothing— nothing bad there.
― Lara, (1:25:02)
It is unsurprising that both Gabe and Lara think about intermarriage radically different from Jewish commentators who argue that certain demographic trends spell certain destruction for American Judaism. However, both of them are Jewish; both feel Jewish in multiple ways and have reached towards Judaism more as they got older.
A non-Jewish mother
Lara was the only of my three interviewees to have a non-Jewish mother, which means that according to some interpretations of halakha, Lara is not Jewish. However, she has never felt excluded from Jewish spaces because of her non-Jewish mother. Though she expressed that excluding her from Judaism because of her patrilineal heritage would be "old-fashioned," and said that an insistence on matrilineal descent could be harmful, she did not feel those harms herself. She also recognized that the question of patrilineal descent is "complicated" since matrilineal descent is "part of the religion."
[Being considered not a Jew because my mother isn't Jewish] doesn't really frustrate me. I've never had that used against me. People are— most of the time, people are just happy you're there.
― Lara, (1:26:35)
However, she was conscious of the difficulties that having a non-Jewish mother might complicate joining a synagogue "fully," depending on the denomination.
I'd have to convert because our mother isn't Jewish. [...] But there are some synagogues that don't care, but most of the traditional synagogues care about your mother's heritage, and our father is our Jewish line.
― Lara, (0:21:35)
Gabe had a non-Jewish father, and so is halakhically a Jew. He expressed no feelings of exclusion from Judaism as a result of his dad's Christianity. Rather, he felt that his connection with Judaism — both as a religion and as a culture — was looser because of his upbringing, similar to Lara's sentiment that she "could have been going to synagogue this entire time with zero issues."