Jews See Marriage to Non-Jews as ‘Annihilation’

Islam Versus Europe
November 5, 2013

The Pew Research Center released a comprehensive and nuanced study on Oct. 1 about the character of the American Jewish community. The reaction here was typical Israeli apprehension about Jews’ place in the world, mixed with a general sense of confusion over how to interpret the results. Most discussions focused on two aspects: The high percentage of interfaith marriages and the vast support among American Jews for Israel.

Fifty-eight percent of Jews who married between 2005 and 2013 have a non-Jewish spouse. Mixed marriages inevitably lead to the assimilation of Jews into American culture, and tap long-standing Israeli fears over the future of the Jewish people. To some Israelis given to these worries, assimilation is tantamount to accepting annihilation.

Many took the news of the Pew report as evidence that Jews who do not live in Israel are putting the future of the “tribe” in danger. Some argued triumphantly that the antidote to assimilation of the Diaspora should naturally be a renewed focus on Zionism — the thesis that Jews can only live fully and safely in the Jewish homeland. It was opportunity for these Israelis to publicly gloat that their long-held ideas over the primacy of Zionism were validated.

“The only place in the world that enables multigenerational Jewish life … is the state of Israel,” the Israeli rabbi Noam Pearl wrote in the Maariv newspaper of the Pew report.

Yet it was impossible to avoid the survey’s bad news. The attention given to the fact that American Jews still care in great numbers about Israel — “about seven in ten American Jews (69%) say they are emotionally very attached (30%) or somewhat attached (39%) to Israel” — belies the sense of apprehension among Israelis about the sustainability of Jewish culture.

…In the committee meeting, Rabbi Gilad Kariv of the Reform movement, was one of those members who put a positive spin on the Pew findings, calling them a “victory of Zionism.” Kariv is hardly a hawkish nationalist, and he has close relations to Reform communities in North America. Nevertheless, he said that the findings prove that “the future of Jewish demographics depends on the Jewish state.”

Source: New York Times

I find it interesting that it is considered socially acceptable for Jews to describe marriage with non-Jews as “annihilation”. If any Europeans expressed a similar sentiment about their own people, Jews, and quite possibly the very same ones, would not hesitate to call them Nazis. This is because Anti-Europeanism, which is the dominant ideology of the world, sees European peoplehood as a lesser thing than non-European peoplehood. Non-European peoplehood is something rich, deep and ancestral, whereas European peoplehood, according to this view, is defined by simple rules such as place of birth or possession of an administrative status called citizenship.

Let’s be clear here. This is about genetics. There is no question of the Jews who “marry out” abandoning their religion. And the “culture” label is just a nod towards the mores of the times, intended to make concern about genetic purity seem more socially acceptable.

In general, the human mating impulse being what it is, the only way any people can maintain its own genetic continuity is to live concentrated within their own physical space. This ensures that the pool of potential mates likely to be encountered is substantially of the same genetic lineage. Absent ethnic homogeneity within an exclusive territory, in-group marriage can only be enforced by a rigorously exclusionist culture, often accompanied by physical controls on movement and interaction and strong social or legal sanctions, sometimes including violence, against those who refuse to comply.

For thousands of years, their ability to maintain their own genetic integrity without a territory of their own has been the “killer app” of the Jewish people, what uniquely distinguished them from all others. Looking at modern Mohammedan demographics in Europe, absent continued immigration and demographic dominance, there is little indication that the Muslims would be able to maintain their own separateness over the long term. Even the internal cultural enforcement mechanisms, including threats of violence, would almost certainly prove unavailing unless the Muslims achieved sufficient strength of numbers to assume political control of the territory.

The only people who have ever been able to maintain their own distinctness over the long term without governmental power are Jews. And, of course, this, in part, is what has led to their disproportionate support for multiculturalism, multiracialism and diversity. Confident in their killer app, a fiercely inward-looking and exclusionist culture, they believed that the corrosive effects of “diversity” would be felt only by others. But now the openness of European civilisation is affecting them too.

A recent article in the Jewish magazine Commentary acknowledged this. For all the bleating about antisemitism in Europe, the real threat to Jews comes not from Europeans being nasty to them, but being nice to them.

Despite the disheartening vilification of Israel, the biggest threat to long-term European Jewish survival is assimilation, not persecution or even prejudice.

European Jewish demographics since World War II ended show a pattern of decline that can be correlated to the degree of Jewish assimilation into the broader European
society. The more secular Jews are, the less children they tend to have.

…The fact is, European Jews are very much like their non-Jewish counterparts. They are assimilating into something–and their full embrace of the surrounding culture leads to
dwindling numbers of Jews for the next generation as a result of lower birth rates, intermarriage, lack of participation in communal life, lack of Jewish literacy, and the like. Their loss to the community means that communities become smaller over time–and larger religious families are not large enough to make up for those lost numbers.

Source: Commentary

Considering the social integration of American Jewry, even an in-group marriage rate of 42% is astonishingly high by any normal standards. It bespeaks massive subterranean cultural prejudice against the idea of marrying non-Jews. But all of the indicators point towards further assimilation and loss of Jewish uniqueness in future. At last Jews are forced to confront the truth that the rest of humanity has faced since the dawn of time: no people can exist without a territory of its own.