Tackling the Intermarriage Question a Few Steps Before Tying the Knot

Gainesville, FL — As thousands of students dig deep to define their Jewish identities, Doron Kornbluth is adamant that one very important aspect not get lost in the equation. The successful author and lecturer is giving Jewish students across the country reasons by the dozen to not only date Jewish, but find a Jewish spouse.

Rabbi Berl Goldman, co-director of the Lubavitch Jewish Center at the University of Florida, hosted the speaker in late January and says Kornbluth’s visit to the school was one of the best received in years.

“We had approximately 100 students attend,” says Goldman. “It was one of our best engagements – very provocative. We had students who were dating non-Jewish boys and girls there, and they came specifically to hear the Jewish perspective on this.”

The success of Kornbluth’s book, “Why Marry Jewish?” and his seminars, “The five secrets of great Jewish families” and “Dating Jewish?!” have made him one of the foremost speakers on these topics.

The issues could not be more timely when dealing with campuses with sizable, and even not so sizable, Jewish populations. In fact, the topic of Jews dating non-Jews is so poignant that the University of Pennsylvania’s student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, recently ran an opinion piece headlined, “You don’t have to date a Jew to be Jewish.”

According to Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel, director of the Chabad Jewish Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “probably some of the most discussed topics among students are dating and marrying Jewish.”

Kornbluth, who’s in the midst of a whirlwind tour of Chabad Houses across the United States – he has upcoming visits scheduled at Penn and the University of Illinois – says he began speaking almost exclusively about the dangers of intermarriage following the publication of data indicating the prevalence of interfaith marriage to be on the rise, particularly amongst Jews.

A 1990 national study by the Council of Jewish Federations revealed that before 1965, only 10 percent of Jews were marrying outside their faith. In 1985, that number rose to more than 50 percent. And a 2003 national survey by the United Jewish Communities shows an intermarriage rate hovering at just under 50 percent.

“About ten years ago, I was working with U.S. college students and the question of ‘Why Marry Jewish?’ kept coming up,” explains Kornbluth. “Some of the students could relate to discussions of the special neshama of the Jew and the special role of the Jewish people, or to the Torah’s insistence on marrying Jewish.

“But in my experience both then and now, the vast majority – and I mean about 90 percent – couldn’t relate to these approaches,” he continues. Even more, “most students felt insulted if I used guilt, i.e. ‘Hitler killed six million; how could you do this? What would your grandfather think?’ It rarely worked.”

His solution?

“There had to be another approach, one that would appeal to the rational critical minds of American Jewish students,” he says. “So I started researching and I found an approach that they can indeed identify with.”

So rather than use an approach based on guilt or rote recitation of Torah passages, Kornbluth aims for the middle ground. The message his audiences receive is one demonstrating dating and marrying within the faith as truly identity-affirming acts; to date or marry a non-Jew would be anathema to a positive Jewish identity.

And although he hasn’t seen the effects with his own eyes, his teachings are apparently sinking in. According to those who work closely with Jewish college students, a handful of relationships and engagements between Jews and non-Jews have been broken off after those involved heard Kornbluth speak.

Tiechtel says he’s chosen to host the speaker on March 10 because he had been so well received at other universities. Kornbluth will host a question and answer session following his talk and will also remain through Shabbat to interact with students.

“We expect around 60 students,” predicts Tiechtel. “Many will attend the Shabbat dinner when Kornbluth will present, but he’ll be around all Saturday afternoon in an informal setting to talk to students about dating and marrying Jewish.”

Although the rabbi admits that many students are still in the dating stage of their lives, and may not quite be ready to look down the road to marriage, their interest in hearing Kornbluth is a sign of the times. As a rising number of adults and students see being Jewish as a cultural identity rather than a religious one, Tiechtel believes Kornbluth’s seminars couldn’t have come at a more important time.

“In today’s society, people have questions about all things,” he says. “People are even wondering if they want to be Jewish and they’re searching for more than a lecture. They want a dialogue about this topic.

“Everyone is searching for meaning,” he continues. “And perhaps the most discussed topic is the search for Jewish continuity.”