Main Jews disappear
Study finds Maine has highest intermarriage rate in U.S.

By Anthony Weiss, The Forward
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/933218.html
Tue., December 11, 2007 Tevet 2, 5768

In Portland, Maine, even the editor of the local Jewish newspaper was born to intermarried parents, and when she got around to marrying, it was not to a Jew.

Given her own experience, Elizabeth Margolis-Pineo, editor of The Voice, was not surprised by a new demographic study that found Portland and its environs to have the highest intermarriage rate in the country.

According to the study, which was funded in part by an intermarried couple, 61% of couples in married Jewish households are interfaith. This is the highest rate of any North American Jewish community measured in the past 15 years.

"There are kids in the [Jewish] preschool named 'Piscapo' and 'Isajar,'" Margolis-Pineo said. "Unless you're an idiot, you realize that there's a lot of intermarriage."

The study was conducted by Ira Sheskin, the director of the Jewish Demography Project at the University of Miami.

The new figures place Portland ahead of both Seattle and San Francisco, which previously had shared the highest measured intermarriage rate, at 55%, according to information from the North American Jewish Data Bank.

The national intermarriage rate was 48% in the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey. By comparison, Boston - the closest major Jewish population center to Portland - has an intermarriage rate of 46%. New York and Los Angeles have rates of 22% and 23%, respectively.

Given the relatively low level of Jewish affiliation in Portland, and the small size of the community - it numbers only 8,350 Jews - one of the most remarkable facts is that an expensive demographic survey took place at all.

The study was made possible, in part, by the chairman and former CEO of L.L. Bean, Leon Gorman, grandson of the iconic company's founder. Gorman is not Jewish, but his wife, Lisa, is.

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Simshalom responds:

Secular Jews intermarry as Haredim are fruitful and multiply:

So it is only a matter of time that in the near future there will be only two types of Jews: Either Torah Jews like the Haredim who live by Halachah and have many children and whose communities will continue to grow OR the non-Orthodox secular Jews who marry gentiles and are on the road to disappearing forever as their numbers shrink.

So this is what it`s come to.

How sad and yet how predictable.

All this just proves that where there is no Torah and observance of the mitzvot there will also be not just no Judaism but no Jews in the end.
And where there is the commitment to live by the Torah and keep all its mitzvot then there will be growth not just of Judaism but also of Jews!

Labels: Assimilation, interfaith intermarriage, intermarriage

- posted by Izak @ 5:45 AM