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during the 20th century, the Jewish denominations borrowed many of the practices of their Christian counterparts to establish their rabbinical functions.

Intermarriage: threat or promise?

Blecher notes that the issue of intermarriage is viewed by the mainline Jewish institutions as perhaps the biggest challenge to American Judaism. Yet Blecher sees intermarriage as a reason for hope for Judaism's future. For those who consider intermarriage a threat to Jewish survival, these truly must be troubling times. Blecher cites statistics that show the rate of intermarriage rising to 50 percent by the mid-1980s. But when viewed in the context of greater professional opportunities for women, the need for two incomes in many families, changing gender roles, and greater acceptance of ethnic differences during this period, the increase in intermarriage should come as no surprise.

Jewish parents may have sent their boys and girls to Jewish camps and synagogue youth retreats, but their kids then attended college, perhaps law or grad school, joined companies with hundreds of employees, bought condos, and volunteered for political campaigns. As a result, men and women interact with each other in more and different ways than before, thus have many more opportunities to meet more and different people from before.

Blecher conducted research of his own on this subject, over a 21 year period (1986-2006), where he interviewed 1,000 Jewish-Gentile couples in the Washington, DC area. Blecher says his findings suggest that intermarriages are increasing the numbers of Jews, not decreasing them as the traditional denominations have feared. He found the vast majority of the children from intermarriages grow up with at least some Jewish identity. Few children from the intermarriages he studied completely reject their Jewish heritage.

In fact, Blecher says, insisting on in-marriage (marriage between two Jews) may be more of a threat to Jewish survival than intermarriage. He notes the higher rates of some genetic disorders and medical conditions that occur in families of of Jews of Eastern European descent. These include cystic fibrosis, Gauchers disease, Tay-Sachs disease, breast cancer, and colon cancer. Children of intermarriage couples are less likely to suffer these disorders.

More Jews in your future

Blecher paints a 21st century American Judaism far different from the bleak world of the future in the warnings from the Jewish denominations. Combining the factors of intermarriage with increasing

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