The Narratives of Interfaith Parents Raising Their Children With Jewish Identities: An Emerging Discourse.

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe an emerging social discourse as found in the narratives of interfaith parents raising their children with Jewish identities, and to demonstrate how in social work practice it can be applied to help in community empowerment. A multidisciplinary approach is implemented to researching intermarriage in the American Jewish community, considered by many observers to be the central social issue of this minority community. With more than forty percent of all American Jewish marriages being intermarriages between 1980 and 2010, the given identity and organizational integrity of the community is called into question. The “American Jewish Culture Critical Literature” primarily describes intermarriage in what would be considered negative terms, as a problem to be solved. This discourse is rooted in either “monarchical/tradition” or “normative/coercion” power relations. Little is known of the self identity “acceptance/transformation” discourse found in the narratives of those mixed couples, where there has been no formal conversion, who choose to bring their children to synagogues to be raised with Jewish identities. Oral history research techniques are used to uncover the account of this aspect of their life story. This emergent discourse is a function of an underlying “conflict of paradigms,” and is part of a “mutational” moment in Jewish history. Themes found in the oral testimony include “meeting in multicultural America,” “strong feelings of Jewish partner,” “finding an open and friendly synagogue,” “desire of a unified household,” and “looking for good values and ethics.” The theoretical literature used spans multiple disciplines. The research-practice theory in Social Work and the new ethnographic theory in Anthropology allows for the complex study of an area of field practice wherein the field worker is also a participant within the culture researched. The American Studies Program locates the social setting within the United States, with its special understanding of organized religion, multiculturalism and other cultural specific norms.