A new study on Canadian Jewry was recently published by Robert Brym and Rhonda Lenton in Canadian Jewish Studies, an academic journal out of York University. The numbers show that intermarriage is no longer as rare as it used to be in Canada, with 30 percent of Canadian Jews marrying outside their faith.
Some key takeaways: younger Jews are more likely to intermarry than older ones, and men are more likely to do so than women. There is a strong inverse correlation between Jewish community size and intermarriage rates, too: intermarriage rates are lower in large Jewish communities than they are in smaller ones. Globally, Canada’s rate is in line with fellow commonwealth countries the United Kingdom and Australia, but roughly half the rate of the United States.
So what do we make of this? Doomsayers have called intermarriage a “second Holocaust”, but the unavoidable reality of young people moving away from religion can’t be fought. Should Jewish institutions and community leaders expand their outreach, or do they tighten their grip on what it means to be a Jew? Special guest host Phoebe Maltz Bovy, host of The Jewish Angle, joins to discuss.
Credits
- Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
- Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Socalled
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