There are many intermarriages happening all the time and I often get telephone calls from a Jewish young man about to marry a non-Jewess or the opposite, a Jewish young lady about to marry a non-Jew. They call to ask what they should do. They are hesitant. On one hand there are emotions and feelings of love but on the other hand it isn’t 100 percent smooth. How should they relate to this situation?
The real answer is, let’s assume that you aren’t Jewish. You’re a Muslim and she’s a Catholic or the opposite, if you both come from very disparate backgrounds where you have no common ground all, even if you’re both religiously unaffiliated, all over the world statistics show that these marriages are not successful. Right now you have emotions and love but years down the line, every couple has differences and arguments. When you add your vastly different backgrounds into the mix you are already fighting against the statistics.
Add the fact you are Jewish and she isn’t, especially the fact that you are Jewish arouses ‘antibodies’ around the world that may not bother you both now but things crop up with time and it may become an issue one day.
Let’s not even talk about the pain your children will have to endure. Children that grow up without a clear idea of whom they are; ‘am I Jewish, am I a non-Jew, my father is this, my mother is that’ can’t define who they are. They don’t know where they belong and they are truly unfortunate.
So, firstly the disparate backgrounds which cause many fights and entanglements with each other make for an unsuccessful marriage that leads to divorce. Add to that the children that will grow up messed up by not being able to define themselves makes this whole deal a bad one.
Add to this that you are Jewish and she isn’t or the opposite, it’s just not good. You don’t take 2 things that can’t glue together and glue them together; it doesn’t stick. You may have love and emotions, even really strong feelings for each other; let it go. Time will heal it. Each one of you should go your own way when it doesn’t hurt that much. As the verse says, ‘Each bird will live with its species’ or as the saying goes ‘birds of the same feather flock together’. Each bird has to look for its own species and the same is true here. Each person should look for their life mate from their own nation and religion. Then they have far greater chance of having a healthier, higher quality and more successful marriage and successful and healthy children who grow up well adjusted.
It may seem somewhat painful now but if you realize that it’s the right thing, you’ll do it and feel better for it afterwards. Every operation hurts but they also save lives. It’s the same thing here. Don’t get into it and you will spare yourself a lot of pain.
Comment by Shlomo Moshe Scheinman:
This is somewhat of an emotional argument that Rabbi Zamir Cohen is making, which might be more effective than the argument that I am going to be bring up, but I still feel I have to say it.
The Biblical Book of Ezra Chapter 10 as translated by https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16507# says:
1 And when Ezra prayed and confessed, weeping and prostrating himself before the House, a very large assemblage of Israel, men, women, and children, gathered to him, for the people wept with much weeping.
2 And Shechaniah, the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, raised his voice and said to Ezra, “We have betrayed our G-d, and we have taken in foreign wives of the peoples of the land, but now there is hope for Israel concerning this.
3 And now, let us make a covenant with our G-d to cast out all the wives and their offspring, by the counsel of the L-rd and those who hasten to [perform] the commandment of our G-d, and according to the Law it shall be done.
We see clearly that G-d opposes intermarriage and we must do what G-d wants!
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