“when people who are intermarried become parents, they also become more conscious of Jewish identity and of Judaism”

My qualitative research indicates that when people who are intermarried become parents, they also become more conscious of Jewish identity and of Judaism. Women who participated in my study described intensified Jewish identities, increased religious practices,or both. Although they may have become “more Jewish” once they became mothers, a typical American Jewish pattern, whether they had intermarried or not, the extent of their change over time suggests that being Jewish while married to a non-Jew usually heightened women’s consciousness about being Jewish.

Keren McGinity, “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle: How the Gender of the Jewish Parent Influences Intermarriage”, AJS Perspectives (Spring 2013), 42.

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