From: RFaussette@aol.com
Date: Sat Oct 25 2003 - 20:43:13 EDT
The following excerpt is from Maurice Lamm's The Jewish Way in Love and
Marriage, Harper & Row 1980
In the acknowledgments:
"My brother Dr. Normal Lamm, my mentor and colleague, president of Yeshiva
University, who sacrificed precious hours to review the entire manuscript
Rabbi Zvi Schacter, Rosh Yeshiva, and head of the Kollel at Yeshiva
University, who tested all my halakhic decisions."
"There have been many reasons given throughout Jewish history for the
profoundly negative attitude toward interfaith marriage. This attitude appeared at
various times to be based on political or military considerations, or
motivated by ethnic pride or the danger of social disintegration. But whatever the
given reasons, the primary motive was to keep the religion of the Jew intact.
(note: the religion OF THE JEW)
The threat of interfaith marriage is graphically illustrated by the following
story:
When the Jews were still wandering in the desert, they had an enormous
population, were militarily well prepared, and were virtually inconquerable. But
the pagan prophet Balaam, recognizing the destructive influence of mixed
relationships, simply loosed idol-worshipping Moabite women upon them, recounts the
Midrash. Immorality, idolatry and assimilation quickly weakened the Jews and
wrecked their cohesiveness, and their will.
The historical tradition of marrying within the religion at any cost is
evident from Abraham's choice of a wife for Isaac (genesis 24:3).; Rebekah's
sending Jacob back to her family to marry (Gen.27:46); Esau's marriage to Hittite
women, which brought grief to his parents (gen:26:34-5); and Jacob's sons who
were horrified that their sister Dinah might be married to one not
circumcised (Gen 34:14). When Samson fell in love with a Philistine, his parents sought
to dissuade him; "Is there no wife among the daughters of thy brothers or
among all my people that thou goest to take a wife from the uncircumcised
Philistines? (Judges 14:3). Thirty nine kings of Judah and Israel reigned for three
hunderd and ninety three years and ONLY TWO MARRIED OUT OF THE FAITH.
Exogamous marriages were contracted by Judah, Simeon, Joseph, and Moses but these
came before the legal restriction was pronounced at Sinai. (It is traditionally
assumed that all their wives were converted).
Jewish literature in different centuries cites interfaith marriage as the
cause of a number of communal failures and historic tragedies. The blasphemy
recorded in Leviticus 24:20 is specifically ascribed in the Torah to a child
of a mixed marriage (an Egyptian man and his Jewish wife), and the inordinate
difficulties of the Jews during the early period of the Judges is blamed on
those who "resided in the midst of" the local nations (Judges 3:4-5).
King Solomon's decline is attributed to marriages to foreign wives "who
sacrificed unto their gods." and caused him to "do evil in the eyes of god" (I
Kings 11:1-6). The murderers of Joash (IIChronicles 24:26) are listed as
children of mixed marriages of Jewish fathers with Shimmat the Ammonite woman, and
Shimrit the Moabite woman.
The prohet Malachi attacks interfaith marriage: "Judah has dealt
treacherously and an abomination is committed in Israel and Jerusalem. For Judah has
profaned the holiness of the Lord. For he has loved and married the daughter
of a strange god. May the Lord cut off the man that does this, that calls and
answers from the TENTS OF JACOB and offers an offering unto the Lord of
Hosts." (2:11-12)
The history of Jewish exogamy goes on for another full page.
It ends thus:
Two centuries later, (after the Hasmoneans) the rabbis could relax somewhat
on the more stringent details of the social ordinances, but NO ONE EVER
COMPROMISED ON THE UNQUALIFIED, UNYIELDING PROHIBITION OF INTERFAITH MARRIAGE. IT
KEPT THE JEWS INTACT AND ENABLED JUDAISM TO LIVE TO THIS DAY.
------------
On the inside cover of a Passover Jewish Action Magazine distributed in local
supermarkets in 2001 by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America
is an unselfconscious letter addressed to Jewish children:
“...Our aim is nothing less than to convince a record number of Jewish
youngsters that interdating and intermarriage are a betrayal of who they are.”
Of course, All of the religions in the OT (except at the very end with the
maccabees) are tribal religions, ethnically based. Hellenism, Christianity, and
Buddhism, all universalist ideologies, were yet to come.
rich faussette
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