So too was my reaction to the latest comments of the newly appointed Israeli education minister, Rafi Peretz that intermarriage – Jews ‘marrying out’ – “is like a second holocaust”. His comment, made last week, during a government cabinet meeting is indicative of a growing rift between hard line Israeli nationalists and the increasingly liberal Jewish diaspora, especially in places like the United States. Peretz was commenting on a briefing given to the Netanyahu government by Dennis Ross, formerly a senior official in the Obama administration, on recent trends in Jewish communities around the world. Peretz pointedly commented that over the last 70 years, the Jewish community has “lost six million people” – a figure that is commonly understood to be the number of Jews that were murdered in the Shoah. [...]
My wife and I decided that our boys – both Jews on account of their mother – ought probably to get their Israeli passports. But the conversation with the Israeli embassy didn’t go well. It seems that our boys will not be allowed to have Fraser on their Israeli passports – though that is their name. The embassy official needed proof that ours was not a sham marriage – or indeed any sort of marriage at all. They demanded Facebook photographs of us together throughout the year before our marriage. Bizarrely, being properly married in a Register Office – with documentary evidence – and living together for three years and having two children didn’t count as sufficient evidence that ours isn’t a sham marriage. But Facebook photos would do. In the face of all this ridiculous officialdom, Mrs Fraser – who is really not to be messed with – is no longer minded to continue with the process of application. [...]
But seeing past my anger, the minister’s statement is indicative of the changing nature of Jewish identity. In 2017, the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute published a study that found that – excluding the Heredi community – close to 60% of US Jews are married to non-Jews and only 15% are married to other Jews and raising their children as Jewish. It is probably these statistics – far more than the sort of shabby, low grade prejudice that currently lurks within the Labour Party – that really bothers those who are looking long-term at the future existence of the Jewish people. For the more conservatively-minded, assimilation constitutes a deeper existential threat.
