There she joined 1,000 worshipers to participate in the age-old evening prayers of repentance in the modern sanctuary at Temple Israel, her Reform synagogue. The woman who could soon become the first Jewish First Lady naturally stirs pride within her religious community. During the past three decades, says Brooklyn College sociologist Egon Mayer the incidence of intermarriage among Jewish young adults has nearly tripled. Most faiths frown on mixed marriage but in Judaism it has long been seen as a particularly severe violation of religious tradition. Since the Holocaust, America's Jewish community of 5.9 million has become sensitized to its erosion through intermarriage and assimilation.
Emotions run high.
Parents and grandparents worry about the future of their families and faith. Pa. Officially, opposition to mixed marriage is one issue on which all wings of U.S. Judaism agree. But in practice there are distinctions. And while the Reform rabbinical conference in 1973 formally denounced the participation of rabbis in mixed-marriage ceremonies, rabbis in the most liberal of Judaism's major branches generally do as they please. Reform Rabbi Irwin Fishbein of Westfield, N.J., last year printed a national directory of 200 members of the Reform clergy who are willing to conduct intermarriages.