Endogamy in Judaism

Interfaith marriage in Judaism (also called mixed marriage or intermarriage) was historically looked upon with very strong disfavour by Jewish leaders, and it remains a controversial issue amongst them today. In the Talmud, interfaith marriage is completely prohibited, although the definition of interfaith is not so simply expressed.

A 2013 survey conducted in the United States by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project found the intermarriage rate to be 58% among all Jews and 71% among non-Orthodox Jews.

The Biblical position on exogamous marriage is somewhat ambiguous; that is, except in relation to intermarriage with a Canaanite, which the majority of the Israelite patriarchs are depicted as criticising. This attitude is formalised in the Deuteronomic Code, which forbids intermarriage with Canaanites, on the basis that it might lead to a son, resulting from the union, being brought up to follow the Canaanite religion. The principle is essentially a general one, and the deuteronomic explanation doesn't clarify why it singles out the Canaanites in particular; one of the Talmudic writers took it to forbid all intermarriage with non-Jewish nations. In Numbers 25, Phineas is praised by God for having punished an Israelite prince who publicly cohabited with a Midianite woman (not from the seven Canaanite nations); this took place at a time when foreign (Moabite) women were inducing the Jews to perform idolatry.

In several places in the Jewish Bible, there are relations which appear to be intermarriages - for example, King David is described as marrying the daughter of the king of Geshur, and Bathsheba as having married Uriah the Hittite. Deuteronomy itself implies that intermarriage to Edomites or Egyptians was acceptable, by permitting the grandchildren of such people to be treated as Israelites. Traditional commentators generally explain such verses as referring to situations where the Gentile partner had converted, and explicitly so in the latter case, where grandchildren are understood as being the grandchildren of converts. In places, traditional commentators suggest that the person involved is not a Gentile, but a Jew who has lived in a Gentile country, or that the law of the captive woman is involved.

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