Wednesday, November 02, 2005

assimilation, education, or what?

Interesting Commentary article exploring the possible causes for the decreasing Jewish birthrate in America. And while Alan Dershowitz already delved into much of these issues in The Vanishing American Jew, Wertheimer looks at it from a slightly different perspective,
provides updated statistics, and raises some interesting new questions:
Almost two-thirds of Orthodox women are wed by the age of twenty-five, and 90 percent by thirty-five. (For Conservative women, the comparable figure at age twenty-five is 9 percent, for Reform women 3 percent, and for women who identify themselves as “just Jewish” 14 percent; by age thirty-five, only slightly over half of Reform women are married.)

Is it true, as one hears, that Jewish men do not want to marry someone who reminds them of their mother, or that Jewish women do not want to marry someone who reminds them of their father? And if it is, why have they only recently begun acting on this disinclination in such massive numbers? Might it be the reverse—that, for example, Jewish men want to marry someone more like their mother than the typical young Jewish woman of today, and that Gentile women happen to fit the bill?

5 Comments:

Blogger Goldie said...

I wrote to BPS to congratulate her on the birth of her first born boy and enclosed the above article with a note thanking her for contributing to the cause, especially for supplying superior genetic material to the pool.

11/02/2005 7:30 PM  
Blogger Dovid said...

I visited the baby- "belly", and let me tell you, HE IS A SWEETY!

11/02/2005 11:07 PM  
Blogger Goldie said...

:). I am most envious. I don't know if I'll be able to make it home to see him any earlier than Thanksgiving...

11/03/2005 6:34 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So howcome you call her BPS and not BSP?

11/03/2005 5:52 PM  
Blogger Goldie said...

BPS was her blogger display name.

11/03/2005 6:20 PM  

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