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Cont Jewry (2012) 32:135166
DOI 10.1007/s12397-012-9078-y
Helen K. Kim Noah S. Leavitt
Received: 24 May 2011 / Accepted: 14 January 2012 / Published online: 12 February 2012 Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstract This paper investigates how racial, ethnic and religious identities intersect among couples where one spouse is Jewish American of any racial or ethnic descent and one spouse is Asian American of any religion or ethnic descent. While intermarriage is certainly not limited to these kinds of partnerships, there is reason to believe that these partnerships may become increasingly common when investigated along racial, ethnic, and religious dimensions. This study incorporates interviews with 31 intermarried couples residing in the Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, Oakland, New York, and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. In particular, we highlight participants discussions of two main subjects: shared values within their partnerships and racial, ethnic, and religious identities of children, if present. Our paper expands the broader sociological literature on inter-marriage as well as the specic literatures on intermarriage for Jewish Americans and intermarriage for Asian Americans.
Keywords Intermarriage Race Ethnicity Religion
Introduction
Intermarriagethat is, marriage between individuals of different racial, ethnic, and religious backgroundshas emerged as a rapidly growing demographic reality and
We dedicate this article to Gary Tobin, Zl
H. K. Kim (&) N. S. Leavitt
Department of Sociology, Whitman College, 345 Boyer Ave., Walla Walla, WA 99362, USA e-mail: [email protected]
The Newest Jews? Understanding Jewish American and Asian American Marriages
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an issue of special consideration in the United States.1 A recent report by the Pew Research Center, analyzing 2008 Census data, reveals that a record high 14.6% of all new marriages in the United States were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another (Taylor et al. 2010). Following the 2000 and 2010 Censuses, which allowed respondents to self-identify as more than one race, interest in intermarriage, multiracial and multiethnic identity, and non-traditional families is increasing within the general population as well as in academia (Saulny 2011). Within the American Jewish community, scholars have paid considerable attention to intermarriage, particularly along religious lines. This focus has largely concerned partnerships between Ashkenazi Jewish Americans and their non-Jewish spouses who are both, for the...