cover image Intermarriage: The Challenge of Living with Differences Between Christians and Jews

Intermarriage: The Challenge of Living with Differences Between Christians and Jews

Susan Weidman Schneider. Free Press, $19.95 (280pp) ISBN 978-0-02-927941-0

According to the author, 375,000 American couples of mixed faiths must accommodate their partner's faith while maintaining their own religious and cultural identities. In this realistic guide for interfaith couples, which concentrates on Jews, Schneider, editor of the Jewish feminist quarterly Lilith and author of Jewish and Female , notes that Jews are torn between assimilation into American society and their need to survive as a separate entity, and points out that religious differences go beyond theology to affect views of life, death, morality and role in the community. Based on discussions with interfaith couples, social workers, psychologists and clergy, Schneider advises couples how to cope with families and with specific rites and events such as weddings, holi days, etc. Conversion, she warns, does not in itself resolve differences and she stresses that there are no certain ways to assure the religious identity of children born to interfaith parents; as adults, many report feeling an uncomfortable sense of ``doubleness.'' (June)