Great article at the Jewish Outreach Institute on Keren McGinity’s new book, Still Jewish: A History of Women and Intermarriage in America.
In the first chapter of Keren R. McGinity’s fantastic new book, Still Jewish: A History of Women and Intermarriage in America, we meet Mary Antin, a Jewish woman who married a non-Jew in 1901. Despite all of the hurdles she and her descendents (both intermarried and in-married) faced over the next century, including anti-semitism, classism, and anti-intermarriage sentiments, there is a photo of Mary Antin’s great-great-grandchildren who are, as the title suggests, “Still Jewish,” and are being raised as Jews.
McGinity’s book is “the first comprehensive history” of intermarried Jewish women. She combines historical research and in-depth interviews to analyze what intermarriage has meant for Jewish women and the American Jewish community from 1900 to the present day. The strength of McGinity’s approach is that she attends to the multiple factors that influence intermarriage: Religion, race, class, gender, personal choices, and the coexistent social and political currents that have influenced each phase of American history. Throughout, she illustrates that intermarriage, family identity and behavior arise out of a confluence of each person’s experience of these factors.
