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Intermarriage at record high – but rate of increase slows

July 7, 2016 19:03
wedding hands

BySimon Rocker, Simon Rocker

4 min read

New research into intermarriage among British Jews has shown that it is at its highest level for generations. The report, by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, claims that marrying out is having a "corrosive" effect on the Jewish population.

However, marriage between Jews and non-Jews is rising at a far slower rate than had been previously thought - and is half that of the United States. David Graham, author of the new survey, said that the "doom-laden predictions of the 1990s about accelerating intermarriage have not come to pass".

He added that "although the intermarriage rate has been steadily rising since at least the early 1970s and is currently higher than it has been in a generation, the rate of increase since the early 1980s has been modest at most."

Yet the effect of such marriages remains "corrosive" on the Jewish population, the report claims, because the children of intermarried couples are three times less likely to be raised as Jewish as those from all-Jewish families.