Canadian Jews show the highest rate of marriage within a faith, the official Yearbook of the Canadian Government indicated today.
The Yearbook reported that “the distribution of brides and bridegrooms by religious denomination is roughly the same as that for the population as a whole. About 72 percent of all marriages are between persons of the same religious denominations.”
A breakdown by faiths for the year 1957 listed such marriages among Jews as at the rate of 93 percent. Among Roman Catholics, same faith marriages were 88 percent; among United Church and Eastern Orthodox, the figure was about 63 percent.
The latest national figures for Jewish grooms marrying non-Jewish brides were for 1955: 148 compared with 1, 428 who married Jewish girls; in 1956, 142 compared with 1,428 who married Jewish girls; in 1956, 142 compared with 1,559 who married Jewish girls; in 1957, 174 compared with 1,571.
In 1958, the number of Jewish men who married Jewish girls in Ontario was 628. The total number of Jewish grooms was 707, which meant that 79 Jewish men (11 percent) married non-Jewish girls who included 24 Roman Catholics, 19 Anglicans, 16 United Church, eight Lutherans, eight Presbyterians, two Baptists, and one Pentecostal adherent and one Unitarian. In 1957, 85 Ontario Jewish men (11 percent) married non-Jewish girls. In 1956 80 Jewish men (10, 8 percent) married non-Jewish brides. In 1955, 67 Jewish men (10.2 percent) did so.
In 1958, 45 Jewish girls married non-Jews. This was about seven percent of all Jewish brides in Ontario that year. The percentages of such Jewish marriages to non-Jewish men were four (29 girls) in 1957; five and one-half (39 girls) in 1956 and five and one-half (34 girls) in 1955.
Jewish brides who married non-Jews in 1958 chose 24 Roman Catholics; 14 Anglicans, 12 each of the United Church and Presbyterians, two Eastern Orthodox, two Methodists, one Unitarian and one Mennonite. Two non-Jewish bridegrooms listed no religions. Figures of Jewish girls marrying non-Jews for all of Canada were 56 in 1957, 68 in 1956 and 65 in 1955.
In 1959, 67 divorces affecting Jews were studied by Parliament. Nearly half of these divorces involved inter-marriages. In recent applications to Parliament for divorce, 12 cases were Jewish partners of mixed marriages.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
