Will the glamour of the White House accelerate intermarriage among American Jews?
The Intermountain Jewish News thinks so, and explains why in an editorial appearing in its May 6 edition entitled “The Hushed-Up Quandary which Kitty Dukakis Could Create for the American Jewish Community.”
Kitty Dukakis is the wife of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who is expected to become the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee. She is Jewish, and if her husband is elected, would be the first Jewish first lady.
“What kind of role model would Kitty Dukakis be for our Jewish children?” asks the Intermountain Jewish News, a weekly published in Denver.
The editorial makes clear it is not questioning anyone’s right to marry whomever they chose or to run for any political office.
“We’re talking about a woman who married out, who reportedly does not even raise her children exclusively in the Jewish tradition, and who might well be projecting all this from the most visible arena in the world,” the editorial explains.
“What kind of role model is this for Jewish children? Only the naive can believe that Kitty Dukakis will not be an object of attention and admiration by Jewish children, especially if seders and the like become visible in the White House,” the editorial suggests.
It concludes, “As if all this were not worrisome enough, we foresee a possibility of demagoguery over this — a Jewish organizational competition to extend to Mrs. Dukakis every Jewish courtesy without any accompanying, firm statement on the unsuitability of intermarriage as a Jewish ideal.”
INTERMARRIAGE HIGH IN DENVER
Are Jews, worried about the high rate of intermarriage, being advised not to vote for Gov. Dukakis? Is there a subtle political message here?
Not so, says Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, senior editor of the Intermountain Jewish News. The 42-year-old Orthodox rabbi and Ph.D. insists the message is neither frivolous nor partisan. He also stressed that the Intermountain Jewish News does not endorse political candidates.
Goldberg is deeply concerned by intermarriage. According to the latest available figures, published in 1981, the rate for Denver is 72 percent, probably the highest in the country, Goldberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a telephone interview Thursday.
He is fearful that the glamor and high visibility of the occupants of the White House, if they are a mixed couple, would inevitably advance the acceptability of mixed marriage, especially among the Jewish young.
“Jewish children do not grow up with the sense of any consequence of intermarriage,” Goldberg said.
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