"I'll tell you a personal story. Last summer I traveled [with my wife] to the USA for a vacation. I graduated from a Jewish school in New York. And we went to meet friends. I have a ton of friends in the U.S.A. And I encountered something that I called an actual plague. I saw my friends' children married or coupled with non-Jewish partners! And the parents beat their breasts and ask questions, and are suffering. Listen, it's every [Jewish] family in the U.S.A.! And we are talking about millions. And I said there must be a campaign, a solution. We have to rack our brains to figure out how to solve this great challenge.The intermarriage rate among American Jews is 58 percent, but 71 percent among the non-Orthodox.
The young are making these choices voluntarily. Herzog's breast-beating, suffering friends are surely in the more traditional, religiously-identified Jewish community. Herzog attended the Ramaz school in New York when his father served here as an Israeli diplomat. He went on to Cornell and NYU. Among less-strongly-identified U.S. Jews, there is wide acceptance of intermarriage, because Jews are mixing freely with non-Jews at schools, and in their neighborhoods.
Herzog is a regular at J Street, the liberal Zionist pro-Israel lobby group.
His anti-intermarriage stance is shared within the Zionist community: notably by Dennis Ross, former White House negotiator who co-chairs the Jewish People Policy Institute.
This statement was posted by Jonathan Ofir.
Comment: And he's the 'softer', 'liberal' answer to Bibi...