Druckschrift 
Marriage and its obstacles in Jewish law : essays and responsa / edited by Walter Jacob and Moshe Zemer
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XII
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century sees many matters related to marriage in a different light. It is not only that our time is different, but our understanding of the past has changed.

Marriage with other groups was treated through a handful of summary prohibitions in the Pentateuch and then virtually ignored in the remaining Biblical literature. It obviously existed as we can see from the descriptions of the lives of the nobility and the common people. The prophets denounced the relationships with non-Israelites and Ezra sought to destroy them as they would weaken the devotion to Judaism . Neither effort succeeded and in the rabbinic period a new method of bringing Gentiles into the Jewish people provided a different approach to such marriages. These problems have been faced differently through the ages.

The essays of this volume and the responsa in the second half of the book deal with some of these issues. The issues are important and very much alive for Jews wherever they live- in the Diaspora or in Israel