SELECTED REFORM RESPONSA
Intermarriage was highest in lands where the number of Jews was small and where there was little discrimination, as in Denmark , Italy , Australia (Ruppin, Op. Cit., p. 161). It reached 34. 1% in Italy in 1881. while in New York in the same year it was one percent, as most Jews had settled there only recently. The figures in Germany between 1904-1908 were 22.2%. It should be noted that the authorities in pre-World War I Hungary stipulated that those about to “contract a mixed marriage can make an arrangement as to the religion they wish their children to have. In the absence of such an agreement, the sons follow the religion of the father, the daughters that of the mother”(Ruppin, Op. Cit., p. 177).
The pattern of increasing mixed marriage, which was noted for England in the 18th century, grew especially with the establishments of civil marriages in 1837. Before that time Jews who married Christians were forced to do so in the Church(C. Roth,“The AngloJewish Community in the Context of World Jewry,” Jewish Life in Modern Britain, pp. 83ff, S.J. Prais and M. Schmool,“Statistics of
Such marriages were also found with fair frequency in early America (M. Stern,“Jewish Marriage and Intermarriage in the Federal Period 1776-1840,” American Jewish Archives, vol. 19, pp. 142%, J Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in New York , pp. 328ff, H. B. Grinstein, The Rise of the Jewish Community of New York , 16541860, pp. 372fF). Studies for the mid-20th century indicated an increasing rate of mixed marriage, which has now reached approximately thirty-five percent of all Jewish marriages. Accurate broad statistics are not available, but many specialized studies have been undertaken(Erich Rosenthal,“Studies of Jewish Intermarriage in the United States, ” American Jewish Yearbook, 1963, pp. 3ff, B. Kligfeld,“Intermarriage: A Review of the Social Science Literature on the Subject,” CCAR Yearbook, Vol. 72, pp. 87ff, M. Davis,“Mixed
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