From 1952 through 2012, the rate of intermarriage has risen from 3% to 56%. I read this statistic and thought, that means that the entire kiruv movement with all the Shabbos meals, all the Pesach sedarim, the menorah lightings, the Discovery programs, the matza and mishloach manos, the campus outreach, all the tefillin, all the summer camps, has been a failure. Shocking.
You can say that without all that outreach, the intermarriage rate would be even worse. But that's small comfort.
I knew that the intermarriage rate had grown tremendously, so I don't know why I reacted this way when I read about it the other day. I think it's because this time, I juxtaposed it with all the heartwarming outreach and baal teshuva stories I've read and heard. It doesn't make the stories any less heartwarming, but the Jewish reality is quite bleak.
Nowadays, when Cohens and Weinbergers aren't Jewish because their mothers are gentiles, and McDonalds and Prescotts are Jewish, we Torah Jews are the few and the proud (to borrow the Marines' motto) and it's quite sad.
Even sadder is that the OTD rate for Chereidim in Israel is around 30% and it is also very high for MO yishuvniks. I am not sure what the OTD rate is in the US but I don't see people becoming frummer. I guess that we can tell ourselves that only 20% of B'nei Yisroel left mitzraim during yetzias mitzraim. From that 20% we built a nation but none of the original adults entered EY. They were not worthy. In every generation we are tested and many leave. Some kid named Prescott will go to a Chabad on campus and come out frum.
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