Is it racist to want my children to marry Jews?

Dear Sex & The Shtetl,
Is it racist to want my children to marry Jews?
The Zaide Agenda

I see you - wannabe Zaide, sitting there at the kitchen bench, chewing on your antacids, spiralling over a thought you haven’t dared to say aloud at bridge: “Is it racist to want my kids to marry Jews?” You ask it quietly, but the question echoes all the way back to your grandfather's shtetl and forward to the hover capsules of your future hypothetical grandchild named Levi or god forbid … Logan.  

First, a moment of radical honesty: You’re not alone. So many Jewish parents have this exact wish. Not because they’re platinum-packaged racists, but because they’re terrified their family’s entire ancestral line is going to vanish the minute their child falls in love with someone who has southern cross tattoos and who thinks “lox” is a type of home security system. (It is, by the way.)  

I’ll begin by giving you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you’re not campaigning for your children to marry only Jews because you believe in ethnic superiority. You’re just dreaming of Friday night dinners that don’t involve explanations. You want your child’s spouse to just ‘get it’: the rhythm of the Jewish year, the entire drawer that’s reserved for shit gifts you intend to pass on to someone else … and the unspoken rule that if your wife asks what happened to the leftover chicken, you MUST tell her that you ate it when you really threw it out because it had been in the fridge two+ weeks. And in a post October 7 context, you may want in-laws who don’t question Jewish indigeneity to the land of Israel on Facebook - or worse - in secret. Understandable.  

The problem arises when cultural preservation morphs into exclusion. Saying “I want my kids to marry Jewish” isn’t automatically racist, but how and why you say it really matters. It might be worth examining if your desires might be excluding entire swaths of humanity because of fear, stereotypes or an unchallenged bias about who's worthy of entering your sacred (and completely cooked) WhatsApp family group chat. What I’m saying is, technically, wanting your kids to marry a Jew isn’t racist, but it can still be discriminatory if it’s rooted in an ‘us vs. them’ mentality that hasn’t been interrogated since Seinfeld was first broadcast.  

Now, here’s where it gets messy: Judaism is both a religion AND an ethnicity. And a culture. And a lifestyle. That means someone can convert and be more Jewish than your cousin Dovid who hasn’t seen the inside of a synagogue since his bar mitzvah. Your child might fall in love with someone who doesn’t convert at all, but who learns the prayers, tells you when your preferred brand of antacid are on special at Chemist Warehouse and visits you the most in respite post hip replacement.

We should also consider that your child might marry a chronically online Jew who gets lost in an anti-Jewish (sorry, “anti-zio”) rabbit hole, taking your offspring with them and before you know it, you’re accusing them of being racist. In a voicemail they'll never listen to because they’re screening your calls and refuse to come to Rosh Hashanah because it’s “Cultural Appropriation of New Year’s Eve” even though the Gregorian calendar came 5,343 years later.  

And now, wannabe Zaide, a little tough love: Your needs and desires are pretty ‘low priority’ for your kids when it comes to choosing a potential partner. For many, it’s so low priority, it gets completely ignored, along with all the other relationship red flags that young singles are simply unable to recognise. You can put all the eligible Jewish teachers, tradies, start-up founders in front of them like you’re hosting some kind of Birthright Bachelor and still they might fall for someone whose only experience with Judaism is Curb your Enthusiasm TikToks.  

So here’s my advice: Focus on values, not labels. Teach your kids what being Jewish means to you. Show them the beauty in the thousands-of-years-old rituals, the humour, the power of our tight-knit community. Make it so meaningful that they want to share it with someone else - regardless of where that person comes from. And then, let go. You might just find your need for antacids drops dramatically. 

Deep breaths, 
Sex & The Shtetl