Full-disclosure: I’m the product of inter-marriage – a Bengali-Hindu woman married a Jewish-Californian man of Lithuanian descent and voila!

Just in time for Valentine’s Day earlier this year, there was a report that the Israeli Prime Minister’s son was dating a non-jew: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26067980

Why is it anybody’s business who the young man’s dating? Well, because.

After the “it’s not my habit to comment on personal matters,” the (not surprising) response includes a range of reasons why inter-marriage is a bad idea. For instance, Dr Daniel Gordis, an author and expert commentator on Israel and Judaism, says

It’s not a racial issue, it’s not a superiority issue, it’s not a xenophobia issue…Jews have come to see that the only real way to transmit powerful Jewish identity to their children is for them to be raised by two Jewish parents. Kids raised by one Jewish parent and one non-Jewish parent have more tepid, more fragile, thinner Jewish identities than their Jewish parents did.

Replace the word Jewish with white or Hindu or black, and it doesn’t sound quite so defensible.