Don't marry non-Jews or converts!

Rabbi who? what? where? and why?

A soundbite from "Mixed-married couples and interfaith couples are a fact of Diaspora Jewish life":

"That a Jew chooses to marry someone who is not Jewish, even if a conversion takes place, is a clear indication that the Jew already has one foot out the Jewish door."

Yeah, that's about when I wanted to start brawling.

As a convert, sure I know that behind my back people think and say certain things about marrying converts. I remember reading an article where a Jewish mother-in-law said of her newly converted Jewish daughter-in-law, "I still wish my son had married a Jew. But that wasn't meant to be." Excuse me, did your daughter-in-law convert? Yeah. So she's Jewish. It's really that simple...though not so simple to the simple-minded clearly.

Interfaith marriage: a marriage between people of two different faiths.

Mixed marriage: According to David Forman, who wrote the awful quote above, "A mixed-marriage is one in which the non-Jewish partner converts to Judaism." This bit stirred quite an uproar in the comments section for this article where people noted a marriage between a born Jew and a converted Jew is a Jewish marriage, there's nothing mixed about it.

In fact, Daniel Forman doesn't seem to think there's any difference between a mixed marriage and an interfaith marriage and for the record, he's opposed to both. He doesn't want converts marrying Jews and he certainly doesn't want non-Jews marrying Jews for after all, he writes:

"Are we to believe that acknowledging the non-Jewish ancestry of either the converted Jew or the non-Jew will have no impact on the child of such a marriage?"

Is he afraid that if I feed my kids plaintains and take them to the Dominican Republic, they won't want to be Jewish? Maybe. 

Forman is afraid if Mami tells little Menachem that she celebrated Christmas but didn't like it as much as Chanukkah, Menachem will want to go to church instead of synagogue. But don't worry Forman came up with a four step plan in case your children marry non-Jews...or converts, eh, what's the difference? Isn't that nice of him?

This article made me wish I was in anger management classes. Mostly, I wanted to print this article put it on a wall and then take a Nerf bat to it. Do they still make Nerf bats? The amazing gall of how this guy treats converts. Oh and get this, he's a rabbi who is apparently all for human rights but not rights for converts. I mean, it's not like we're human...or according to him, even Jewish.

And that's just what the world needs more rabbis treating converts like that stuff that gets stuck to your shoe on a New York City subway platform. Sorry, did I get that sarcasm on your shoe too?