Still Jewish: A History of Women and Intermarriage in America

1. Immigrant Jewesses Who Married “Out”

19 1 Immigrant Jewesses Who Married “Out” My grandchildren, for all I know, may have a graver task than I have set them. Perhaps they may have to testify that the faith of Israel is a heritage that no heir in the direct line has the power to alienate from his successors. Even I, with my limited perspective, think it doubtful if the conversion of the Jew to any alien belief or disbelief is ever thoroughly accomplished. What positive affirmation of the persistence of Judaism in the blood my descendants may have to make, I may not be present to hear. —Mary Antin, The Promised Land, 1912 Immigrant Jewish women who intermarried in the early decades of the twentieth century were highly independent thinkers who refused religious conformity as a way of life. The Jewish women I consider here immigrated to this country between 1886 and 1894, and subsequently married Gentiles. Their Eastern European places of origin were similar, as were their Orthodox beginnings, and as activists they shared some political views and experiences. The lives of Mary Antin Grabau, Rose Pastor Stokes, and Anna Strunsky Walling illustrate freedom of choice and expression in the New World. These immigrant women who intermarried did not cease to self-identify as Jewish or to exemplify Jewish values as was presumed to be the case for those who married “out.” They contributed to a new subculture of modern American life that permitted intermarriage at a time when it was uncommon, without entirely forgetting their heritage . As Progressives during a period of bountiful public activism, they worked on behalf of the tired, the poor, and “the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”1 In some cases they formed new religious identities. 20 Chapter 1 All their experiences expanded what it meant to be a “Jewish woman” by illustrating the growing elasticity of religious identity in modern American culture. Each romance in its own way suggests something about the mechanics of intermarriage between Jewish women and Gentile men that defies conventional ideas about the influence of intermarriage on identity. Antin, Pastor, and Strunsky are well-known historical figures because of their political activism and literary works. However, the personal details of life within their homes and marriages, and how their families responded to their marital choices, have received little attention to date. These three women are the focus here, because they became celebrities of sorts as a result of their ambitions, their professional accomplishments, and their marriages to prominent non-Jewish men. These women demonstrate that despite the lack of social acceptance that inhibited large-scale intermarriage—between less than 2 percent and 3.2 percent of Jews married non-Jews prior to 1930—for some Jewish women (and men) intermarriage was a way to join the dominant culture.2 The American rate of Jewish intermarriage was significantly lower than in Germany where, by 1930, twenty out of one hundred Jewish marriages were interfaith.3 These women’s stories also shed light on the meaning of intermarriage by dismantling prior assumptions about the reasons for the failures of some mixed marriages. Antin, Pastor, and Strunsky helped make intermarriage a topic suitable for public discussion. In the years following their marriages, other immigrants began voicing their personal concerns in the print media. Most immigrants had a humble outlet for their angst: the Jewish Daily Forward, a Yiddish newspaper in America started in 1897. It attracted many immigrant readers, became their confidant and adviser, and, by the early 1930s, had a circulation of a quarter-million. In 1906 Abraham Cahan, the Forward’s editor, began printing letters from readers and the paper’s responses in a column titled “A Bintel Brief” (A Bundle of Letters).4 The topics ranged considerably, including woes of unemployment, poverty, starvation, illness, husbands who deserted their families, protests about boss’s actions, complaints against family members, and issues related to intermarriage. Those who intermarried wrote some of the letters, as did their relatives. The topic of intermarriage was an issue of interest, whether or not the Forward’s staff members fabricated any of the letters for their readers. “What is the matter with the Jewish girls and boys of the East Side?” asked the American Jewish Chronicle in a 1916 article titled “Intermarriage on the East Side.” In a thinly veiled reference to the Pastor- Immigrant Jewesses Who Married “Out” 21 Stokes and Strunsky-Walling couples, the author alleged that...