According to a report in The Times of Israel, a poll conducted in Europe by the Pew Research Center had some interesting results. When asked "Would you be willing to accept Jews as members of your family?", Italy and the United Kingdom had the highest percentage of respondents saying no.

Italy came in at the top with 25% of respondents saying no to having Jews as family members, while the UK came in second place at 23%. Surprisingly, to me at least, the Netherlands came in with the highest percentage of acceptance with 96% of respondents saying they would accept Jews as members of their family.

While some are pointing to this as a sign of anti-semitism and decrying such sentiments, I say otherwise. I say good. I say the numbers aren't high enough. We Jews should not be intermarrying, and the non-Jews not wanting to marry Jews can only help us keep intermarriage numbers down, though obviously it isn't helping enough right now. And just like many of the non-Jews clearly don't want to marry us, many of us don't want to marry them.

And from a more objective perspective I might say that a poll showing that 25% or 23% of a European country not wanting Jewish family members is far from a sign of anti-semitism. I suspect that 50 years ago, 70 years ago, 100 years ago, those percentages were likely far higher, so, sadly, those percentages are probably going down fast.

and Arab MKs..

An organization that works to prevent intermarriage in Israel, להב"ה - למניעת התבוללות בארץ הקודש, has publicized that there is an intermarriage between a Jewish woman and an Arab man scheduled for this coming Sunday evening in Rishon Letzion.

Lehava posted the wedding invitation online, on their Facebook page, and announced that they are making efforts to stop the wedding from happening, and will go to the wedding with signs and protest.


They have also since posted that efforts to talk to the Jewish woman and her family have not helped.

One of the issues Lehava mentions is that this wedding is not taking place in an Arab village, as it has in the past, but is in the heart of an Israeli city... this is a step up for intermarriage.

According to reports, the women has converted to Islam. She has said she wont be stopped and will even post security at the wedding to ensure nobody makes any trouble.

Many people are calling Lehava out for racism. Typically they use accusations such as sinat chinam, besides for saying they are racist and the like. I am not sure sinat chinam has anything to do with trying to prevent an intermarriage.

While the wedding invitation makes it look like the parents are a part of thsi wedding, the father has supposedly said he opposes it and wants her to marry jewish. He said he will not attend the wedding on Sunday night.
sources: Kikar, Haredim10, Kooker, INN

if you've got nothing to do on Sunday night, you might want to head out to Rishon Letzion.....

PM Benjamin Netanyahu has been receiving praise for "keeping shabbos" while in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, by walking, with his wife, more than 2 kilometers back to their hotel in the snow rather than being driven.. They first participated in Shabbos services and meal sponsored by the jewish community, and then prepared for their snowy walk and went on their way. And he deserves that praise for publicly keeping Shabbos in the name of the State of Israel.

Unfortunately, at the same time, it became public knowledge, when the PM himself let it slip, that his son is dating a girl from Norway.

 Sandra Leikanger is Yair Netanyahu's girlfriend, and they've been dating for months. They met at IDC in Herzliya, where she is getting a degree, as is Yair. Unfortunately, while her family is very pro-Israel, they are evangelical Christians...

Parents don't always have control of what their kids do and don't do, especially when they are already adults, and he shouldn't necessarily be blamed for it,  but it is not good that the Prime Minister's son is dating a non-Jew... they haven't gotten married yet, so they could still break it off, maybe she is planning on converting, or it might just not work out, so there is still hope..

A Guest Post by Dr. Harold Goldmeier

Mazel Tov to Israeli-born US Oscar-winning actress (for her role in Black Swan) Natalie Portman (born Natalie Hershlag), upon the birth of her little baby boy b'chor.

Unfortunately, it seems her fiancée is not Jewish, or at least that is the assumption, though obviously the baby is. Benjamin Millepied's faith is listed as unknown. Millepied was Portman's choreographer on the set of Black Swan.

A story that seems a little bit blown out of proportion to me, is reportedly getting the people of Bnei Braq very excited. The story points to the miracle workings of Rebbetzin Kanievsky.

The Story
The story was related this past Shabbos by Rav Yitzchak Zilbershtein, brother in law of Rav Chaim Kanievsky and rav of the Ramat Elchonon neighborhood of Bnei Braq.

A young woman named Riva from Bnei Braq went a few weeks ago to Rebbetzin Kanievsky for a bracha before her wedding. The only thing strange about the request was that she was going to be marrying an Arab fellow.

When Rebbetzin Kanievsky heard that she is marrying an Arab, she was shaken. She tried to convince the bride to call it off, to cancel the wedding. Alas, it was to no avail, and the girl insisted she would not back out of the wedding.

Rebbetzin Kanievsky made one more request before the bride left. She asked the bride to at least recite one chapter of Tehillim every day.

A week later the bride comes back to Rebbetzin Kanievsky and informs the rebbetzin that she has decided to cancel the wedding, and she is breaking up with her Arab fiancée.

When asked what had changed, why now she was willing to break up, she responded pointing to the Tehillim she had said. Riva said that she opened up her tehillim to a random place and read the chapter that it had opened to.

The chapter she read was perek 43, and the passuk that caught her attention was: (Hebrew and English courtesy of Machon Mamre)

א  שָׁפְטֵנִי אֱלֹהִים, וְרִיבָה רִיבִי--    מִגּוֹי לֹא-חָסִיד; מֵאִישׁ מִרְמָה וְעַוְלָה    תְפַלְּטֵנִי.

1 Be Thou my judge, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation; {N} O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man.

The fact that she saw her name in the passuk, and with the request to "deliver me form the deceitful and unjust man" was too much for her. She saw this as a sign and knew she had to break it off. (source: Kikar)

At a recent protest in Bat Yam about strengthening the Jewish character of the city, and saying that Jewish girls should not date Arabs (it seems to be a problem in bat Yam, though I am not sure what a protest would accomplish in this issue), an Arab was caught on video talking about how he has dated tens of Jews, seduced many, and converted many to islam.

Jews have never before at any time in history been as desirable as we are today. That is probably why we suddenly have a conversion crisis in Israel. Never before did anybody really want to be Jewish or associated with Jews, whereas today it is either simply not an issue, or there are perceived benefits.

Now that the dust has settled on the hyped-up press coverage of the Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky wedding, the religious fathfull need to take a look at alternative efforts besides outright rejection to deal with the catastrophe of interfaith marriages. This was the most public and publicized of all interfaith marriages, since Edwin Schlossberg married Caroline Kennedy in a 1986 Camelot ceremony held inside and outside the Church of Our Lady of Victory as all the world watched on television. Both weddings were no victory for the Jews, but an enormous bite out of the Jewish community’s sense of continuity.

There is a shoah, darkness, spreading across the Jewish communities of America and Europe with ever-faster speed. Jews and Gentiles alike watched the wedding procession whom none other than Jackie Kennedy had planned. Now the bad news is coming not in threes, but in multitudes of intermarriages. Clinton-Mezvinsky, Bar Refaeli and Leonardo DiCaprio, Ari Fleischer and Rebecca Davis (Catholic), Rep. Anthony Weiner married a Muslim, Huma Abedin, are among the more recent high profile couples to date or marry persons of other religions. Most distressing, we learned upon the death of Congressman Tom Lantos, a Hungarian born Jew who championed the causes of Israel and the Jewish people that his wife and daughters are converts to the Mormon faith.

Freedom is a challenge to the religious faithful. Rabbi Ben Zion Kaganoff of Chicago once pondered if Jews need to be bound in a straight jacket of persecution and oppression to survive as a people? Our population numbers are frozen. Fewer Jews each identify themselves as religious and are active members in local Jewish institutions and causes. If celebrity out marriage is not a cause, it certainly gives impetus and legitimacy to Jews who are in the marrying mode. It would be easy and wrong to dismiss the Jew who marries out just like it is for those advocates for love conquers all.

Most Jewish religious leaders reject interfaith couples, while some accept them in their congregations and communities. In The Missing ‘Mazel Tov,’ the Forward Forum, August 20, 2010, Edmund Case believes the answer to Jewish continuity lies with our leaders embracing interfaith families and welcoming them into Jewish life. He decries the lack of outreach to them, and the general feelings of disgust when newlyweds Clinton-Mezvinsky were talked about. Case argues we need to reach out and persuade them to accept Judaism into their lives as the enriching and fulfilling lifestyle.

An earlier published piece in The Huffington Post, July 23, 2010, had Case dreaming about the Jewish and Christian rituals at the Chelsea-Marc wedding. He was near on the mark. His glowing account later in The Forward, his appreciation of their choices like a tallis Marc wore, marrying under a chupa, etc., give hope to Case this couple will make similar lifestyle choices in their new home together—perhaps she will light candles Friday night, invite the mishpacha for dinner and serve gefilte fish and chicken soup, have a bris of their future son, and so on.

Case is not a fool, but perhaps a bit of a dreamer. He is precisely what’s missing in our leaders right now. The Lubavitcher Rebbe was a dreamer. So were Rabbis Feinstein and Auerbach who brought Torah law and religious spirit to the people in ways they could understand and accept. We simply have to extend our horizons, ignore our feelings of shame and rejection (when those marry out reject us and our traditions). The vibrant and successful baal tshuva movement is an example of what can be accomplished and those tactics of love and hard work need to be extended to interfaith couples.

Feelings about Chelsea and Marc among my religiously observant friends run the gamut from a sense of loss for another Jewish soul to anger and outrage about the hypocrisy of Marc marrying out. Most were infuriated by their high jacking Jewish traditions to put a seal of approval on the wedding and marriage like the chupa, the breaking of the glass, the tallis, and more. Who cares about them was the best thing some could say. We should all care.

True blue Jews can be mean and say mean things to and about interfaith couples. Yes, we can shun them. We can and should do everything we can to persuade a Jew and a gentile from not marrying, including giving great moral and financial support to outreach programs that fight this kind of thing. But we cannot prevent interfaith marriages without the straight jacket of anti-Semitic racial laws. The devastation of Jewish family life from intermarriage in urban areas is much more devastating in less populated cities and towns. No educated arguments, statistics about the divorce rate, explanations about the impact of mixed marriage on the children, can compete with love and lust.

Jews active in kiruv, outreach, know how hard it is to keep an open mind and an open heart when dealing with people not on the same plane of religious belief. I personally know a family where the wife is Jewish and the husband is not; yet, someone reached out to them over the years, and now the wife is an Orthodox practicing Jew whose husband often brings their son and daughter to shul, and waits patiently and respectfully in the hall for the services to finish. Will the children marry Jewish when their time comes? Who knows, but it is more likely now than anyone would have bet years before the mother became religious. Before we take out our anger on these young people and walk away from them like they had a disease, remember, there is virtually no Jewish family or neighbor in the world without an interfaith marriage. We have to influence them to go in the way of our Jewish people, because our G-d is one G-d. Take a lesson from Abraham who went down to Sodom to reach out and bring his brother before the One G-d.

As you can, I added a poll right above the posts, It will be up for a few days. Let me know what you think.

I get all the emails about depositing money in my bank account for some Nigerian prince, so I want to know how come I did not receive the mass email announcing Chelsea Clinton's engagement to Jewish guy Marc Mezvinksky?

What's the connection? Mezvinksky's father sat in jail for his involvement in the Nigerian fraud scheme... so they must have my email address on record....

Anyways, mazel tov to the couple. It seems that Chelsea has no plans to convert to Judaism unlike a different celeb named Ivanka who recently converted and married a Jew. At least there are no reports of her planning a conversion.

I guess there are two sides to an intermarriage - while it is a shame, it is horrible, that he wants to marry a shiksa, the other side of it is that a shiksa celebrity wants to marry a Jew! You've come a long way, baby!

Israel has turned out a new campaign to fight anti-semitism in the Diaspora... Here is the commercial playing on tv as the beginning of the campaign gets underway.

It played on Israel TV, and the point seems to be for people to call the Jewish Agency and give them names of people to contact abroad and try to get them connected. Maybe they should be advertising in the target countries, and try to attract those people directly...