Does Debbie Wasserman-Schultz resent Bernie & Jane Sanders because of their interfaith marriage?

[Cheese Sandwich]

We know she sees this kind of intermarriage as a "problem" because she said so in early 2015.

Could this explain if she had some bias against Bernie Sanders?

Although she does not actively "oppose" it, she identified "assimilation" and intermarriage as problems.

"We have the problem of assimilation. We have the problem of intermarriage. We have the problem that too many generations of Jews don't realize the importance of our institutions strengthening our community..."

Comments and a subsequent clarification from U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston have attracted new attention to long-running concerns over the implications of interfaith marriage in the Jewish community.

Wasserman Schultz recently told a Jewish group that interfaith marriage is a "problem." On Tuesday, in a statement issued by the Democratic National Committee, she said she does "not oppose" it.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-wasserman-schultz-jewish-intermarriage-20150203-story.html

[Dr Hobbitstein]

1. .

[virtualobserver]

3. Was DWS just bullshitting the faithful when she called interfaith marriage a "problem"?

[Dr Hobbitstein]

5. You mean something that deeply religious Jewish people find problematic?

Oh noes! She was speaking to people of her faith about issues pertaining to them.

[virtualobserver]

10. people of "faith" find many issues concerning marriage "problematic", like same sex marriage.....

.....based on your explanation....it would be fine for Democratic politicians to describe that as "problematic" as well.....depending on the "faith" of the audience.

[MFM008]

12. Lol

[annavictorious]

2. If DWS resents this pair, she resents them

because they're obnoxiously self-important non-Democrats who feel entitled to dictate terms to the party they have spent the last 10 months exploiting purely for personal gain.

But keep reaching. It's amusing to see exactly how ridiculous the claims will become.

[floriduck]

11. Hilarious, sadly. I'll pray for you in Hebrew.

[msanthrope]

47. Remember what this Jew had to say about fellow Jews praying....Matt 6:5-6. nt

[hrmjustin]

4. No.

[JPnoodleman]

6. Maybe......?

I mean, possibly, but Sanders has produced a child and at this point it would be kinda nutty to expect him to go out and find a Jewish woman to make Jewish babies with.

Idk, DWS is a craven piece of work and a bad chair but I doubt her dislike of Sanders is up to him being married outside the religion of Judaism.

[Arkansas Granny]

7. That is probably the silliest thing I've heard today.

[Lizzie Poppet]

8. "We have the problem of intermarriage."

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

[Cheese Sandwich]

16. LOL

understandable reaction.

[tabasco]

9. She's disgusting.

It is a disgrace to see her as chair of the Democratic party.

[MFM008]

13. Why in the name of King Tut

Would that matter to her?

[still_one]

14. doubling down trying to put a "Jewish connection" into your OP?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017378124

[Cheese Sandwich]

17. Uh... How am I "putting" it in?

It's a question about whether DWS sees interfaith marriages as a problem.

[Tarc]

15. I believe that I can find a suitable image for this

[Warren DeMontague]

24. There is plenty of other stuff to criticize DWS on, like voting to send cancer grannies to prison

for using medical marijuana.

[okasha]

18. You're really desperate, aren't you?

[Cheese Sandwich]

20. I just wondered if maybe Wasserman-Schultz has a problem with people marrying outside their religion

[okasha]

25. Many Jews are concerned less with interfaith marriage

than with raising children of such marriages outside the faith. It gets especially complicated when the husband is the Jewish partner because "Jewishness" is reckoned only through the mother.

An honorary niece of mine is Jewish, and she and her husband had a full-throttle ecumenical (Jewish, Catholic, Presbyterian) wedding, but her daughter is being raised Jewish.

I doubt DWS has concerns about a late born baby, here.

[Blaukraut]

19. Sorry, all sharks are busy being jumped over already. The line starts over there ----> n/t

[gollygee]

21. This is not an uncommon position for people in many religions

And it has nothing to do with this election or the Sanders family.

[no_hypocrisy]

22. Debbie, sit down . . . .

[Warren DeMontague]

23. She supports payday lending and thinks medical marijuana users belong in prison.

She is a disaster.

[Behind the Aegis]

36. I agree.

However, this type of nonsense is simply stupid and borderline bigoted. Many cultures worry about their culture being "lost". Look at issues around gentrification, Native American communities and their languages/cultures, the GLBT community "assimilating" to a heteronormative life, and the list goes on, but when a Jew expresses concern about our culture being lost, then suddenly their are ulterior motives or we are "white" supremacists. If this were being leveraged as part of the Democratic position or some such, then I would have a real issue with it; but she was talking to other Jews and said nothing that most Jews haven't heard and have been hearing for years and struggle with to some degree.

[Warren DeMontague]

38. Yeah, it's nothing I haven't heard before.

But my Grandparents were like the poster Jews for Assimilation, and I'm the product of one of those interfaith marriages, so I'm probably a bit biased.

She seems to approach many things from a sort of socially reactionary position of trying to "contain" or control "bad" or what-may-be-perceived as "unwanted" behavior, which strikes me as fundamentally counterproductive not just to dealing with peoples' complex lives and choices, but ALSO from the standpoint of organically encouraging people to discover what meaning or tradition (if any) holds value for them personally.

The goose, as always, has to get itself out of the bottle.

Describing any two people who love each other (presumably) and want to commit their lives together as a "problem"- to me, that's a problem, no matter the context.

[Behind the Aegis]

40. My grandparents were different.

They were all for "assimilation" up to a point, which is why my father and his sister don't speak Yiddish, but she and my father both married non-Jews. They didn't care much about my aunt's marriage, but they were not happy with my father (matrilineal line). Both of my brothers are married to non-Jewish women, and my brothers barely touch on Jewish culture. I am too married to someone who isn't Jewish, but Jewishness is a part of our lives, though we have no children (neither of us like them all that much).

I can somewhat agree with your assessment of DWS, but, quite frankly, I am just as irritated by shit like this (the OP) in regards to Jews. Seriously, why is it every other fucking culture can be proud and want to preserve their culture and it is seen as "fine" and even "admirable", but, Jews, and it is goddamned conspiracy?!

Where I see this as different from you, is that she doesn't have a problem with two people in love, but whether or not the Jewish culture will be preserved and I do find that to be reasonable. To me, that context is important. I no longer see the US as a "melting pot." I abandoned that belief years ago in college when I saw Sarah Weddington (Rove V. Wade) speak, and she said America shouldn't be a "melting pot" but rather a "tossed salad", individual cultures not being dispersed to make a tasty meal, but rather maintaining it's original form and still being apart of something greater than its parts.

To me, this type of "concern" (in the OP) is problematic in of itself!

[Warren DeMontague]

41. I do know what you mean and where it is coming from.

Believe me, these are long-running conversations that take place and questions that come up in our house, too. I mean, hell, we've got kids, so you can imagine what that adds to it all.

But full disclosure: I probably can't have an unbiased opinion about DWS at this point, no matter the topic. Once she allied herself with Sheldon Adelson to kill medical marijuana reform in FL in 2014, that was pretty much it for me.

[JudyM]

50. Agreed, smells like bigotry, sorry to say.

[KingFlorez]

26. Why would she care?

These theories are getting stupider and stupider by the day. Delete this now.

[Cheese Sandwich]

27. It's not really a theory

It's just some statements of fact and some questions.

[KingFlorez]

30. It's beyond unlikely that DWS cares who Sanders is married to

In fact, he's not even a practicing Jew or of any religious belief, so it's a moot point. It's pretty crazy to think that DWS has a personal vendetta against Sanders.

[Cheese Sandwich]

32. I don't know she seems to have some problem with "intermarriage."

There's actually a quote she made on the subject. There's a recording and everything.

[Warren DeMontague]

42. Nah, as long as Jane Sanders isn't trying to ease chemo nausea by eating a pot brownie

DWS doesn't want her arrested, or anything.

[LenaBaby61]

28. This post ......

[Agschmid]

45. Yup.

[jamese777]

29. Jewish Interfaith Marriage Statistics

Key Intermarriage Statistics
47% of Jews marrying between 1996 and 2001 married non-Jews.
31% of all married Jews are intermarried.
39% of these marriages are Jewish-Catholic.
23% are Jewish-Protestant.
26% are between a Jewish person and a person who doesn't affiliate with any religion.
33% of children in intermarriages are raised as Jews. The percentage varies greatly by community, however. In Boston, for example, 60% of children of interfaith families are raised as Jews. In Baltimore, 62% of children of intermarriage are raised as Jews. Conversely, in Denver, only 18% are being raised Jewish.
27% of married people in the U.S. are in interfaith marriages. When you count Protestant denominations as different religions, the number jumps to 37%. Roughly 35 million people in the U.S. are in interfaith marriages.


Key Jewish Population Statistics
Between 5.2 million and 6.5 million. Jews live in the U.S. Jews make up roughly 2% of the U.S. population.

There are 14.4 million Jews throughout the world. 5.7 million Jews live in Israel. After the U.S. and Israel, the countries with the largest Jewish populations, in descending order, are France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia and Argentina. Jews make up .2% of the world population.
The metropolitan areas with the largest Jewish populations are, in descending order, Tel Aviv, New York, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, Haifa, South Florida, Beersheba, San Francisco, Paris and Chicago.


Background on Intermarriage in the Jewish Community
For much of American Jewish history, intermarriage was relatively rare. The incidence of intermarriage started to increase in the 1970s (from 13% to 28%). Many Jews know the story of a relative who was disowned (in some cases, mourned as if he or she had died) when he or she married a non-Jew.

In response to the increase in intermarriage, the Reform movement took two controversial steps: it created an outreach department to reach out to and welcome intermarried couples, and decided to recognize the children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers as Jews (under traditional Jewish law, only children of Jewish mothers are considered Jews).

But when the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey revealed that close to half of all new marriages involving Jews in the previous five years were to non-Jews, intermarriage shot to the top of the Jewish community's agenda.

Because Judaism doesn't encourage proselytizing and Jews are such a small minority (somewhere between 5.2 million and 6.5 million), some Jews consider the ongoing high rate of intermarriage a threat to the continued existence of the Jewish people. Major Jewish figures have been harshly critical of intermarriage and view outreach to the intermarried as a waste of limited communal resources. Major Jewish organizations see promoting Jewish in-marriage as one of their explicit or implicit fundamental goals.

In the last two decades, there has been a growing awareness that writing off intermarried families may mean writing off a Jewish future. Intermarriage can be an opportunity to sustain and even grow the Jewish population both quantitatively and qualitatively. If more than 50% of interfaith families raise their children as Jews, interfaith families will actually increase the size of the Jewish population. But intermarried couples will only make Jewish choices if the Jewish community genuinely welcomes them. InterfaithFamily is a leading advocate for building such an inclusive Jewish community.
http://www.interfaithfamily.com/news_and_opinion/synagogues_and_the_jewish_community/Jewish_Intermarriage_Statistics.shtml

[wildeyed]

31. No!

Did you hurt yourself making that stretch?

NEW YORK (JTA) — There are a lot more Jews in America than you may have thought — an estimated 6.8 million, according to a new study. But a growing proportion of them are unlikely to raise their children Jewish or connect with Jewish institutions.

The proportion of Jews who say they have no religion and are Jewish only on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture is growing rapidly, and two-thirds of them are not raising their children Jewish at all.

http://www.jta.org/2013/10/01/news-opinion/united-states/pew-survey-u-s-jewish-intermarriage-rate-rises-to-58-percent

The concern of many Jewish groups is more about assimilation than interfaith marriage.

[tandem5]

33. I heard DWS gets her shoes from DSW!

[JI7]

34. wouldn't she resent the Clinton Family also because of Chelsea and Mezvinsky have an interfaith

marriage ?

[JI7]

35. this is a common discussion among many cultures . think of all the jokes about marrying

the "nice ...........boy" "nice ................girl" . fill in the blank with jewish, catholic, italian, korean etc....

[Behind the Aegis]

37. Yes, but we (Jews) have this conversation...

...it is all about "white" supremacy of some sort, not about preserving our culture. I am really disgusted this is even being "discussed".

[grossproffit]

44. Uh huh.

[Betty Karlson]

39. So she's bigot as well as a DINO?

How is this horrible person still a chair? Just because she threatened Obama with "sexism and anti-semitism OMG!!!!!!!111111one!!!!11111!!!!!" charges when he anted to get rid of her in 2013?

[Cheese Sandwich]

63. Wait what?

Wasserman Schultz Reportedly Wanted to Paint Obama as ‘Anti-Woman,’ ‘Anti-Semitic’ If Ousted

Buried inside a Politico report about Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz‘s (D-FL) future aspirations was an interesting revelation: “When (Wasserman Schultz) sensed Obama was considering replacing her as chair in 2013, she began to line up supporters to suggest the move was both anti-woman and anti-Semitic.”

http://www.mediaite.com/online/report-dws-wanted-to-paint-obama-as-anti-woman-and-anti-semitic-if-ousted-as-dnc-chair/

[JCanete]

43. No, there's no religion in the world that can stand up to the green God the DNC worships. If

Bernie weren't a socialist but instead a good insider Dem, I'm sure that she'd be able to see past these sorts of things.

[Cheese Sandwich]

57. this is a great point.

[oberliner]

46. Does DWS resent Chelsea Clinton & Marc Mezvinsky because of their interfaith marriage?

Could this explain if she had some bias against Hillary Clinton?

[Hiraeth]

54. ^^ this ^^

[Cheese Sandwich]

58. Not really an exact equivalent since Bernie is the one who married outside.

In the Clinton case it's just Hillary's son in law.

[msanthrope]

48. Interfaith marriage is a problem for all religious communities who wish to retain their traditions.

Devout "fill in the blank" parents of all faiths see that as a concern.

Why would you make an OP singling out Jews?

[OilemFirchen]

59. Why indeed?

It's baffling, no?

[Cheese Sandwich]

60. I'm not religious.

[Cheese Sandwich]

61. I'm not religious

If Rick Santorum makes a comment about Catholic intermarriages being a problem, go ahead and post it I'll give you a DU rec. He's about the only one I could imagine saying it though.

[sufrommich]

49. This was recorded by right wing conservatives to paint

DWS as the "other" to conservative christians in Fla.,its an age old anti semitic dog whistle and it doesn't belong here. I don't care for DWS but this is really an inappropriate OP fit for Free Republic,not DU.

[riversedge]

52. Thanks for your much needed post.

[Cheese Sandwich]

62. This was a mainstream media report so you know what to do

[riversedge]

51. Each day your OP's more more silly. Thank goodness they will stop when the voting is done!

Ask yourself why they are so admired by so many?

[MariaThinks]

53. i love innuendo. The republicans honed it to a fine art. Basically insinuate anything with a

question.

For example,
If Bernie colluded with the communists in the Soviet Union, should he withdraw from the presidential race?

[TheSarcastinator]

55. you mean like claiming all critiques of Hillary are

MIIISOOOOOGEEEENNNNYYYYYYYYY???

[NorthCarolina]

56. No, establishment types just flat-out don't like populist types.

I think it's really that simple.