A Famous Jew Intermarries, and Nobody Notices

And lo, in the month of Jewish American and Asian-Pacific American Heritages both, it came to pass that famous Jew Mark Zuckerberg married his longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan, who is not Jewish, and then a great miracle (if you ask some) happened: nobody rang the intermarriage bells.

Allison Kaplan Sommer noted that the non-news is itself news. “And so we’ve reached the stage where, in many cases, actual disappointment over intermarriage has drastically diminished,” she writes, “because the expectation that non-Orthodox American Jews will actively prefer and seek out fellow Jews as life partners doesn’t exist.”

I don’t have much to add to that. I’m a little bit surprised it has not been a bigger deal, but then again, it was something that barely registered with me. I do wonder whether it wouldn’t almost be a bigger deal if Zuckerberg were marrying, say, a fifth-generation WASP rather than an Asian-American with some family still in China. There may also be a whiff of “well, Asians are the new Jews” thing to it, particularly given that they met at an AEPi party at Harvard.

It’s Complicated: Zuckerberg, Chan, and Intermarriage Among Jews [Haaretz Routine Emergencies]
Earlier: Jewish, Asian-Pacific American Heritage Months