From the Bible to Sex and the City, Jewish intermarriage has been debated, prohibited, embraced, and redefined. In this class, we’ll explore how attitudes toward intermarriage have shifted over time, using both gender and historical change as lenses. We’ll read the ancient text prohibiting intermarriage, examine contemporary analyses from Pew Research, and watch clips from popular culture—including Sex and the City and Nobody Wants This. No prerequisites are required. This class welcomes Jews and beloveds of other faith backgrounds, clergy and educators, and communal professionals.

Dr. Keren R. McGinity is an internationally known scholar-activist and a research associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University. She is a 2018 Forward honoree of America’s 50 most influential Jews for her clarion call for a Jewish response to the #MeToo Movement, a Boston Top Pick, and a Jewish feminist highlight by Lilith Magazine 2023.
Dr. McGinity was the first interfaith specialist at the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism and the founding director of the Interfaith Families Jewish Engagement graduate program at Hebrew College. Her pioneering books, Still Jewish: A History of Women & Intermarriage in America (NYU Press 2009), a National Jewish Book Award Finalist, and Marrying Out: Jewish Men, Intermarriage & Fatherhood (Indiana Univ. Press 2014), provided groundbreaking analyses about Jewish continuity by focusing on gender and change over time. Her newest book is #UsToo: How Jewish, Muslim, & Christian Women Changed Our Communities (Routledge 2023). She was the Mandell L. Berman postdoctoral research fellow in contemporary American Jewish life at the University of Michigan's Frankel Center for Jewish Studies and earned her PhD from Brown University.