The high-profile wedding of Arab Israeli news anchorwoman Lucy Aharish and Jewish Israeli actor Tzachi Halevy has become a matter for public debate and has sparked comments that range from the despicable and racist comments made by Likud MK Oren Hazan to others praising assimilation.
Without violating the privacy of a loving couple who made the decision to marry, it seems there is room here to discuss the issue in principle.
Everyone needs to relax. A Jew cannot assimilate in Israel. Israel is a Jewish state, Israeli society is Jewish, and its culture is also Jewish. Our year revolves around the Jewish holidays, and the weekly day of rest is Shabbat. The language is Hebrew, and the population is overwhelmingly Jewish. Nearly all Jews in Israel marry other Jews, and even when a Jew marries a non-Jew in Israel, their children and their grandchildren continue to be an inseparable part of the Jewish collective for as long as they live in the country.
This is not the case in the Diaspora, where Jews are a minority and assimilation continues to pose a real threat. Purely from a statistical perspective, a majority of Jews there will likely fall in love with non-Jews, because that is simply whom they are most likely to meet at school, at work and elsewhere. The rate of intermarriage overseas is very high and on the rise. The existence of Conservative and Reform streams of Judaism significantly slows the rate of assimilation and delays the spiritual annihilation for a generation or two, but not forever. There can be no real Jewish future in the Diaspora over time.
For this reason, I refuse to be concerned about a young intermarried couple in Israel. I am more concerned by emigration from Israel. While the emigration rate is now the lowest it has been since the state's founding, it is still high, and worse, it enjoys social and cultural legitimacy. Many Israelis treat emigration from Israel as a reasonable and natural choice. "One mustn't judge" those who decide to leave the country, they say.
For an Israeli who left the country and settled in the Diaspora, the chances are high that their children, and if not their children then their grandchildren, will no longer be Jews or a part of the Jewish people. That is why those who so greatly fear assimilation should not concern themselves with a wedding that is nothing more than sensational tabloid news. It is more urgent for Israel to make aliyah a top priority. As the nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel's commitment is to the future of the Jewish people; this commitment should be expressed in efforts to bring Jews to Israel and to discourage them from emigrating overseas.
Like many others, I totally reject assimilation, and I am sorry for every Jew who abandons our people. But I believe there is only one barrier to assimilation and that is life in Israel. Zionism is the answer to assimilation; it ensures the future of the Jewish people, not only its security and material concerns but also its spiritual resilience.
