Ethnoreligious intermarriage in Israel: an exploration of the 2008 census

ABSTRACT Since its establishment, Israel’s population has included individuals associated with different religions and ethnic groups. The literature on religious intermarriage in Israel is not abundant. This probably reflects the relative paucity of cases in relation to a total population that has overwhelmingly tended to perform endogamous marriages – within the Jewish population but also within each of the other main religious groups. It probably also reflects negative normative attitudes towards the phenomenon. This paper presents previously unpublished data on the religious composition of couples, as it is covered in Israel’s population census of 2008. We evaluate the overall frequency of intermarriage across religions, according to the combination of spouses from four main religion categories (Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Other), and the frequency of Jewish religious intermarriage by selected sociodemographic characteristics of spouses (sex, age, year of immigration, educational attainment, district and main cities of residence).