Since the publication more than half a century ago of a landmark article that referenced the “vanishing American Jew,” it’s been hard to shake that idea as the dominant narrative of American Jewish life. Yet the U.S. Jewish community is the largest in the world, with an estimated 7 million Jews slightly more than Israel’s 6.8 million.
For New Greeting-Card Company, Chrismukkah Time is Here at Last December 7, 2004 5:00 am Adam Brody in the famous Chrismukkah episode of The OC. (Screen shot from YouTube)
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Some have called intermarriage the silent killer of the Jewish people but for Minna Friedel Klug and her family, it may have been a lifesaver. “She believes they were spared only because my grandmother in Germany had married the love of her life, her next-door neighbor, just as the Third Reich was taking over,” says Klug’s grandson, Ron Gompertz. “He was Lutheran.”
Today Gompertz himself married to the daughter of a minister in the United Church of Christ has taken the spirit of his grandmother’s belief and given it a lighthearted spin.