By Bill Simons

Depictions of interfaith romance, sex and marriage have long elicited Jewish commentary as evidenced by the Bible. The Book of Ruth is a story of inclusion. After the death of her Hebrew husband, the Moabite woman Ruth tells her mother-in-law Naomi, “[W]herever you go, I will go… your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Conversely, the manipulative Philistine beauty Delilah robs the Hebrew judge Samson of his hair, strength and life. And the usually wise King Solomon, builder of the First Temple, loves many foreign women, leading to the division of Israel by his sons. In contrast, Esther employs her charms, with the encouragement of her kinsman Mordecai, to win the love of the Persian King Ahasuerus and to thwart evil Haman’s plan to annihilate the Jews. 
In the centuries that followed, competing themes of interfaith romance continued to resonate. In the stage musical and movie “Fiddler on Roof,” Tsarist Russia, on the cusp of the great Jewish migration to America, provides the setting. Dairyman Tevye, the protagonist, declares his daughter Chava dead when she marries a Russian Gentile, a not uncommon response in that time and place. 
In American media, images of interfaith love continued to evolve. Embracing American exceptionalism and popularizing a metaphor, Israel Zangwill’s play “The Melting Pot” (1908) celebrates assimilation and intermarriage. Fleeing Russia to settle in New York City, the young Jewish musician David Quixano becomes engaged to the beautiful Vera Revendal. Not only is Vera a Gentile, but her father, a former Cossack commander, led the bloody Kishinev pogrom that killed David’s parents. However, David exclaims that America provides emancipation from Old World hatreds: “There she lies, the great Melting Pot – listen!... how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame!”
The popular play “Abie’s Irish Rose” (1922), which is heavy on stereotypes, added humor to the tale of love and marriage between an Irish Catholic woman and a Jewish man, a trajectory followed in later decades by George Burns/Gracie Allen and Jerry Stiller/Anne Meara. The original film version of “The Jazz Singer” (1927) – the first movie with sound, albeit limited, to capture the public’s attention – dramatized powerful emotions. It presents the irreconcilable options of a young man torn between obligation to his dying father to chant the Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur and the love of his Gentile girlfriend, who expects his star-turn for the opening of a Broadway extravaganza. 
During the second half of the 20th century, interfaith romance was central to several film dramas and comedies, notably “Marjorie Morningstar,” “The Heartbreak Kid,” “Dirty Dancing,” “Annie Hall” and “When Harry Met Sally.” “The Way We Were” added nascent feminism, leftist politics and the charisma of Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford to the mix. 
The 1969 Philip Roth novel “Portnoy’s Complaint” and the 2024 Tyler Perry-directed film “The Six Triple Eights” are both set during World War II and feature romances between a young Jewish American male and his adolescent Gentile girlfriend. In the novel and the film, the young Jewish men share a common fate: a soldier’s death in wartime combat. However, the two mediums provide very different perspectives. 
Alexander Portnoy, the novel’s erstwhile protagonist, recalls the hero of his youth, cousin Heshie, a ruggedly handsome, Newark javelin champion. His engagement to the Polish Alice Dembosky, a beautiful baton-throwing majorette, led Heshie’s father to meet Alice secretly, scaring her away with the lie that Heshie was dying of a rare blood disorder, prohibiting intimacy. To exit the tale, Roth records, “When Heshie was killed in the war, the only thing people could think to say to my Aunt Clara and my Uncle Hymie, to somehow mitigate the horror… was, ‘At least he didn’t leave you with a shikse wife. At least he didn’t leave you with goyische children.”’
In contrast, there is a sweetness to the wartime romance of Jewish Abram David and African American Lena Derriecott. In early 1940s metropolitan Philadelphia, playful friendship is a portent of deeper emotions. Lena’s adventures in the rumble seat of Abram’s car are prelude. Tender kisses and professions of love precede Lena’s acceptance of a promise ring from Abram as he enlists in the Army Air Corps to fight Hitler. Tragically, Abram is killed when enemy fire downs his plane. A soldier on the ground finds an envelope addressed to Lena in Abram’s back pocket. That letter long remains undelivered. 
Grieving for Abram, Lena joins the war against Hitler as part of the all Black, all woman 6888th battalion tasked with ensuring that 17 million undelivered letters find their proper destination. As part of that process, Abram’s letter reaches Lena, but she does not open the blood-stained envelope until she stands at his grave, marked by the Star of David, in a soldier’s cemetery overseas. Weeping, Lena reads Abram’s words that tell her that if he doesn’t make it home, she should live long enough and laugh enough for both of them. Adding to the poignancy of Lena and Abram’s romance is the revelation that it was historically grounded, subject to cinematic embellishments. In the epilogue, the real Lena, an indomitable 100 in 2024, appears and speaks directly to viewers, affirming the story. 
Although the 1972-73 TV comedy “Bridget Loves Bernie” garnered good ratings, it was cancelled after one season, apparently due to pressure by American Jews apprehensive about rising rates of intermarriage. With the popularity of “Seinfeld,” “Mad About You” and similar TV comedy series in the 1990s, interfaith romantic relationships grew ever more prevalent in media, but were more often referenced as an incidental circumstance rather than as a major focus of plot. 
“Nobody Wants This,” a contemporary streaming comedy series, has brought Judaism and conflict back to the core of interfaith romance. A young, handsome rabbi and a nubile, attractive Gentile podcast host both find the other sexually irresistible to the disgust of the rabbi’s mother, who denigrates the “shiksa.” A ratings hit, “Nobody Wants This” is simultaneously offensive and hilarious. 
Turning from the fictive to the sociological, Pew Research data reports that 72 percent of present-day non-Orthodox American Jews marry Gentiles. For the survival of American Judaism, clearly serious family and synagogue discussions are needed concerning child raising and temple protocols.