Kvetch: About the 'keep it in the tribe' gaggle

One of my real inspirations to start my own blog came from reading blogs this past year, many of whom purport the whole 'keep it in the tribe' philosophy. A few days ago, I came upon this The Urban Kvetch:

http://estherkustanowitz.typepad.com/myurbankvetch2005/2006/02/an_open_letter_.html#comment-63568154

Yet another attack on 'good Jewish boys who've gone to the other side' (meaning hooking up with a *gasp* non-Jewish girl). I'm really sick of all the kvetching about people ruining the Jewish culture because they are falling in love with and building lives with people outside the 'tribe'.One day folks will realize that the true demise of a culture comes when that culture refuses to adapt, grow and change to its new environment.

Evolution is inevitable.

If synagogues and Jewish 'leaders' in the community continue to ostracize Jews for falling in love with people who aren't Jewish, the culture will eventually die out. My living with a Muslim man does not make me any less Jewish. We share our deepest set of values that I have never found in anyone else (Jewish or otherwise).

Love doesn't come in a webpage package or a circumcision or a Jewish middle name. It doesn't come in going to synagogue or keeping kosher. Those things are all secondary to the simple rule: do you connect with this other person on a real personal, intimate, deep-down, life-affirming connection kind of way?When you look into this person's eyes does it make your heart beat just a little bit faster? When this person says something, does it connect with you somewhere deep down in your soul a place you never realized existed within you? Can you picture yourself living with and loving this person for the rest of your life, even if they don't know where the laundry basket is, even if they never wash their dishes? Is there just something about that other person that completes you?

Yes people, this is love!

Can 2 people be Jewish and be in love? Of course. But that cannot be the only factor, it will never be enough, it will never survive!Can a Muslim man and a Jewish woman raise beautiful loving children together who are open to the universe, to their cultures and traditions and who can grow to understand the multiplicity and greatness of all things? Yes of course!Will this relationship mean the death of Judaism? No. It is the evolution of Judaism. It is a new interpretation. It will eventually hopefully mean the death of wars and hatred which stems from differences and misunderstandings that stem from those differences. The more people in this universe meld mingle and mix, the more we will come to understand one another.

I will fight until the day I die this kind of kvetching, this ignorance put forth by fear mongerers that all _________ people should hook up with all ___________ people.

End the fear mongering now. Spread the love. Connect with people because you feel deep in your bones that you cannot live without them in your world, not because your parents are telling you to hook up with someone of your own culture.

End the fear. Stop the hate. Spread the love.