Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/452

448 In France and Italy also Jews frequently marry christians. This is particularly the case with the French aristocracy, who often marry Jewish heiresses. In Italy the Jews to-day are thoroughly assimilated, and many observers state that mixed marriages are almost as frequent as pure marriages.

In eastern Europe they are less frequent. In Austria, during 1901, there were contracted 7,576 pure Jewish marriages and 147 mixed marriages. But here we can see how far isolation acts as a preventive of intermarriage. Of the 147 mixed marriages contracted during 1901, 98 were in the city of Vienna and 25 in Bohemia. Although three quarters of all the Austrian Jews live in Galicia, still not a single case of intermarriage was recorded there during that year. It must also be mentioned that in Austria intermarriage between Jews and christians is not permitted by the law, and in many cases of mixed marriages, one of the parties adopts the religion of his or her partner, and the marriage is thus recorded as pure christian or pure Jewish; or one or both declare themselves as dissenters (Konfessionslos) and appear on the registration lists as the marriage of a Jew with a dissenter, or of dissenters. As a result of this condition the available figures do not by any means represent the true condition of affairs.

Up to 1895 intermarriage was entirely prohibited by law in Hungary, unless one of the parties was converted to the religion of his or her partner. Since this law was abolished in 1895, mixed marriages are taking place in large numbers. During the nine years, 1895 to 1903, 3,590 Jews married with christians, and 60,275 with Jews, i. e., 5.95 per cent, of all pure Jewish marriages were mixed. Most of these marriages are contracted in the city of Budapest, where the proportion reached 17.06 per cent, during 1903 and 1904. The steady increase of mixed marriages in that city is well seen from the following figures:

It thus appears that every thirteenth Jew who married in Budapest, during 1904, married a christian.

For English-speaking countries there are no available statistics on the subject of intermarriage, because no religious censuses are taken. In England they occur often among the native Jews, and although among the immigrant Jewish population in London they are less frequent, still they are not as rare as is generally believed. In New South