Interfaith marriage does not shake the beliefs of most Jewish women.

This was Dr. Karen McGinity’s message on Wednesday in her lecture on Jewish interfaith marriages.

McGinity works at the University of Michigan and researches the religious tendencies of Jewish women who have married outside their faith. The speech highlighted women McGinity studied, all of whom were in interfaith marriages. Anti-Semitism made most Jewish women in America at the beginning of the 20th century ashamed of their religious beliefs, McGinity said. This resulted in more of them marrying outside their faith.

Once married, it became easier to neglect Judaism. When most of these women had children, however, McGinity’s research showed they had a renewed interest in their Jewish faith. This is primarily because they wanted their children to understand their origins.

Toward the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, McGinity said, more and more Jewish women were staying true to their religion. As the feminist movement surfaced and women were fighting for more rights in and out of the household, Jewish women were also fighting to gain respect for Judaism.

Arts & Sciences freshman Kristina Ward said she enjoyed the lecture.

“I thought her speech was very interesting,” Ward said. “I didn’t realize how little information there is about Jewish women and interfaith marriage.”

McGinity began her research while pursuing her graduate degree at Harvard University. It was during a summer job that she decided on her research topic.

“I needed a topic for my dissertation,” McGinity said, “and I began researching Jewish women, and I found little to no information on them and absolutely no information on Jewish women in interfaith marriages.”

McGinity has spent the last few years researching Jewish women in interfaith marriages. She has decided her next research topic will be Jewish men in interfaith marriages, however that will be a more difficult task.

“Although I’ve been working on finding more information about Jewish men in interfaith marriages, I am finding it difficult to focus solely on men,” McGinity said. “Whenever I talk to men in interfaith marriages, their first response to me is ‘speak to my wife.’ This shows me that women are never far removed from anything marriage related.”