1. A "melting pot marriage" is the sort of marriage celebrated in t he play Abie's Irish Rose, a marriage in which a Jew marries a Gentile, leading to a mixture of cultures. Such marriages serve the image of the melting pot well, and that image holds that people from different backgrounds come together in the American context and intermix, producing a hybrid American more in keeping with the image of the American born here than with either of the two foreign sources for husband and wife. The authors note how popular this work was in the 1920s and sees this as surprising, though one reason for its popularity was that there were pressures in American society bolstering this sort of marriage and because many in the audience may have been in such a marriage themselves. The authors note how the play coupled such marriages with patriotism from the post-World War I era. The authors cite the play The Melting Pot for celebrating a marriage between a Jew and a Christian. The play was written by Israel Zangwill in 1908 and generated much approval for its message of tolerance and the mixture of faiths and backgrounds in a free America. The Jews who created these works or who supported them saw America in terms of innocence and openness. The authors cite real-life marriages such as that of Irving Berlin, Groucho Marx, or Jed Harris. The authors note that early in this century, such marriages were relative novelties in American life, though this is no longer the case.
AO 2. The Cowans find that denying either of the two cultures is a poor idea and will not solve the dilemmas raised by interfaith relationships. They cite the Rosenbaums who have filled their home with both Judaism and Christianity, giving their children a thorough grounding in each and allowing the children to take from each and make their own decisions. The case of the Goldmans is different because the children are being raised as Jews and not as Christians, lea...