ABSTRACT
The drawing of boundaries has been a key part of the Jewish tradition and has served to maintain a distinctive Jewish identity. The increasing fragmentation of Judaism into competing claims to membership, from Orthodox adherence to secular identities, has brought striking new dimensions to this complex interplay of boundaries and modes of identity and belonging in contemporary Judaism. This chapter examines the issue of being an 'insider outsider', as well as the key boundary themes of conversion and outmarriage. The chapter addresses the demographic changes brought by population mobility and marrying out, as well as the complex relationships between Israel and the Diaspora. It further reveals how these shifting boundaries play out in a global context, where Orthodoxy meets innovative ways of defining and acquiring Jewish identity. One very important boundary area relates to marriage where transgression of the norm of marrying another Jewish person was in the past and still is, in some Jewish communities met with strict sanctions.
