ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses changes in the marriage regime and its alternatives as expressed in living arrangements, with a focus on issues of ethnic intermarriage. It outlines the family processes that have occurred in Israeli society as a whole and among its major communities, reviews changes in the extent and timing of family formation, and examines marriage and intermarriage between persons of different ethnic origins. The chapter provides a firmer answer to the question of how familistic Israelis are and how important family connections are in the changes that have enveloped the society over time. By the third or fourth generation of ethnic intermarriages, the identity and the culture, the in-group interaction and the networks, have become so mixed that ethnic origin no longer is salient. Families are the building blocks of social organization. In obvious ways, families reproduce and socialize the next generation in the values and lifestyles of the community.
