Intermarriage 'threatens UK Jewry'

I have a similar background in that there were very few Jews in the town I grew up in. I picked up some slack for it. But there was also some curiosity.

I had two choices. Abandon Judaism or embrace my identity as "The Jew," even if there was no opportunity to be part of a Jewish community, Orthodox or otherwise. I believe God exists. I believe the Torah is, for the most part, accurate. I don't believe in Jesus.

Once I moved to cities where there were more extensive Jewish communities, I admit that I found it hard to fit in. Small town boy in a group of big city/suburban people. Well, it's not like I've ever been that socially ept,anyway. Interestingly enough, it seemed to be Hasidim -- specifically the Lubavitch (Chabad) who most easily accepted me as Jewish. But, I think you have to be either born to that or spiritually driven to be Hasidic. And I've never been terribly uncomfortable with the consertative-to-reform believes I've had.

I had decided that I would marry whoever I fell in love with and was willing to marry me, Jewish, Christian, or other -- and considering the crowd I hung out in, New-Age Pagan was a possibility. I wasn't going to change my religion, though what my children would turn out to be would be anyone's guess. As it turned out I fell in love with a Christian woman who had already considering converting to Judaism.

To get back to the original point, I sympathize with you -- it is not easy for a Jew raised outside the Jewish community to fit in to the Jewish community. So, short of complete, Orthodox immersion, one has to decide what is or isn't going to be part of your identity and beliefs, independent of what does or does not go on in the Jewish community.

Largely Ashkenazi. The oldest communities were Sephardic but they made up very small numbers. Moses Montefiore was elected Sheriff of London in the 1830s and of course Disraeli, a baptized Jew, was Queen Victoria's favorite Prime Minister.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England

There were large waves of working-class Jewish immigration from Russia and, unlike the U.S., the Netherlands into London's East End in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The wave of refugees from Germany and Austria in the 1930s was proportionally much greater in Britain than in the U.K., as well.

The Jewish communities in Britain are even more highly centralized than they are in the U.S., with most Jews living in London and a smaller community in Manchester, and insignificant communities elsewhere. Provincial Jewry in Britain has declined significantly in the past 100 years as people left the north for the southeast.

Given that British Christians have largely drifted away from churches and have smaller families than Americans, it should come as no surprise that British Jews have experienced the same trends at even higher rates.

Quite common among American Jews. I've had to wrestle with my own feelings of exclusion from the temple I grew up in, because my parents feuded with the power structure and knew quite a lot of the corruption that afflicted one rabbi's administration... but that is not an excuse to not take personal control of and responsibility for my own faith.

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