Telling Her Family She’s Dating Outside Her Race and Religion

Judith’s Iranian Jewish parents expected her to date, and ultimately marry, someone of her cultural background. But her new relationship is creating tension with her relatives--and within herself. And Samira Mehta, a religion and family politics scholar, debunks myths about interfaith marriage in the U.S. and shares strategies for making religious spaces and family traditions more inclusive.

Featured Expert:

Our expert this week is Samira K. Mehta. Samira is an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and the Director of Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research and teaching focus on the intersections of religion, culture, and gender, including the politics of family life and reproduction in the United States. Her first book, Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), was a National Jewish Book Awards finalist. Mehta is currently working on two academic book projects. The first, God Bless the Pill: Sexuality and Contraception in Tri-Faith America, examines the role of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant voices in competing moral logics of contraception, population control, and eugenics from the mid-twentieth century to the present and is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press. The second, A Mixed Multitude: A History of Jews of Color in the United States, under contract with Princeton University Press, will trace that history through much of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her book of personal essays, The Racism of People Who Love You: Essays on Mixed Race Belonging, was released by Beacon Press in January 2023. 

In addition to these academic book projects, Mehta serves as the primary investigator for the Henry Luce Foundation–funded collaboration Jews of Color: Histories and Futures and is working on editing scholarly and literary collections related to her research topics.She serves as a Creative Editor at the journal American Religion and co-chairs both the North American Religion Section of the American Academy of Religion and the board of eFeminist Studies in Religion. She holds degrees from Swarthmore College, Harvard University, and Emory University. 

In addition to speaking at colleges and universities, Mehta frequently teaches and speaks at high schools, churches, and synagogues. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram at @samirakmehta. Learn more about her work here.

If you liked this show listen to Raised Mormon, She Left the Church Fearing for Her Safety and A Historical Would He’s Trying To Understand.