The Intermarriage Innovator Asking The Tough Questions Should a rabbi be permitted to marry a Jew and a non-Jew? This year, that question roiled the Conservative movement as it struggled to balance its embrace of modernity with the strictures of Jewish law and tradition. Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie put a face, and a proposal, to that…
Earlier this week, our colleague Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie resigned from the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly over his decision to perform intermarriages, as part of a larger initiative to embrace the non-Jews within his community. He is in good company. For years, many American rabbis – including some in our network – have been officiating interfaith…
In her article “A Wedding Invitation Like No Other,” Jane Eisner describes “intermarriage” as the “oozing story” among Conservative Jews, a story “found just below the surface.” I am one of the rabbis she describes as “not so quietly defying the restriction against officiating” at a marriage ceremony involving a Jewish person and a non-Jew….
In his recent proposal to marry Jews and non-Jews under certain circumstances, Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie explores a phenomenon of modern life in which non-Jews are inspired to participate in very positive ways in the life of the Jewish community out of their love of the Jews in their families. There is broad agreement that these…
Responding to the 72 percent intermarriage rate among Conservative, Reform and other non-Orthodox-raised Jews; how can rabbis – and more broadly, “The Jewish World” – convey two seemingly contradictory messages? First, we (rabbis, parents, institutions, friends, etc.) want to say that whoever you marry, we want you to be deeply engaged in Jewish life. Not…
On the night that Jews around the world mourn the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, here was a Tisha B’Av service unlike any other: Neshama Carlebach singing her father’s mournful, hopeful compositions and Basya Schechter singing her lovely iteration of “Eicha.” The service was dubbed “Shattered Shrines” and was led by Amichai Lau-Lavie, the…
Recently, Amichai Lau-Lavie, founding director of Storahtelling and a second-year Jewish Theological Seminary rabbinical student, published a blog post about illegally smuggling tallitot (prayer shawls) into the Western Wall for use by Women of the Wall on February 11, Rosh Hodesh Adar. “I broke the law by smuggling prayer shawls into the site of the…
Passover is the quintessential symbolic and educational festival. The fun educational tool of choice at the start of this century is the web video. Amichai Lau Lavie, of Storahtelling fame, makes that point exactly, in this video shot at an educational gathering pulled together by Repair the World and Uncommon Schools. Jake Marmer, doing performative…
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