The first time I heard Louis Farrakhan speak, he called Judaism a “gutter religion.” I was shocked that in the 1980’s, only 35 years after Auschwitz, that anyone would speak that way in public and not be denounced immediately. I was a cantor at a Conservative synagogue in Norwalk, CT, a diverse community about an…
At a recent dinner party, a fervent argument broke out over the way one chooses romantic partners. Penny, an old friend of my partner Ellen, invited us to meet her new husband; she is Jewish, he is not. They had met at a mutual friend’s party. Ellen and I, I told them, had met on…
The Jewish community in the Washington, D.C. region has grown to nearly 300,000, making it the third-largest in the United States — but most Jews aren’t affiliated or connected with local Jewish institutions. A report by Brandeis University researchers found that the number of Jews in the District and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs has…
About twenty five years ago, I attended my sister-in-law’s marriage to a non-Jew. In other words, I broke a rule of the Rabbinical Assembly, the governing body of Conservative Judaism, thus risking expulsion from the group and professional suicide. A few nights ago, I asked my wife, “Did I know back then that I was…
The year after Rabbi Jason Miller graduated from rabbinical school, he skipped the wedding of his first cousin, who was marrying a non-Jew. He regretted it immediately. “It caused a significant fissure in our relationship,” Miller told the Forward. At the time, Miller thought he was abiding by an ironclad rule that bound all rabbis…
A little more than a year ago, a young rabbi revealed to colleagues that he had discovered that the Conservative movement never officially adopted one of its signature rules: the ban on rabbis blessing intermarriages. Conservative rabbis are also forbidden from even attending intermarriages on pain of expulsion from the movement, and the likely job…
Almost thirty years ago, my father invited me to attend a round table discussion on intermarriage. He was a leader in the local Jewish community, a vice president of an important Jewish organization. I was a rabbinical student, with clear instructions – sit in the corner; shut up. The various machers went around the room…
Interfaith families may now be buried together in a cemetery plot belonging to Congregation B’nai Israel, a Conservative synagogue in the coastal New Jersey town of Toms River. “There are always questions about burial of non-Jewish spouses in our cemetery,” Glenn Jacobs, a member of the synagogue’s cemetery committee told the website Patch.com, “and some…
דער באַגריף, ייִדישע אױטאָנאָמיע אין גלות — הײַנט פּאָפּולער בײַ קריטיקער פֿון ציוניזם — איז היסטאָריש ניט געװען קײן דערפֿאָלג.
