B’nai Jeshurun stands on 88th Street among expensive Upper West Side apartments, an impressive synagogue in an elegant Moorish style. It’s best known for lively and well-attended Shabbat services, which can attract thousands of congregants, including a distinctive, progressive core of Jewish movers and shakers. Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has attended, as well as…
Editor’s Note: On June 9, the Forward’s editor-in-chief Jane Eisner wrote a piece entitled, “Why This Renegade Rabbi Says He Can Marry Jews —- And The Jew-ish,” which discussed the controversy of intermarriage within the Conservative Jewish community. In the coming days and weeks, we will be publishing several responses to her story. The following…
Editor’s Note: On June 9, the Forward’s editor-in-chief Jane Eisner wrote a piece entitled, “Why This Renegade Rabbi Says He Can Marry Jews — And The Jew-ish,” which discussed the controversy of intermarriage within the Conservative Jewish community. In the coming days and weeks, we will be publishing several responses to her story. The following…
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…
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie’s research, analysis and essay on officiating at an interfaith wedding is interesting. It is clear that his proposal comes from a place of thoughtfulness and love of Judaism, the Jewish people and those connected to them. Rabbi Lau-Lavie, like all of us, is struggling with our generation’s most complex problem: how do…
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…
Early in my career as a journalist, a brilliant editor encouraged me and other reporters to look for the stories that “oozed” — the ones that are found just below the surface — because day-to-day news can obscure deeper and more significant trends. Among Orthodox Jews, the oozing story of our day is the emergence…
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