(JTA) — In the months since the Pew Research Center’s survey of American Jews renewed communal concern about assimilation, the intermarriage debate is flaring up again. Jewish religious and communal institutions had been shifting away from seeing intermarriage as a problem to be combated and toward focusing on engaging the intermarried. But in recent weeks, there…
The leader of the haredi Shas Party said that the relationship between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son and a non-Jewish Norwegian woman is a matter of national concern. Yair Netanyahu, 23, is dating Sandra Leikanger, 25, a woman he met while they were both studying at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. Netanyahu reportedly chatted with…
In September 2009, an Israeli TV and internet campaign aimed at dissuading Jews from marrying non-Jews upset many in the Diaspora – including Yael Ben-Zion, an American-born photographer, who lives together with her French, non-Jewish husband in New York City. So Ben-Zion, 40, who grew up in Israel, posted an ad at an online parenting…
(JTA) — The good news is in: Rabbi Avi Weiss’ conversions will be accepted in Israel. I am glad to see that the religious integrity and leadership of Rabbi Weiss has been acknowledged. Undoubtedly, this course correction on the part of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate is due in part to the hue and cry of…
Is intermarriage good for the Jews? This is not a trick question. It’s the new Rorschach test in determining how you think about the Jewish future. If you believe, as does the leadership of the Reform movement, that intermarriage is a fact of modern life, an inevitability in an open society where Jews are —…
In a Huffington Post piece from late October, author Yona Zeldis McDonough positions her latest, highly readable novel, “Two of a Kind,” as a reflection of the growing intermarriage rate between Jews and non-Jews as reported in the by now notorious Pew study. Certainly, we can take Zeldis McDonough’s story about Christina Connelly, a Christian…
A rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement’s central rabbinical school, set off a revealing internal spat when he wrote an op-ed questioning the school’s policy on rabbis and intermarriage. Officially no student at the school is allowed to date or marry a non-Jewish partner. The debate illuminated the Reform movement’s tricky balance:…
(JTA) — Last spring, I found myself averting my eyes when my 4-year-old mentioned something about the Easter bunny in front of my dad. We were at my parents’ home in Michigan for Passover and my son said, “When I get back to Brooklyn, the Easter bunny is going to bring me a basket!” I…
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