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…
In conversations with other parents, we often discuss what we would say if our children told us they were gay or transgender. It’s possible that I get this question more often than other people because I am an out-and-proud conservative living in the liberal enclave of Park Slope, Brooklyn. Having rarely come across a conservative,…
Last week, election winners across the country broke glass ceilings and made history. Danica Roem became the first transgender person elected to a state legislature. Michelle De La Isla became the first Hispanic mayor of Topeka, Kansas. Ravi Bhalla, a Sikh man, was elected mayor in Hoboken, New Jersey. Sheila Oliver became the first Black…
The time for red ribbons on the crib has come again as I await the birth of my second daughter. In 1900 Anzia Yezierska, a Polish-Jewish immigrant moved to the Lower East Side and wrote a book called Red Ribbon on a White Horse. She ran away from her orthodox family in search of words,…
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