Millennia ago, before rabbis existed or conversion was invented, thousands who were not born Jewish became part of the Jewish community through a very simple act: They married a Jew. Sarah was the first, followed in turn by Rebecca, Leah and Rachel. Thousands more followed — both biblical characters and many more whose lives as…
Illustration by Lior Zaltzman The other day at work, I got goysplained. Let me back up. In 2008, Rebecca Solnit wrote her seminal essay, “Men Explain Things To Me.” In the essay, Solnit relates a story where she went to a party and mentioned that she had been writing about the famous photographer Eadweard Muybridge….
I made my first visit to Ireland more than 30 years ago. When I had married John a few months earlier, I had also wed his Celtic heritage, and was no longer a Goldberg, in name at least. My “Jewishness” became something that it was detected by no one but me. We went to a…
Over the past two years, influential Conservative rabbis have begun flirting with performing intermarriages and with relaxing conversion standards, or at least wringing their hands at Judaism’s traditional endogamy norm and the distress it is causing interfaith families. Given pervasive intermarriage — 58% of all American Jews marrying since 2000 wed gentiles — it may…
I write in support of Lord Sinderby. Surely you’ve seen his character on “Downton Abbey”: more dour than Carson the butler, more rigid than Lord Grantham, Sinderby is a self-made Jew who is implacably opposed to his son’s marriage to a non-Jew. On the very morning of the wedding in a registry (no church or…
(JTA) — As a longtime promoter of Jewish-Muslim dialogue in Denmark, Naveed Baig is no stranger to Copenhagen’s Great Synagogue. The imam at the capital’s Danish Islamic Center, Baig, 39, has on numerous occasions sat under the structure’s gold-and-white ceiling meeting with people he calls his “Jewish brethren” to discuss issues of common concern. On…
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz rescinded comments she made about the problems that intermarriage poses for the Jewish community. “I do not oppose intermarriage; in fact, members of my family, including my husband, are a product of it,” Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the head of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement issued Tuesday, according to…
(Haaretz) — The Jewish Telegraphic Agency wire service ran an article about the United Synagogue Youth’s annual international convention, under the headline “USY drops ban on interdating.” Unfortunately, this headline, which was widely circulated among Jewish news outlets, failed to capture the real issue that emerged from the confab. A more apt headline would have been…
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