A top Conservative movement official thinks that Conservative rabbis should be allowed to participate in interfaith weddings. Now explicitly barred by the movement, the proposal — put forward by Rabbi Charles Simon of the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs — is one of a handful of new efforts by Conservative rabbis to loosen restrictions on…
For some, Susan Katz Miller’s new book “Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family” (Beacon Press) is an inspiring testament to inclusive religious identity. For others, it sparks debate about what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be Christian, and if it’s possible to be both. But however it’s read,…
I gave my 10-year-old son, Zev, the Pew survey on American Jews. The entire thing. One Sunday afternoon at our kitchen table. It all started the night before, when an undergraduate student at Hillel at Ohio University, where I am a rabbi, told my son during our Sabbath dinner that he recently found out he…
(JTA) — When Eric Woodward started rabbinical school at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary, he assumed he would be be the only student who grew up celebrating Christmas along with Hanukkah. But midway through his training, when Woodward started a discussion group for students of interfaith families, more than 20 people showed up. Not all…
(JTA) — To an outsider, the battles might seem to be over trifles — in some cases, just a few feet. Where may a non-Jewish parent stand in the synagogue during his child’s bar mitzvah? Can a non-Jew open the holy ark? Should non-Jewish synagogue members have voting rights? Such questions have been pushed to…
The good people at Pew Research have come up with a brief, fascinating addendum to their recent survey of Jewish Americans, aiming to clear up some of the furor the survey touched off over the closely related questions of intermarriage, religious identity and overall Jewish population numbers. Some quick background, in case you just got…
Susan Katz Miller, the author of a new book, “Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family,” recently argued in a New York Times op-ed that children being raised as Jewish and something else are not totally lost to Judaism. She said that kids who learn about the faith when they are young may…
(JTA) — When Susan Katz Miller’s Episcopalian mother and Jewish father married in the 1960s, they did exactly what most religious leaders advised intermarried couples to do: They chose one religion and stuck to it. Katz Miller’s mother put her religious tradition aside, learning to make matzah balls and shepherding her four children through bar and…
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