One of the most significant shifts in Jewish life over the past half a century has been in attitudes towards intermarriage. To marry someone outside the community was once seen as a passage out of it, an act almost of sabotage of the Jewish future. But the rejection of intermarriage has given way, on the religious left, to accommodation, where the approach is not to turn one’s back on a mixed couple but to reach out and try to welcome them into the fold.
The condemnations, the laments, none of that has halted the inexorable rise in the number of Jews in the diaspora choosing a non-Jewish partner. According to the 2020 Pew survey of US Jewry, 72 per cent of non-Orthodox Jews – who represent by far the majority of the Jewish population – who got married since 2010 had a spouse who was not Jewish.
The intermarriage rate is much lower in the UK, but still on the increase, according to the last count by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Whereas it comprised 24 per cent of those who married from 2000 to 2009, by the second decade it had climbed to 34 per cent. If for argument’s sake, the remaining 66 per cent married among each other, it would mean that for every all-Jewish couple, there would be one with a non-Jewish partner.
Inevitably, that is bound to have some impact on the character of the community in the coming years. The changing environment already led to one important move a decade ago when in 2015 the Movement for Reform Judaism in the UK adopted equilineal status, enabling the child of either parent to be accepted as Jewish; it brought Reform closer to the Liberals, paving the way for the union of the two movements that came into effect this year.
The latest movement grappling with the challenge is the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ) in the USA, which was once the largest Jewish denomination in the country but is still the second largest. In a recent report, a working party of its Rabbinic Assembly recommended that it move away from its historic hostility towards intermarriage to doing more to make mixed couples feel at home in the movement.
As Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, chief executive of UCSJ and the Assembly, observed: “For decades, our movement’s approach to families where one partner is Jewish and the other is not was rooted in disapproval and shaped by fears about Jewish continuity.
“But today – as we connect with countless families who want to learn, participate, and belong – we are committed to welcoming people as they are and grounding our decisions in inclusion, personal relationships with clergy, and an authentic halachic process.”
It aimed to “continue moving from disapproval to engagement,” he said.
In the 60s, the movement’s official policy was for rabbis to “dissuade any Jew who is contemplating marriage with a non-Jew” from going ahead with it. Unlike American Reform rabbis, Conservative clergy are not allowed to officiate at an interfaith wedding. According to a 1989 rabbinic decision, congregations should not congratulate families on the occasion of an interfaith marriage or on the birth of a child resulting from one.
When I refused to officiate at the weddings of people I cared about,
I caused harm
However, the previous stance “turned out not to be helpful,” the recent report averred. “Every study shows that Jews continued to intermarry despite rabbinic disapproval, and were pushed away from our communities rather than being engaged.”
As one rabbi remarked, “When I refused to officiate at the weddings of people I cared about, I caused harm… my logic was not theirs, and they experienced my rejection personally, and as a rejection of their relationship, and of their place in the Jewish people.”
One respondent to a survey commissioned by the working party said, “For the first 25 years of our marriage… I was made to feel most unwelcome, so I disaffiliated from denominational Judaism for that time. When the mood of the congregations changed, I renewed my involvement.”
The movement’s past approach had “resulted in hurt, alienation, and disconnection from our community", the working party acknowledged. Instead, it offered an apology, promising to address the harm caused and try to repair relationships.
The movement should “embrace those who want to be part of our Jewish families and communities”.
Although it did not go so far as to advocate lifting the ban on officiating at interfaith marriages, it called for “openly looking at rituals and alternative ceremonies that engage intermarrying couples and their families”.
It sought “options to welcome, bless, and affirm couples with one Jewish partner and one partner who, while not formally Jewish, is firmly committed to co-creating an exclusively Jewish household”.
While there may not have been unanimity on the working party, nevertheless it signals a major change of heart within the movement – the outcome of which is likely to reverberate beyond the USA.
Rabbi Chaim Weiner, the London-based director of the European Masorti Bet Din, commented: “Intermarriage is a major challenge to Jewish continuity in Jewish communities everywhere. It is appropriate that the International Rabbinical Assembly is studying the impact of intermarriage on our communities and assessing whether our traditional responses are achieving their goals or whether different approaches are necessary. We support this endeavour.”
The bodies involved in the working group were mostly American, he noted, and its report – an interim one that did not represent a change of policy – reflected “the reality of the American Jewish community.
“The European branch of the movement has not been directly involved in this process. Once the working group completes its report, we will study its recommendations and decide what, if anything, is relevant and useful for our communities in the UK and across Europe.”
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