NY’s B’nai Jeshurun rabbis to officiate intermarriages
But liberal Orthodox Yeshivat Chovevei Torah reiterates opposition to practice
NEW YORK (JTA) – Rabbis at B’nai Jeshurun, an influential nondenominational synagogue in New York City, will officiate at the weddings of interfaith couples who commit to creating Jewish homes and raising Jewish children.
The new policy, which was announced at the synagogue’s annual meeting on Thursday night, is intended to welcome the participation of interfaith families within the bounds of Jewish law, or Halacha. Interfaith couples will not sign a ketuba, the traditional document sealing a marriage between a Jew and a Jew, but a ritual contract called a tenaim, a traditional engagement agreement that lays out the conditions of marriage.
“We are embracing a significant change in how we approach the future of Jewish life at B.J.,” J. Rolando Matalon, the synagogue’s senior rabbi, said in a video shared with congregants, according to The Forward. He called the decision a “shift in emphasis in the way we relate to and invite in intermarried couples.”
The synagogue’s rabbis also announced that they will continue to hold to the traditional matrilineal definition of Jewish identity, in which a child is considered Jewish at birth if its mother is Jewish by birth or choice. Patrilineal adults and children will continue to immerse in a mikve as part of a conversion ceremony at the synagogue.
B’nai Jeshurun, known as “B.J.,” is a large and trend-setting congregation on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that has led a renaissance of sorts among tradition-minded, egalitarian worshipers living in that heavily Jewish section. Although the synagogue has roots in the Conservative movement, it is unaffiliated with any denomination and has set its own course between the liberalism of Reform and the stricter traditionalism of Conservativism.
For example, the Reform movement has embraced patrilineal descent, while Conservative rabbis affiliated with their movement may not officiate at intermarriages.
Meanwhile, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a liberal Orthodox rabbinical seminary in New York City’s Bronx borough, released a statement stressing its opposition to intermarriage following an essay by one of its graduates advocating welcoming intermarried couples.
The statement, issued on Friday, reiterates the school’s blanket ban on its rabbis performing intermarriages but supports conversion for “sincere” candidates. It also notes the need to find a way to welcome intermarried couples while still “doing everything we can to prevent” intermarriage.
“Besides intermarriage being strictly prohibited halachicly, it poses grave danger to Jewish continuity,” the statement said. “Needless to say, we strictly forbid any of our rabbis to perform intermarriages. We do, however, advocate working very hard to convert anyone who sincerely wants to join the Jewish people.”
The statement comes following an op-ed by Chovevei Torah graduate Rabbi Avram Mlotek in the New York Jewish Week, published on Tuesday, which advocates Orthodox and Conservative communities adopting a welcoming attitude toward intermarried couples, similar to the Reform movement’s stance.
Mlotek, who serves as a mentor to groups of intermarried couples in New York City, also called for liberalizing traditional Judaism’s “highly divisive conversion practices.”
“While the Reform movement has the most welcoming posture toward families with non-Jewish partners, the Conservative and Modern Orthodox worlds would be well served if they adopted a similar approach,” Mlotek wrote. “If our traditional communities do not learn how to adapt to modernity and cater religiously to different people’s needs, Judaism risks nearing its extinction date.”
The B.J. decision comes amid a renewal of the debate over the growing numbers of interfaith marriages involving US Jews. Last week, the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute published a study saying that barely 40% of US Jews are marrying Jewish spouses and that among non-Orthodox Jewish-American adults, only 32% were raising their children Jewish in one way or another. Only about 8% of grandchildren of intermarried couples are being raised as “Jews by religion.”
In an essay in the Forward, one of the study’s authors, Steven M. Cohen of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute for Religion, noted the dilemmas facing rabbis, especially in the Conservative movement, who are torn between upholding Jewish “norms” and encouraging interfaith couples to engage in Jewish life.
This month, the leader of another influential New York congregation, Lab/Shul, also announced that he will officiate at weddings between Jews and non-Jews following a learning series ahead of and after the wedding ritual. Although ordained in the Conservative movement, Rabbi Amichai Lau Laurie said he expects to resign from its Rabbinical Assembly in favor of a policy that “may enable more rabbis to welcome more people into our community with open arms.”