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| Image from JTA for illustration purposes |
The question they are currently dealing with is what to do about intermarriage:
The Rabbinical Assembly report issued this week recommends that the prohibition around officiation at interfaith weddings be maintained at this time.
‘…at this time.’ This is somewhat predictive about what their future holds. ‘It indicates that the prohibition could change in the future –subject to conditions at the time. This is I essence the major failing of the Conservative movement. Although it was founded to ‘conserve’ Judaism as bulwark against the inroads of the non Halachic Reform movement, they have succeeded in doing the opposite.
It is rather old news by now that over 70% of non Orthodox Jews are intermarried. That statistic is still shocking. And the Conservative movement has contributed to that statistic by their lack of instilling the value of Torah observance into their members.
I recall one of the movements brightest lights, Professor Jack Wertheimer making this very observation. Their pulpit rabbis tend to tolerate non observance in their membership and do precious little to try and change that. The results being their members have little that distinguishes them as Jews. Which highly contributes to the high intermarriage rate. If you don’t know that the Torah prohibits it, is any wonder why so many Jews do it? …without the slightest bit of guilt? …often with their parents approval?
Even if intermarried Jews are committed to their Jewish identity, that identity includes little if anything of Jewish substance. It is mostly a cultural identity that includes non essentials, like eating Gefilte fish and chicken soup. Or buying deli food items at Katz’s Deli – a Treif restaurant.
Even rituals that have a religious basis - like Bar and Bat Mitzvahs have little actual religious content. They are mostly coming of age parties for 12 and 13 year olds who are entering puberty. What takes place at these parties hardly comports with Halacha. There are even some non Jews have ‘Bar and Bat Mitzvah’ parties for their own kids.
As indicated by Professor Wertheimer the overriding problem with the Conservative movement is that their members have not been educated as Jews. Not in the home, not in school, and not in Shul. That they now Jewish schools (the Solomon Schechter Schools) that do teach – at least the latest version of Conservative Halacha is too little too late. And in any case, the vast majority of Conservative Jews do not send their children in those schools.
Instead of taking to heart Professor Wertheimer’s criticism, they are going the opposite way and once again - looking to see which way the wind is blowing and following suit.
That is what Conservative Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal (CEO of the Rabbinical Assembly and the CEO of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism) seems to be suggesting with respect to interfaith marriages:
Our culture of welcoming and engagement can start with how we announce all of our weddings and lifecycle events; how we offer blessings as a community in the days before and after a wedding; the pastoral conversations we have with all couples about creating a Jewish home; and how we include everyone in our communities during lifecycle events, in worship, in Torah study and in acts of kindness and justice.
This is nothing less than a concession to defeat. The idea of welcoming intermarried couples almost as though intermarriage is a Mitzvah will move them even further away from their claims of being a Halachic movement. Although in reality they lost that distinction years ago, they are now doubling down on that in the name of preserving Judaism.
I understand that in many cases, their intermarried couples are more ‘Jewish’ than are their Jewish couples. Often it is the non Jewish partner that is the more assertive about that.
I am not saying that we should completely shun intermarried couples. Chabad actually embraces them in an effort to get the Jewish partner to be as observant as possible. As they famously did with Kirk Douglas. But what Rabbi Blumenthal suggests a virtual abandonment of the prohibition against intermarriage. That is the opposite of what Chabad does. It is thus only a matter of time where Conservative rabbis will be fully permitted to perform intermarriages.
This is not how you conserve Judaism. This is how you contribute to its demise. The offspring of about half of them will not even be Jewish in name. They will be full-fledged gentiles.
Rabbi Blumenthal and his fellow conservative rabbis either don’t realize or are ignoring the history of their own demise. They don’t realize their movement’s own contributions to that both in the past, present and the future. They are on what seems like an irreversible trajectory toward the demise of American Jewry. A tragedy of epic proportion.
