update: Regarding Eddie's recent comment that proselytising should be viewed as kiruv - this article presents a related viewed that intermarriage should be viewed a kiruv. Accepting intermarriage is viewed
as holding on to Jews who would normally either leave the community or
be driven away. I also means holding on to the 25% of their children who
identify as Jews. Holding on to Jews who would otherwise be lost is called kiruv!
update Head of Reform movement - intermarriage and kiruv
update Head of Reform movement - intermarriage and kiruv
Forward [...] Reform rabbis in particular receive no clear guidance on this issue
from their denominational leaders. The decision of whether to officiate
interfaith marriages is left to the clergy themselves and to their
understanding of Jewish theology, of the right path for American Judaism
and primarily of the needs of their own community. For some, like
Zemel, coming out in support of marriage of Jewish and non-Jewish
couples took the form of a letter to the community. Others took to the
pulpit during prime-time High Holy Days sermons to explain their move.
“After long and deliberate consideration, I have reached this
decision: Going forward, when a Jew and a non-Jew in our community here
at Temple Israel come to me and state that both partners are willing to
commit to a Jewish future, Jewish education for their children and the
creation of a Jewish home, I will officiate happily at their chuppah,”
Rabbi John Rosove stated in his 2012 Rosh Hashanah sermon at Los
Angeles’s Temple Israel of Hollywood.
The stakes for Ponet were probably higher than for others. His
decision in July 2010 to perform the wedding of Chelsea Clinton and Marc
Mezvinsky made him the rabbinic public face of interfaith marriages. “I
outed myself,” he said, “and I knew it would impact the dialogue.”
Reaction to the high-profile celebrity interfaith
wedding was mixed. Many expressed their support, while others saw it as a
“terrible betrayal,” he recounted. Looking back, Ponet believes that
performing the wedding was the right move, and that sticking to old
beliefs about intermarriage contradicts the rabbinical mission of
attending to the Jewish needs of Jewish people. “We were neglecting
Jewish individuals for the sake of some theory of demography,” he said.
The demographic predictions that Ponet and others refer to are based primarily on studies showing
that intermarriage is a key indicator for the loss of Jewish identity
in the second generation. The recent survey by the Pew Research Center
does find an increase in Jewish identity among individuals born to
interfaith families in recent years, thanks, presumably, to a greater
effort on behalf of the Jewish community to welcome intermarried
families. But the numbers still show a significant difference between
Jewish identification and behavior of in-married and out-married
families.
“I know the statistics that only 25% of children of intermarried
families will identify as Jewish, but I want to keep these 25% in our
community,” Rosove said.
The Reform movement, America’s largest Jewish denomination, has
become increasingly tolerant of rabbis officiating interfaith weddings.
Though the movement does not have a clear policy on the issue, it is estimated
that half of the 2,000 members of its rabbinic arm, the Central
Conference of American Rabbis, now perform marriages between Jews and
non-Jews.
But in Conservative Judaism, American Jewry’s other major liberal
religious stream, rabbis struggling with this issue face a more
complicated situation. The movement maintains an absolute prohibition
against rabbis conducting interfaith ceremonies — or even attending such
a ceremony. Violators of this ban are subject to being thrown out of
the Rabbinical Assembly, Conservative Judaism’s rabbinic organization. [...]