The Conservative Movement Does "Teshuva" And Welcomes Gentiles Into The Movement

שורש פורה ראש ולענה. If there is a rotten root - everything that grows from it will be poison. It started off quite bad and has just gotten progressively worse and worse over the years. It just follows Reform. Encouraging intermarriage is really a poor strategy to "conserve" Judaism.    

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The Conservative movement is formally apologizing for decades of discouraging intermarriage and committing itself to a new approach centered on engagement.

The shift marks a significant change in tone for a movement that long treated intermarriage as a threat to Jewish continuity, even as its longstanding ban on clergy officiating at such weddings remains in place.

Leaders of the movement announced the shift in a report released Thursday by a working group representing the denomination’s three main arms: the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the Rabbinical Assembly and the Cantors Assembly.

“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,” the leaders wrote in a statement accompanying the report. “But today — as we connect with countless families who want to learn, participate, and belong — we are committed to welcoming people as they are.”

In the report, the movement also accepted responsibility for the consequences of that approach.

“We acknowledge that our movement’s historical stance has resulted in hurt, alienation, and disconnection from our community. We deeply apologize,” the report said.

The report does not itself change binding policy. Instead, it asks the movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, or CJLS, to revisit how its rules are interpreted, while recommending new educational, pastoral and ritual approaches aimed at intermarried families.

“The idea that we could discourage people from intermarrying through disapproval — all that did was push people away who really should have been part of our communities,” Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, the CEO of both the Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said in an interview.

The Conservative movement’s formal ban on officiating at interfaith weddings dates to a 1973 “standard of practice” adopted by the Rabbinical Assembly, which also barred clergy from speaking during such ceremonies. While the rule remains in effect, the report argues that it effectively froze conversation for decades even as intermarriage became widespread across American Jewish life.

“What we stated in 1973 obviously did not deter intermarriage. So moving forward, how do we really embrace these individuals” who are part of intermarried families? asked Shirley Davidoff, a member of the working group and vice president of USCJ’s board.

The ban has long been framed by the movement as a matter of Jewish law, or halacha, which traditionally understands marriage as a covenant between two Jews. While the Conservative movement has historically embraced the idea that halacha evolves over time, leaders have argued that officiating at interfaith weddings raises complex legal and ritual questions that go beyond concerns about continuity.

The report contends, however, that halacha itself contains “expansive, creative” resources for welcoming interfaith families.

“We believe that our halakhic process already contains the necessary ingredients to address the needs of our constituents,” the report said.

The report is the culmination of a nearly two-year process that included responses to a questionnaire from 1,200 people, listening sessions, focus groups and commissioned papers from scholars and rabbis. The 17-member working group included clergy and lay leaders from North America and Israel and operated by consensus rather than formal votes.

The new report builds on a 2024 clergy-led review that maintained the officiation ban but called for greater engagement with interfaith families, expanding that work into a movement-wide process that included lay leaders and focused on repairing trust and widening pathways into Jewish life.

In its section on marriage rituals, the report explicitly notes that there was not unanimity among members, a signal of persistent internal disagreement, particularly over whether and how Conservative clergy should participate in weddings between Jews and non-Jews.

The working group stops short of recommending an immediate end to the officiation ban. Instead, it asks the CJLS to clarify ambiguous terms such as “officiation” and “wedding,” and to consider whether rabbis might offer blessings or other forms of participation before or after a wedding ceremony.

The report arrives amid a broader rethinking of intermarriage in some corners of American Judaism. Reform and Reconstructionist movements have long permitted officiation, and individual Conservative congregations have increasingly tested the boundaries — including a high-profile case last year in Minnesota, where a Conservative synagogue announced it would allow clergy participation short of officiation. In a separate case, a rabbi left the movement rather than face possible expulsion following a complaint to his rabbinical association over his officiation at interfaith weddings.

Blumenthal declined to comment on any internal disciplinary reviews, emphasizing that the report is about setting direction, not enforcing compliance.

“What we hope,” he said, “is that rabbis and congregations will think more deeply about what it means to truly engage people who want to build Jewish lives.”

Rabbi Dan Horwitz of Congregation Beth Yeshurun in Houston is among those opposing a more permissive policy, warning that attitudes in the United States are generally less traditional than elsewhere in the movement.

“Given what I know about the Rabbinical Assembly as a whole, a change in policy would rupture the assembly — particularly among older members and those living in Israel or Latin America,” said Horwitz, who was not involved in the working group and did not have a chance to review its report prior to publication.

But Keren McGinity, who served as director of intermarriage engagement and inclusion at USCJ until her position was eliminated earlier this year, said fears of mass defection have long been overstated.

“I have heard the concern about the fracturing of the movement for years,” McGinity said. “It’s not that no one would leave, but generally speaking, when people make that threat, it’s often hyperbolic.”

While acknowledging deep divisions within the movement, McGinity said she was not convinced that lifting restrictions would fracture Conservative Judaism. Avoiding change, she added, also carries risks, pointing to the 2020 Pew study showing that fewer than half of Jews raised Conservative still identify with the movement. “That,” she said, “is hugely concerning.”

Despite inevitable disagreements over policy and pace, members of the working group said they hope the report itself will be seen as a sign of institutional seriousness and as a unifying moment for the movement.

“I hope people will feel proud that we’re having this conversation,” Davidoff said. “That we’re willing to pull back layers, listen carefully, and include people that want to build a Jewish home.”

Torah is Not a Mirror for Our Politics

I recently listened to an interview with a prominent "Modern Orthodox" rabbi in Israel—an individual bolstered by a massive platform and significant funding from those who share his distorted worldview. It was truly uncanny; nearly everything he uttered was the direct antithesis of authentic Torah values. He performed a sort of theological malpractice, superimposing progressive, postmodern ideologies onto the Divine. Rachmana Litzlan.

The Yam Shel Shlomo (Bava Kamma, 4:9) famously rules that to misrepresent the Torah—to lie about its fundamental truths—is a transgression of Ye'hareg v’al ya’avor. This is precisely what we are witnessing.

Among the "lowlights": he claimed that according to the Torah, a "faithful Christian" or a "faithful Muslim" earns a portion in Olam HaBa. Where is the source for such a claim? It simply does not exist. It is a sugary, universalist fantasy that suggests, "Don't worry, keep your holidays and your foreign prophets, and you are good to go." This flies in the face of the Rambam, who clarifies that while the "Righteous among the Nations" have a share in the World to Come, this refers specifically to those who accept the Seven Laws of Noah because G-d commanded them, not those who adhere to competing religious systems (Hilchos Melachim 8:11).

Another egregious moment: he condemned a soldier for smashing a statue of "Yoshke," claiming the act was "anti-Torah." On the contrary, the Torah explicitly commands us: "You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations... served their gods... and break down their pillars" (Devarim 12:2-3). While we may refrain from such actions today to avoid legal repercussions or Eivah (animosity), to claim that the destruction of Avoda Zara is "against the Torah" is a total inversion of a Mitzvah d’Oraita.

Ariella Chava bas Chana Miriam

 A young mother of many. Please daven!

A Dangerous Convergence: The SPLC, the ADL and the Reform Movement

 The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was known by many as a charitable organization devoted to fighting hate groups, particularly those on the Far Right such as white supremacists and neo-Nazis. It was recently indicted for helping bankroll such groups. It allegedly did so as a fund-raising ploy, underwriting extremist activities which it then could cite in its mass mailings as shocking evidence of the organization’s need for more funding to counter those very activities.

If true, the damage done by the SPLC goes far beyond those covered in the indictment. The SPLC has always been virtually silent on the scourge of extremism coming from sources other than the Far Right - from, for example, the Red-Green alliance: the Far Left and Islamists. The SPLC’s systematically overstating the threats emanating from the Far Right has almost certainly served to further avert the public’s gaze from hate-filled assault on the nation emanating from other sources.

Sadly, other organizations supposedly committed to fighting hatred - while not funding Far Right hate groups to amplify their perceived importance, as the SPLC is accused of doing - have likewise focused on pernicious Far Right groups and downplayed other entities sowing hatred in America.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which exists to fight ethnic, religious and racial hatred, particularly antisemitism, is a case in point. Three days after the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, the ADL released a report entitled “White Supremacist Leaders Applaud Hamas Violence Against Israelis,” documenting the celebratory spewings in online posts by several neo-Nazi and white supremacist leaders and groups. It offered no comparable reports on Islamists and leftists who, at the same time and in much greater numbers, were celebrating Hamas and vilifying Israel and Jews.

In subsequent months, the ADL’s online “Hate Symbols Database” offered 214 examples of symbols and the hate groups using them, all neo-Nazi, white racist and related groups. There were zero examples of antisemitic Islamist groups and their symbols then proliferating on campuses. As one observer noted in a televised report: “When the protests broke out at Columbia University and spread to campuses across the country, it was only natural for terrorist organizations to express their support. The flags, logos, signs, posters, patches, headbands and other paraphernalia of Hamas, Hezbollah and the [Popular] Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), are visible and have often gone viral on social media.” Likewise on prominent display on campuses but omitted from the ADL inventory of hate symbols were those exhibited by Far Left groups, such as stars of David crossed out or equated to swastikas.

Only belatedly, and when the displays of antisemitism from non-Far Right sources became too blatant and widespread for the ADL to continue ignoring, did it begin addressing seriously those sources.

Elements of Reform Judaism, including among its leadership, have been explicit in declaring their reluctance to call out Jew-hatred other than that of the Far Right. They have done so, for instance, in the context of the Reform Movement’s announcing several years ago its opposition to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism being codified in law. (As of November 1, 2024, forty-five nations had adopted the definition, including the United States, as well as thirty-seven state governments and ninety-six American county and city governments.) The Reform announcement particularly objected to elements of the IHRA definition related to Israel. Among the examples of attacks on Israel that the IHRA deems antisemitic are: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” and “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

Why would the Reform Movement oppose such attacks on Israel being labeled antisemitic? The Movement, in stating its opposition, refers to concerns about “potentially problematic punitive action to circumscribed speech, efforts which have been particularly aimed at college students and human rights activists.” In essence, it refuses to recognize as hateful a type of speech that typically comes from non-Far Right haters like “college students and human rights activists.” It further states that the IHRA definition’s Israel examples “must not divert attention from the more frequent manifestations of antisemitism, too often violent, emanating from new streams in the hate movements... streams primarily associated with the Far Right.”

While antisemitism from the Far Right has been growing, is dangerous and certainly shouldn’t be downplayed, it is simply untrue to assert Far Right Jew-hatred is responsible for “the more frequent manifestations of antisemitism.” This was an obviously absurd claim to any unbiased observer before October 7, 2023, and is even more obviously so today. Far Left antisemitism has penetrated much more into the American mainstream, achieving a deep and widespread presence in higher education as well as K-12 classrooms, in the media, among cultural elites, in unions, and even in the halls of Congress. Far Right Jew-hatred, however poisonous and dangerous and however much it may be gaining ground, remains comparatively marginalized. Yet those Reform leaders that embraced the critique of the IHRA definition, like the leaders of the ADL, have sought all too often to divert their constituents’ gaze from the hate emanating from sources other than the Far Right. In doing so, they, hardly less than the SPLC, have deceived and betrayed those they claim to be protecting.

The consequences of that betrayal cannot be overstated. One factor that has virtually always served to advance the spread of antisemitism has been that it is typically cost-free for its promoters. With American Jews lulled by major legacy communal institutions into complacency and inaction about the major contemporary drivers of antisemitism - an antisemitism that has become, perhaps most notably, a key shaper of today’s Democratic Party policies - the result is a dearth of pushback and an easing of the path for purveyors of that hatred. The scope of the resulting dangers should be obvious to all Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike.

Why We Need to Take Love Seriously

We live in a time of contradiction. We have the technology to allow for extraordinary connection, yet people feel incredibly alone and isolated. We could have almost anything at our fingertips, yet we find ourselves frustrated or bored. We are living in the information age, yet our world is marked by mistrust and apathy. We use the word “love” all the time, yet the way we use it increasingly blurs what it actually means.

Part of the problem in how we use the word “love” is due to semantic inflation and a broader shift in our culture towards hyperbolic language, whereby stronger and stronger expressions are used to convey the same feeling because our everyday language has lost precision and weight.

For example, when asked how something was, “good” is no longer enough. We say it was “amazing!” At the end of every interview, people no longer say “thank you,” they say, “thank you so much!” Similarly, instead of just liking something, we say we “love” it. Today, if we don’t use the most intense form of description, we risk coming across as giving a slight critique.

However, when we use stronger and stronger expressions to convey the same sentiment, we flatten distinctions between thoughts, emotions, and experiences. If everything is “amazing,” it becomes harder to distinguish what is truly exceptional. If every idea is “genius,” it’s hard to know what to really consider. If we “love” everything—from people to products to passing experiences—loving slides into “liking a lot,” and the language we rely on to express deep commitment begins to lose its hold on us.

People may very well realize the conceptual difference between loving a turkey sandwich and loving their children, but the concept creep of “love” into “like” does have practical ramifications. To see why, it helps to step back for a moment and look at what happens when language shifts in other areas.

Philosopher Eve Kitsik argues that when harm-oriented categories broaden to include a wider range of phenomena, it is not necessarily true that people will lose the ability to understand the differences between subgroups of the now-expanded category. We can still tell the difference between, say, physical and psychological harm. Yet, the expanded category instructs people on how to direct their attention to the issue. She writes, “How we use terms like "sexual harassment" or "human rights" influences what problems we select for acting on (addressing), first as individuals, and thereby as communities."

Said differently, the words we use don’t describe reality—they guide what we notice and how we respond. Broadening a category will lead people to see a wider range of issues —even when they vary in degree—as worthy of attention and response. Limiting a category will lead people to give priority only to those more extreme cases.

The crucial point here is not about harm. It is the more general point that language use affects perception and action. This is where using “love” so broadly comes back into focus. When love comes to include our sandwiches and strangers’ outfits, we give and prioritize attention and action to a wider category of things, even when we still know the differences between them.

However, here the analogy between harm and love breaks in an important way that shows what is really at stake when we misuse the word, “love.” The difference between “love” and “like” isn’t a matter of degree in the way harm is. It’s a difference in kind. When you like something, you want to engage in that thing, be around it, keep talking about it, and so on. When you love someone or something, it’s not simply that you just want more or feel more. You invest yourself in the subject or object of your love, and this investment unfolds through how you speak, act, and show up over time, shaping your identity.

Love is other-directed. It involves attention, commitment, and a willingness to give (and sometimes sacrifice) for something or someone beyond any immediate gratification. Love asks something of us. Yet, when we say, “I love this” to mean “I like this a lot,” the focus changes from the relationship to one’s personal satisfaction. We go from commitment to consumption. In this way, semantic inflation may actually reinforce a change in how we love.

In a recent (albeit small) study, investigators discovered that “increases in expressing love led to increased feelings of being loved over time; however, increases in felt love did not lead to increases in expressing love." While there may be several ways to interpret why this is the case, one thing is for sure: For love, the more you give, the more you get, but not the other way around. Of course, this may not be true in every case. People do find themselves in one-sided or bad relationships, whether platonic or romantic, but let’s not assume bad relationships are the rule and good ones the exception.

When using “love” in an exaggerated way becomes our default for speaking, it subtly trains us to approach the world—including other people—in terms of what they provide for us. We become more selfish.

We also become lonelier, despite how many people and things we love in our lives. Loneliness is not simply the absence of people. It is often the absence of meaningful relationships—of being seen, understood, and valued. When loving relationships are framed by what people do for us, each person sees the relationship as lacking rather than imagining what they could be doing to strengthen it.

Reclaiming a richer understanding of love doesn’t require policing our language, but it does require us to recognize the difference between liking something because we enjoy it and loving something in a way that shapes how we live.

psych. today

 

Bi-koach And Bi-foal/ Shira/ Nefesh And Ruach/ Seichel

 HERE!!