Conservative schools and Jewish fathers

As I'm traveling this week, the only new item I can offer at this time is the one published in Slate yesterday (written more than a week ago, but still relevant) and dealing with "The next Jewish challenge":

Not even a month has passed since the Jewish Conservative movement decided that it is now permissible for its rabbinical schools to admit openly gay people - and a new initiative, no less momentous, is already in the making. The 76 Schechter day schools in the United States and Canada, which admit only children who are Jewish according to Jewish law - born to a mother who is Jewish or has converted to Judaism - will now be more "flexible": They will soon begin to admit students with Jewish fathers.

For Conservative Jews, with the gay controversy over, the new issue might be the widespread phenomenon of mixed marriage. Hence the issue of accepting the sons and daughters of Jewish fathers (as opposed to Jewish mothers) to Schechter schools - a small step, signifying more to come. The Reform movement decided in 1983 to get rid of the matrilineal orthodoxy and emphasize the Jewish upbringing as the definitive element of Jewishness.

The Reform movement's decision was based on the rising number of intermarriages: They didn't want to lose all those youngsters. The Conservative Jews, though, still adhere to the old tradition. But as they look for ways to boost declining membership, they will have no choice but to turn to the growing population of Jews who marry someone of a different faith.

Conservative Jews haven't yet reached the point of hard decisions. For now, they are just making it easier for children of intermarriages to join, on the condition that they convert to Judaism before their bar mitzvah. But one should not envision this decision as an isolated case of better marketing. Whether the rabbis and leaders are ready to accept it or not, they are entering the treacherous fields of Jewish identity in the age of intermarriage.

And Conservatives, following the sister Reform movement, will probably get to the point of more acceptance. They need members, and the members marry, and the marriage isn't always to someone whom the rabbis recommend. This trend, though, has its strange ways and conflicting results. The Orthodox are following the Conservative, who are following the Reform - but the Reform are now trying to turn the train back. Mixed marriage, they realized, has become a custom too powerful and destructive to ignore.

And leaders of the Reform movement understand this. A year ago, in the biennial convention of the Reform movement, the head of the movement, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, delicately reminded his crowd that there's a time to permit, but also a time to forbid: "By making non-Jews feel comfortable and accepted in our congregations, we have sent the message that we do not care if they convert. But that is not our message," he preached, urging a more aggressive approach to conversion. "The time has come to reverse direction by returning to public conversions and doing all the other things that encourage conversion in our synagogues."

You can read the full article by clicking here.

More about this issue on Rosner's Domain:

The in-married Jewish people, the intermarried Jewish people

Are intermarried couples hopeless?