Revisiting a question that has long plagued rabbis and congregants alike, the Reform movement will decide this weekend whether to rescind its official opposition to rabbis officiating at interfaith marriages.
Delegates to the Union of American Hebrew Congregations’ national board meeting in Los Angeles will vote on a resolution that, among other things, would revoke a portion of a 1973 resolution drafted by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Reform movement’s rabbinic body.
That document declares its opposition to Reform rabbis’ participation in “any ceremony which solemnizes a mixed marriage.”
How much clout the lay leadership’s rejection of that stance would carry is unclear.
“It’s like saying a state senate can make a determination the president needs to abide by,” said Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann, former leader of Temple Israel in Alameda and interim director of the UAHC’s Northern California council. “I think most people feel like the lay organization can’t tell the rabbinic organization what to do.”
The author of the new resolution insists, however, that rejection of the 1973 passage is more than symbolic.
“I think that a lot of rabbis’ decisions against officiating are made because of the CCAR resolution,” said David W. Belin, former chair of the UAHC’s Strategic Planning Task Force on Jewish Continuity and Growth.
Despite the CCAR’s 1973 resolution, the Reform movement has long asserted that rabbis must ultimately rely on their own judgment when deciding whether or not to officiate at interfaith weddings. Some Reform rabbis, in fact, do agree to officiate at mixed weddings, sometimes on the condition that the couple agree to raise their children as Jews.
Belin, an attorney from Des Moines, says the resolution he authored reflects the attitude of a majority of Reform Jews.
He cites research by the Jewish Outreach Institute undertaken in 1991-92 that shows 75 percent of Reform Jews (and nearly 60 percent of Conservative Jews) want rabbis to officiate at intermarriages in which there is a commitment to create a Jewish household.
It is estimated that between 35 percent and 45 percent of Reform rabbis currently conduct such marriages.
“Religion is for people, the rank and file,” Belin said. “What people do not like is the rabbinic organization saying that rabbis should not [officiate]. We’re trying to move that to a neutral position.”
The resolution would do that by restating, in official terms, the principle of self-determination.
“It is really urging that each rabbi has the right to determine in his or her conscience whether or not to officiate,” explained Dennis Bates, president of UAHC’s Northern California council.
The resolution stems from demographic realities, say those familiar with it. The 1990 Jewish Population Survey states that over the past 30 years the intermarriage rate has continued to rise. In marriages that have taken place in the last decade, 62 percent of those who identify themselves as Reform Jews have married non-Jews.
The statement to be considered this weekend — titled “Resolution on Rabbinic Officiation at Intermarriages Where There is a Commitment to Identify as a Jewish Household and Raise Any Children as Jews” — urges CCAR’s approximately 1,700 members to do “everything possible” to encourage members to make that commitment.
It also urges CCAR members to be sensitive to the concerns of non-Jews marrying Jews who pledge to create a Jewish home but “often feel rejected and upset when rabbis assert that Jewish tradition does not permit them to officiate.”
Said Belin: “Put yourself in the position of the non-Jew. They cannot understand if they’ve gone 90 percent of the way, why the rabbi can’t bend to officiate.”
George Markley understands why.
As part of a series of articles on the officiation debate in Reform Judaism magazine’s Fall 1996 issue, the former vice chair of the Commission on Reform Jewish Outreach expressed his opposition to rabbis officiating in interfaith marriages.
“When rabbis officiate, irrespective of what conditions they impose,” he wrote, “the message is that we have given up on ever stemming the intermarriage tide and our only hope is to engage in damage control, perform the ceremony and hope that the couple will establish a Jewish home and return to the synagogue someday.”
Not surprisingly, opposition to the resolution is expected. Neither Belin nor Bates of the regional UAHC could predict the votes’ outcome. Should the resolution pass, a larger UAHC body may need to vote on it again at the organization’s biennial convention in Oct. 1997.
Bates, it seems, is still struggling with his own vote.
“When I listen to the arguments, I feel like Tevye — I agree with you. I also agree with you,” he says. “I understand there are halachic reasons why we do what we do, and then on the other side, why it would be important to provide an opportunity to have a Jewish marriage.”