U.S. Reform rabbis suggest welcoming interfaith couples

[UndertheOcean]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1155137.html

Snip ==>

A Reform Jewish task force on intermarriage said Monday that the movement should do more to encourage mixed-faith couples to be active in Jewish life, including creating special blessings for major life events such as weddings and funerals.

The panel proposed no changes in the movement's policy on officiating at interfaith weddings. Reform Judaism formally opposes the practice but allows each rabbi to decide.

Instead, the panel proposed other steps, including educating rabbis on how they can engage intermarried families, and creating blessings for ceremonies that involve a non-Jewish spouse.
Leaders of the task force said their two-year study represents a shift away from trying to prevent intermarriage and toward encouraging mixed-faith couples to create Jewish homes.

The intermarriage rate for U.S. Jews has been above 40 percent since at least the 1990s. Slowing the trend has become one of the biggest concerns of the Jewish community.

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the comments section are really scary , almost as scary as the comments I read at Aljazeera.net

take this beauty for example :

"Hitler did not need to gas 6,000,000 he should have simply introduced reform into Jewish life. Interfaith dialogue is one thing encouraging is just suicide. Reform Rabbi`s should encourage conversion of the non Jewish spouse not encourage assimilation. I just despair when I hear" we will allow our children to decide" Like children get a vote?

We are doomed."



(TO THE MODS : I debated myself whether to post this in i/p or not , but the article does not mention Israel nor Palestine )

[villager]

1. I'm the product of an intermarriage, and I teach at a Jewish Sunday school

...where lots of my students are from intermarriages (or are adopted, and from different backgrounds).

Fundies hate tolerance, ecumenism, etc., because it subverts their lie that they have the Exclusive Attention of God.

Once that is undercut, all the other facades start to (deservedly) crumble away...

[UndertheOcean]

2. +100000

[Lance_Boyle]

3. Seems rather intolerant of 'intermarriage' to hold the position 'be more Jewish'

Reform Judaism is just not reformed enough. Tons less baggage than the conservatives and the various orthodox weirdos, but still entirely too insular. Where is Judaism's equivalent to the Unitarians?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. I tried to convert to reform twice and was rebuffed twice.

Forget that.

To hell with Abrahamic religions.

[PCIntern]

5. Please elaborate...

I'm most interested as a Reform Jew by upbringing and birth, Conservative by marriage...we joke that we have a mixed marriage...she's Conservative and I was/am Reform.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

8. first marriage. Thirty years ago.

Got married to an immature kid in college. His parents were reform and yelled at me and told me to convert. I said I could convert and I was fine in it because I was not a christian anyway. They had a real chip on their shoulders; they assumed that I was a Christian and therefore, I was the enemy. I tried to tell them I had a lot of respect for the Jews, but they refused to listen to me.
We were both going to a Presbyterian college and I was raised Presbyterian but not baptised.

I thought they were pretty obnoxious and self righteous since his mom did not keep a kosher kitchen or go to a mikva for a ritual bath. Thd kid turned out to be a real loser and not worth the powder it would take to blow him to hell. He screwed seven of my girlfriends and could not understand why I was mad at him. We were only married and living together for about nine months.

When we were living together we went to temple on Friday night and the Unitarian chuch on Sunday morning.

His big brother died last year and I saw him again at the memorial service. Turns out he is now a liberal Methodist and getting a M. Div. in Austin, so he can be an officially ordained minister. He cleaned up his act. After I talked to him for a while after the memorial service, I had a wonderful feeling. It felt like two invisible hands pulled my ribs open and my heart chakra released a lot of pain after that. Even though we did not discuss our marriage at all at that time. It was extraordinary.

He has apologized to me for his acts that hurt me so much. I told him I didn't think in terms of forgiveness, just that I would like to forget it and that it was a long time ago. I told him that I thought it was his responsibility to realize he had done wrong and had hurt me, and that he had changed his mental state. I thought that was more important than my forgiving him.

Second time: In the 90s I was going with my present husband and we are both secular humanists. We met at a Unitarian Universalist church. My daughter went to a friend's bar mitzvah and we got interested in Judaism.

We went to a classical reform temple: No prayer shawls, no beanies, most of the readings in English. I did not know about Classical Reform before that. The rabbi wanted us to convert. The rich doctors on the board did NOT want us as members, because we were both highly educated but unemployed. (We are still unemployed but now we call it retirement)

We had volunteered to do 40 hours of work, gardening, or I could do secretarial work for the rabbi, in lieu of paying dues. My husband has a BS and MS in math/physics. I have a 2 year court reporting degree (I worked as a court reporter for many years), BA in pre-med, and a Juris Doctor and I can type 110 words per minute on a computer.

The board did nto want us to join because we were unemployed. The other ereason they did not want us was that "we've never had a COUPLE that wanted to convert and join before". Neither of us was dragging the other into it, and they just couldn't wrap their minds around it. Apparently the board was able to overrule the rabbi. I did not feel like I would be welcomed if I converted but the rich doctors resented me for not being able to pay dues.

We are still both secular humanists, some years later. We are far away in the country and there is no Unitarian fellowship within driving distance, and I am reading more intensely in Buddhism.

I started reading Buddhism in the 70s, when all the Buddhist writings out there were pretty much Alan Watts and Zen, and nothing else. I don't know if it's true or the right thing but I am completely sick of Abrahamic religions. Where I live everybody is into all Jeebus all the time, they invite you to their church and just can't understand when you say "Not interested". They have no conception of what a Unitarian is and they can't comprehend it anyway.


We had also attended a couple of large wealthy churches in Houston and could not get them to pay us for our efforts to help them in spreading their message, or to set up a charity with the proceeds of an educational project my DH and I had put together. They would not help us find jobs when we were quite desperate. We gave up on Christianity too.

So now we have decided that nothing helped us when we were xtians and prayed and believed, and if god's people are supposed to help us on earth, I guess god wanted us to just starve to death. The preachers were quite well off and one of them is a buddy of President Bush. I decided the whole thing was a delusion people put themselves into, and nothing got better, things just got worse. I also got sick of that original sin message. Every time I went to church I got suicidally depressed and wanted to crawl in a hole and die, because I was not going to feel bad just because i was human. It was either keep suffering suicidal ideation and major depression, or get the hell out of Christianity.


I got the hell out for my mental and physical health.

[old mark]

6. My father in law asked me if I would be willing to become Jewish

when I married his daughter. I told him I didn't believe in the religion I had been born and raised in, and that I wouldn't mind becoming a Jew, but I wouldn't believe in that, either.

He said,"Oh well.....You ARE circumcised, though? If not we could have it done right here in the den....."

A little Jewish lawyer humor.....


mark

[UndertheOcean]

7. lol ! n/t