Seminary Admissions: Modern-day Discrimination

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GUEST POST BY SUSAN RIZZO

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a dentist.  Why?  My dad’s best friend was a pediatric dentist.  He had a cool office with ceiling-mounted television screens above each chair and video arcade consoles in his waiting room.  I figured there couldn’t be a better job!  Here I am in my 40s, having long ago chosen education over dentistry, and now ready for a career change (preferably one that doesn’t involve my putting my hands in another’s mouth).  Since being nominated to participate in the Wexner Heritage Program last year, I am very interested in helping shape the Jewish future.

Life-long Reform Jew that I am, I started with the website of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), the movement’s main seminary, to learn what it takes to become ordained.  I learned there about the “extraordinary five-year journey” which promised to “expand my intellectual curiosity, nurture my search for spiritual meaning, and fulfill my aspirations to implement tikkun olam, the healing of the world.”  Apart from some issues of practicality (distance, expense, etc.), I am ready to be signed up for what sounded like the adventure and career of a lifetime!

The (non-exhaustive) list of program requirements for HUC-JIR seminary programs includes:  Bachelor’s degree.  Check!  GPA of 3.0 or higher.  Check!  Year of college-level Modern Hebrew.  Check!  Readiness for graduate school.  Check!  (I’m going to assume completion of two prior master’s degrees constitutes readiness.)  Commitment to and leadership experience within Reform Judaism and K’lal Yisrael (Jewish peoplehood).  Check and check!  Ability to think analytically and express oneself clearly in speech and writing.  (I’ll let you be the judge.)

Wow, I could be a rabbi or cantor!  Except, no.  “Current policy states that applicants who are married to or in committed relationships with non-Jews will not be considered for acceptance to this program.”  That’s right, my most amazing partner of nearly 18 years, with whom I have raised a Jewish family for more than a dozen, is not himself Jewish.  Apparently, that’s enough to disqualify me from applying to an HUC-JIR rabbinic or cantorial program. Not only does this seem counter to the values espoused by Reform Judaism, but per their website, HUC-JIR “does not discriminate on the basis of disability, race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, genetic information, marital status, sex, age, sexual orientation, veteran status or gender identity and expression” (all emphases added).

I decided to invite HUC-JIR to help me see how precluding my candidacy based on the religion/ancestry of my spouse does not violate their own equal opportunity and non-discrimination policies.  Emails to Cantorial, Admissions and finally the Equal Opportunity Coordinator resulted in my having a phone conversation with the Associate Director of Recruitment and Admissions, who suggested that a policy change might be on the horizon.  That was late 2018.  As recently as last month, no change had yet been implemented, so I reached out again – this time to the new HUC-JIR president.  He thanked me for my feedback, conceded that others have expressed similar concerns, and assured me of the school’s on-going commitment to religious pluralism.  He also pointed out that rabbis and cantors serve as exemplars to the Jewish community and, therefore, have to be held to high personal standards.

I do hold myself to high standards, both personally and professionally.  Does my having intermarried somehow mean I can’t be a model for the Jewish community?  I reject that premise, both because it offends and because it really does not seem grounded in the present reality.  Has anyone noticed how many self-identified Reform Jews intermarry?  A LOT!  Do we not think congregants deserve to be led by a reflection of themselves?  The implication seems to be that my having intermarried means my having not chosen a Jewish life, but clearly that’s not true.  Not only was I chosen by my temple’s clergy to participate in the Wexner Heritage Program; I am presently matriculated in the Spertus Institute Master of Arts in Jewish Professional Studies program; I serve on four committees at my temple, including one I chair; I sing in various temple choirs and am right now co-constructing our temple’s first summer lay-led service; our two children are enrolled in our temple’s religious school and will become b’nai mitzvah next year.  Yet somehow none of that “counts” because having intermarried makes me an unfit model?

Shockingly, HUC-JIR isn’t the only non-Orthodox seminary that won’t admit intermarried candidates.  One self-ascribed “pluralistic” seminary I recently talked to “reassured” me that my husband “would likely convert, knowing how important it was to me.”  That’s not the point – he shouldn’t have to!  My husband’s religion (it happens he only practices Judaism, even though he never converted) has zero bearing on whether I’d make a good rabbi or cantor. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College seems to know this; they decided to admit and ordain intermarried candidates in 2015.  It’s time the Reform movement, which I’ve called home since birth, caught up!

At the end of the day, discriminating against intermarried Jews violates Reform Judaism’s proclaimed emphasis on liberalism and evolution.  A half-century after the rabbinate opened to women, it’s time it opened to all Jews, regardless of race, sexuality, gender identity, or marital status.  It’s time that the Jews in the pews see ourselves reflected more fully on the bimah and that we stop being intermarriage “shamed.”

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Susan Rizzo is a life-long member of Reform synagogues, including most recently Temple Sinai in Rochester, New York, where her family have been active members since 2012.  Her husband is not Jewish but participates extensively in temple life.  Their two sons have recently begun training for their 2021 joint b’nai mitzvah.

How Audacious Will Our Hospitality to Interfaith Families Be?

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published in eJewishPhilanthropy

I applauded in 2013 when Rabbi Rick Jacobs announced the Reform movement’s audacious hospitality initiative, and again in 2015 when my colleague April Baskin was appointed to lead it. But the recent release of the Audacious Hospitality Toolkit surfaces a deep question: just how audacious will our hospitality to interfaith families be?

The Toolkit is an excellent resource. I recommend it to every congregation, not just Reform. It offers guiding principles and concrete steps synagogues can take to self-evaluate, develop and implement efforts to welcome diverse populations. It builds on pioneering work by the Reform movement’s own Outreach Department, Big Tent Judaism, and InterfaithFamily.

But missing from the Toolkit is discussion or guidance about the difficult issues that I believe must be addressed for interfaith families to engage in Jewish life and community.

In 2000 I wrote an op-ed, Redefine Jewish Peoplehood, for Reform Judaism magazine, and a longer We Need a Religious Movement that is Totally Inclusive of Intermarried Jewish Families for InterfaithFamily. I said that we need to include – indeed, embrace – not only Jews but also their partners from different faith traditions, and their children, as “in,” as part of “us,” as included in the Jewish people more broadly defined as the Jewish community. Not as “out,” “other,” not allowed to participate and engage fully in Jewish life. Instead of focusing on identity, on whether a person “is” Jewish, I said we needed to focus on engagement, on whether a person wants to “do” Jewish.

It’s not surprising that in the seventeen years since there has been some but not enough change. This kind of fundamental shift is hard, and generates exactly the issues that I believe Jews and their communities need to address.

One issue is the preference Jews express for their children marrying other Jews. A friend who has a lesbian daughter in a long-term relationship told me last week that he hated it when well-intentioned people said to him, “it’s wonderful that your daughter has a partner – but wouldn’t you prefer that she were straight?” No, he wouldn’t, thank you.

The same kind of preferential thinking applies to interfaith couples, and I’ve been guilty of it myself; once when a friend wanted to introduce my son to a young woman, I said “is she Jewish”? right in front of my daughter’s husband who is not Jewish himself. (Fortunately, it gave me a chance to tell him I loved him just as he was.) Jewish leaders and their communities need to address the attitudes that Jews have about partners from different faith traditions, and that consider relationships with them to be “sub-optimal.”

Another issue is the attitude that partners from different faith traditions are welcome but with limitations, that their patrilineal children aren’t “really” Jewish or Jewish enough, or that conversion or some new special status like “ger toshav” is the answer to inclusion and recognition. Partners from different faith traditions want to be welcomed as they are, without ulterior motives that they convert, and they don’t want their children’s status questioned. Creating new categories of who is more “in” or “out” and which status confers more or less benefits, is not inclusive. Jewish leaders and their communities need to examine and explicitly address their policies – and assert the Jewishness of patrilineals in dialogue with other movements.

A third issue is ritual participation policies, like the parent from a different faith tradition not being allowed to pass the Torah or join in an aliyah at the bar or bat mitzvah of the child they have raised with Judaism. Those parents could say the Torah blessing with full integrity because their family is part of the “us” to whom the Torah was given. They want to feel united with their family and want their child to see them participate and be honored fully. Maintaining the boundary that only a Jew can have an aliyah excludes them. Jewish leaders and their communities need to examine and articulate their policies, and whether they will allow anyone who wants to participate fully to do so.

After the Cohen Center’s recent research showed strong association between officiation and interfaith couples raising their children as Jews and joining synagogues, it is no longer tenable for liberal rabbis not to officiate on the grounds that intermarriage is not good for Jewish continuity. Jewish leaders should ensure that that at least some of their synagogue’s clergy officiate. It is time for the Reform rabbinate to change the resolution still on the CCAR’s books that disapproves of officiation. Statements of position set a tone that matters, and bold leadership helps people adapt their attitudes to address new realities. That’s why Hebrew Union College, the Reform seminary, should follow the Reconstructionists’ lead by admitting and ordaining intermarried rabbinic students. The growth and vitality of liberal synagogues depends on engaging more interfaith families. What better role model for them could there be than an intermarried rabbi?

Finally, the real frontier of audacious hospitality is how Jewish communities will respond to couples who think they may or say they want to “do both.” What appears to be a growing population wants to educate their children about both religious traditions in the home, without merging them together. When they knock on Jewish doors – when couples ask rabbis to co-officiate at their weddings, or parents ask synagogue religious schools to accept children who are receiving formal education in another religion – they mostly get “no” for an answer. While more rabbis appear to be officiating for interfaith couples, most won’t co-officiate, saying they want a commitment to a Jewish home and family. But participating in those weddings holds the door open to later Jewish commitment for couples who haven’t decided yet, while refusing to risks shutting that door. Similarly, while we don’t have to recommend or favor raising children as “both,” providing Jewish education to them if they seek it opens doors to later engagement.

The more confident we are that Jewish traditions are so compelling that people will gravitate to them once exposed, the more we will openly discuss these issues, dismantle barriers, and articulate and implement a totally inclusive – yes, a truly audacious – hospitality. People who say Jewish communities are already welcoming enough, and don’t need to talk about or do anything specific for interfaith families, are out of touch; Jewish communities can do a lot to attract and engage interfaith families with explicit statements, invitations, and programs designed for them, especially meet-ups and discussion groups where new couples can talk out how to have religious traditions in their lives.

As summer approaches, many congregational rabbis are thinking about their High Holiday sermons. The Reform movement will gather again in December at its biennial. Will Jewish leaders seize these occasions to forthrightly address just how audacious their hospitality to interfaith families needs to be?

Why We Should Accept Rabbis Who Intermarry

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In a Forward editorial today, Jane Eisner says we should expect a rabbi to raise his or her children in a Jewish home, to maintain that home as the most sacred place in the Jewish eco-system. The fallacy in her argument is her assumption that intermarried rabbis would not do so. People who seek to become rabbis do so precisely because they are deeply committed to ongoing Jewish life – not only for themselves, but also for their communities, as the Reconstructionists realize. There is no reason to believe that intermarried rabbis would be any different; indeed, given the challenging process to become and then serve as a rabbi, it is absurd to do so.

When Eisner says we should expect a rabbi to partner with another Jew – that’s the tribalism that the Reconstructionists report alienates many younger progressive Jews and current or would be rabbinical students. If the goal is Jewish commitment to the home, synagogue and beyond, and if interfaith couples can demonstrate that commitment – as more and more do – then why is it necessary for Jews to partner with other Jews, beyond the assertion that “Jews should marry Jews” or worse, that “Jews are better.”

Interfaith couples resolve the “inherent complications” Eisner cites all the time, in ways that are conducive to ongoing Jewish engagement. There is no reason to think that intermarried rabbis would not do the same; in fact, there is more reason to think that they would. And because non-Orthodox Jewish communities are so heavily intermarried, intermarried rabbis would be excellent role models for those communities.

I’m glad to see Eisner say that “It is a propitious time to offer bold ideas to make Judaism more accessible and welcoming, to strengthen commitment among those born Jews and encourage others to join.” The Reconstructionists’ decision is precisely such a bold decision. Over the years I have talked with many would-be rabbis who lamented that because they were intermarried they could not attend any major seminary. I predict that being the first, the Reconstructionists will benefit from many excellent applicants and students.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Bravo Reconstructionists!

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The Reconstructionist movement has once again led the way to a more inclusive Judaism by taking the bold step to accept and graduate rabbinic students who are intermarried or in committed relationships with partners who are not Jewish.

The main argument advanced against ordaining intermarried rabbis is that rabbis should serve as role models for Jewish life and commitment. The Reconstructionist movement reaffirmed that “all rabbinical candidates must model commitment to Judaism in their communal, personal, and family lives” – but explained their decision in large part because “Jews with non-Jewish partners demonstrat[e] these commitments every day in many Jewish communities.”

Reconstructionism approaches Jews and Judaism not simply as representing a culture or a religion, but as a people and a civilization. Its borders and boundaries are porous and constantly evolving. “The Jewish present and Jewish future depend on our shifting focus toward Jews ‘doing Jewish’ in ways that are meaningful to them rather than on ‘being Jewish’ because of bloodline or adherence to mandated behaviors,”… “The issue of Jews intermarrying is no longer something we want to police; we want to welcome Jews and the people who love us to join us in the very difficult project of bringing meaning, justice, and hope into our world.”

We send our very hearty congratulations to the Reconstructionist movement for their courageous leadership. For years we have heard from people eager to become rabbis who were barred by the major seminaries from applying. A prediction: the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College will be attracting and graduating some very outstanding rabbis – with partners from different faith traditions – in the future, and those rabbis in turn will lead the way to a more inclusive Judaism.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

More on Ordaining Intermarried Rabbis

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Kudos to Paul Golin, associate executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute, for a powerful contribution to the debate over ordaining intermarried rabbis: What Intermarried Rabbis Can Teach Us. Building on Rabbi Ellen Lippman’s inter-partnered rabbi’s perspective, that we’ve blogged about before, Paul adds his own very important perspective:

Rabbis with nontraditional families like my own make me feel more included. Conveying why Judaism is still relevant to them provides me with access I wouldn’t feel elsewhere. The focus is not on how you come in, but what you get out of doing Jewish — in other words, why it’s so amazing.

Definitely worth reading — and considering by those deciding the issue.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

A Plea to Ordain Intermarried Rabbis

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Ellen Lippman, rabbi of Kolot Chayeinu in Brooklyn, has an important contribution in today’s Forward to the debate about admitting and ordaining as rabbis people in interfaith relationships, an issue we’ve blogged about frequently. In an “open letter” to her alma mater, Hebrew Union College, Rabbi Lippman, who is partnered with a person who is not Jewish, writes,

We are like the thousands of Jews across America who commit to strongly Jewish lives with their non-Jewish spouses. Interfaith families tell me that having a rabbi who mirrors their relationships makes an enormous difference to being able to commit to Jewish life.

Rabbi Lippman argues that an “inclusive vision of Jewish leadership” means that “we should not push away those who want to become leaders of the Jewish community as rabbis just because they are intermarried.” And she argues that:

A rabbi is a role model, and there are many kinds of role models. Intermarriage is a fact of American Jewish life. We can do a better job of connecting intermarried Jews to synagogues, rabbis and Jewish life. One way is to knowingly ordain intermarried rabbis.

It will be fascinating to follow this issue as it is debated at HUC.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Intermarried Rabbis and Intermarriage Attitudes

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We’re back from Passover and there was a flurry of commentary about intermarriage in the Jewish media. Last week Benjamin Maron blogged about Rabbinical Students and Intermarriage, picking up on Rebecca Goodman’s February post on Rabbis and Intermarriage. This is all started when Daniel Kirzane, a rabbinic student at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College and the child of intermarried parents, wrote in a debate in Reform Judaism magazine that that seminary should admit students with non-Jewish partners — which it currently does not allow. (This debate has been going on at least since I blogged about it in 2009.)

Benjamin pointed out that a Reform rabbi, Mark Miller, wrote a rather scathing article in the Times of Israel, lamenting Reform Judaism’s supposed “embrace of assimilation.” I want to bring to your attention Aliza Worthington’s very powerful response, also in the Times of Israel, Rigidity is the real threat to Jewish continuity. Worthington tells her personal story of Jewish engagement despite — or perhaps because of — her own intermarriage, the welcome she and her husband received, how she shares Judaism now with her children — and then describes Miller’s response to Kirzane as follows:

You are taking people who have chosen Judaism — chosen it! — and shoving them away. Here is someone [Kirzane] who was born of an intermarriage of faiths, and he not only chose Judaism to follow, to study, but to live and to teach! And you belittle his parents’ love because it somehow makes his Judaism less authentic to you? You deny him his learning and his future livelihood should he fall in love with someone who is not Jewish? You’re worried that a rabbi who marries a gentile is threatening and disgraceful to the Jewish faith? Even though he cherishes Judaism.

I respect your education and career. I admire your devotion to our shared faith. I worry, though, that you have grossly misidentified the real threats to Judaism: Sanctimony, Superiority, and Judgmentalism.

Sadly but not surprisingly, Worthington’s essay attracted vituperative comments which spurred Adin Feder, a high school student at Boston’s Gann Academy — a pluralistic Jewish day school — to write in The Threat of Warrantless Hatred:

…the problem is the absolutism and rigidity of those who write off and bash Jews who intermarry or subscribe to a different religious philosophy. Attacking and disowning a fellow Jew who decided to marry a Catholic isn’t just wrong. It’s also impractical.

In a recent survey I took of my grade at my pluralistic Jewish high school, I found that over half of the grade, 51%, is “open to marrying someone who is not Jewish”. A further 19% said that they “don’t know” if they would be open to it. Only 30% of the grade said that they are not “open to marrying someone who is not Jewish”. Keep in mind that these results are from students at a Jewish school!

Is the peanut gallery that claims to have been invested with the power to define “real Judaism” and therefore insult all other Jews who don’t fit that definition, prepared to repudiate a huge portion of the next generation of American Jews? Perhaps their energy would be better spent appealing to rather than insulting Jews, in order to ensure the continuity of the Jewish people.

Sadly, again, Feder’s article attracted more nasty comments — but Worthington had what I hope is the last word: “Thank God for kids like you who are thinking, educated, engaged, open-minded, compassionate, and articulate. You are the future of a strong, healthy Judaism. Thank you.”

The nasty comments are unfortunate but they aren’t really the point. There will always be people at the extreme who see their way as the only way and intermarriage as intolerable — just as there will always be people who are extremely passionate about the potential for positive Jewish engagement by interfaith families. But I wonder what this exchange of commentary demonstrates about the attitudes towards intermarriage of the “great middle.”

With the same-sex marriage cases recently before the Supreme Court, there has been much in the secular press, less about the extremely pro and extremely con voices in that debate, but much more about the revolution in attitudes of the “great middle” in favor of marriage equality. Is Feder’s survey — and remember, it’s from a Jewish high school — representative, indicative of a great shift in attitudes among younger Jews which will push negative views like those of Rabbi Miller to an ineffectual extreme? I wonder.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Rabbinical School and Interfaith Marriage, Part 3

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A new article in Tablet, Big Tent Country by Marissa Brostoff, sheds some light on the issue of rabbinical schools accepting and ordaining intermarried rabbis.

We blogged about this issue three months ago, when New Voices published an important article, The Coming of the Intermarried Rabbi. At the time, I wrote that “there could be no better role model for interfaith couples than an interfaith partner who is so Jewishly engaged that he or she is a rabbi,” and that “Intermarried rabbis would be particularly inspiring to the interfaith couples who they served — and there is no reason they could not be inspiring to in-married couples as well.”

The Tablet article tells about Ed Stafman, a former attorney who intermarried, became active in a Reform synagogue, and eventually was ordained by the Renewal-affiliated Aleph Rabbinic Program, the only seminary that does not reject intermarried students outright. Rabbi Stafman will be installed next week as rabbi at Beth Shalom, a Reform synagogue in Bozeman, Montana.

What’s most interesting to me in the article are the comments by the members of Beth Shalom, which support the notion of an intermarried rabbi as a role model and inspiration for interfaith couples. Beth Shalom is by all descriptions a heavily intermarried congregation. One person in the hiring process said that Stafman’s being intermarried “might be a great asset because we’re so intermarried here that you might have a better understanding of the congregation.” Another said, “I think it will be very beneficial to those interfaith families in the community, and that they will really feel they have a home at Beth Shalom.”

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.

Rabbinical School and the Interfaith Marriage, Part 2

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Last week Ruth Abrams blogged about an important article by Jeremy Gillick in New Voices, The Coming of the Intermarried Rabbi, about men and women seeking to attend and be ordained by rabbinical schools that will not accept them because they are intermarried.  Shortly before the New Voices article came out, we published Why I’m Not A Rabbi, in which Edie Mueller explained her experience of this rejection 15 years ago. I’d like to now explain our position on this issue, prompted in part by a parallel discussion that is taking place on the Jewish Outreach Institute‘s JOPLIN listserv.

Years ago when David Ellenson, whom I respect tremendously, became president of Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement’s seminary, he was quoted in a publication as affirming the policy not to admit or ordain intermarried students because rabbis are “role models.” I wrote a letter to the editor suggesting that there could be no better role model for interfaith couples than an interfaith partner who is so Jewishly engaged that he or she is a rabbi.

For denominations that consider traditional Jewish religious law (halachah) binding, it may make sense to require rabbis to live in halachically recognized marriages. But the seminaries training rabbis for other denominations are free to consider that their graduates will be serving constituencies with many interfaith couples and families. Those rabbis presumably want to inspire their constituents to more Jewish engagement. Intermarried rabbis would be particularly inspiring to the interfaith couples who they served — and there is no reason they could not be inspiring to in-married couples as well.

When congregations hire rabbis, lay leaders are the ones who select them. Many congregations that want to promote in-marriage won’t hire rabbis that they perceive to encourage interfaith marriage. Presumably these lay leaders would chose not to hire an intermarried rabbi. Congregations that want to promote conversion as a solution to the issue of interfaith marriage presumably would chose not to hire a rabbi whose non-Jewish partner had not chosen to convert. But congregations that are focused less on these boundary lines and more on supporting the Jewish engagement of all community members might well welcome an intermarried rabbi. Congregations are diverse, and rabbis could be as well.

Over the years at IFF we have talked with a number of exceptional people who would have made great rabbis who were frustrated because they couldn’t be accepted at the seminaries because they were intermarried. David Curiel, the lead subject of the New Voices article, is one of them. Edie Mueller is another. We believe that turning these people away is a mistake.

This post originally appeared on www.interfaithfamily.com and is reprinted with permission.