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In a shift, Hebrew College will now admit and ordain rabbinical students whose partners are not Jewish
(JTA) — Hebrew College will begin admitting and ordaining rabbinical students in interfaith relationships, according to new admissions standards revealed on Tuesday.
The decision makes the pluralistic seminary outside of Boston the second major rabbinical school in the United States to do away with rules barring students from dating or marrying non-Jews. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Seminary was the first to do so in 2015.
Hebrew College’s decision comes as rabbinical schools compete over a shrinking pool of applicants and after decades of rising rates of intermarriage among American Jews.
Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, Hebrew College’s president, announced the policy change in an email to students and graduates on Tuesday evening. She said the decision, which followed a year and a half of review, came amid a broad revision of the seminary’s “guiding principles for admission and ordination.”
Those new guiding principles were published on the admissions page of Hebrew College’s website late Tuesday, replacing different language that had included the partner policy. “We do not admit or ordain rabbinical students with non-Jewish partners,” the page had previously said, adding that applicants whose partners were in the process of converting would be considered.
“This is a really exciting moment for Jewish communities everywhere,” said Jodi Bromberg, the CEO of 18Doors, a Jewish nonprofit that supports interfaith families. “We all will get to benefit from Jewish leaders in interfaith relationships who have been sidelined from major seminaries up to now.”
Hebrew College has set aside time on Wednesday for its roughly 80 rabbinical students and others to process their reactions about the change, which Anisfeld had previously said she expected to be intense no matter the decision. She declined to comment late Tuesday, saying that she was focused on communication with members of her community.
“This has not been a simple process and, in addition to the strong feelings raised by the policy itself, there have been complex feelings about various stages of the process we’ve undertaken over the past year,” Anisfeld wrote in a message to students in October, in a series of emails obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Hebrew College’s policy change reflects a longstanding and sometimes painful dynamic in American Jewish life: While nearly three-quarters of non-Orthodox Jews who married in the last decade did so to non-Jews, few traditional rabbinical schools have been willing to train or ordain rabbis in interfaith relationships. Their policies have roots in Jewish law, known as halacha, which prohibits marriages between Jews and non-Jews. But they also reflect anxiety among American Jewish leaders over whether high rates of intermarriage threaten the future of Judaism, and whether rabbis must model traditional practices in their families.
At Hebrew College, which launched its rabbinical school 20 years ago, the prohibition against interfaith relationships had been the only admissions requirement rooted in Jewish law beyond the rule that applicants must be considered Jewish according to at least one Jewish movement. There was no requirement that rabbinical students keep kosher or observe Shabbat.
When the school’s leadership first solicited feedback from students a year ago, several took aim at what they said was hypocrisy in the approach to Jewish law.
“This is the one area of students’ halachic life where I am acutely aware that the school does not trust us, does not think we are capable of navigating our own personal lives, and does not believe that the choices we may make for ourselves have the capacity to expand and enrich our Jewish practice,” wrote one student, according to a collection of anonymous comments shared among students at the time.
A chuppah at a Jewish wedding. More than 60% of American Jews who have married in the last decade have done so to non-Jewish partners, according to a 2021 study from the Pew Research Center. That proportion rises to nearly 75% for non-Orthodox American Jews. (Scott Rocher via Flickr Commons)
Most of the 15 comments that students and graduates shared with their peers called for doing away with the ban on interfaith student relationships, often citing the benefits of having Hebrew College-ordained rabbis reflect the families they are likely to serve.
“We should be training rabbis for the Jewish community that exists and that we want to cultivate, not the one we wish existed or that existed in the past,” one student wrote. “Having intermarried rabbis could do a lot of good: perhaps having role models for a fulfilling, active, intermarried Jewish can help people feel welcomed, not just grudgingly tolerated after the fact — and can increase the likelihood that those intermarried couples want to raise Jewish children.”
Several students and graduates wrote that the policy as it stood incentivized students to obscure their relationships, denying them dignity and preventing their mentors and teachers from fully supporting them. Several suggested that prohibiting students in interfaith partnerships could have a disproportionate effect on queer Jews and Jews of color.
At least one person argued against changing the policy, instead suggesting that the school strengthen enforcement and clarify expectations about other Jewish practices and values.
“By changing the policy Hebrew College is sending the message to the Jewish world that love-based marriages are more sacred than the covenant with which we made at Sinai,” that student wrote, referring to the moment in Jewish tradition when God first spoke to the Israelites. “However, by not changing the policy Hebrew College is affirming that students learn the art of lying. Therefore, my suggestion is to keep the policy but change the ethics on how it is enforced.”
Those comments followed a two-day workshop, facilitated by experts in conflict resolution, about the policy a year ago. The experience was challenging for many of those in attendance, according to the student comments.
“The pain of the need to hide was on full display during Winter Seminar, and I found myself wondering if I could remain in a community whose first response was anything other than to seek healing for the hurt that the policy has inflicted,” one wrote at the time.
With tensions high, an initial deadline to decide whether to keep the policy came and went last June. In late October, Anisfeld wrote to students with an update. A special committee including both rabbinic and academic faculty members had been meeting regularly since July, she said, and would be presenting their recommendation by the end of January.
Last week, she said in her message to students and graduates on Tuesday, Hebrew College’s board approved the policy change and admissions principles revisions.
The decision could renew pressure on other rabbinical schools amid steep competition for students. Several non-traditional rabbinical schools that do not have a requirement about the identities of students’ spouses have grown in recent years, while Hebrew College; the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College; and the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in the Conservative movement all shrunk. Hebrew College recently completed a move to a shared campus after selling its building under financial duress.
“We continue to hear from folks who want to be rabbis and up until this moment had really limited choices,” said Bromberg. “I can’t help but think that this will have a really positive impact on the enrollment in Hebrew College’s rabbinic program.”
The pressure could be especially acute for Hebrew Union College, the Reform seminary with three campuses in the United States. (Because of declining enrollment, the school is phasing out its Cincinnati program.) HUC does not admit or ordain students in interfaith relationships, even though the Reform movement, which does not consider halacha to be binding, permits its rabbis to officiate at intermarriages and to be intermarried themselves.
That policy, which the movement reaffirmed after extensive debate in 2014, has drawn resentment and scorn from some who say it is the only thing holding them back from pursuing Reform ordination.
“All my life, my community had told me that no matter who you are or who you love, you are equal in our community and according to the Divine. But now it feels like I’ve been betrayed, lied to, misled,” Ezra Samuels, an aspiring rabbinical student in a queer relationship with a non-Jewish man, wrote on Hey Alma in 2020, expanding on a viral Twitter thread.
But even the Conservative movement, which bars rabbis from officiating at intermarriages and only recently began permitting members of its rabbinical association to attend intermarriages, is grappling openly with how to balance Jewish law and tradition against the reality around interfaith relationships.
The movement recently held a series of online meetings for members of its Rabbinical Assembly to discuss intermarriage, sparking rumors that the movement could be headed toward policy changes. That’s not the case, according to movement leaders — though they say other shifts may be needed.
“There are no proposals at present to change our standard,” said Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, the CEO of the RA and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the movement’s congregational arm. “But there is a conversation about what are the ways that we can provide more pastoral guidance to colleagues, especially around moments of marriage.”
The Pew study found new high rates of intermarriage in the Jewish community. (iStock/Getty Images)
Keren McGinity, the USCJ’s interfaith specialist, previously directed the Interfaith Families Engagement Program, a now-defunct part of Hebrew College’s education school. She declined to comment on the internal conversations underway within the Conservative movement. But in 2015, she argued in an op-ed that the Jewish world would benefit from more rabbis who were intermarried.
“Seeing rabbis — who have committed their careers, indeed their lives to Judaism — intermarry, create Jewish homes and raise Jewish children should convincingly illustrate how intermarriage does not inhibit Jewish involvement,” she wrote, citing her research on intermarried couples.
That argument got a boost two years ago, when a major survey of American Jews found that most children of intermarried couples were being raised Jewish. And on Tuesday, McGinity said she was glad to hear that Hebrew College was dropping its partner requirement, which she said she knew had caused students to leave the program in the past.
“The decision to admit rabbinical students who have beloveds of other faith backgrounds is a tremendous way of leading in the 21st century, illustrating that interpartnered Jews can be exemplars of Jewish leaders,” she said.
She added, “Knowing my colleagues, I can only imagine the hours and hours of thought that went into this decision.”
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The post In a shift, Hebrew College will now admit and ordain rabbinical students whose partners are not Jewish appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Turkey Pushes for Closer Ties With Iran Despite Mounting Sanctions as Both Countries Pursue Regional Ambitions
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends a press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, Oct. 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Despite the recent reimposition of UN sanctions on Iran, Turkey has called for closer diplomatic and trade relations with the Iranian regime, as both countries seek to bolster their influence in the Middle East while openly targeting Israel.
In a new interview with the semi-official Iranian news outlet ISNA, Turkey’s Ambassador to Iran, Hicabi Kırlangıç, said Ankara was working to expand bilateral cooperation with Tehran by leveraging existing capabilities to increase economic ties between the two countries.
“One of the obstacles to expanding trade relations between Iran and Turkey is the issue of sanctions. However, we should not cling to this excuse and refrain from trying to increase trade relations,” Kırlangıç said.
“The goal is to raise the level of trade relations to $30 billion, but we are still far from this figure,” he continued, emphasizing the vast potential for economic growth and the need for careful planning to achieve it.
The Turkish diplomat’s latest remarks followed Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s visit on Sunday to Tehran, where he also pushed for stronger bilateral cooperation between the two countries and denounced what he called “unfair sanctions” on Iran.
In a joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Fidan reaffirmed Turkey’s support for Tehran while calling for the country’s nuclear program to be addressed through dialogue amid ongoing discussions to restart nuclear talks with the West.
After repeated unsuccessful negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, European countries launched the process to reinstate wide-ranging UN sanctions earlier this year under the so-called snapback mechanism, adding further pressure on Tehran, which was already facing mounting US sanctions.
Fidan called for the removal of these “unrighteous” sanctions, stressing that the Iranian regime must resolve outstanding issues “on the basis of international law.”
“Turkey has always stood with Iran and will continue to stand with Iran within the framework of international law,” the top Turkish diplomat said, adding that “these unfair sanctions should be lifted.”
During their high-level meeting in Tehran, officials from both countries vowed to significantly expand cooperation on trade, energy, border management, and regional security, noting that economic ties remain well below their potential.
As part of their announced initiatives, the two nations agreed to build a new joint rail line that will serve as a strategic trade corridor between Asia and Europe, with construction expected to take three to four years and cost roughly $1.6 billion.
Fidan also said both countries consider Israel “the biggest threat to stability in the Middle East,” pointing to the war in Gaza, tensions in Lebanon and Syria, and broader concerns over what he called “Israeli expansionist policies.”
“The international community must fulfill its responsibilities,” he said, calling for stronger global pressure on the Jewish state.
Amid international efforts to uphold the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and chart a path for post-war Gaza, Turkey — a longtime backer of Hamas — has been pushing to expand its role in Gaza’s reconstruction efforts, which experts have warned could potentially strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.
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Israeli Real Estate Firm Denies Canceling New York Event Due to Anti-Zionist Group’s ‘Stolen Land’ Protest
Illustrative: Demonstrators attend an anti-Israel protest on the day of the two-year anniversary of the attack on Israel by Hamas, in New York City, US, Oct. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
An Israeli real estate firm has denied canceling an event set to take place in New York City on Tuesday due to a planned demonstration organized by a notorious anti-Israel group, saying the cancellation was for unrelated reasons.
A spokesperson for CapitIL, which provides information about buying real estate in Israel, said the gathering was canceled so the firm could focus its resources on holding a larger event in the coming months, according to the Times of Israel.
The Israeli publication reported that CapitIL’s event for this week had already been canceled when the local chapter of the radical anti-Zionist activist organization Pal-Awda announced the protest on Friday.
“When we as a community challenge the zionists’ genocidal settler-colonial machine we can win! And we did! We forced the cancellation of zionist land thieving CapitIL Real Estate’s planned illegal land sale in Manhattan,” Pal-Awda posted on social media on Tuesday.
“All this shows the importance and strength of our community when we turn out to challenge these genociders,” the group continued. “Please continue to follow us as we will continue to expose and, with our community’s support, challenge the zionist entity’s long tentacles here in [New York and New Jersey].”
Pal-Awda celebrated the cancellation of the so-called “illegal” sale of “stolen land” in Israel.
“This series of cancellations speaks to the power of our mobilization: with every principled protest and disruption, we are making the theft of Palestinian land untenable in our neighborhoods,” the group wrote. “As our protests have grown in size, we have seen more and more agencies and organizations similarly cancel and delay events, fearing the consequences of accountability and community outcry.”
On Friday, Pal-Awda initially advertised the planned protest.
“A zionist real estate event attempting to sell land in occupied Palestine will be held in Manhattan,” it posted. “This event is part of the zionists’ ongoing effort to ethnically cleanse Palestine. Join as we confront the white supremacist, settler-colonial project!”
The group called for supporters to gather in force.
“As the United States continues to provide political cover & military support for the ongoing indiscriminate assaults on Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, & Yemen, zionist settlers are exploiting this moment to further their settler-colonial agenda,” it said. “This expansion is facilitated by zionists from all over the world, including most prominently in the US, through real estate events where Stolen Land is sold & discounted mortgages are provided by “isr@eli” banks backed by the zionist entity’s government.”
Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, called on New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who takes office next month, to take an aggressive stand against such protests and push for a ban of such demonstrations in front of houses of worship.
“In my conversation with Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani recently, I made it clear that the Jewish community will not stand idly by for such antisemitic and violent protests,” Schneier told The Algemeiner. “I hope that we will be able to work together to put my plan into action, creating a ban of protests on the property of any house of worship. This cannot be the new norm in New York City.”
Last month, Pal-Awda organized a gathering of demonstrators who called for violence against Jews outside a prominent synagogue.
The protesters were harassing those attending an event being held by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a Zionist organization that helps Jews immigrate to Israel, at Park East Synagogue in Manhattan.
“We don’t want no Zionists here!” the group of roughly 200 anti-Israel activists chanted in intervals while waving the Palestinian flag. “Resistance, you make us proud, take another settler out.”
One protester, addressing the crowd, reportedly proclaimed, “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events! We need to make them scared.”
Footage on social media also showed agitators chanting “death to the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces, as well as “globalize the intifada” and “intifada revolution.” Community figures described the scene as openly threatening and a stark escalation of anti-Jewish hostility in New York City.
Mamdani, a strident critic of Israel, drew immense backlash after releasing a statement which “discouraged” the language used by the protesters but also condemned the event for supposedly using “sacred spaces … to promote activities in violation of international law.”
Jewish leaders reacted with disappointment, arguing that Mamdani effectively provided political justification for a protest that targeted Jews for participating in a mainstream, fully legal pro-Israel program. Critics said the mayor-elect’s framing implied that the synagogue event, not the threatening chants outside, was the real problem, a position they described as deeply irresponsible amid rising antisemitism in the city.
Pal-Awda has vowed to hold demonstrations at “private homes, businesses, and houses of worship” if necessary “to stop the pipeline of settlement and zionist colonial expansion.”
In addition to the nixed CapitIL event, Pal-Awda also claimed on Tuesday that it caused Nefesh B’Nefesh to cancel a separate event planned for Thursday in Manhattan. The Algemeiner could not immediately confirm the veracity of that claim.
New York City has been ravaged by a surge in antisemitic incidents since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. According to police data, Jews were targeted in the majority of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City last year. Meanwhile, pro-Hamas activists have held raucous — and sometimes violent — protests on the city’s college campuses, oftentimes causing Jewish students to fear for their safety.
Leaders of the Jewish community have raised alarm bells following the rapid political ascendance of Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and anti-Zionist. Mamdani is an avid supporter of boycotting all Israeli-tied entities who has been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. He has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide;” refused to recognize the country’s right to exist as a Jewish state; and refused to explicitly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been associated with calls for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
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Cornell Graduate Student Union Blasts Israel, Backs BDS While Committing to ‘Palestinian Liberation Struggle’
Cornell University students walk on campus, November 2023. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
A graduate workers’ union at Cornell University has approved a resolution to adopt a statement titled “International Solidarity With the Palestinian Liberation Struggle” which espouses invective against Israel and calls for participation in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against the Jewish state.
“Cornell is implicated in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians through research, recruitment, and financial ties with the weapons industry, and endowment investments,” says the resolution, passed by Cornell Graduate Students United, a division of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE). “Cornell’s complicity perpetuates its history from profiting from dispossession.”
Pronouncing its synthesis of classical Marxist themes and anti-Zionist propaganda, the statement continued: “The labor movement faces a once in a generation opportunity to build international worker solidarity after globalization has fractured the working class across lines of race, gender, legal status, and national borders. The Palestinian Trade Unions have urged us, as workers of the world, to end all forms of complicity with Israel’s crimes.”
Cornell UE, which announced the membership vote last week, added that it will follow up the resolution with a series of policies and actions intended to enforce it, including using union time, resources, and space to advocate anti-Zionism, pressure the university to “disclose” its investment holdings, and enforce BDS within the union by ensuring its members “refuse funding sources that are tied to the US and Israel militaries and weapons manufacturers and … find alternatives.”
Experts told the US Congress in September that antisemitism runs rampant in campus labor unions, trapping Jews in exploitative and nonconsensual relationships with union bosses who spend their compulsory membership dues on political activities which promote hatred of their identity and the destruction of the Jewish homeland.
Testifying at a hearing titled “Unmasking Union Antisemitism” held by the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, the witnesses described a series of issues facing Jewish graduate students represented against their will by the UE.
In particular, Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
During an interview with The Algemeiner after the hearing, Glenn Taubman, staff attorney for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW), said union antisemitism highlights the issues inherent in compulsory union representation, which he argued quells freedom of speech and association. He pointed to the case of Cornell PhD candidate David Rubinstein, who said he has experienced a climate of hatred that is impervious to correction because the ringleaders fostering it hold left-wing viewpoints.
“The only reason that David is forced to be represented by UE and is theoretically forced to pay them dues is because federal labor law allows that and in many cases requires it,” Taubman explained. “What I told the committee is that ending the union abuse of graduate students and people like David requires amending federal law so that unions are not the forced representatives of people who don’t want such representation.”
He added, “Unions have a special privilege that no other private organization in America has, and that is the power to impose their representation on people who don’t want it and then mandate that they pay dues because they quote-un-quote represent you. That is the most un-American thing that I can imagine.”
Campus antisemitism has drawn NRTW into an alliance with Jewish faculty and students across the US.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.