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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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Iran Rounds Up Thousands in Mass Arrest Campaign After Crushing Unrest
A billboard with a picture of Iran’s flag, on a building in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 24, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Plainclothes Iranian security forces have rounded up thousands of people in a campaign of mass arrests and intimidation to deter further protests after crushing the bloodiest unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, sources told Reuters.
Modest protests that began last month in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over economic hardship unleashed long-suppressed wider grievances and swiftly escalated into the gravest existential threat to Iran‘s Shi’ite theocracy in nearly five decades, with protesters commonly calling for ruling clerics to step down.
Authorities cut internet access and stifled the unrest with overwhelming force that killed thousands, according to rights groups. Tehran blames “armed terrorists” linked to Israel and the United States for the violence.
Within days, plainclothes security forces launched a campaign of widespread arrests accompanied by an intensified street presence based around checkpoints, according to five activists who spoke on condition of anonymity from inside Iran.
They said detainees had been placed in secret lockups.
“They are arresting everyone,” one of the activists said. “No one knows where they are being taken or where they are being held. With these arrests and threats, they are trying to inject fear into society.”
Similar accounts were given to Reuters by lawyers, medics, witnesses, and two Iranian officials speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution by security services.
They said the roundups appeared aimed at preventing any serious revival of protests by spreading fear just as the clerical establishment faces rising external pressure.
Uncertainty over the possibility of military action against the Islamic Republic has lingered since US President Donald Trump said last week that an “armada” was heading toward the country but that he hoped he would not have to use it.
On Wednesday, however, he doubled down on his threats by demanding Iran negotiate curbs on its nuclear program, warning that any future US attack would be “far worse” than one day of airstrikes last June on three nuclear sites.
Multiple Western and Middle Eastern sources told Reuters this week that Trump is weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces and leaders to inspire protesters, although Israeli and Arab officials said air power alone would not topple the clerical establishment.
ROUNDED UP FOR PROTESTS IN PREVIOUS YEARS
One of the activists said security forces were detaining not only people accused of involvement in the latest unrest but also those arrested during protests in previous years, “even if they had not participated this time, plus members of their families.”
The latest death toll compiled by the US-based HRANA rights group stands at 6,373 – 5,993 protesters, 214 security personnel, 113 under-18s, and 53 bystanders. Arrests stand at 42,486, according to HRANA, which is investigating an additional nearly 20,000 possible deaths.
Several media outlets have reported the death toll could exceed 30,000 citing sources inside Iran.
Judiciary officials have warned that “those committing sabotage, burning public property, and involved in armed clashes with security forces” could face death sentences.
The UN human rights office told Reuters on Thursday it understood that the number of detainees was very high and they were at risk of torture and unfair trials. Mai Soto, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, said the thousands of detainees included doctors and health-care workers.
UNOFFICIAL DETENTION CENTERS, THOUSANDS OF ARRESTS
Two Iranian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to Reuters that thousands of arrests had been carried out in the past few days.
They said many detainees were being held in unofficial detention sites, “including warehouses and other improvised locations,” and the judiciary was acting quickly to process cases.
Iranian authorities declined to comment publicly on the number of arrests, or say where the detainees were being held. Authorities said on Jan. 21 that 3,117 were killed in the unrest, including 2,427 civilians and security personnel.
Amnesty International reported on Jan. 23 that “sweeping arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, bans on gatherings, and attacks to silence families of victims mark the suffocating militarization imposed in Iran by the Islamic Republic’s authorities in the aftermath of protest massacres.”
Arrests are continuing across the sprawling country, from small towns to the capital, witnesses and activists said.
“They arrested my brother and my cousin a few days ago,” said a resident of northwestern Iran who asked not to be named.
“They stormed our home in plainclothes, searched the entire house, and took all the laptops and mobile phones. They warned us that if we make this public, they will arrest all of us.”
FAMILIES FRANTIC OVER MISSING YOUNG PEOPLE
More than 60% of Iran‘s 92 million people are under the age of 30. Although the latest protests were snuffed out, clerical rulers will eventually risk more demonstrations if the heavy repression persists, according to rights activists.
Three Iranian lawyers told Reuters that dozens of families had approached them in recent days seeking help for relatives who had been detained.
“Many families are coming to us asking for legal assistance for their detained children,” one lawyer said. “Some of those arrested are under 18 – boys and girls.”
Human rights groups have long said Iranian security organs use informal detention sites during periods of serious unrest, holding detainees without access to lawyers or family members for extended periods.
Five doctors told Reuters that protesters wounded during protests had been removed from hospitals by security forces and dozens of doctors had been summoned by authorities or warned against helping injured demonstrators.
Prison authorities denied holding wounded protesters.
Families of five detainees said the lack of information about their whereabouts itself had become a form of punishment.
“We don’t know where they are, whether they are still alive, or when we’ll see them,” said an Iranian man whose daughter was rounded up. “They took my child as if they were arresting a terrorist.”
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Israeli Parliament Gives Initial Approval for 2026 Budget, Averting Snap Election for Now
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a session of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem, Jan. 26, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Israel‘s parliament gave initial approval to the 2026 state budget draft on Thursday, handing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a temporary political reprieve by averting the immediate prospect of an early election.
Lawmakers voted 62-55 in favor of the spending plan, which totals 662 billion shekels ($214.43 billion), excluding debt servicing, and sets a budget deficit ceiling of 3.9% of gross domestic product this year.
The budget, as well as an accompanying economic plan, still faces a difficult path to final approval amid deepening polarization within Netanyahu’s governing coalition. Under Israeli law, the budget must be passed by the end of March or parliament would automatically dissolve, triggering a snap election.
Tensions inside the coalition have simmered for more than two years, fueled by disagreements over the war in Gaza, the ceasefire reached in October that halted the fighting, and demands by ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties for legislation exempting religious seminary students from mandatory military service.
Some ultra-Orthodox lawmakers did not vote in favor of the budget since a military conscription bill has not yet been approved.
Netanyahu’s other right-wing coalition partners – as well as opposition parties – argue that ultra-Orthodox men must share the burden of military service, particularly after two years of fighting in Gaza and Lebanon in which nearly 1,000 Israeli soldiers were killed.
($1 = 3.0872 shekels)
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Trump Weighs Iran Strikes to Inspire Renewed Protests, Sources Say
US President Donald Trump delivers a speech on energy and the economy, in Clive, Iowa, US, Jan. 27, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump is weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces and leaders to inspire protesters, multiple sources said, even as Israeli and Arab officials said air power alone would not topple the clerical rulers.
Two US sources familiar with the discussions said Trump wanted to create conditions for “regime change” after a crackdown crushed a nationwide protest movement earlier this month, killing thousands of people.
To do so, he was looking at options to hit commanders and institutions Washington holds responsible for the violence, to give protesters the confidence that they could overrun government and security buildings, they said. Trump has not yet made a final decision on a course of action including whether to take the military path, one of the sources and a US official said.
The second US source said the options being discussed by Trump‘s aides also included a much larger strike intended to have lasting impact, possibly against the ballistic missiles that can reach US allies in the Middle East or its nuclear enrichment programs. Iran has been unwilling to negotiate restrictions on the missiles, which it sees as its only deterrence against Israel, the first source said.
The arrival of a US aircraft carrier and supporting warships in the Middle East this week has expanded Trump‘s capabilities to potentially take military action, after he repeatedly threatened intervention over Iran‘s crackdown.
The US Navy sent an additional warship to the Middle East, a US official told Reuters on Thursday. The official, who was speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the USS Delbert D. Black had entered the region in the past 48 hours. This brings the number of destroyers in the Middle East to six, along with the aircraft carrier and three other littoral combat ships. The additional warship in the region was first reported by CBS News.
Reuters spoke to more than a dozen people for this account of the high-stakes deliberations over Washington’s next moves regarding Iran. Four Arab officials, three Western diplomats, and a senior Western source whose governments were briefed on the discussions said they were concerned that instead of bringing people onto the streets, US strikes could weaken a movement already in shock after the bloodiest repression by authorities since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, said that without large-scale military defections Iran‘s protests remained “heroic but outgunned.”
The sources in this story requested anonymity to talk about sensitive matters. Iran‘s foreign office, the US Department of Defense, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. The Israeli Prime Minister’s office declined to comment.
Trump urged Iran on Wednesday to come to the table and make a deal on nuclear weapons, warning that any future US attack would be “far worse” than a June bombing campaign against three nuclear sites. He described the ships in the region as an “armada” sailing to Iran.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran was “preparing itself for a military confrontation, while at the same time making use of diplomatic channels.” However, Washington was not showing openness to diplomacy, the official said. The US official said the current weakness of the regime encouraged Trump to apply pressure and seek a deal on denuclearization.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is civilian, was ready for dialogue “based on mutual respect and interests” but would defend itself “like never before” if pushed, Iran‘s mission to the United Nations said in a post on X on Wednesday.
Trump has not publicly detailed what he is looking for in any deal. His administration’s previous negotiating points have included banning Iran from independently enriching uranium and restrictions on long-range ballistic missiles and on Tehran’s already-weakened network of armed proxies in the Middle East.
LIMITS OF AIR POWER
A senior Israeli official with direct knowledge of planning between Israel and the United States said Israel does not believe airstrikes alone can topple the Islamic Republic, if that is Washington’s goal.
“If you’re going to topple the regime, you have to put boots on the ground,” he told Reuters, noting that even if the United States killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran would “have a new leader that will replace him.”
Only a combination of external pressure and an organized domestic opposition could shift Iran’s political trajectory, the official said.
The Israeli official said Iran’s leadership had been weakened by the unrest but remained firmly in control despite the ongoing deep economic crisis that sparked the protests.
Multiple US intelligence reports reached a similar conclusion, that the conditions that led to the protests were still in place, weakening the government, but without major fractures, two people familiar with the matter said.
The Western source said they believed Trump‘s goal appeared to be to engineer a change in leadership, rather than “topple the regime,” an outcome that would be similar to Venezuela, where US intervention replaced the president without a wholesale change of government. During a US Senate hearing about Venezuela on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said “the hope” was for a similar transition if Khamenei were to fall, although he recognized that the situation in Iran was far more complex. The US official said it was unclear who would take over if Khamenei were out of power.
Israel’s military intelligence chief, General Shlomi Binder, held talks on Iran with senior officials at the Pentagon, the CIA, and the White House on Tuesday and Wednesday, a source familiar with the matter said. Axios reported that he shared intelligence on possible Iranian targets.
Khamenei has publicly acknowledged several thousand deaths during the protests. He blamed the unrest on the United States, Israel and what he called “seditionists.”
U.S.-based rights group HRANA has put the unrest-related death toll at 5,937, including 214 security personnel, while official figures put the death toll at 3,117. Reuters has been unable to independently verify the numbers.
Several media outlets have reported the death toll could exceed 30,000 citing sources inside Iran.
KHAMENEI RETAINS CONTROL BUT LESS VISIBLE
At 86, Khamenei has retreated from daily governance, reduced public appearances, and is believed to be residing in secure locations after Israeli strikes last year decimated many of Iran’s senior military leaders, regional officials said.
Day-to-day management has shifted to figures aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including senior adviser Ali Larijani, they said. The powerful Guards dominate Iran‘s security network and big parts of the economy.
However, Khamenei retains final authority over war, succession, and nuclear strategy – meaning political change is very difficult until he exits the scene, they said. Iran‘s foreign ministry did not respond to questions about Khamenei.
In Washington and Jerusalem, some officials have argued that a transition in Iran could break the nuclear deadlock and eventually open the door to more cooperative ties with the West, two of the Western diplomats said.
But, they cautioned, there is no clear successor to Khamenei. In that vacuum, the Arab officials and diplomats said they believe the IRGC could take over, entrenching hardline rule, deepening the nuclear standoff and regional tensions.
Any successor seen as emerging under foreign pressure would be rejected and could strengthen, not weaken the IRGC, the official said.
Across the region, from the Gulf to Turkey, officials say they favor containment over collapse – not out of sympathy for Tehran, but out of fear that turmoil inside a nation of 90 million, riven by sectarian and ethnic fault lines, could unleash instability far beyond Iran‘s borders.
A fractured Iran could spiral into civil war as happened after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, two of the Western diplomats warned, unleashing an influx of refugees, fueling Islamist militancy, and disrupting oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a global energy chokepoint.
The gravest risk, analyst Vatanka warned, is fragmentation into “early-stage Syria,” with rival units and provinces fighting for territory and resources.
REGIONAL BLOWBACK
Gulf states – long‑time US allies and hosts to major American bases – fear they would be the first targets for Iranian retaliation that could include Iranian missiles or drone attacks from the Tehran-aligned Houthis in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and Egypt have lobbied Washington against a strike on Iran. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has told Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian that Riyadh will not allow its airspace or territory to be used for military actions against Tehran.
“The United States may pull the trigger,” one of the Arab sources said, “but it will not live with the consequences. We will.”
Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman was in Washington this week for meetings with US officials focused on Iran, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
A batch of 1,000 drones was received by the various branches of the Iranian army, semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Thursday, amid growing tensions.
“In accordance with the threats ahead, the army maintains and enhances its strategic advantages for rapid combat and imposing a crushing response against any aggressor,” the army‘s Commander-in-Chief Amir Hatami said.
Mohannad Hajj-Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center said the US deployments suggest planning has shifted from a single strike to something more sustained, driven by a belief in Washington and Jerusalem that Iran could rebuild its missile capabilities and eventually weaponize its enriched uranium.
The most likely outcome is a “grinding erosion – elite defections, economic paralysis, contested succession – that frays the system until it snaps,” analyst Vatanka said.