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To welcome interfaith couples, this Conservative synagogue hired a rabbi who’s allowed to wed them
(Jewish Journal of Greater Boston via JTA) — Sarah Freudenberger has spent a lot of time being told “no.”
A year and a half out of college, the “no” came from cantorial schools when she applied for ordination. Months later, when she got engaged, it came from the three rabbis she had worked with at a Reform synagogue in Florida, when she asked if they would officiate her wedding.
Both refusals were because – like 42% of married American Jews, according to a 2020 Pew study – Freudenberger’s spouse is not a Jew. Peter, her husband and the father of her three children, is Buddhist.
It took time to find a cantorial program that would allow her to get ordained with a non-Jewish spouse — just as it had taken time before she found a rabbi who would officiate at her interfaith wedding, which took place in 2010.
“It was such a gift to us,” she said. “Looking back, I didn’t realize how much it would have affected me personally, how much regret I would have felt, if I hadn’t had a rabbi at my wedding.”
She added, “I can’t untangle my personal experience from my officiant experience. It is the main reason why I know — firsthand — how much of a blessing it is to be able to do that for people.”
Now, Freudenberger says she is passing on this gift to other Jews like her by offering interfaith wedding officiation as the cantor of Congregation Shirat Hayam in Swampscott, Massachusetts.
She can’t preside over the ceremonies inside Shirat Hayam’s building, because the congregation is part of the Conservative movement of Judaism, which bars its member communities from hosting interfaith wedding ceremonies. But because Freudenberger did not attend a Conservative seminary and is not part of its rabbinic association, she is free to officiate the weddings elsewhere.
The arrangement illuminates how a changing rabbinic marketplace is opening doors for interfaith families at Conservative synagogues, where the movement’s prohibitions around interfaith weddings have imposed barriers to welcoming intermarried couples.
“Intermarriage and the inclusion of intermarried couples and families are among the most important issues the Conservative-Masorti movement is addressing,” said Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly, two leading organizations of the Conservative-Masorti movement. (Masorti is the name of the Conservative movement in Israel/outside of North America.)
“Conservative-Masorti rabbis who are members of the Rabbinical Assembly are not authorized to officiate at interfaith wedding ceremonies,” he said. “But rather than focusing on intermarriage as a ‘threat’ to Jewish survival – as we did in the mid-20th century – today we are instead exploring ways to engage all couples and families with a Jewish partner in the beauty and meaning of Jewish community and practice.”
In recent years, the movement’s standards on intermarriage have shifted. In 2017, Conservative institutions voted to allow non-Jews to become members of synagogues. The following year, it removed a ban on its rabbis attending interfaith weddings.
In 2020, the USCJ hired Keren McGinity as interfaith specialist; like Freudenberger, her spouse is not Jewish. She recently produced a handbook on interfaith inclusion that Blumenthal says is a vital step in shifting the status of interfaith families within the movement while holding firm on matters of traditional Jewish law, or halacha, which forbids Jews from marrying non-Jews.
Blumenthal said the movement has established a task force that will recommend further steps for welcoming intermarried couples. He said the task force, composed of clergy and lay leaders, will aim to “balance tradition and modernity within the framework of halacha.”
Shirat Hayam has been striving to find ways to include and welcome interfaith families in its community for years. In 2018, Rabbi Michael Ragozin founded an Interfaith Task Force to address an issue challenging many in the community at that time – non-Jewish spouses of Jewish congregants could not serve on the board of directors. Ultimately, the congregation voted to extend full membership privileges to non-Jewish spouses.
“A couple of generations back, intermarriage was a different phenomenon. Intermarriage may have been more likely to walk away from Jewish tradition, Jewish community, raising Jewish kids,” said Ragozin. He noted that today, the data says otherwise.
The 2020 Pew survey of American Jews found that Jews married to other Jews are far more likely than intermarried couples to say they are raising their minor children as “Jewish by religion.” But it also found that the adult children of intermarried couples are “increasingly likely” to identify as Jewish — and that two-thirds of intermarried couples today say they are raising their children with a Jewish identity.
As that data was emerging, long-standing patterns in rabbinic hiring were changing rapidly. In recent years, the number of people seeking to attend denominational seminaries, including the ones operated by the Conservative movement, has fallen sharply, creating a gap between the number of synagogues seeking rabbis and cantors and the number of applicants on the job market. Meanwhile, non-traditional, often low-residency programs have grown — including the Aleph Ordination Program where Freudenberger was ordained in 2022.
Aleph is affiliated with the Jewish Renewal movement but its graduates work in all kinds of synagogues. And when Freudenberger emerged as a leading candidate in Shirat Hayam’s cantor search, Ragozin saw an opportunity.
“The lightbulb went off in my head,” he said. “This is how we’re going to signal to the broader Jewish community that’s on the North Shore, that’s looking at Shirat Hayam for the North Shore – we’re going to signal to intermarried families that this is a place in which you belong.”
Before moving ahead with the plan – for a Renewal-ordained cantor to officiate interfaith weddings for the community – Shirat Hayam leaders checked in with the USCJ. The response they got was that that scenario would not require the synagogue to disaffiliate from the movement, as long as the service wasn’t held on the congregation’s property.
Blumenthal said the new task force is examining cases like Shirat Hayam’s, and putting together a report that will “help us frame important questions like the ones that are raised by the practice in Swampscott.”
During the interview process, the search committee asked Freudenberger if she would be willing to officiate interfaith weddings.
“That sent me a clear message that the synagogue was interested,” she said. “They not only wanted to allow it, but were interested in me doing them for the congregation.”
She was hired in 2021.
“We don’t want to be ‘backroom’ about it,” she said. “We want to be open about it, we want to tell people about it. We want to say ‘You’re welcome here, you’re welcome with us, we want you to be a part of our community.’”
Since her ordination, Freudenberger has officiated at four weddings – two between Jews, and two interfaith.
“People that are coming looking for a Jewish wedding want a Jewish wedding,” she said. “If their answer is no, what does that tell them about being Jewish? What does that tell them about being Jewish as a family?”
A version of this story originally appeared in the Jewish Journal of Greater Boston and is reprinted with permission.
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The post To welcome interfaith couples, this Conservative synagogue hired a rabbi who’s allowed to wed them appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Insists US Will ‘Take’ Gaza, Jordan’s King Stays Mum on Palestinian Relocation During White House Visit
US President Donald Trump meets with Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House in Washington, DC, Feb. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump insisted that America will “take” Gaza and that other countries in the Middle East will absorb the Palestinians currently residing in the enclave while meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan in the White House on Tuesday.
“There’s nothing to buy. We will have Gaza. No reason to buy. There is nothing to buy,” Trump said.
The president suggested that the damage incurred by the ongoing Israel-Hamas war has corroded Gaza’s value and that the United States will simply seize the enclave. However, he did not detail how he plans to facilitate or finance the reconstruction of Gaza.
“It’s Gaza. It’s a war-torn area. We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it. We’re going to cherish it,” Trump added.
Nonetheless, the president vowed that the US will energize Gaza’s economy and turn the territory into a “diamond” and “tremendous asset” for the Middle East. Trump maintained that Gaza possesses the potential to become a “great economic development” for the region, touting its scenic location on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
However, the president lamented that seemingly “every 10 years” Gaza erupts into explosive warfare, resulting in “death and destruction” for its civilians.
Trump added that he believes “99 percent” that the United States could strike an agreement with Egypt to relocate the residents of Gaza, where the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas ruled before the war and remains the strongest faction.
When asked what he thought of Trump’s ambitions to transfer Palestinian civilians to Egypt, Abdullah revealed that Egypt and other Arab countries are planning to meet in Saudi Arabia to discuss the future of Gaza. Abdullah refused to speak extensively about Trump’s stated goal of removing Palestinians from Gaza, advising reporters to “not get ahead of ourselves” and wait for Arab countries to deliberate about the matter.
“It’s hard to make this work in a way that’s good for everybody,” Abdullah said.
Though the Jordanian king would not commit to taking in large numbers of Palestinians, he said Jordan would be willing to “take 2,000 children that are cancer children or are in [a] very ill state” while Arab countries “wait for the Egyptians to present their plan on how we can work with the president to work on Gaza challenges.”
During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House last week, Trump called on Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states in the region to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war between Israel and the Hamas. Arab leaders have adamantly rejected Trump’s proposal.
Last week, the US president expressed similar sentiments as he did on Tuesday, saying that the US would “take over” the Gaza Strip to build the war-torn Palestinian enclave back up. However, many members of the US Congress across both parties pushed back on Trump’s declaration, accusing him of endangering American troops, destabilizing the Middle East, and floating an ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza. Trump has also stated that Palestinians would not have the “right to return” to Gaza after being relocated and said no US troops would be needed for his plan without elaborating.
Following his meeting with Trump, Abdullah took to social media to call for a permanent end to the war in Gaza and the creation of a Palestinian state.
“This is the unified Arab position. Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all,” he wrote on X/Twitter.
“Achieving just peace on the basis of the two-state solution is the way to ensure regional stability. This requires US leadership. President Trump is a man of peace. He was instrumental in securing the Gaza ceasefire. We look to US and all stakeholders in ensuring it holds,” the Jordanian king added.
The post Trump Insists US Will ‘Take’ Gaza, Jordan’s King Stays Mum on Palestinian Relocation During White House Visit first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Bowdoin College Clears ‘Gaza Encampment’
Anti-Zionist Bowdoin College students storming the Smith Union administrative building on the evening of Feb. 6, 2025, to occupy it in protest of what they said are the college’s links to Israel. Photo: Screenshot
Bowdoin College in Maine has negotiated an end to an anti-Zionist group’s occupation of an administrative building without acceding to any of its demands for a boycott of Israel, The Bowdoin Orient reported on Monday.
The group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)had installed an encampment inside Smith Union on Thursday night in response to US President Donald Trump’s proposing that the US “take over” the Gaza Strip and transform it into a hub for tourism and economic dynamism. The roughly 50 students who resided inside the building vowed not to leave until the Bowdoin officials agree to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Following the action, Bowdoin officials promptly moved to deescalate the situation by counseling the students to mind the “gravity of situation” in which they placed themselves, with senior associate dean Katie Toro-Ferrari warning that their behavior “could put them on the path where they are jeopardizing their ability to remain as Bowdoin students.” No sooner had it sent this communication than it began issuing temporary suspensions to students who rejected appeals to leave Smith Union and return to normal student life.
“You will be placed on temporary suspension, effective immediately, pending a college disciplinary process,” Bowdoin vice president Jim Hoppe wrote to the protesters in a letter, copies of which were sent to their parents. “During your immediate suspension, you may not attend your Spring 2025 courses … Your family will receive a copy of this letter. This temporary status will continue until further notice.”
Facing threats of severer sanctions, SJP agreed to vacate Smith Union on Monday and shared that they had issued a plea for mercy in discussions with college officials which called for them to “understand a context of good faith for the students who have engaged in this action.” By that time, several students had already left the building, according to the Orient.
Republicans in Washington, DC have said that disruptive and extremist political activity on college campuses “will no longer be tolerated in the Trump administration.” Meanwhile, the new US president has enacted a slew of policies aimed at reining in disruptive and discriminatory behavior.
Continuing work started during his first administration — when Trump issued Executive Order 13899 to ensure that civil rights law apply equally Jews — Trump’s recent “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism” calls for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” The order also requires each government agency to write a report explaining how it can be of help in carrying out its enforcement. Another major provision of the order calls for the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Bowdoin College Clears ‘Gaza Encampment’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Rebuffs Trump’s ‘Worthless’ Call for Israel to Resume War if Terror Group Refuses to Release Hostages
Then-US President-elect Donald Trump makes remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, US, Jan. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Hamas has rebuffed US President Donald Trump’s warning that he’ll “let hell break out” if the Palestinian terrorist group does not release all the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza, saying that the American leader’s threats are “worthless and only complicate matters.”
“Trump must remember that there is an agreement that must be respected by both parties, and this is the only way to get the prisoners back,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhr told multiple press agencies, referring to the Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal between the terrorist group and Israel. “The language of threats is worthless and only complicates matters.”
On Monday, Trump advised Israel to cancel the ceasefire and said he would “let hell break out” if Hamas refused to release the remaining hostages. Trump’s comments echoed statements made by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, last month that the White House would support Israel resuming the war in Gaza if Hamas violated the ceasefire agreement.
“As far as I’m concerned, if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock … I would say, cancel it [the hostage deal] and all bets are off and let hell break out,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “I’d say they ought to be returned by 12 o’clock on Saturday, and if they’re not returned — all of them — not in dribs and drabs, not two and one and three and four and two — Saturday at 12 o’clock. And after that, I would say, all hell is going to break out.”
Trump cautioned that Israel might want to override him on the issue and said he might speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump’s comments came after Hamas announced on Monday that it would stop releasing Israeli hostages until further notice over alleged violations of the ceasefire deal. Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida claimed that Israel has prevented Palestinians from returning to northern Gaza, conducted strikes throughout the Gaza Strip, and impeded the delivery of humanitarian goods.
“The resistance leadership has closely monitored the enemy’s violations and its failure to uphold the terms of the agreement,” Obeida said.
The Israel Defense Forces has insisted that its strikes were conducted for defensive purposes, saying that its soldiers have “operated to distance suspects who posed a threat to them in different areas of the Gaza Strip.”
“The IDF is committed to fully implementing the conditions of the agreement for the return of the hostages,” the military wrote in a statement, adding that their forces are “prepared for any scenario and will continue to take any necessary actions to thwart immediate threat to IDF soldiers.”
Meanwhile, Israel said last week that 12,600 trucks of aid had arrived in Gaza since the beginning of the deal on Jan. 19.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the war in Gaza when they murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during their invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in the neighboring enclave. The conflict raged for nearly 16 months until both sides agreed to last month’s ceasefire and hostage-release deal, the first phase of which is set to last six weeks.
Under phase one, Hamas agreed to free a total of 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, and in exchange, Israel would release over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorist activity. Meanwhile, fighting in Gaza will stop as negotiators work on agreeing to a second phase of the agreement, which is expected to include Hamas releasing all remaining hostages held in Gaza and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave.
So far, 16 of the 33 hostages in Gaza have been released within the first phase of the ceasefire.
The three latest hostages were released on Saturday. Their strikingly thin and emaciated bodies sparked international outrage about Hamas’s treatment of the hostages, with Trump comparing the captives to Holocaust survivors.
The details of the second phase of the ceasefire are still being negotiated. However, Israel has reportedly presented the White House with a plan to advance the truce with Hamas.
The post Hamas Rebuffs Trump’s ‘Worthless’ Call for Israel to Resume War if Terror Group Refuses to Release Hostages first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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