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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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Armed attacker arrested after lunging at Ohio Jewish gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton
(JTA) — Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, a Jewish Democrat, was unharmed following an attack by an armed individual at the sprawling Canfield Fair on Sunday.
Police arrested 38-year-old Patrick Havas, who had pushed his way through a crowd in a Democratic Party fairgrounds tent where she was speaking, the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office announced on Sunday evening.
“While attending the Canfield Fair, an armed individual lunged at Dr. Acton, injuring multiple people,” Addie Bullock, communications director for the Acton campaign, said in a statement.
“This kind of violence has no place in Ohio,” Bullock added. “Dr. Acton will always stand up to the chaos, hate and vitriol that pits us against one another.”
Acton, who would be Ohio’s first Jewish governor if elected, is a former director of the Ohio Department of Health and completed residencies in both pediatrics and preventative medicine.
Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, Acton’s opponent in the upcoming election, released a statement condemning the attack on Sunday. His communications director, Connie Luck, stressed that “candidates should be able to meet with voters without having to worry about threats or violence.”
“What happened today is completely unacceptable and has no place in politics, and we hope that no one was hurt,” she added.
Havas had at first entered the fairgrounds tent and began recording Acton’s speech on his cell phone, but when he began pushing, Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers confronted him, according to the sheriff’s office. During the confrontation, two people were knocked to the ground and Havas was taken into custody by Canfield Fair police.
Following Havas’s arrest, police said they found two handguns and a set of brass knuckles in his possession, although no weapons were ever brandished or removed from their holsters.
Detectives on Sunday night added that they’d be continuing the investigation and would be filing charges after consulting with the Mahoning County Prosecutor.
The Canfield Fair, established in 1846, describes itself as the third-largest county fair nationwide. The fairgrounds, located about 75 miles southeast of Cleveland, sits on 353 acres of land and houses more than 60 buildings.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Armed attacker arrested after lunging at Ohio Jewish gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton appeared first on The Forward.
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Far-right win in Germany regional race sends shockwaves through Europe
(JTA) — A victory for Germany’s far-right party in an eastern federal state has reverberated across the globe, exposing the widening rifts between alarmed centrist leaders and insurgent nationalist movements in Europe.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won 43.8% of the vote in an election in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, crushing the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party, which held 17.2% support, according to preliminary figures.
The AfD is now heading toward 39 seats in Saxony-Anhalt’s 83-seat state parliament. It’s expected to fall 3 seats short of an outright majority, leaving open the question of whether it can form Germany’s first far-right state government since World War II. The party has proposed a sweeping nationalist agenda that includes deporting immigrants, defunding “anti-German art” and teaching children less about the country’s Nazi past.
Merz told reporters in Berlin on Monday he was “deeply shocked” and “unsettled” by the results, which he said rippled through the rest of the country and the world. He added that it was impossible for Germany to “go back to business as usual” after so many voters in Saxony-Anhalt chose a party that “questions the democratic institutions in our country.”
The results dealt the CDU its “most severe defeat” in decades, conceded Merz, who leads the party once headed by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merz said that he was searching for answers to “why far-right populism and far-right extremism was able to rise in such a rapid manner,” suggesting that his party may have underestimated the “fears of our population” amid economic crises and rapid technological change. He said that minorities in Saxony-Anhalt would be particularly vulnerable under an AfD government, but noted that the state would still have obligations to follow federal law, including regarding immigration policy.
Merz also directed his message to the rest of Europe, saying that Germany had a “special responsibility because of its history” to keep its political order “deeply anchored in Europe.”
Despite the scale of the CDU’s defeat in Saxony-Anhalt, Merz ruled out stepping down, saying, “Giving up is not an option.”
Though Saxony-Anhalt is one of Germany’s smallest regions, home to some 1.7 million voters, its election results quickly sent shockwaves through other European countries whose leaders, like Merz, are fighting to fend off far-right, anti-immigrant parties in national elections next year.
French Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad called the AfD’s regional win a “grave moment in Europe” and said that “nationalism and xenophobia will never be a solution.”
“We cannot forget our history,” said Haddad, an ally of centrist President Emmanuel Macron. “That is the meaning of the choices made by France and Germany.”
France’s government faces its own fears of a right-wing populist wave. Marine Le Pen, the head of the far-right National Rally, has dwarfed all other candidates in polls heading into France’s presidential election in 2027, when term limits force Macron to step down.
Across the Channel, British Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds said in an interview on Times Radio that the U.K.’s Labour government “will not be reaching out to a right-wing populist party.” She added that she put the AfD in “the same political bracket” as Reform UK, the far-right party that surged in local elections earlier this year.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk also condemned the AfD’s victory. The far-right party has alarmed Poland, Ukraine’s neighbor, with its pro-Russia stance, as it seeks to halt Germany’s military aid to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
“In Poland, only idiots or traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD in Germany,” said Tusk.
Meanwhile, the AfD was cheered by nationalist, anti-immigration party leaders in Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, all of whom have sought to capitalize on economic and social grievances similar to those that contributed to the AfD’s victory Sunday.
Santiago Abascal, the head of Spain’s far-right Vox party, called the result “a great hope for Germany and for Europe.”
André Ventura, the founder of Portugal’s far-right Chega party, said that “the Germans too are opening their eyes against illegal and uncontrolled immigration, corruption, and the capture of our freedom and identity.”
And in the Netherlands, the AfD received a “Congratulations” from the far-right Party for Freedom’s leader, Geert Wilders.
While President Donald Trump has yet to officially respond to the Saxony-Anhalt election, he posted a screenshot of the results without comment on his Truth Social account Sunday night.
Trump’s post was shared by Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian presidential envoy and businessman, who said the AfD scored a “historic win” that would “put migration under control.”
Elon Musk, the billionaire and former Trump adviser who campaigned for the AfD last year, gave his support to the national party leader Alice Weidel on X, which he owns, writing “Well done” in German.
Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s candidate in Saxony-Anhalt who hopes to become the state premier, responded by praising Musk.
“Thank you, @elonmusk, for your support and for your clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time — including here in Germany,” he wrote.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Far-right win in Germany regional race sends shockwaves through Europe appeared first on The Forward.
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How synagogues and Southern Jews came to mourn Robert E. Lee
In October 1870, mourning covered New Orleans.
The doors of the St. Charles Theater and Academy of Music were draped following the death of Robert E. Lee. Along St. Charles Street, saloons displayed signs of grief. Black and white cloth appeared on private homes, stores, banks and warehouses. The New-Orleans Weekly Times reported that “the rich and the poor vied with each other in their outward manifestations of grief.”
On Carondelet Street, the synagogue was draped too. Here at the Congregation Dispersed of Judah, the main door “presented a cloud of white and black draping.” Inside, the congregation’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs, delivered a eulogy for Lee. He turned to Zechariah 11:2 and compared the dead Confederate general to a fallen cedar.
In Galveston, Texas, another Southern Jewish congregation went further. At what a newspaper described as an “Orthodox congregation of Israelites,” a prayer was offered for Lee’s soul. It asked God, “who resteth in the highest heavens,” to grant Lee rest beneath the wings of divine providence.
“We pray to the Almighty that He shall keep him under His wings forever,” the congregation prayed, so that “at the resurrection” Lee’s soul would be among those “prepared to live again.”
The synagogue memorials were not isolated expressions of grief. Many Southern Jews had supported the Confederacy, served in its army and shared their neighbors’ admiration for Lee. Lee had also developed a reputation among Jewish soldiers for respecting their religious practice during the war. Their mourning reflected both a Jewish community deeply embedded in the society around it and a particular memory of Lee that would endure for generations.
Fighting for the Confederacy, observing Yom Kippur
For Jewish soldiers, loyalty to the Confederacy and religious observance could exist side by side. Confederate officers sometimes accommodated those needs, and Lee himself corresponded with a Richmond rabbi about allowing Jewish soldiers to observe their holidays.
In September 1861, around 40 Jewish soldiers stationed at a Confederate army camp in Pensacola, Florida, received permission from General Braxton Bragg to observe the Day of Atonement. Newspapers across the South reported that as the soldiers prayed “to the God of their fathers,” they “forgot not the Government for which they have taken up arms.”
That same year, Rabbi Maximilian J. Michelbacher of Richmond reminded Jewish soldiers that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were approaching. A Richmond correspondent estimated that thousands of Jews were serving in Virginia and wrote that “no class of our citizens have responded more liberally to the treasury and army of the Confederacy than the Southern Jews.”
Michelbacher also corresponded with Lee about allowing Jewish soldiers time away from the army for religious observance.
In 1864, he asked that Jewish soldiers be allowed to return to Richmond for the High Holidays. Lee declined to grant a general furlough but told the rabbi that he would “gladly do all in my power to facilitate the observance of the duties of their religion by the Israelites in the Army.”
Individual applications, he said, could be approved when circumstances allowed.
An account recorded in the 1887 work Christ in the Camp: Or Religion in the Confederate Army by Reverend J. William Jones, a Southern Baptist minister and Confederate chaplain, described a captain rejecting a Jewish soldier’s request to attend religious services. The captain wrote that if such applications were approved, “the whole army would turn Jews or Shaking Quakers.”
Lee overruled the decision. He returned the request with advice that the captain “should always respect the religious views and feelings of others.”
In 1870, Lee visited Norfolk, Virginia. Among those who came to see him was Emanuel J. Myers, an 89-year-old Jew who had served under Napoleon I and received the French Legion of Honor.
A report in The Israelite, a Cincinnati Jewish newspaper, described Myers approaching with a “full flowing, snow beard,” his medal shining on his breast. The old soldier greeted Lee with “a hearty shake of a soldier’s hand.”
The newspaper called Lee the “brave hero” and “great chieftain.”
The Almighty, the reporter said, had allowed Myers to live long enough to “grasp the hand of one whom we all delight to honor.”
Lee died five months later.
Remembering Lee as a friend to the Jews
Decades later, Lee was still being invoked as a symbol of religious tolerance.
In 1914, Rabbi Henry Barnston of Temple Beth Israel in Houston referenced Lee’s defense of a Jewish soldier’s religious observance while speaking about the persistence of intolerance. Others used the story similarly. In 1922, The American Israelite put it on its front page beneath a simple headline: “General Lee Respected the Jews.” Four years later, Vanderbilt University professor Edwin Mims invoked Lee while arguing against religious bigotry. His words, Mims said, “ought to ring out in America today.”
Nor were these accounts confined to the South. A story about Lee’s respect for Jews appeared in The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle in 1928. In 1930, University of Wisconsin president Glenn Frank spoke about it at a memorial for Lee while condemning intolerance in the South. “You cannot fight for even one hour in the ranks of intolerance,” Frank said, “without turning traitor to the memory of the great Lee.”
The story took on new meaning after the October 1958 bombing of The Temple in Atlanta. The explosion tore through the synagogue building after Rabbi Jacob Rothschild had become an outspoken supporter of civil rights. One person claiming responsibility invoked a “Confederate Underground.”
In an op-ed published afterward in The Arizona Post and other outlets, David Schwartz, a writer with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, remembered the long history of Jews in Georgia and returned to the story of Lee defending a Jewish soldier’s religious observance.
“I don’t think Robert E. Lee would have liked to be associated with them,” he wrote, referring to the self-described “Confederate Underground” that claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Back in 1870, the synagogue memorials in New Orleans and Galveston had been part of a much wider response to Lee’s death. In Memphis, a newspaper remarked on the range of people who joined the city’s funeral procession, including Northerners, immigrants and “Hebrews,” writing that “none were found to show disrespect or even indifference.”
As plans emerged for an equestrian monument to Lee in Richmond, organizers proposed that on memorial days throughout the South, “every congregation, Christian and Hebrew,” make a contribution. The statue, erected in 1890, stood until 2021.
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