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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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Democrats to weigh resolution condemning AIPAC, fueling concerns about ‘undercurrent of antisemitism’
(JTA) — The Democratic National Committee is set to consider a resolution at a meeting next week that “condemns the growing influence” of AIPAC.
The resolution also condemns large-scale outside spending in elections generally but calls out only the pro-Israel lobby specifically, even as other lobbies are pouring similar sums into trying to influence election outcomes.
The meeting is being held during an election cycle in which rejecting AIPAC support has become a defining issue in Democratic races. It also comes amid concerns from some Jewish Democrats — including ones critical of AIPAC — that the group’s emergence as a bogeyman in American politics is inappropriate or even antisemitic.
“I do think there is an undercurrent of antisemitism in the degree to which AIPAC seems to be vilified,” Rep. Dan Goldman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month. Goldman has accepted an endorsement from AIPAC as he seeks a third term, but says he won’t take money from corporate PACs in this election.
The resolution, which is subject to amendments before it is voted on, specifically names AIPAC and its super PAC, United Democracy Project, as having been “one of the largest outside spenders in Democratic contests” in 2024. It also refers broadly to other “corporate money PACs” and sources of “dark money,” though it does not name any specific groups.
Committee member Allison Minnerly, who introduced the resolution, told the Intercept, a left-wing outlet, that formally distancing the Democratic party from AIPAC “could be one step toward” winning back voters who “might really not have felt represented or seen when it came to Gaza or seeing their party support Palestinian rights or stand against military conflict.” Minnerly also introduced a resolution last August calling for an arms embargo on Israel, which was defeated.
A recent NBC poll found that 57% of Democratic voters have a negative view of Israel, compared to 13% who have a positive view of the country.
Meanwhile, a growing number of the party’s congressional candidates — and politicians thought to be seeking its 2028 presidential nomination — are swearing off AIPAC, and crossing its red line of supporting conditions on military aid to Israel.
The group has also spawned opposition online. Track AIPAC, the social media watchdog that posts politicians’ pro-Israel lobbying campaign donation numbers, has amassed 442,000 followers on X since 2024.
At town halls and candidate forums, politicians on the campaign trail are often being asked whether they would accept an endorsement or donations from the group.
Alana Zeitchik, an Israeli-American advocate and writer, said she understands that candidates might be asked about AIPAC in those types of settings, and said that she personally “would love to hear candidates” reject all special interest and corporate dollars. But when they hone in on AIPAC “on their own accord,” she said, she views it as “a political strategy to feed the beast, this hyper-obsession with AIPAC.”
The proposed DNC resolution voices concern over “massive outside spending” on candidates based on their foreign policy positions, pointing specifically to AIPAC’s $14 million spend in a single Illinois primary. The threat of those expenditures “raises concerns about undue influence over democratic debate and policymaking,” the resolution reads, and in “shaping Democratic party positions.”
The resolution condemns “the growing influence of dark money and corporate-backed independent expenditures in Democratic elections.”
AIPAC has remained a major spender in this year’s midterm elections. The group, which is operating with the aim of electing a majority pro-Israel Congress, recently shelled out around $22 million in support of four Illinois candidates, three of whom it backed through shell PACs under different names. Two of its four preferred candidates won.
While it narrows in on AIPAC, the DNC resolution does not address other types of high-spending special interest groups, such as real estate lobbying groups or the burgeoning landscape of pro-AI PACs.
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who has previously received AIPAC donations but is rejecting all PAC money this year, told Politico last week that the particular attention paid to AIPAC has been “problematic.”
“There are Iranian Americans that bundle money. There are Turkish Americans that bundle money. There are a lot of ethnic groups that bundle money, and often for things that I don’t agree with. But somehow AIPAC seems to be drawing a lot of attention, and that’s problematic to me,” Booker said. “[AIPAC] is not the problem in America. The problem in America is money in politics.”
Adam Carlson, head of the progressive polling form Zenith Research, poked fun at Booker’s comments with a facetious tweet that dismissed Booker’s concerns, and pointed out the lack of an AIPAC-sized group for Iranian and Turkish Americans.
“Cory’s right. I am sick and tired of the mainstream media refusing to report on PERSIAPAC and TURKPAC spending hundreds of millions of dollars meddling in primaries to boost their preferred candidates,” wrote Carlson, who is Jewish. “It’s an antisemitic double standard, and he’s a hero for pointing it out.”
Goldman, like Booker, says he isn’t taking corporate PAC money in this election, but he did accept AIPAC’s endorsement. Goldman is currently facing a primary challenge from Brad Lander, a Jewish progressive whose attacks against Goldman have centered the congressman’s AIPAC endorsement.
While the DNC’s proposed resolution suggests that AIPAC is shaping Democratic party positions, Goldman asserted that his views are independent from his endorsements.
“I have personally pushed AIPAC very much to recognize that it is an organization that supports first and foremost the State of Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship, but that does not mean that they should be unwavering in their support for the Israeli government,” he said.
He added, “I am going to continue to operate independently, based on my own understanding and nuanced view of the situation, and work towards a peace in the region and two-state solution and security for Israel.”
Other Democrats have said they turned down AIPAC because of foreign policy disagreements. In Illinois, Rep. La Shawn Ford said he met with UDP but did not receive its endorsement because he was unwilling to meet its requirement of supporting unconditional military aid to Israel.
Zeitchik said she is not a fan of AIPAC’s “really dirty” tactics, which have included spending on attack ads against pro-Israel politicians because they are open to conditioning military aid — but she, too, has concerns about the particular attention paid to it.
“I think that the hyper-obsession with AIPAC amongst progressives, and making AIPAC the bogeyman, the problem, has an undercurrent of what I’d call an antisemitic worldview, or an antisemitic reaction,” Zeitchik said.
Joel Petlin, the school district superintendent in the heavily Jewish village of Kiryas Joel, outside New York City, wrote that the DNC’s proposed resolution “singles out AIPAC for doing precisely what many other lobby groups are doing every day.”
He added, “If this resolution passes, the DNC can finally stop calling themselves ‘the big tent party,’ because it clearly isn’t large enough for American Jews.”
Similar accounts to Track AIPAC have popped up online, though none have taken off in the same way. Oil PACs Tracker was founded in 2021 and has 43,000 followers. An account called Melt ICE, which tracks candidates’ stance on ICE, has garnered 3,000 followers since being created in January.
Zeitchik said she appreciates how congressional candidates such as Jack Schlossberg, who is running in New York’s 12th Congressional District, have approached the issue by rejecting all special interest money without harping specifically on AIPAC.
“When I see Israel become a wedge issue, and politicians continue to push and make it a wedge issue — that, to me, is alarming,” she said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Democrats to weigh resolution condemning AIPAC, fueling concerns about ‘undercurrent of antisemitism’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Stitched in faith, woven in memory, these precious artifacts bind Jews to their history
The red stitching has long since faded, and the hand-woven linen has softened from white to ivory. Embroidered with a menorah, a double-headed eagle, a lion, and a Magen David, the 18th-century Torah binder is simple in design yet rich in history.
The binder is among 25 artifacts from London’s Memorial Scrolls Trust making their American debut in Fordham University’s “Binders of the Covenant” exhibition. Aside from showing how these functional objects, beautified, in keeping with hiddur mitzvah (beautifying a ritual object) the exhibition reveals the binders’ dual purpose: securing parchment Torah scrolls while symbolically binding families to their community.
“The binders allow us to see the artistic expression of the devotion; of how they reflect traditional values of Jewish identity, like going toward the Torah, toward the chuppah, and doing good deeds. But there is also an acknowledgement of local identity like in the Hapsburg double eagle or a German flag,” Magda Teter, a chaired professor of History and Judaic Studies at Fordham, told me.
Though women were historically excluded from reading or carrying the Torah, they were the primary creators of these binders. Through intricate needlework, they forged a physical connection to the sacred text. The collection includes a binder created by a grieving husband for his late wife, Esther, and another inscribed by a mother celebrating her daughter’s birth.
“It shows that women managed to get close to the Torah, they are bound to the Torah even if their physical bodies were not allowed to do that,” Teter said.
The history of these binders is rooted in survival.
Between the 14th and 20th centuries, Ashkenazi parents in Central Europe swaddled newborn boys in linen strips called wimples. Women embroidered them with religious and secular symbols. When a boy began formal Torah studies around age three, the family donated the wimple to the synagogue to be reused during milestones, such as a recovery from illness or the Shabbat before a wedding.
“It’s a collective story of community. Seeing these artifacts brings history to life,” guest curator Warren Klein said.
Over time, the creation of these binders evolved as women moved beyond traditional linen and cotton to incorporate silk, leather and velvet, reflective of Bohemian artistic traditions.
An intricately decorated 18th century binder featuring intricate leatherwork flowers, embroidery and beads on plum-colored velvet is a prime example.
“It shows an exchange of artistic ideas,” Klein said.
Over time, production shifted from hand-embroidery to sewing machines and paint. The inscriptions shifted as well, as German, Czech, and Yiddish frequently replaced traditional Hebrew.
Visitors to the exhibit will note the lingering shadow of the Shoah. A 1922 binder depicts a Magen David alongside a German flag; a display of pride in both Jewish and national Jewish identity created just two decades before the Holocaust.
Embroidered in canary-yellow silk thread on linen, a 1918 Bar Mitzvah binder for Ludwig Rosenzweig serves as a reminder of this era. On Oct. 26, 1942, Rosenzweig, his wife, and child were murdered at Auschwitz. Today, these binders remain the only physical witnesses to such interrupted lives.
“You can’t escape the loss but in order to appreciate the loss you need to understand the life. Those binders bring the people to life; they capture the moments of joy and celebration, and of course death. The binders create communal memory,” Teter said.
The tradition of hand-sewn binders has faded over the last half-century. Families are more apt to commemorate a child’s birth with the donation of engraved silver Judaica or prayer books with commemorative bookplates.
Yet, rather than lament this change, the exhibit brings the practice of creating binders to the present with the display of contemporary works by fabric artist Rachel Kanter.
“These community binders show vibrancy,” Teter said. “They show that Jewish life is ongoing,”
The post Stitched in faith, woven in memory, these precious artifacts bind Jews to their history appeared first on The Forward.
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California College Employee Calling Jewish Professor ‘Colonizer’ Was Antisemitic, Investigation Finds
Sign reading “Welcome to City College of San Francisco” above glass entry doors with building number 88, San Francisco, California, Aug. 29, 2025. Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
A City College of San Francisco (CCSF) staff member who called a Jewish professor a “colonizer” among other verbal attacks engaged in unlawful harassment and discrimination based on the academic’s Jewish identity, according to an independent investigation into the incident.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Center, two Jewish advocacy groups, on Tuesday celebrated the upholding of a disciplinary investigation’s finding as a “significant victory” for Jewish faculty and students.
“The outcome establishes a critical precedent for how universities must evaluate conduct often mischaracterized as political speech but that, in context, targets Jewish identity,” the groups said in a statement.
The investigation stemmed from a series of incidents which escalated to an explosive May 2025 confrontation in which CCSF employee Maria Salazar-Colon, president of the local Service Employees International Union (SEIU) union, allegedly launched a volley of anti-Jewish invective at computer science professor Abigail Bornstein. Calling Bornstein a “colonizer” and telling her to “shut the f—k up,” Salazar-Colon converted the professor’s name into a sobriquet by denouncing her as “Dumb-stein” during the public comment portion in a meeting of the community college’s board of trustees, according to the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs.
That utterance, combined with other comments related to Israel, indicated Salazar-Colon’s awareness of Bornstein’s Jewishness and her willingness to degrade her over it, the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs said — noting that a trivial discussion on college “governance,” not politics or the Middle East conflict, set the staff member off.
Salazar-Colon allegedly continued targeting Bornstein through email, denouncing her again as a “colonizer” and making other crude statements. The conduct drove the professor off campus. She reported the alleged harassment to the CCSF administration and filed a criminal complaint with the local police.
However, Salazar-Colon hit back, filing her own grievance in response to allege that she was the victim. Meanwhile, the college hired a law firm as a third-party investigator to look into the matter. Its findings were conclusive, determining not only that Salazar-Colon was fully culpable but that her conduct, rising to “workplace violence,” was intentionally discriminatory against a Jewish colleague.
CCSF ultimately dismissed Salazar-Colon’s “retaliatory” complaint, but the finality of its decision hung on the opinion of the college trustees. Salazar-Colon filed an appeal with the body. It took no action, crystallizing, the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs said, a consensus on the “seriousness of the underlying conduct and the strength of support for the [third-party investigator’s] findings.”
On Monday, Brandeis Center staff litigation attorney Deena Margolies told The Algemeiner that, in this case, justice prevailed but that many other Jewish members of academia suffer similar indignities.
“The college did the right thing here. They brought in an independent investigator. They made clear that this was about discrimination based on Bornstein’s protected identity, that being Jewish — not union advocacy — and that’s important and a necessary distinction that we don’t often see being recognized,” Margolies said. “I’m seeing many more of these disciplinary matters in the employee context, and I notice that what often happens is that when a Jewish professor or staff member is targeted or files a complaint, there is often a cross complaint, a baseless complaint which is retaliatory. And yet, they always end up coming through.”
CCSF will be taking disciplinary action. against Salazar-Colon.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, antisemitism promoted by university employees often disguises itself as politics, complicating higher education institutions’ response to it.
In September, a survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) found that staff and faculty accelerated the “antisemitism” crisis on US college campuses by politicizing the classroom, promoting anti-Israel bias, and even discriminating against Jewish colleagues. It found that 73 percent of Jewish faculty witnessed their colleagues engaging in antisemitic activity, and a significant percentage named the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) group as the force driving it.
Of those aware of an FSJP chapter on their campus, the vast majority of respondents reported that the chapter engaged in anti-Israel programming (77.2 percent), organized anti-Israel protests and demonstrations (79.4 percent), and endorsed anti-Israel divestment campaigns (84.8 percent). Additionally, 50 percent of respondents said that anti-Zionist faculty have established de facto, or “shadow,” boycotts of Israel on campus even in the absence of formal declaration or recognition of one by the administration. Among those who reported the presence of such a boycott, 55 percent noted that departments avoid co-sponsoring events with Jewish or pro-Israel groups and 29.5 percent said this policy is also subtly enacted by sabotaging negotiations for partnerships with Israeli institutions. All the while, such faculty fostered an environment in which Jewish professors were “maligned, professionally isolated, and in severe cases, doxxed or harassed” as they assumed the right to determine for their Jewish colleagues what constitutes antisemitism.
Administrative officials responded inconsistently to antisemitic hatred, affording additional rationale to the downstream of hatred. More than half (53.1 percent) of respondents described their university’s response to incidents involving antisemitism or anti-Israel bias as “very” or “somewhat” unhelpful, and a striking 77.3 percent thought the same of their professional academic associations. In totality, alleged faculty misconduct and administrative dereliction combined to degrade the professional experiences of Jewish professors, as many reported “worsening mental and physical health, increased self-censorship, fear for personal safety,” and a sense that the destruction of their careers and reputations was imminent.
“Antisemitism cannot and should not be downplayed as political, academic, or workplace disagreement. Antisemitism is, clearly and concretely, insidious discrimination,” Brandeis Center chairman Kenneth Marcus, a former US assistant secretary of education for civil rights, said in a statement released with the news of the outcome of the CCSF incident. “Institutions have both the authority and the obligation to intervene, and we are hopeful that these outcomes encourage those who wish to report incidents of antisemitism to come forward without fear of retaliation.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.