Mixed Marriage Question Left to Rabbis

Amid growing pressure on rabbis to marry Jews to non-Jews, lay leaders of Reform Judaism have voted not to challenge their rabbis’ official opposition to interfaith marriage ceremonies.

The Union of American Hebrew Congregations’ national board of trustees took up the hot-button issue for the first time at its three-day meeting here. The board decided that the rabbis’ right of conscience and authority on religious matters must be respected.

“We should be able to trust our rabbis,” said board member Mark Levy, a past president of Leo Baeck Temple in Bel-Air.

Many rabbis had cautioned that even suggesting policy changes would tip the delicate balance of power between lay and rabbinic leadership.

In Saturday night’s voting, only 15 or 20 trustees raised their hands in favor of the resolution, out of 170 trustees. “I’m very disappointed, but I was able to raise the question of ‘Who is religion for, the people or the rabbis?’ ” said David Belin of Des Moines, Iowa, who proposed the resolution.

The liberal Reform wing of Judaism, which has 860 temples and more than 1.3 million members in North America, is roughly comparable in size with centrist Conservative Judaism. Various Orthodox organizations make up the smaller, traditionalist segment of American Judaism.

A 1990 survey found that 62% of Reform Jews who married in the late 1980s had wed non-Jewish partners, a trend that Reform leaders said threatens to decimate the American Jewish population.

About 40% of Reform rabbis perform interfaith weddings. Their official organization, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, is on record against mixed-faith weddings, but acknowledges the right of a rabbi to follow his or her own conscience.

Parents in many Reform temples contend that if their rabbi turns down the request of their sons and daughters to conduct a wedding, the effect on the Jewish partner and his or her family might be devastating.

Pressure on rabbis to officiate at interfaith weddings is especially strong because of that wing’s adoption of other changes, such as the ordination of women rabbis and cantors, and not requiring kosher diets. Critics also say the official policy is hypocritical because Reform Judaism has a growing program to welcome married couples of mixed faith to synagogue life.

In June, the Central Conference’s executive committee reaffirmed the official opposition to mixed marriages.

Two Southern California rabbis explained their opposing stances on mixed-faith marriages during a trustees session Saturday.

After declining at first to officiate at interfaith weddings at Congregation Emanu El in San Bernardino, Rabbi Hillel Cohn said he has done so now for 25 years.

“The Jewish partners of those mixed marriages have in the great majority not only maintained their ties with the Jewish people but also have strengthened those bonds--expressed in the creation of homes where children are being raised as proud and participating Jews,” Cohn said.

However, Rabbi Carole L. Meyers of Glendale said that she refuses because interfaith weddings, in her view, “diminish the power and integrity of the ritual [and] will be perfunctory rather than expressing holiness.”

The issue--recently termed by a Reform journal as dominating relations today between rabbis and congregations--”is a rabbi’s nightmare,” Meyers said.