By Sherwin Pomerantz
Over the last week or so there has been a flurry of commentary resulting from
a piece penned by Daniel Kirzane, a Wexner Graduate Fellow and rabbinical student at
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City, where he
also earned a master’s degree in Jewish education.
Last October he delivered a sermon at HUC-JIR
entitled, “Open the Door: Our Reform Duty to Open HUC-JIR to Applicants and
Students with Non-Jewish Partners.” His continued dialogue on this issue has
appeared in Reform Judaism Magazine and is forthcoming in Sh’ma: A Journal of
Jewish Ideas. His basic thesis is that
the Reform movement should relax its long standing position against admitting
people into their rabbinic program when they are married to non-Jewish
partners.
In his defense of his position he states:
Rabbis, cantors, and Jewish
educators are “symbolic exemplars” of Jewish life. Thus, when we state
requirements of entry into these roles, we state what’s most important to us.
Sadly, we currently make this statement negatively. You cannot be a rabbi if you have a non-Jewish partner. Instead, let us declare our values
positively by stating explicitly which qualities the Reform movement’s preeminent
educational institution deems essential to professional Jewish leadership.
Perhaps we should require our students to demonstrate (1) a mindful Shabbat
practice, (2) an ethical dietary practice, and (3) a sustained commitment to
social justice.
This is certainly a strangely illogical sequence of
thoughts. On the one hand he admits that
the religious leaders of the community are “symbolic exemplars” of Jewish
life. As such, one would expect that
independent of the choice any individual Jews makes regarding his or her
significant other, if one chooses to be
a ”religious leader” within Judaism one needs to be an example of basic
Jewish values. So logic would dictate
that the profession of rabbi, cantor, or Jewish educator, demands that such
people see Jewish marriage as an imperative, for them.
With an intermarriage rate in the US of over 50%
clearly who one marries is not a critical factor for large segments of the
Jewish community. But if someone chooses
religious leadership as a profession, it would seem that he or she should also
value Jewish tradition by upholding such a basic value as Jewish marriage.
Critics of the non-Orthodox streams of Jewish
observance will be quick to point out, of course, that this is a natural
progression resulting from the relaxation of other rules and regulations which
then allows people like Kirzane to reduce the importance of Jewish marriage to
a lower place in the ranking of critical characteristics that contribute to our
long term viability as a people. And they
may be right.
No doubt, we also did our diaspora communities a
major disservice as well when we, 40 years ago, began to elect intermarried lay
people to positions of leadership in religious organizations.
Nevertheless, if there are no red lines at all,
even within Reform; if there really is nothing that cannot be breached in the
name of modernity, then we are left with just a shell of a religion. The
Reform movement will be doing Judaism a disservice larger than their decision
on patrilineal descent if they accede to this push to de-Judaize the institution
of marriage as it applies to its religious leadership.
It was Abraham Lincoln who said “Important
principles may and must be inflexible.”
That is as true today as it was when he said it. It is sad that the Kirzanes of the world don’t
understand that.
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