How realistic is Nobody Wants This?

If the scenario might be have once seem far-fetched, it is not so in the diaspora now. The main Reform rabbinic organisation in the US, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, has no membership bar on rabbis with non-Jewish spouses. Neither do its equivalents here, the Assembly of Reform Rabbis and Cantors and the Conference of Liberal Rabbis and Cantors.

More than a decade ago, Britain’s Progressive rabbinic training academy, the Leo Baeck College in London, changed its rules to allow the admission of rabbinic students with a non-Jewish partner – a new policy that was triggered by concern over equality laws. However, the Reform seminary in the States, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, followed suit only this summer.

Announcing the change, HUC’s leaders said it recognised that “many Jewish individuals with non-Jewish partners maintain a Jewish family and home in which Judaism exclusively is practised and are deeply engaged with Jewish communal life and peoplehood. We believe we should welcome these individuals into HUC-JIR and into leadership roles in Jewish communities.”

But in line with the expectation that graduates would keep a Jewish home, the college added a new provision that “students with children are expected to raise them exclusively as Jews engaged with Jewish religious practice, education, and community”.

Explaining the background, Professor Andrew Rehfeld, the college’s president, told the JC: “What’s really important to note is that 40 or 50 years ago marriage to a non-Jew was a statement by an individual of their disinterest or outright rejection of Judaism. Today marriage to a non-Jew does not necessarily constitute a statement of alienation or rejection of Jewish community.

“Additionally, we see some of the most committed Jewish families exclusively practising Judaism and raising their children as Jewish within intermarried homes.”

Applicants to HUC have included children of mixed-faith parentage who “as a matter of principle and their lived experience don’t accept that you need a Jewish spouse to have a Jewish house home and family”.

Maintaining the insistence on Jewish partners meant the college had been losing some “unbelievably qualified students”.

As for the prevalence of interdating rabbis, “I don’t think it is that it is frequent”. He believes that “in many congregations they would not accept a rabbi in an interfaith relationship. But I think the norms of this are changing rapidly.”

Abby Pogrebin, former president of a large Reform congregation in New York, Central Synagogue – and co-author of the recently published It Takes Two to Torah – observed that rabbis marrying non-Jews was “such a new development for the Reform movement that I think it’s premature to say how the wider non-Orthodox Jewish community feels about it.

“But I will say that the Reform community has already seen the powerful impact of welcoming interfaith couples to our congregations with open arms — because so many of those couples choose Jewish life for the families they build and they strengthen us with their curiosity and embrace of Jewish tradition, ritual and learning.

“We have seen what happens when the non-Jewish spouse or partner is shunned or sidelined – we alienate the Jew in that relationship and often lose the couple all together.”

In the UK, Rabbi Robyn Ashworth-Steen of the Manchester Reform Synagogue, who co-chairs the Reform Assembly, said, “We have a plethora of diverse relationships and families within the rabbinate which makes it all the richer.”

As for colleagues with a non-Jewish partner, “from my point of view and my generation of rabbis [she is 41], it’s not an issue”, she said. “I would like to think that no one would raise an eyebrow if the rabbi had a partner from another faith.”

Coming from a “dual heritage” herself – her mother is Jewish, her father not – she is strongly committed to the principle of inclusion within the Progressive movement.

“It would be quite hypocritical to say that rabbis should have a different standard,” she said.

Whereas Orthodox synagogues often employ a rabbinic couple recognising a formal role for a rebbetzin alongside the rabbi, the same is generally not the case in Progressive communities.

Rabbi Ashworth-Steen couldn’t think of any instance of a community refusing a position to a rabbi because their partner was not Jewish. Indeed, she wondered what the legal implications would be in terms of equality law if it had.

But Rabbi Aaron Goldstein of the Ark (Liberal) Synagogue in Northwood, while emphasising too inclusiveness within the movement, wondered whether the leaders of a community should still be expected to role model “what might be seen as an ideal situation” by having a Jewish partner.

He acknowledged feeling “caught betwixt and between… Our heads say this, our hearts say that”.

Meanwhile, talk about Nobody Wants This looks set to go on with a likely second series. Although Professor Rehfeld’s verdict was: “As entertaining as the show was, it was unrealistic in the depiction of the rabbi’s commitment to Jewish life.”