By “welcoming people as they are,” the Conservative movement is declaring that they accept intermarriage
Ihad to look twice at the recent headline in the Times of Israel: “American Conservative Judaism Apologizes, Signals New Approach To Intermarriage.” Finally, I mused, they are admitting that their spineless approach to Torah and mitzvos has only increased intermarriage, and they are courageous enough to acknowledge their historic error and to embark on a different path.
Empty hope. The very first sentence of the news story jarred me back into reality: They were “ apologizing for decades of discouraging intermarriage… and were now embarking on a new approach centered on engagement.” Surely this was a printer’s error: They whose abandonment of halachic norms and whose elastic approach to mitzvos resulted in the loss of their youth and the subsequent spike in intermarriage — they are now changing direction and will do what? They will be less discouraging about intermarriage, because that discouragement “alienated” Jews from Judaism. Instead, the Conservative movement “will welcome people as they are.” (Imagine a mother not correcting her child for fear of alienating the child.)
The statement issued by the committee, which consisted of representatives of the Conservative United Synagogue and the Rabbinical Assembly, should win an award for meaninglessness and left-liberal woke terminology. It is reminiscent of the old joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Dotting the statement are jargon terms and concepts like “listening sessions,” “focal groups,” “consensus,” “repairing trust,” “having a conversation,” and “widening pathways into Jewish life.”
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