dauer said:
I'm also glad that some rabbis, working with interfaith couples more closely -- that is, using a different model of interaction than the OP -- are willing to make exceptions for them in certain cases.
and so am i. i just think it should be made abundantly clear what the issues are and when they are likely to arise - i have personal experience of tremendous hurt arising from a decision taken in anger 30 years ago - and that every effort should be made to ensure that a case is made for conversion. i am all for being nice to people, but i don't think that this should be taken advantage of.
There are culturally identifying Jews for whom a wedding and indeed other transitional moments in life make use of Judaism merely for ethnic flavoring.
well, i am entitled to consider that a squandering of an incredible cultural inheritance, which reduces judaism to the level of, say, a chocolate easter bunny. what a loss to the jewish people.
Their Judaism is not my Judaism any more than it's your Judaism, but it is a Judaism and one that has quite a strong following. As long as that cultural identity is passed from one generation to the next there remains the possibility that the children might investigate their heritage more deeply.
but statistically, of course, it won't be passed to even the next generation. that is the point.
wil said:
It seems though members of the Jewish community were first to accept homosexual unions as marriages. Is it halakhah? As you indicated a contract between two Jewish 'people'.
umph - you can't have a homosexual *ketubah*, any more than you can have a ketubah between this synagogue and church that you mention (i almost fell off my chair!) because it's a specific type of contract. of course you can have some kind of other halakhically enforceable contract, but you couldn't contract for a ketubah between other than a jewish man and a jewish woman; the actual word "ketubah" is the amount specified in the marriage contract according to halakhah as her divorce settlement and that can only take place in the context of a marriage. you could have a contract between two homosexual jews, but it could not, as a matter of halakhah, specify as a term of the contract that one of them was entitled to sexual satisfaction from the other, as it is specified in a halakhic marriage contract (the wife's ketubah is payable upon non-delivery of maintenance, sexual satisfaction and i think also shoes, but don't remind mrs bananabrain about the last bit, we don't have any more room in her wardrobes, that's plural), it would be the equivalent of a contract which specified that one of them was entitled to expect the other to feed them bacon in the morning, i think in secular law it's called "ultra vires".
RabbiSteve said:
I totally respect the opinion that Interfaith marriages are problematic. But that is only- I repeat only- for Halachic Jews. And that fact cannot and will not change.
except that that isn't actually true. i expect you learnt, steve, that "kol yisrael arevim zeh-la-zeh", right? well, if you marry a couple and the woman's not jewish and her child comes over to the UK and falls in love with my child, that affects both me and my kid (as halakhic) and the other party - all this does is cause
sinat hinam (pointless hatred) and
hillul haShem (desecration of the Divine Name) - you are kidding yourself if you think that what you do doesn't have consequences for the people you think you're helping.
However for liberal mainstream Jews, Interfaith relationships, marriage and families must be supported and nurtured. They are our future.
HANG ON. how do you get from trying to help these poor misguided sods to them being "our future"? i've just come from
Limmud Home. i *am* a liberal, mainstream jew and i believe that the future is in a renewed commitment to the traditional values of learning, Torah, culture, derech eretz and last but not least, halakhah. your position appears to be an enormous leap to unwarranted conclusions.
After living as a Halachic Jew for many years, I began to understand it was no longer acceptable for me. My vision had become wider- and I now embrace all choices. Halacha was never truly practiced in my Conservative communities. It was always hypocritical in application- from shabbat observance through kashrut. And it resonated for only a very few elderly people.
so your solution, rather than to remove the hypocrisy, is to remove the halakhah? well, pardon me if that makes no sense. why don't you try seeing how life is lived when halakhah is *not* a matter for hypocrisy? or, if you are determined to see hypocrisy everywhere, why do you insist that halakhah be configured to the standards of angels, not normal human beings?
But we must learn to be respectful and be non-judgmental and yes- SUPPORTIVE towards each other.
i don't see why that should be an absolute moral relativism. open-mindedness doesn't mean taking leave of one's critical judgement. a world without judgement is simply a bunch of fluffy, hot-air utopian hippy nonsense. is there *anything* you wouldn't be "supportive" of?
It is true that child of an interfaith couple might one day marry a non-Jew. Yet, if there is a spark in their hearts- that is lit by the love and support of a rabbi or cantor somewhere in their journeys- the end result might be a new Jewish generation.
what an absolutely supine and servile surrender to the selfishness of whimsy and egocentricity. you should read starke and finke's groundbreaking book on the sociology of religion: "acts of faith" - a religion that makes no demands attracts no loyalty and, ultimately, no adherents. that is what the statistics say. anything worth having involves paying a price. all you are doing is giving away a free label - and guess what people do with free stuff?
That is the premise- and guess what? It works. Many of the interfaith couples I have counseled are choosing to raise their children as Jews or at least expose them to both faiths.
that for you is "working"? sheesh. you make it sound as if "at least exposing them to both faiths" is actually an equivalent to getting a decent jewish upbringing. my kids live in a non-jewish society - they're getting plenty of exposure to plenty of other faiths, they don't live in a bubble. what you are doing is the equivalent of raising kids in a commune and not telling them which of the adults are their parents; there's been plenty of research done on the harm done by removing such moral certainties.
We must always choose love and light rather than judgment and darkness.
is that the sort of statement you'd use to get out of a speeding ticket, then? this is nothing but a load of cod-pauline feelgood tosh.
You might not understand all of the hurt- and damage- we cause in an effort to keep the flock(s) in line.
you clearly don't understand all of the hurt and damage you do by giving people anything they ask for and never demanding anything in return. i wouldn't bring up my kids like that and adults contemplating marriage have a lousy future relationship in store if they can't even bring themselves to make tough choices.
b'shalom
bananabrain
