US Conservative rabbi quits movement, preempting sanctions over performing intermarriages

JTA — When the Conservative movement’s ethics committee opened an investigation into his participation in interfaith weddings, Rabbi Ari Yehuda Saks didn’t wait for the verdict.

On Sunday, the third-generation Conservative rabbi resigned from the Rabbinical Assembly, saying he considers helping Jews who choose to wed outside their religion part of a rabbi’s duty to bless and embrace all who seek connection — even if his denomination calls it a violation.

Saks had been summoned to answer an anonymous complaint against him, the first step in an ethics process that could have led to his expulsion. In his resignation letter, he said he would leave the movement rather than undergo what he called a “Sisyphean exercise” with a foregone conclusion.

His letter, which he shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, criticizes the movement for prohibiting rabbis from making what he considers a legitimate religious choice around intermarriage, given the prevalence of American Jews marrying outside their religion.

“By continuing to equate rabbinic participation in intermarriage ceremonies with an ethical violation the RA is sending a message to Conservative rabbis and the Conservative Jewish community at large that marrying a non-Jew is ethically and morally wrong, which is a statement believed only by very few on the fringes of our community,” he wrote.

In a statement, Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, CEO of the Rabbinical Assembly, said he could not comment on Saks’s case because ethics proceedings are confidential.

He said the RA welcomes and supports intermarried couples but holds that Jewish law requires both partners to have “formal Jewish status” for clergy to officiate. He added that officiation rules are viewed in the code of conduct as a matter of professional practice rooted in Jewish legal standards.

“It is not viewed as an ethical violation,” Blumenthal wrote.

Saks’ resignation comes amid a renewed debate within Conservative Judaism over how to respond to the reality of rising intermarriage rates. About 70% of non-Orthodox Jews to wed in America since 2010 married outside of the religion, according to a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center.

“In most non-Orthodox synagogues today, I think there’s around 50%, if not more, interfaith families,” said Oren Z. Steinitz, the rabbi of Congregation Beth Sholom-Chevra Shas, a Conservative synagogue in Syracuse, New York. “Interfaith families are often the backbone of liberal congregations. We always see the non-Jewish partners who bring the kids to religious school, taking part in and organizing social events, even services. Sometimes they are even more devout service-goers than their Jewish partners.”

The prevalence of intermarriage hasn’t eliminated the controversy around it.

“Intermarriage is an interesting sticking point in the debate about preserving Jewish continuity. It’s a common reality and still such a loaded topic,” said Jodi Eichler-Levine, a professor of Jewish studies at Lehigh University.

She was not surprised to learn of the resignation, saying it fits into a long history of anxiety among American Jews.

“The resignation is a manifestation of the ongoing tension over whether Jewish Americans should open up wide to the world or circle the wagons carefully,” Eichler-Levine said.

While the Conservative movement allows rabbis to welcome non-Jewish spouses into synagogue life, its official policy, adopted in the 1970s, bars clergy from officiating or co-officiating at weddings between Jews and non-Jews. The policy reflects the denomination’s interpretation of Jewish law, or halacha.

In practice, Saks is not alone.

“It’s well known that many rabbis serving the Conservative movement are participating in interfaith weddings; don’t ask, don’t tell is the status quo,” Keren McGinity, the movement’s former director of interfaith engagement and inclusion, wrote on Facebook in reaction to Saks’s resignation.

The status quo faced a high-profile challenge earlier this summer, when Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Minnetonka, Minnesota, led by Rabbi Aaron Weininger, voted to allow clergy to participate in interfaith weddings as long as they are not officiating them. The July 2 decision, first reported by JTA, marked the first time a Conservative synagogue had formally taken such a step, igniting discussion across the movement.

Saks, who said he has participated in four interfaith ceremonies, frames his involvement not as a break with halacha but as an application of it. In an interview, he described a 15-year-long research project that began while he was a student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, culminating in an unpublished 90-page treatise he says offers a Conservative Jewish pathway for rabbinic participation in interfaith weddings that conforms to halacha.

That pathway, Saks argues, involves co-officiation with clergy or representatives from the non-Jewish partner’s tradition, symbolizing mutual respect and rejecting the idea that the other tradition is inherently a threat to Judaism.

“Welcoming interfaith families into the broad tent of Conservative Judaism through rabbinic participation in intermarriage ceremonies is perhaps the most moral and ethical act we can do,” he wrote in his letter.

He says his attempts to present his argument to the movement’s official bodies have been met with little or no engagement.

Saks says his approach builds on his family’s legacy of challenging the movement’s boundaries. His grandfather, Rabbi Alexander Shapiro, served as president of the Rabbinical Assembly in the 1980s and was instrumental in the decision to allow the ordination of women.

“I am a lifelong Conservative Jew and a third-generation Conservative rabbi,” wrote Saks, who met his wife at Camp Ramah, and whose father, Rabbi Moshe Saks, was Philadelphia’s chief kosher supervisor for many years. “I live and breathe the Torah of Conservative Judaism, and ever since rabbinical school, when I heard my call to serve interfaith families, I believed that there is a Conservative Jewish pathway through the prism of halakha to permit interfaith marriages.”

For 11 years, Saks served as a full-time pulpit rabbi in congregations in New Jersey and Long Island. Now he works part-time as the rabbi for Temple Torat Yisrael in Rhode Island, a Conservative synagogue. He said the congregation knows of his resignation and supports his decision.

He also focuses on outreach to interfaith families through teaching, consulting, and co-hosting the “Interfaithing” podcast with a Christian colleague. The show’s tagline, “Why families can embrace two faiths under one roof,” reflects his belief that Jewish and non-Jewish traditions can coexist in a way that strengthens Jewish life.

The debate over intermarriage in Conservative Judaism has persisted for decades, reflecting the movement’s dual commitments to tradition and change. Compared to Orthodoxy, the movement’s approach to halacha more readily allows for reinterpretation in light of historical realities; unlike Reform Judaism, it retains a more formal adherence to the halachic process.

The movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has, over the decades, issued landmark rulings that attempt to balance fidelity to tradition with pastoral sensitivity, such as permitting counting women in prayer quorums and recognizing same-sex unions.

But when it comes to interfaith weddings, the line has held firm.

The Minnesota decision, coupled with Saks’s resignation, suggests that line is under increasing pressure. Adding to the uncertainty is the movement’s recent elimination of its director of intermarriage engagement role, leading to McGinity’s dismissal.

The tension is compounded by simple labor economics. Conservative congregations are required to give hiring priority to rabbis with denominational affiliation, but a persistent shortage of pulpit rabbis has eroded that advantage, enabling unaffiliated rabbis to find jobs with relative ease.

Saks’s resignation echoes those of other Conservative rabbis who have left the movement in protest of the intermarriage ban. In 2017, Amichai Lau-Lavie publicly severed ties with the Rabbinical Assembly over the issue, without any disciplinary case pending. Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann, founder of Mishkan Chicago, recounted her experience in a 2018 essay. She described years of quietly officiating interfaith weddings despite the prohibition and the urging by Rabbinical Assembly leaders that she stay in the movement. Ultimately, with an investigation looming, she resigned. In other cases, the rabbinical association has expelled offending rabbis.

Last year, the Rabbinical Assembly reaffirmed its ban on clergy officiating interfaith weddings while urging members to be more welcoming toward mixed families. A cross-movement working group has been studying the issue since and is expected to release its findings later this year.

As Saks considered last week how to respond to the complaint against him, he recalled one ceremony that particularly helped steel his resolve. It was a wedding between a Jew and a Christian, coming from two faiths with a history of contentious relations.

“This moment under the chuppah with these families together in this co-officiation model was a way to do a tikkun, to show that Christianity, Judaism and Islam can coexist,” he said. “Being in those moments is a call that emanates from what it means for me to be a Conservative rabbi.”