Free Republic

EW YORK (JTA) – Conservative Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom has been expelled from the Rabbinical Assembly, the movement’s rabbis’ association, for performing interfaith weddings. An ordained Conservative rabbi for 44 years, Rosenbloom was expelled by unanimous vote last month after a hearing of the R.A.’s Executive Council. Since 1972, the Conservative movement has prohibited its rabbis from officiating at or even attending intermarriages. Rosenbloom told JTA the council offered to retain his membership in exchange for a promise not to perform any more intermarriages. Rosenbloom declined the offer.

Israel's Cabinet voted Sunday to allow non-Orthodox Jewish prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a move advocates said marked a historic show of government support for liberal streams of Judaism. The issue is of particular importance to the Jewish community in the United States, where the more liberal Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism are dominant. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed the plan in an attempt to please American Jews, a key source of support for Israel, despite stiff opposition by ultra-Orthodox and religious nationalist elements in Israel who are key members of his own government. [...] According...

When it comes to the issue of gay marriage, the Jewish Theological Seminary blinked and gave way to society’s shifting mores. So one must ask the question: Should we guide religion, or should religion guide us? The ongoing battle over redefinition of marriage threatens to shatter a long-standing, popular approach to personal faith and biblical morality. For several generations, most Americans have embraced what could be described as the Goldilocks attitude toward religion: affirming faith choices that seemed not too soft but not too hard, not too hot but not too cool. Majorities viewed easy-going moderation and comforting compromise as...