In 2017, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s General Assembly passed a measure allowing congregations to accept non-Jewish members — a tentative first step in the direction of condoning interfaith marriages. 

The following year, rabbis were also allowed to attend interfaith weddings in an unofficial capacity. When interfaith expert Keren McGinity was hired two years later as the movement’s first director of intermarriage engagement and inclusion, many in the movement saw this as a move toward full acceptance of interfaith marriage. Soon, they watched the movement update its policies, recommending that rabbis and congregations encourage aufrufs, mezuzah ceremonies and new baby announcements for interfaith families. In February, the movement solicited feedback from members for its Intermarriage Working Group, as it considered its next steps, noting that “disapproval has not discouraged intermarriage but instead has discouraged affiliation” from Conservative synagogues and rabbis. 

To many, it appeared that the movement was poised to cross the Rubicon and allow its clergy to officiate interfaith weddings, joining the Reform and Reconstructionist movements. But last month, on the same day that Minneapolis’s Adath Jeshurun Congregation made waves by breaking ranks with the larger movement by allowing its clergy to participate (but still not officiate) in interfaith ceremonies, McGinity was dismissed from her position, eJewishPhilanthropy has learned. 

After heading toward acceptance of interfaith couples, the pendulum appears to be swinging back — a welcome development for more traditional voices in the movement and a blow to interfaith advocates, some of whom told eJP that inclusion no longer appears to be a priority for USCJ. Those within the movement who are opposed to accepting interfaith marriages see it as fundamentally at odds with Jewish law and as a slippery slope leading the movement away from its more traditional roots, while proponents consider it a recognition of reality and a way to keep interfaith couples connected to Judaism.

For Joshua Kohn, McGinity’s dismissal hit hard and may cause him to turn down a position on the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism board, a decision he promised to render by the end of summer. 

“I made it my personal philanthropic mission for my Jewish life to make Conservative synagogues more open to interfaith families like mine,” Kohn, former president of Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El in Philadelphia, told eJP. A decade ago, “The USCJ was extremely behind the times on supporting interfaith families, and I would argue, even fought it for many, many years.”

Until 2017, when the rules changed, in his own synagogue, despite being married, he used to be considered “a single-parent household,” he recalled.

When McGinity was hired — four months after George Floyd’s murder, at a time when inclusivity was emerging as a vital issue nationally — Kohn was excited. “By hiring somebody of her pedigree, it showed that USCJ was serious about interfaith families as a piece of a movement and a piece of the growth going forward,” Kohn said.

Over the years, McGinity has led workshops, provided one-on-one support to rabbis and produced resources to support synagogues in becoming more welcoming, not just for non-Jewish spouses, but for non-Jewish extended family members of Jewish congregants, such as in-laws whose children chose Judaism. McGinity recalled to eJP feeling joy as she watched rabbis, for the first time in their careers, allowing non-Jewish relatives to carry coffins for Jewish family members and inviting non-Jewish parents onto the bimah to celebrate their Jewish children’s milestones. 

Last month, after four and a half years, McGinity’s contract wasn’t renewed, and plans are not firmly in place for her work to continue.

“USCJ and our partners remain committed to engaging intermarrying couples and their families,” the announcement circulated in mid-June within the movement said, adding that their volunteer-based Intermarriage Working Group is processing the feedback from its ongoing survey, which has so far received 1,200 responses. “We will next be focusing on initiatives determined by the IWG that require a different staff structure for the work. We look forward to sharing more details this summer.”

While McGinity’s position has been cut, the funding for it remains available, according to Rabbi Ashira Konigsburg, the chief movement strategy officer for USCJ and the Rabbinical Assembly and the chief operating officer for the Rabbinical Assembly. The movement may now use that funding for outside consultants instead of a full-time employee.

“The work is going to look different depending on what needs to happen,” Konigsburg said. “We want to have the flexibility to staff for the specific things that need to be accomplished.”

According to Pew research, 61% of Jews who married post-2010 are intermarried; in non-Orthodox circles, this rises to 72%. Of those married between 1950 and 1999, about 40% are intermarried. Sources who spoke with eJP described a generational rift within the Rabbinical Assembly, between older members who oppose any modification to intermarriage policies and a younger generation of rabbis who believe it is hypocritical to claim to accept interfaith families while refusing to participate in their weddings. Some wondered to eJP if McGinity was a casualty of this generational debate.

When Minneapolis’s Adath Jeshurun Congregation proclaimed that while its rabbis and cantors can not officiate an interfaith wedding, they can participate in the ceremony through readings, blessings and teachings — as long as other religions’ rituals aren’t part of the ceremony — many in the movement grew concerned that other congregations would follow in their footsteps. To date, there has been no known repercussions towards the large congregation. Others in the movement wonder if a move like Adath Jeshurun’s will push the movement closer to allowing interfaith wedding officiation. 

“This choice by one congregation to ‘reinterpret’ the RA’s Standard of Rabbinic Practice has added new intensity to our long-standing conversations—not only about halacha and inclusion, but about our mutual responsibilities and relationships to one another as leaders within a sacred community,” the USCJ said in an internal statement released last week, asking that members of Conservative movement affiliates “hold off on taking individual actions that preempt or circumvent the collective work still underway.”

This is just one instance in a long line of “questionable decisions these last few years,” Rabbi Oren Steinitz, the rabbi at Conservative Congregation Beth Sholom-Chevra Shas in Syracuse, N.Y., told eJP. Specifically, he referred to the movement shuttering much of its young-adult programming, such as its college outreach program Koach and its Israel gap-year program, Nativ, which has just been revived after a 2-year hiatus, though in a different form. “It just doesn’t seem like the next generation is a priority, and it’s very disappointing.”

Steinitz’s congregation is made up of over 50% interfaith families. Often, he said, non-Jewish partners are involved in synagogue life more than their partners. Many convert after gaining an appreciation for Judaism. “We cannot really imagine our congregation without these families,” he said. “Without these families, there really isn’t a Jewish-American future.”

No longer having a full-time paid intermarriage inclusion position sends a strong message that the work is “no longer a priority for the [USCJ],” he said, no matter what vague messaging they are putting out. “It’s honestly a spit in the face of so many congregations that are not only grappling with these issues, but it’s a spit in the face of these interfaith families that are basically becoming the backbone of Jewish American communities.”

Last year, Steinitz was part of the Rimonim cohort led by McGinity, which had participants meet weekly virtually for a month. It was “a safe place for rabbis to grapple with interfaith inclusion, he said. “For many rabbis, it was the first place, the first time, and maybe the only place where they could really express how they feel about these issues.”

Today, many Conservative congregations have moved towards celebrating interfaith families, he said, instead of viewing them as a problem, and he hopes the USCJ “change[s] course again, and they publicly commit to supporting and including these families,” though he isn’t sure McGinity would accept her position back after she was let go this way.

McGinity, whose work with USCJ was funded by Crown Family Philanthropies, told eJP that “the appetite [for interfaith work] was and is voracious… One of the things that I’ve learned is that there is tremendous diversity across the conservative movement. I was not fully aware, before I worked from the inside, that there were congregations that had just become egalitarian, and then there are those who changed their bylaws to allow members of other faiths and have them serve on committees and on the board.”

When McGinity’s position ended, Joshua Kohn’s Philadelphia congregation was in the middle of changing its bylaws, and McGinity was helping guide him in how to word it. But with the change inches from the finish line, he now has no one to call for help, and he’s rethinking joining the USCJ board.

“When my personal priorities are interfaith, inclusion and welcoming, and then you have no real plan, it does make me question the intent of the organization,” he said. 

According to Pew, the Conservative movement, once the largest in the U.S., with 4 in 10 Jews among its ranks, now only represents 15% of American Jewry, and without investing in interfaith families, the movement will continue to shrink, Kohn said. 

“When you ultimately decide to deemphasize these efforts, you’re just killing yourself over the long term, even if it helps your budget over the next six months, a year,” he said. “If they actually had a cohesive plan and this issue was actually a priority for them, they would have already developed it…Right now, it’s empty words, and they have not shown that this is a strategic priority for the organization. I hope that they prove us wrong.”

Until the plan “is ready for launch, it’s not ready for a launch,” Konigsburg said. Shirley Davidoff and Rabbi Aaron Brusso, co-chairs of the Intermarriage Working Group, told eJP that the IWG’s recommendations will come this fall. 

“Our fiscal year ended [on] June 30,” Konigsburg said. “That’s when those changes needed to be made. It was made for budgetary purposes. People are going to think what they think, until we can show them something different.” But this moment is about “growing the work,” she said, and “beyond saying that we are committed, which we are committed. The proof is in the pudding.”