Last February, the Conservative movement asked members of their email list to share their thoughts on the movement’s approach to intermarrying couples. Over 1,200 responses flooded in, including hundreds from respondents who were once deeply involved in the Conservative movement, yet felt rejected the moment they fell in love with someone non-Jewish.

“That was incredibly painful to hear about,” Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, the CEO of USCJ and the Rabbinical Assembly, told eJewishPhilanthropy. “We felt that it was important to acknowledge that pain and hurt and to offer an apology for the policies and attitudes that led to their experience.”

On Thursday, the USCJ, Rabbinical Assembly and Cantors Assembly, the three arms of the movement, released their Joint Intermarriage Working Group Report, with an apology for the hurt the movement caused due to its previous view that interfaith marriage was a threat to Jewish survival. The report includes a list of recommendations for ways the movement can better serve interfaith families, including creating curricula based on welcoming interfaith families and conversion. It also recommends considering what role clergy can play in interfaith weddings, yet interfaith activists told eJP that they were disappointed that the report is mostly rhetorical and does not entail concrete changes in the movement’s policies. They added that they appreciated that the movement recognized that its actions so far have been ineffectual and pushed people away.

The issue of interfaith marriages and weddings has emerged as a central division within the movement. Some are pushing for greater acceptance of so-called “mixed marriages,” which have grown increasingly common in the United States and within Conservative congregations. While there is general recognition of the need to embrace existing interfaith families, to others within the movement, permitting Conservative clergy to perform interfaith weddings condones a practice that they see as inherently odds with halacha, to which the movement is bound. 

The question of changing the role clergy can serve in an interfaith ceremony is still being discussed within the movement — including whether rabbis can perform a ritual, prayer or song at the ceremony — but must be brought before the movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which is made up of representatives from the RA, CA and USCJ. While the report recommends the question of changing the role be asked to the CJLS, the report does not provide an opinion on halacha, Blumenthal said.

According to 2021 Pew research, 72% of non-Orthodox Jews who married post-2010 have spouses of another religion, and a majority of Conservative rabbis believe clergy should be allowed to officiate interfaith weddings. Many in the movement believe that the issue is existential. Once the largest movement in the U.S., counting some 40% of American Jews among its ranks, today only 15% identify as Conservative. Less than half of Jews raised Conservative still identify with the movement.

“People will continue to intermarry with or without Jewish clergy involvement,” Keren McGinity, who served as the movement’s first director of intermarriage engagement and inclusion from 2020 to July 2025, when her contract was not renewed, told eJP. “Interfaith couples and families need and want support and guidance around creating a home and a life together.”

Similar to a previous report that was released in 2024 by the RA, the new report recommends that clergy look for rituals outside of the wedding ceremony to perform with the couple. These include, it said, “opportunities to bless the couple, independent of the traditionally prescribed Jewish wedding ceremony, in the synagogue or elsewhere, before, on the day of and after the wedding date.” In the 2024 report, the RA specifically recommended promoting aufrufs and mezuzah hanging ceremonies, while the new report refrained from offering specific ideas.

“The current standard of rabbinic practice [that clergy do not officiate at a wedding ceremony where one person is not Jewish] is still in place,” Blumenthal said. “First of all, that only marks one particular moment within this range of times where we would want to engage couples in Jewish life, and, second, we are looking to clarify how that standard is put into practice by our clergy.”

Some Conservative leaders have grown tired of waiting for the movement to allow clergy to perform interfaith marriages, with some rabbis leaving the movement over the issue, including one who was under investigation for going rogue and performing interfaith ceremonies, and Minneapolis’s Adath Jeshurun Congregation going against rank by announcing its clergy are allowed to participate in the ceremony, yet still not officiate. Adath Jeshurun has not announced participation in any interfaith ceremonies since making the announcement in July and there has not been any disciplinary action taken against them. (Adath Jeshurun did not respond to a request for comment on the new report.)

The report recognizes halacha as evolving, with Blumenthal using the example of how rabbis made decisions on how technology can and can’t be used on Shabbat and if lab-cultured meat is kosher. Today, American Jews live in a free-and-open society, which is unprecedented in Jewish history, he said, “so it’s understandable that Jewish tradition has laws that express anxiety about intermarriage. The question is, how do we evolve a halacha that is developed for a very different time and place for what’s needed today.”

Blumenthal would not give a time frame for how long it will take for the CJLS to make a decision about what is halachically acceptable for clergy to perform during an interfaith ceremony. “The law committee’s process takes an extended period of time. That’s part of the way that we ensure that it’s a thoughtful and helpful process.”

If a leader were to participate in an interfaith marriage ceremony without waiting for the CJLS to make their decision, such as at Adath Jeshurun, where they said they would if it were requested, would they be disciplined? I’m not speculative on things that might happen,” Blumenthal said. “I only talk about events that have taken place.”

The report recommends that the movement work to make conversion more accessible “to increase the number of people choosing Judaism by curating and creating resources and curricula,” without specifying how this will be achieved. Blumenthal clarified that, “we actually don’t set numeric targets or approach this as a demographic exercise.”

McGinity, who was listed as executive leadership and staff in the report and was employed by the movement when the report was first brainstormed at a retreat ten months ago, is excited to see more resources created to support rabbis, educators, lay leaders and future rabbis. During her time with the movement, she created resources for how to properly greet visitors, questions for congregants to avoid and ways to involve family members in rituals and lifecycle events.  

She was also happy to see the report mentioned the possibility of “alternative rituals,” which McGinity said is a “glimmer of hope… Interfaith couples and families, in my experience, they’re not concerned with halacha the way that clergy are, so if there is an alternative ceremony that doesn’t violate halacha and enables Jewish clergy… to verbally participate, then that would go a long way.”

It remains to be seen if the changes the movement makes will “appeal to folks who either have left the movement or are shul shopping or considering affiliating?” she said. “Will they feel seen and heard, or will the distinctions being made between different kinds of marriage persist in making them feel other or less than?”

For some, the report was too vague with no solid progression. “The idea of moving from disapproval to engagement sounds OK, but the engagement piece doesn’t seem deeply meaningful or helpful to people in any way,” Dan Olson-Bang, vice president of adult education at Conservative Congregation Beth Sholom-Chevra Shas in Syracuse, N.Y., who is in an interfaith marriage, told eJP. 

“I don’t know what the report really advances in the face of just essentially saying ‘We’re going to keep it the same,’ which is what it looks like to me,” he said. “I think if you said, ‘Look, we’re not budging on this issue,’ and that’s your report, maybe that makes some sense, but writing a report and making a big deal of it, and in fact, changing nothing of any actual substance, seems a little disingenuous to me.”

By saying rabbis should be more involved, yet leaving it up to CJLS to make a decision on clergy’s role at interfaith ceremonies, leaders are still left unsure what is acceptable or what will lead to discipline, McGinity said. “That’s an area that I think deserves more clarity and [be] explicit one way or the other. Otherwise, I feel for clergy and educators who are going to continue to wrestle with what they’ve been wrestling with.”

The message the report gave is “we should be welcoming, but we are not giving you any new tools that will allow you to do it,” Rabbi Oren Steinitz, rabbi at Congregation Beth Sholom-Chevra Shas, told eJP. He estimated that roughly half of his congregation are interfaith families. “The language, tone and mechanisms suggested in the report have been used since the 1990s. Nothing new under the sun,” Steinitz said.

Joshua Kohn, the former president of Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El in Philadelphia, who is in an interfaith marriage and said that he turned down a position on the USCJ board over McGinity’s dismissal, was optimistic about the report. He commended “the RA/USCJ/CA on the efforts in their Working Group Report. Its message, themes and recommendations represent meaningful steps in the right direction towards a more optimistic future of welcoming in the Conservative movement,” he said. “In recent months and years, the USCJ has retreated in its efforts to support interfaith families. My hope is that this report does not represent empty words, but will spark renewed support for interfaith outreach within our community.”

Still, there are many within the movement that feel that it is becoming too lenient in its stance on intermarriage, but most everyone agrees “that it’s time for us to clearly engage all kinds of families,” Blumenthal said. “There are questions about how Jewish law can and should change to reflect that philosophy and goal.”The conversation about whether a congregation can claim to welcome interfaith couples and not perform their marriage ceremonies is one that “I hope couples and our clergy will have with each other,” Blumenthal said. “Our clergy also have a commitment to halacha and to Jewish tradition as well as engaging every couple that they meet with or that is a part of their community.”