Despite Prohibition, Estimated 40% Will Wed Jews to Non-Jews : Area Reform Rabbis Open to Mixed Marriages

PALM SPRINGS —  About 40% of the Reform rabbis in Los Angeles and Orange counties will officiate at weddings of a Jew and a non-Jew under some conditions--despite their own denomination’s guidelines opposing so-called mixed-marriage ceremonies.

That estimate, by Rabbi Lennard R. Thal, a regional Reform executive, is higher than generally supposed. Thal estimated that between 30 to 40 rabbis out of 85 affiliated with the liberal wing of Judaism perform such services.

Rabbis who perform such weddings rarely talk about the issue openly.

For one thing, they are going against Judaism’s legal tradition forbidding intermarriage. That law is strictly observed by Orthodox and Conservative rabbis, and widely supported by most Jewish community leaders, who fear that intermarriage is partly responsible for American Jewry’s eroding numbers and decline in religious observance.

It is estimated that one Jew in three marries outside the faith, although studies vary widely.

Most Reform rabbis who officiate at mixed marriages believe that refusing to do so will do nothing to stem their proliferation. They believe they are taking a constructive step toward preserving Jewish identity within families with one Jewish spouse.

Some of these rabbis, who say they do not worry about criticism from their peers, are reluctant to be identified for another reason: “The demand for mixed-marriage ceremonies is so great that I would be overrun with requests,” said a well-known Los Angeles rabbi.

Thal, however, contends that while while “the phone might go off the hook” for popular rabbis, “there is no shortage of people relative to the need.”

Thal is director of the Pacific Southwest Council, the Los Angeles-based association of 64 synagogues aligned with Reform Judaism’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations. He was attending the Palm Springs meeting of the Pacific Assn. of Reform Rabbis.

Rabbis who refuse to officiate at mixed marriages say it is a matter of personal and religious integrity. “I can’t look a non-Jew in the eye and say this wedding is sanctioned by the Jewish people and have him break the glass at the end of the ceremony; it’s hypocritical,” Rabbi Larry Goldmark of La Mirada said. “I’m not a rent-a-rabbi.”

Surprisingly, Thal said, those who do officiate in the Los Angeles area tend to be older rabbis, some of whom once consistently declined requests.

Rabbi Joseph B. Glaser, executive vice-president of Reform Judaism’s Central Conference of American Rabbis, based in New York, said the same is true in Northern California.

“I was very much surprised when I began to hear who was doing it in California, because many of them were very traditional in other ways,” Glaser said.

After talking to some of these rabbis, Glaser said, he found that “it was not that they had been worn down by the constant pressure but that they felt the people they had turned down, they had sort of lost. These rabbis were going to take another tack now.”

The younger generation of rabbis, on the other hand, seem more tradition-bound, Glaser said.

Two rabbis who do perform mixed marriage ceremonies--Leonard Beerman of Leo Baeck Temple, Los Angeles, and Henri Front, Temple Beth David, Westminster--said they will not co-officiate at so-called ecumenical weddings with a priest or minister. Both said they require that the couple agree to study Judaism, have a Jewish home and raise the children as Jews.

Beerman said he has always been willing to sanction such marriages. “If anything, I’ve been more liberal in recent years,” he said.

Front said he once opposed mixed marriage weddings. However, about 15 years ago, he took his turn conducting Reform’s Introduction to Judaism classes, mostly for people who were about to be married.

“After a year’s experience with hundreds of these people, I realized my former position was in error. We live in an age of romantic love--people are going to get married regardless of who marries them,” Front said. “I am not so interested in halakha (Jewish law) as I am in the future generations of Jews in this world.”

Why is Southern California a place where so many have agreed to break with tradition?

A possible factor is that most Reform synagogues have been lenient on the issue--unlike major temples in some other cities.

The late Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin occasionally performed mixed marriages, said his longtime associate at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Rabbi Alfred Wolf.

“As long as the Jewish partner had a firm commitment to Judaism, the couple intended to have a Jewish home and the non-Jewish partner had no conflicting faith commitment,” Magnin would disregard the Reform guidelines, last re-stated in 1973, said Wolf, who is now retired.

These days, in Los Angeles County, Thal said, “to the best of my knowledge, the majority of rabbis of congregations with 400 families or more will officiate under a variety of circumstances.” Put another way, he said, “There are two or three senior rabbis of large congregations in Los Angeles who do not officiate at mixed marriages.”

One of those apparently is Rabbi Daniel Polish of Hollywood’s Temple Israel. He was among 24 rabbis who recently signed a nationwide protest statement against a privately published argument for mixed-marriage weddings.

The statement, mailed last week to almost 1,000 U.S. and Canadian Reform rabbis, responded to criticism by Prof. Eugene Mihaly of Reform’s Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati of the basis on which mixed-marriage ceremonies are discouraged.

At the same time, the protest statement suggested that the refusal to officiate at mixed weddings may harm a rabbi’s career.

“What is intimidating is the fact that some congregations are screening out pulpit candidates who do not officiate at mixed marriages,” the signers said.

Reform officials interviewed here, however, said that is not usually the case.

“It’s not an illegitimate area of questioning,” Thal said, “but in the 3 1/2 years I’ve been in my position there has not been one congregation that has made a decision based on that.”

One rabbi, who did not wish to be identified, said he was recently tempted to change his stance against mixed-marriage ceremonies in order to beat out a rival candidate whom he thought condoned the practice. The other rabbi got the pulpit, but it turned out that he also opposed such marriages.

“He convinced the selection committee that it was not the most important thing by which to judge a rabbi,” the losing rabbi said.

Rabbi A. Stanley Dreyfus of New York, the national placement director for Reform Judaism, said, “We encourage synagogues not to make it a prime factor and we prepare panels of candidates without regard to whether they do or they don’t” (approve of mixed marriages).

Dreyfus, who said he resisted pleas for mixed marriages for 14 years at a Brooklyn synagogue without losing many members, nevertheless acknowledged the difficulty each rabbi faces:

“It’s hard to turn people down, hard to be turned down, especially since the parents at a time like that feel that somehow they have failed. When the rabbi says no, that confirms this view of themselves.”