Posted on 12/20/2016 12:33:28 AM PST by Read Write Repeat
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at jta.org ...
A wedding is not just a party. It is also a ceremony, and attendance constitutes endorsement. I have (politely and “regretfully”) declined to attend those weddings that I am not comfortable endorsing, and I will continue to do so. A religious leader should do the same.
I’d have to check, but I think all the marriages this rabbi performed are now invalid.
The state doesn’t care who was defrocked by a religious group. The marriage was performed by a state licensed, at the time, rabbi. It is equivalent to the state as standing before a judge.
What concerns and disgusts me is the state also would also accept 2 men or 2 women as the celebrants.
Not talking about civil — the issue is whether or not the marriages this rabbi performed were halachic. Jews are answerable to a higher authority, and much more involved. These interfaith couples were married under the false assumption their marriage was sanctioned by Gd and of course it wasn’t.
Also, no Conservative or Orthodox rabbi perform same gender marriages.
I had a roommate (the 1960s) whose brother was a rabbi in a liberal synagogue. He would eat bacon and give his kids bacon but tell his small children it was pastrami so as not to have the kids open their mouths in the wrong company.
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