August 19, 2026

In this article, I argue that Conservative/Masorti rabbis and cantors in the United States should officiate at the weddings of Jewish couples even when only one partner is Jewish. I do not reach this conclusion lightly, nor do I do so by diminishing the central goals of our movement. On the contrary, I remain unwavering in my commitment to covenant, Torah, mitzvot and halakhah. My argument is that our current prohibition against officiating at interfaith weddings no longer advances those goals and may, in fact, be undermining them. With each passing day, people disaffiliate from Conservative congregations and separate from beloved childhood rabbis because their desire to sanctify their love is denied. And that means the denominational loss of not only the couple, but their parents, grandparents and siblings. We are still reeling from this self-imposed restriction.

Our Core Commitments

Let me begin from the foundations of Conservative/Masorti Judaism: a covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish people, expressed through Torah and lived through mitzvot. Halakhah is our vehicle for translating divine will into lived reality. It is neither frozen nor fossilized; it is a dynamic, interpretive system that has always integrated fidelity to precedent with responsiveness to changing circumstances.

For over a century, the Conservative/Masorti movement has prohibited its clergy from officiating at interfaith weddings. The intention behind that prohibition was clear and honorable: to deter intermarriage and thereby strengthen Jewish identity, continuity and communal engagement. I affirm that goal completely. Maximizing Jewish life, learning, practice and belonging remains nonnegotiable.

However, when a halakhic ruling fails to achieve its purpose, we must reexamine the ruling. In the United States today, where intermarriage among non-Orthodox Jews approaches 70%, refusal to officiate has not stemmed the tide. Instead, it has often alienated couples and their families, pushing them away from Jewish institutions and Jewish life. The goal remains sound; the policy has failed.

The American Context

American Jewish life is distinctive. Jews in the United States have experienced unprecedented social integration and acceptance. We live, work, study and form friendships and romantic relationships with non-Jews at levels unimaginable in earlier eras. Intermarriage today often does not signify rejection of Judaism but simply human love in an open society.

Sociological data show that many intermarried couples are raising their children as Jews, and the overall Jewish population in America has grown. While in-married couples transmit Jewish identity at higher rates, rabbinic refusal to officiate does not reduce intermarriage. It only removes rabbinic presence at these sacred moments and weakens the likelihood of ongoing connection.

The question before us is not whether in-marriage correlates with higher engagement. The question is how to maximize Jewish life among the families who are forming regardless of our participation. If our refusal is not preventing marriages but is diminishing Jewish connection, we must reconsider.

The Ethical Dimension

Over time, this issue has become, for me, an ethical one as well as a sociological one. Judaism teaches that every human being is created in the image of God and commands us to love the stranger. In the modern era, commitments to dignity, equality and self-determination have deepened these biblical insights.

Our movement has already faced similar crossroads: the ordination of women, full inclusion of LGBTQ Jews and expanded roles for people with disabilities. In each case, opponents feared rupture and decline. In each case, inclusion strengthened us.

I now see refusal to officiate at the marriage of a Jew who loves a non-Jew as increasingly inconsistent with our affirmation that love is sacred and dignity universal. I do not question the sincerity of colleagues who oppose change. Their concerns about continuity and Torah integrity are honorable. I share many of their emotional hesitations. But rabbinic leadership demands that I subordinate nostalgia and personal preference to the future vitality of Jewish life.

Halakhic and Historical Considerations

It is important to state clearly that the Torah contains no explicit universal prohibition against intermarriage. Biblical figures — including Judah, Joseph, Moses, Boaz, and Solomon — married non-Israelites. The blanket prohibition emerges in later periods, especially in the post-exilic era when Jewish identity was fragile.

Rabbinic authorities debate whether the prohibition is De-Oraita (biblical) or De-Rabbanan (rabbinic). I align with those who understand it to be De-Rabbanan. That classification matters, because rabbinic enactments can be modified when they no longer serve their purpose.

Even for those who see the prohibition as biblical, our tradition provides mechanisms for extraordinary adjustment when necessary to preserve Torah’s larger goals. Halakhah has always been regional, provisional, and responsive.

I also believe we must confront honestly the ways in which certain mystical and supremacist strands of Jewish thought have portrayed Gentiles as intrinsically inferior or impure. Such views, while historically understandable in times of persecution, are morally untenable today. Any resistance grounded in notions of ethnic purity or qualitative superiority must be rejected outright.

Live by Them

When a policy no longer serves its intended purpose, it must be recalibrated. In a time when intermarriage was rare, refusal to officiate may have reinforced communal norms. In a society where intermarriage is pervasive, that refusal does not deter — it alienates. Our task is to apply Torah so that Jews may live by it, not be distanced from it.

My Proposed Policy

I therefore advocate that rabbis and cantors who concur should be permitted to officiate at Jewish weddings even when only one partner is Jewish, under specific conditions designed to maximize Jewish engagement:

• The ceremony must be clearly and exclusively Jewish, officiated only by Jewish clergy.

• There should be no conflicting religious symbols or liturgy. But enhancing the ceremony with the culture and heritage of the non-Jewish partner is to be embraced.

• The couple must engage in serious pastoral counseling.

• The couple must commit to building a Jewish home.

• If blessed with children, they must commit to raising those children as Jews.

• I strongly encourage participation in an Introduction to Judaism program and invite the non-Jewish partner to consider conversion.

• I continue to affirm matrilineal descent while encouraging rituals that ensure broad communal recognition of Jewish identity.

This is not capitulation. It is strategic embrace. Those who love Jews and are willing to raise Jewish children deserve our gratitude and support.

Unity Without Uniformity

I do not claim that this ruling should apply everywhere. Halakhah has always been regional. Communities in Israel, Europe or South America may face different sociological realities and reach different conclusions. Jewish unity does not require uniformity. What unites us is our shared commitment to covenant, Torah, and the flourishing of the Jewish people.

Leaning Toward Love

Ultimately, what does a loving God want of us? How do we best secure the future of our ancient covenant in contemporary America? For me, the answer lies in leaning toward love — toward welcome rather than rejection, toward engagement rather than distance, toward building Jewish homes rather than standing outside them.

The stone once rejected can become the cornerstone. By embracing these couples within the framework of Torah and mitzvot, we can strengthen Jewish life rather than weaken it. My aim is not to dilute Judaism but to ensure that it thrives — rooted in covenant, animated by halakhah and radiant with hesed. 

Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson is the Goldstine Distinguished Scholar of American Jewish University.

When I was 21 and learning Torah in Jerusalem after college, someone I happened to know from New Jersey knocked on my yeshiva’s door and asked me whether I knew where to find the Sanhedrin. 

I was dumbfounded, of course — as, at least to me, this individual was either 200 or 2,000 years too late. The last time a group of Torah scholars assembled using the name of the traditional highest rabbinic court was in France in 1807, under the auspices of Napoleon. The time before that was around the period of the Jerusalem Temple’s destruction in 70 C.E. 

Turns out I was the fool, not him. 

Starting in 2004, there was a brief attempt to reconvene the august rabbinic body. The organizers even enlisted the renowned scholar Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. As a Jewish paper reported in June of 2005: “The recently elected secretary of the new body, Rabbi Dov Stein, told The Forward that the process of reestablishing the Sanhedrin has taken 20 years. He said the current mix of rabbis has garnered the support of ‘a quarter of the traditional Jewish community living in Israel.’ Stein said the new body hopes to ‘unify the religious parties’ and become the primary governing power in Israel. The members are still debating whether it would be best to maintain a democratic system or re-establish a monarchy ruled by a scion of King David (for which they are currently vetting candidates).”

My yeshiva’s surprise visitor was in the area to listen in on the group’s proceedings, which he successfully did despite my stunned silence. 

Alas, perhaps not surprisingly, this historical initiative itself swiftly became ancient history, fizzling out shortly after its public launch. But the incident did raise fascinating questions as to the nature of rabbinic authority in modern times. 

The popular scholar-podcaster Rabbi Dr. David Bashevkin, founder of the media company 18Forty, analyzes this episode in his new book, “I Read This Over Shabbos: Reading Jewish History in the Parasha.” It is, he notes, part of the fascinating and fraught story of rabbinic authority itself.

When Moses, at God’s command, rested both of his hands on Joshua in the book of Numbers, thereby symbolically transferring upon him the authority of leadership, “he was deliberately invoking the image of a korban (sacrifice),” Bashevkin writes. Joshua “was not an actual korban — though some have described the rabbinate that way,” he jokes. Instead, it was through Joshua’s sacrifice on behalf of the lives of the Jewish people as he prepared to lead them into the Promised Land that he merited becoming the first person ever to receive semicha, rabbinic ordination.

According to the traditional understanding, subsequent to Joshua, an ordained rabbi possessed an unbroken chain of authority that had begun with that initial transfer from Moses. Rabbis with formal semicha could exercise certain powers that other scholars could not, including serving on a rabbinic court in capital cases, imposing certain fines, sanctifying the Jewish calendar, and, according to the medieval commentators known as Tosafot, serving on a court for conversion.

The institution of rabbinic ordination came under severe threat after the destruction of the Second Temple. As Roman persecution intensified, the authorities sought to suppress Jewish leadership, including formal ordination. The Talmud tells the remarkable story of Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava, who risked his life to preserve the institution. He gathered five students and formally ordained them. He then urged them to flee, warning that their newly acquired status would make them targets of Roman persecution. Rabbi Yehuda himself was too old to escape. The Romans caught and killed him, but the semicha he had transmitted survived.

Most scholars believe that formal semicha continued for nearly two more centuries, until roughly the fourth century, when Hillel II established the fixed Jewish calendar around 360 C.E. Some scholars have argued that the institution survived much longer, perhaps even into the first millennium. Whenever precisely it ended, however, there is little question that the original semicha eventually disappeared. The chain had been broken.

Yet the possibility of restoring the original semicha never entirely vanished. Maimonides wrote that it could potentially be renewed if the sages of the Land of Israel gathered together and mutually agreed to reinstitute it (i.e., through a reconstituted Sanhedrin), although he ultimately leaves the question open and says that the matter requires further consideration. 

In 1538, such an attempt was made. Rabbi Yaakov Beirav, known as Mahari Beirav, gathered 25 leading rabbis in Tzfat and conferred semicha on several scholars, among them Rabbi Yosef Karo, the future author of the Shulchan Aruch. Mahari Beirav was not merely trying to create a stronger rabbinic credential. According to historian Jacob Katz, his effort was deeply connected to the messianic expectations of his time.

The Jewish world was still reeling from the Spanish Expulsion of 1492, and hopes surrounding figures such as the messianic pretender Shlomo Molcho had fueled widespread speculation that the actual redemption was near. Mahari Beirav, himself an exile from Spain, believed that the restoration of semicha could be the first stage in bringing the Messianic Era closer.

That idea did not make him many rabbinic friends. Rabbi Levi ibn Chaviv, known as Maharalbach, strongly opposed the initiative. Having himself endured forced baptism before eventually settling in the Land of Israel, Maharalbach was deeply suspicious of attempts to proactively hasten the redemption. He argued that Mahari Beirav’s renewal of semicha was not valid. With the support of other leading rabbis, including Rabbi David ben Zimra, the Radvaz, he succeeded in preventing the initiative from gaining broad acceptance. Mahari Beirav ultimately abandoned further attempts to confer semicha.

The idea nevertheless resurfaced. In 1830, Rabbi Yisrael of Shklov, one of the principal students of the Vilna Gaon, pursued a similar effort to renew semicha, again in the context of hopes for Jewish redemption and the rebuilding of Jewish life in the Land of Israel. 

The most organized modern attempt came after the establishment of the State of Israel. In 1951, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Maimon, Israel’s first Minister of Religion and one of the drafters of its Declaration of Independence, convened a rabbinic conference in Tiberias with the goal of renewing semicha and ultimately reestablishing the Sanhedrin. Tiberias was chosen deliberately since Maimonides had written that the Sanhedrin ultimately disbanded in Tiberias and suggests that it will eventually be restored from there. That plan, too, was subject to opposition and never took off.

Over time, as that official, original chain was lost, semicha came to mean something closer to certification: an acknowledgment that a student had achieved the knowledge and stature necessary to join the class of Torah scholars. In that sense, modern semicha is closer to an academic degree than to the institution described in the Talmud.

“Nowadays, particularly in the United States,” Bashevkin writes, “getting the title ‘Rabbi’ is a lot easier. Many incredible rabbis I know have not [even] completed rabbinic ordination.”

He concludes his engaging historical review by offering a moving anecdote and an assessment. “Rav Chaim Soloveitchik, the famed genius rav of Brisk, was once asked to describe the job of a rabbi. He did not respond by discussing his brilliant interpretations on the Rambam [Maimonides]. ‘The job of a rabbi,’ Rav Chaim responded, ‘is to help the poor, widows and orphans.’ On Rav Chaim’s tombstone, the first superlative he is described with is ‘Rav Chessed,’ a rabbi of loving-kindness. Semicha has indeed changed quite a bit, but its initial goal — uplifting the Jewish People — remains ever the same.” ■

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include the newly released “Jewish Roots of American Liberty,” “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”