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135 navigating the conflicting cultural and religious values and themes in discourses about intermarriage challenges religious experts as much as laypeople. In interviews and participant-observation with these experts—rabbis, Jewish educators, and other clergy—I discovered that their shared vocabulary of Jewish traditions and symbols obscured deep divisions. For some clergy, as for some laypeople, universalism and individualism expressed the ultimate truth of their religious convictions. Others saw the role of universalism and individualism as much more limited and focused instead on covenant and community. Matters grew more complicated as laypeople challenged the clergy’s convictions with their own demands and claims. Many laypeople were unwilling to grant any particular religious authority to clergy beyond their ability to officiate at religious rituals such as weddings. Many rabbis struggled to understand their role as leaders among laypeople who regarded themselves as ultimately autonomous. As rabbis grappled with these complicated matters, they sometimes aired contentious disagreements with one another in public, even though their private interactions with intermarried couples were often more compassionate, as I will discuss later in the chapter. Reconstructionist Rabbi R, one of thirteen rabbis I interviewed in Atlanta, was one of only a handful of rabbis in the city who officiated at interfaith wedding ceremonies. He explained that he found himself at odds with his Orthodox colleagues: This is going to be heretical, but it’s on the record now: I so deeply hope that people can connect to Judaism, and I see the beauty in it, and it’s the set of rituals and symbols and stories that inform who I am as a spiritual person. But I am okay, at the end of the day, if somebody is spiritually happy and that’s not a Jewish home, for them. So if a child grows up as a result of an interfaith relationship, there certainly is a sadness. But I 5 sovereign selves in a fractured Community 136 JewIsH On THeIr Own Terms don’t see it as the same kind of loss, if they’re a good person. And so, I feel like I could be perceived as—and I’ve been accused, actually; I’ve had an Orthodox rabbi accuse—that I’m helping destroy the Jewish people by doing interfaith ceremonies. A very public thing, and I very publicly responded back to him. I said, “No, you’ve given up on the people that I work with. And so I’m not destroying what you’ve already let go of.” Some of the voices in discourses on intermarriage would agree with Rabbi R’s detractor that rabbinic officiation at interfaith weddings undermines the Jewish people. For ethnic familialists, however, rabbinic officiation is one way in which they can align their lives with normative Judaism despite their intermarriage . Narrowly focused discourses about intermarriage and Jewish continuity obscured the rabbis’ broader disagreements and agreements with one another and with laypeople. The reasoning behind the rabbis’ viewpoints and their personal experiences with intermarried couples were often missing from public discussion. Private discussion was evidently lacking as well. One Reform rabbi in Atlanta told me that local rabbis did not discuss intermarriage in any sustained, formal way or circulate any official information about their approaches to it. They relied on the grapevine for information about which of their colleagues would officiate at wedding ceremonies for intermarrying couples. If the rabbis had discussed their views with one another, they would have seen clearly that they understood the stakes of intermarriage in drastically different ways. Even though discourses about intermarriage often rehearsed the claim that rabbinic officiation at interfaith wedding ceremonies was harmful to the Jewish people, the Orthodox rabbis I interviewed framed their stance on intermarriage and inclusiveness differently from how Rabbi R portrayed it. In their eyes, intermarriage endangered Jews’ ability to continue to serve God by observing Jewish law with integrity as a group. For the more liberal rabbis, the Jewish mission could be upheld by a broader contingent because Judaism was a rich set of “rituals and symbols and stories” that helped to define people’s emotional lives. For these rabbis, both Jews and non-Jews could use and appreciate this set of symbols for positive and affirming ends. While the mixing of Judaism and Christianity in the way that some Dovetail conference participants advocated was clearly out of bounds for the rabbis, there could be room for inclusion of non-Jews in Jewish communities. My analysis of these rabbis’ contrasting views is based upon...

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