Schindler Hits Orthodox Call to Blackball Intermarried Jews

Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, declared here yesterday that “One can oppose intermarriage and seek to mitigate its spread without pillorying the intermarried. Jewish life has no need of witch-hunts.”

The leader of Reform Judaism spoke in reply to the demand made by Rabbi Sol Roth, on his installation as president of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) last month, that Jews who married outside their faith and rabbis who performed such marriages be denied “all leadership roles in Jewish life.”

Schindler, who was here for the dedication of the Kivie Kaplan Center, named for the late Reform Jewish leader, called Roth’s proposal “an inquisition that has no place in an open, free and pluralistic Jewish community.” If carried out, he said, the Orthodox RCA would “exercise its veto powers against the selection of such individuals in organizations like the Synagogue Council, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Chaplains Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board, the Joint Advisory Committee and so on.”

Schindler conceded that “intermarriage is a serious threat to Jewish survival” and observed that “the Reform movement is no less concerned with it than the Orthodox body which Rabbi Roth heads.” But, he said, “intermarriage cannot be totally eliminated in an open society and cannot be dealt with by bombast or coercion.” Schindler asked whether Jews who are married to non-Jews but have chosen to raise their children as Jews should be read out of Jewish life.