WASHINGTON (JTA) — The leaders of three of the four major Jewish religious streams were not invited to a White House briefing on issues “impacting the community,” nor was the Jewish community’s leading civil rights advocacy group. Officials of three Orthodox umbrella groups — Orthodox Union, Agudath Israel, and… Read more »
Tagged Reconstructionist movement
Why the Reconstructionist movement is rebranding

The line is from a remarkably poignant scene in the 2004 film “Garden State,” in which Zach Braff’s character explains to his love interest, played by Natalie Portman, a few things that most non-Orthodox American Jews know about large suburban synagogues. “The Jews I know,” Braff continues, “they go… Read more »
Reconstructionists consider dropping ban on intermarried rabbis

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Reconstructionist movement is on the cusp of making a historic decision about whether to drop its longstanding ban against intermarried rabbinical school students. If the policy change passes, as most expect, Reconstructionism would become the first of America’s four major Jewish religious denominations to ordain intermarried rabbis.… Read more »
What’s in a word? For ‘ordained’ rather than ‘invested’ cantors, a lot

(JTA) — What’s the difference between investiture and ordination? Plenty, say officials at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which has announced that for the first time since establishing its cantorial school in 1948, it will ordain rather than invest its graduating class of cantors. Six… Read more »