SELECTED REFORM RESPONSA

The Rabbinical Conference of Braunschweig in 1844 intended to endorse the statements of the Napoleonic Sanhedrin, but as no one possessed a copy of the resolution, it actually went further by stating: “The intermarriage of Jews and Christians and in general, the intermarriage of Jews with adherents to any of the monotheistic religions is not forbidden provided that the parents are permitted by the law of the state to bring up the offspring of such marriage in the Jewish faith.” A motion was also made to permit rabbis to officiate at such marriages, but that was rejected, and so no Jewish authority was authorized to conduct such marriages.(For a summary of the debate, see W. G. Plaut , The Rise of Reform Judaism, pp. 220fF). The author of the general resolution, Ludwig Philipson, later changed his mind on this question(L. Philipson, Israelitische Religionslehre, vol. 111, p. 350: Moses Mielziner , The Jewish Law of Marriage and Divorce, p. 48). Abraham Geiger similarly opposed mixed marriages(A. Geiger , Referat ueber die der ersten Israelitischen Synode ueberreichten Antraege, pp. 187ff). At the conference held in Breslau in 1846, Samuel Holdheim suggested that rabbis should officiate at mixed marriages, but this motion was rejected(CCAR Yearbook, vol. 1, p. 98). Resolutions calling for acceptance of civil marriage and marriages between Jews and Christians were introduced at the Leipzig Synod of 1869. but none were passed. The Synod of Augsburg(1871) stated that civil marriages were to be considered as valid(CCAR Yearbook, vol. 1, p. 113). None of the other rabbinical conferences held in Germany or in the United States during the last century passed resolutions on this subject; a number of individual rabbis dealt with the issue in essays and lectures. The radical David Einhorn called mixed marriage“a nail in the coffin of the small Jewish race”(Jewish Times, 1870). This citation was frequently quoted by others in the last century and in our own.

The Central Conference of American Rabbis has dealt with the question of mixed marriage extensively from its earliest days. Mendel Silber read a lengthy historical essay on the subject to the Conference

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