CVK
(Thanks to mtevc for this!) New Jersey’s Star-Ledger discusses a new document being circulated among Conservative Jewish temples, that may signal a thawing towards interfaith couples:

For decades, Jews marrying outside the faith have been sermon fodder for Conservative rabbis, who have lambasted intermarriage as the bane of the American Jewish existence.

The rabbis have feared that with intermarriage rates nearing 50 percent — and, more critically, with only a third of intermarried couples raising their children to be Jewish — the American Jewish population, estimated at 5.2 million, will dwindle to insignificance in a few generations.

But that attitude toward intermarriage has come with a price that increasing numbers of Conservative rabbis in New Jersey are acknowledging: the alienation of intermarried couples from Judaism, at least from its Conservative movement.

Now, a document circulating through Conservative temples, the religious middle ground for American Jewry, is calling for a warmer embrace of interfaith couples, both to encourage conversions and to improve the odds the couples will raise Jewish children.

The document does not propose changing the Conservative ban on synagogue membership for non-Jewish spouses. But it encourages better treatment for them at services and in synagogue communities — suggesting, among other things, that temples stop excluding the name of the non-Jewish spouse from mailings to the home.