Between Catholic Israel and the 'k'rov yisrael': Non-jews in Conservative synagogues (1982-2009)

Throughout much of the twentieth century, non-Jewish family members of intermarried Jews were completely excluded from membership and active ritual life in American Conservative congregations. The unprecedented rise of intermarriage rates during the last decades of the twentieth century caused many within the movement to reconsider such policies. This article focuses on American Conservative Judaism since the early 1980s and the original approaches that it has adopted toward non-Jewish spouses of Jewish individuals as well as other non-Jewish family members. This issue offers a new perspective on the internal difficulty manifest in the classic Conservative concept of 'Catholic Israel'.