by Rabbi Ronald Price
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are that of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Union for Traditional Judaism, unless otherwise indicated.
In this article (click here to go directly to a pdf if the prior link does not work) from the January 1990 (Vol. 66 No. 3) issue of the Journal of Jewish Communal Service Rabbi Ronald Price discusses the goals and priorities of the Jewish community both in general and in response to intermarriage.
[T]he issue that the Jewish community must address is not only how to cope with the reality of intermarriage but also whether coping is all we want to do. Is our objective to make peace with intermarriage or to take action against it? Do we want to convince the non-Jewish partner to convert to Judaism? Do we simply want to incorporate nonconversionary intermarried couples into the community in the hope that they and their children will ultimately choose a Jewish lifestyle? …
We communal workers are afraid of turning people off by demanding too much of them. It is fat less threatening if we talk about teaching the next generation. Yet, if we keep pretending that parental example is not the basic factor in the transmission of religious identity and ideals, we are dooming the Jewish community to an unending investment in damage control, rather than development. …
The increase in intermarriage over the last 40 years is not a threat to Jewish values; rather, it is the result of their not having been adequately taught and inculcated in the first place. …
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Rabbi Ronald D. Price is the executive vice president emeritus of the UTJ. He served as executive vice president for 26 years, beginning with the founding of the UTJ in 1985 and as the founding dean of the Institute of Traditional Judaism, the Metivta, from 1990 until his retirement in 2011.
A native of Washington, D.C., Rabbi Price graduated from the University of Maryland in 1971 with a BA in Political Science. He received an MA in Hebrew literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1975 and was ordained there in 1977. From 1977 until moving to Israel in 1980, Rabbi Price was Assistant Dean of the Rabbinical School of JTS. Following the break with the Conservative movement, Rabbi Price took his advanced ordination in 1992 under Rav David Weiss Halivni, reish metivta of the Institute of Traditional Judaism.
A highpoint in Rabbi Price’s career came early in his tenure with the UTJ. In 1988, when the “Who is a Jew?” crisis arose and threatened the relationship of Israel to the North American Jewish community, Rabbi Price, on behalf of the UTJ, authored a proposal for a halakhic as well as political solution to the “Who is a Jew?” issue which gained much support in all segments of the community and was praised publicly by the government of Israel as “a bright light at a dark time”.
Rabbi Price also authored the first halakhic living will which continues to be used by individuals and hospitals around North America and is part of the Elder Care Law Library, housed in Washington, D.C. He has lectured extensively and published many articles on subjects such as pluralism in the Jewish community; the right to die and Jewish tradition; creating traditional communities; the realignment of religious Judaism; and the risks and benefits of outreach to the intermarried.
Rabbi Price has dedicated his life to developing ways of making traditional Judaism accessible to the lay community and is the creator of the video education curriculum, “Taking the MTV Challenge: Media and Torah Values,” a Jewish response to media which has been taught in more than 300 institutions across the denominational spectrum around the world.
Rabbi Price lives in Ashqelon, Israel with his wife Tziporah.