Jewish Geography
last year in Minnesota, where a Conservative synagogue announced that it would allow clerical participation in inter- faith weddings, though not of- ficiation. In a separate case, a rabbi left the movement rather than face possible expulsion fol- lowing a complaint over his of- ficiation at interfaith weddings. Keren McGinity, who served as director of intermarriage engagement and inclusion at the USCJ until her position was eliminated earlier this year, be- lieves fears of mass defection from the Conservative move- ment in response to this kind of measure, especially in countries whose Jewish communities tend to be more traditional, have long been overstated. “I have heard the concern about the fracturing of the movement for years,” McGinity says. “It’s not that no one would leave, but generally speaking, when people make that threat, it’s often hyperbolic.” Avoiding change, she adds, also car- ries risks, pointing to a 2020 Pew study showing that few- er than half of Jews raised Conservative still identify with the movement. “That,” she says, “is hugely concerning.” Despite inevitable disagree- ments over policy and the pace of change, members of the working group say they hope the report will be seen as a sign of institutional seriousness and as a unifying moment. “I hope people will feel proud that we’re having this conversation,” Da- vidoff says. “That we’re willing to pull back layers, listen careful- ly, and include people that want to build a Jewish home.” JTA
HISTORY YAD VASHEM HAS IDENTIFIED FIVE MILLION HOLOCAUST VICTIMS by GRACE GILSON
covering large amounts of mate- rial quickly, the algorithms were taught to look out for variations of victims’ names, leading to the new identification of hundreds of thousands of victims. Yad Vashem estimates an addition- al 250,000 names could still be recovered using the technology. “Reaching five million names is both a milestone and a reminder of our unfinished obligation,” said Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem. “Behind each name is a life that mattered — a child who never grew up, a parent who never came home, a voice that was silenced forever. It is our moral duty to ensure that every victim is remembered so that no one will be left behind in the darkness of anonymity.” JTA
YAD VASHEM, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, says it has reached a major milestone in its efforts to uncover the identities of all of the Jews murdered in the Holo- caust, crossing the five-million name threshold. That leaves one million names still unknown from the total of six million Jews who were killed. Two years ago, Yad Vash- em inaugurated a 26.5-foot- long “Book of Names,” which included the names of 4,800,000 victims of the Shoah, at the United Nations headquar- ters in New York. Since then, researchers have deployed AI to analyze hundreds of mil- lions of archival documents — a corpus that is too extensive to research manually, according to Yad Vashem. In addition to
The Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
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