A RACE OR A RELIGION?:

Dario Feiguin, a rabbi for nearly 40 years, recently officiated at his first interfaith wedding -- a practice forbidden by the Conservative movement that ordained him. The Jewish groom is a close friend of his daughter. The bride has no religious affiliation.

"I saw their love and commitment to each other and realized that my moral obligation is to keep the door open," said Feguin, whose synagogue, Congregation Kol Shalom on Bainbridge Island, is part of the Reform movement.

Feiguin is one of a growing number of Conservative rabbis -- members of the denomination's Rabbinical Assembly -- who are deciding to preside at interfaith weddings. The issue has been decided in the Reform movement, the largest stream of Judaism in the U.S., which allows it. And it remains strictly prohibited within Orthodox Judaism.

But the question is increasingly divisive within the RA, which has some 1,600 members worldwide. Some rabbis have resigned from the RA over it. Others have been kicked out for officiating at interfaith ceremonies, though Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, CEO of both the RA and the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism, the movement's umbrella organization, said he does not know how many. Others, like Feigun, are hoping to remain part of the movement even though they have broken its prohibition over marrying a Jew to a non-Jew.

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