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The following appeared in the New Year's Honours List published
on 31 December 2003
MBE: Dr Jonathan Anidjar Romain.
For services to
Community Relations. (Maidenhead, Berkshire)
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain - who is minister of Maidenhead Synagogue
- has received the award for his pioneering work in the field of mixed-faith
marriages in Britain, not just within the Jewish community but nationally and
across all religious frontiers.
At 49, he is one of the youngest rabbis to receive an award, and
is only the 3rd Reform rabbi to be honoured after Lionel Blue and the late Hugo
Gryn.
Dr Romain was one of the first religious leaders to appreciate the
sharp growth in mixed-faith marriages in Britain in the 1980s, and to realise
the severe problems such couples often experience: domestically in harmonising
two different cultures, along with the difficulties they often encounter from
their own families and communities, as well as the problems their children can
face.
He has both helped couples resolve religious and cultural
differences between each other or with their family, and educated ministers of
all faiths to adopt a more sympathetic approach to them and recognise their
spiritual and pastoral needs.
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