I grew up in a large suburban Conservative synagogue in the 1980s. It was there that I learned what it meant to be a Jew. I attended religious school three times a week, absorbing Jewish history, ritual, Hebrew, and values. I loved being Jewish — until I became a bar mitzvah.

Around that time, I realized that I was gay. I quickly thought that finding another Jewish man to marry may be impossible and that an interfaith relationship might be my future. Shortly thereafter, our synagogue’s education director told my peers and me that if we married outside the faith, there would be no place for us in the Jewish community. At 13, I felt faced with an impossible choice: Do I choose to be gay and leave Judaism, or reject who I am in order to remain Jewish?

I left Judaism behind, finding my way back several years later, but never to the Conservative movement.

That experience defines how I read the movement’s Joint Intermarriage Working Group’s report, released last month. The report, in my view, represents a meaningful and overdue evolution in tone within the Conservative/Masorti movement. Its public acknowledgment of harm — and its clear shift away from disapproval toward engagement — matters deeply to the many Conservative Jews like me and our loved ones who have long felt judged, sidelined, or pushed out.

What struck me most powerfully was not its nuance when it comes to halacha, or Jewish law, or its procedural recommendations — important as those are — but its pursuit of teshuvah: not........

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