c. 1998 Religion News Service
UNDATED _ A revised manual for Judaism’s Conservative rabbis was released Tuesday (Oct. 20), including the movement’s first-ever post-abortion grieving ritual and other contemporary touches.
The updated”Rabbi’s Manual”_ the movement’s first in 33 years _ is designed to help rabbis meet congregants’ needs. “Today the world looks very different,”said Rabbi Perry Rank of Springfield, N.J., who co-edited the manual.”We have new approaches to life-cycle events, a new vocabulary and a broader understanding of religious ritual.” The manual was published by the New York-based Rabbinical Assembly, the umbrella organization for some 1,400 Conservative rabbis in the United States, Canada, Israel and elsewhere.
Conservative Judaism, which claims the allegiance of about 1.5-million American Jews, is the faith’s middle-of-the-road denomination, poised between Orthodox Judaism to its right and Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism to its left.
Rabbis within the latter two movements have also created post-abortion rituals _ as well as others for miscarriages and still-births _ that have been widely circulated, although as yet unpublished in official denomination literature.
The rabbinic manual’s release followed by a month publication of a new Conservative prayer book _ the first in 13 years. The prayer book featured”gender-sensitive”language and similar contemporary additions, some of which were also incorporated into prayers included in the manual.
Conservative Judaism allows modifications in traditional Jewish law in accordance with contemporary needs. It allows abortion in situations where the mother’s physical or mental health are endangered.
Rabbi Jan Kaufman, the Rabbinical Assembly’s director of special projects, said the”grieving ritual following termination of pregnancy”is not required of Conservative Jews.
Rather, she said, it was intended”to help the immediate family with its healing process with a brief liturgy to be said in private at home or in a rabbi’s study, if desired. It’s intended as a pastoral moment to show there is the presence of God even in the midst of pain.” The manual notes that”surely, not every woman who experiences the termination of pregnancy would seek a Jewish ritual, or even contact with a rabbi, around this event.” In addition to traditional Jewish prayers relating to grief, the ritual includes language that refers to choosing an abortion.”That we have the capacity to make choices is both a blessing and a curse … You made a choice, choosing life for (mother’s name), for the two of you as a couple, for your family, for the well-being of children yet to come into your lives.” The post-abortion ritual was written by Rabbi Amy Eilberg of San Francisco, who in 1985 became the first female Conservative rabbi.
Also, included in the two-volume, 688-page manual _ which was 10 years in preparation _ are new rituals for the birth of handicapped children, infertility, changing homes, retirement, creating living wills and even going to summer camp, among others.
It also pulls together stricter Conservative standards for conversion rituals, all of it previously outlined by the movement’s leaders.”All of these are often anxious periods for people and the solace of a 3,500-year-old tradition can be most reassuring,”said Rabbi Gordon M. Freeman of Walnut Creek, Calif., the manual’s other co-editor.
Rabbi Rank said the creation of new rituals was meant to meet requests made to the Rabbinical Assembly by rabbis and lay Conservative Jews.”Our members are hungry for authentic Jewish practice,”he said.
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