NEWS ANALYSIS: Conservative Jews Try to Find Patch of Middle Ground on Gay Issues: Also transmitting

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) When it comes to questions of whether to ordain gay and lesbian rabbis and perform same-sex commitment ceremonies, Reform and Orthodox Jews know where their movements stand. Simply put, Reform Jews do both, Orthodox Jews do neither. But the Conservative movement, full of nuances and complex legal processes, is […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) When it comes to questions of whether to ordain gay and lesbian rabbis and perform same-sex commitment ceremonies, Reform and Orthodox Jews know where their movements stand.

Simply put, Reform Jews do both, Orthodox Jews do neither.


But the Conservative movement, full of nuances and complex legal processes, is not as easy to categorize. On paper, the movement forbids both the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis and the blessing of homosexual unions. Yet if a Conservative rabbi blesses a gay union, as some do, that rabbi would not face disciplinary action.

A yearslong debate over homosexuality among Conservative legal scholars is coming to a head, and it is making stark the movement’s ideological struggle between preserving traditional Jewish legal precedent and embracing modern morality. It is also raising questions about what the future of this movement might look like.

The Committee on Law and Standards, comprised of 25 Conservative rabbis who vote on issues of Jewish law, met last March in closed session to try to reach an agreement on whether and how the movement’s view of Jewish law on homosexual behavior should change.

The result of that meeting _ a vote was tabled until December _ is a telling illustration of how the movement is at a delicate crossroads. No matter which way the rabbis decide, the outcome will inevitably leave one chunk or another of Conservative Jews feeling upset and disappointed.

“We’re in the middle,” said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, the committee’s vice chairman and a professor of philosophy at the University of Judaism, the Conservative seminary in Los Angeles.

Dorff, who authored a paper arguing for a compromise interpretation of the verse in Leviticus that calls homosexual behavior an “abomination,” believes it is an “empty welcome” for the movement to allow gay and lesbians in its congregations but not afford them ordination or union opportunities.

“Being gay or lesbian is not a rebellion against the tradition; it’s just simply the way that people were created,” Dorff said.

It is a controversial moment, but not one that threatens the movement’s ultimate survival, observers inside and outside the movement say. After all, the question of whether to ordain women caused similar consternation in the 1980s, and the movement survived that debate.


The very foundation of Conservative Judaism is this ground, murky as it may be, between traditional Jewish legal authority and contemporary moral values.

Orthodox Judaism, on the one hand, holds Jewish law as binding and unchanging except for its application to new technologies. The Reform movement, meanwhile, believes each individual Jew has the right and the duty to determine the content of that Jew’s covenant with God.

Caught in the middle is the Conservative movement, which believes Jewish law is binding but has changed over time and may continue to do so _ for reasons including changing social circumstances and moral sensitivities.

Conservative Jews are wrestling with the same issues that are roiling Protestant denominations, particularly the Episcopal Church, which is on the verge of schism after the 2003 election of openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson in New Hampshire touched off a firestorm of debate and controversy.

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Among Conservative Jews, the issue draws a line that is largely generational.

For the movement’s young people _ and its next generation of rabbis and leaders _ the debate over same-sex commitment ceremonies and whether to ordain gay and lesbian rabbis cuts to the heart of their struggle to square contemporary morality with the authority of Jewish law.

The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), the movement’s New York rabbinical school, is a telling window on the future of Conservative Judaism, where students and future rabbis appear to largely disagree with the official positions of the movement. The seminary’s outgoing chancellor has warned that changing the law on homosexuality could lead to a dangerously relativistic approach to other moral issues.


“We grew up in a world where homosexuality is part of normal life, and people who are homosexual are no more or less sacred than anyone else,” said Daniel Klein, a first-year rabbinical student at JTS.

“Jewish law is authoritative,” Klein said. But at the same time, “Jewish law has to coincide with morality, and on this issue it’s clear that homosexuals need to be included in our community in an equal way.”

Klein, who is also a co-chair of Keshet, a student organization that advocates for more inclusion for gays and lesbians at the seminary, said a recent informal survey of rabbinical students showed that as many as 80 percent supported change in the movement’s policy toward gays and lesbians.

Some Jewish legal scholars fear that Klein’s sentiment, if it represents the thinking of many of his classmates, could undermine how the new generation of Conservative rabbis respects the idea and process of Jewish law.

“It is my hope and anticipation that as the current rabbinical students become better educated and more mature, they will be far more conscious of the potential negative consequences to the halachic (Jewish legal) system of the things they say in their youth and inexperience,” said Rabbi Joel Roth, a 30-year member of the law committee who has argued for maintaining the current Conservative interpretations on homosexual behavior.

“It is not the young who are empowered to decide,” Roth said.

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Among the law committee members who decide Conservative policy, there is ardent disagreement.

At the movement’s annual Rabbinical Assembly meeting, March 21-23 in Mexico City, some Conservative rabbis rebuked their colleagues for taking so long to decide on the issue.


“Torah is what Am Yisrael (the Jewish People) decides it to be … we ought to be the people of the Big Tent,” Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, who is dean and vice president of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism, told the gathering.

The law committee is considering four papers, each called a “teshuva” from the Hebrew word for “answer,” that articulate interpretations of Jewish law. They range from strict prohibition against homosexual behavior to full and equal inclusion of gays and lesbians in Jewish life.

According to the law committee’s rules, a paper needs only six votes to be accepted as a teshuva, or act of judicial interpretation, regardless of how many committee members are present. If a paper receives 13 votes, it is considered “takana,” or an act of legislation.

Several committee members and Conservative leaders say it is possible _ even likely _ that all four papers could ultimately pass, which would allow individual rabbis to choose which interpretation they support.

Such a position would be historically in line with Conservative Judaism _ empowering individual rabbis to make their own decisions in contemporary situations, but always guiding them carefully with the weight of traditional Jewish law.

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Rabbi Jeffrey A. Wohlberg, senior rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C., said he feels the press is “overriding” the issue because it does not understand the way the Conservative movement works. The ongoing delays in voting, he says, are simply the result of Conservative commitment to the Jewish legal process.


“It’s the process which is critical here,” Wohlberg said, “The outcome might be the same as another movement, but how we get there is what distinguishes us. We’re bound by Jewish law and tradition, so we have to use the tools Jewish law and tradition give us as we walk down this path.”

In the meantime, some Conservative-minded gay and lesbian Jews have sought out alternative ways to both practice Judaism according to the traditional liturgy and create communities in which they feel totally welcome.

Three years ago, Jack Nieman married his partner of 20 years, Rick Reder, in a ceremony in Jerusalem. The couple, who lives in New York City, had the ceremony performed by Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, a Conservative-ordained rabbi who is associate rabbi at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, an independent New York congregation that prides itself on being open to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people.

“We wanted to make a commitment to one another in the traditional sense of two Jews coming together, two people coming together,” Nieman said.

“I find that this whole debate is so divisive,” Nieman said, adding that he would feel uncomfortable attending a Conservative synagogue as long as the movement continues on its current course.

The debate is “all about saying `no’ to something that is very wonderful and beautiful,” he said. “We joined in community to celebrate a wonderful union. What could be more joyous than that?”


KRE/JL END RNS

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