Conservative Jews Allow Gay Rabbis and Unions

serena — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:39:52 GMT

From the New York Times -
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/us/07jews.html?pagewanted=print

December 7, 2006

Conservative Jews Allow Gay Rabbis and Unions

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

The highest legal body in Conservative Judaism, the centrist movement in worldwide Jewry,
voted yesterday to allow the ordination of gay rabbis and the celebration of same-sex
commitment ceremonies.

The decision, which followed years of debate, was denounced by traditionalists in the
movement as an indication that Conservative Judaism had abandoned its commitment to
adhere to Jewish law, but celebrated by others as a long-awaited move toward full
equality for gay people.

"We see this as a giant step forward," said Sarah Freidson, a rabbinical student and
co-chairwoman of Keshet, a student group at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York
that has been pushing for change.

But in a reflection of the divisions in the movement, the 25 rabbis on the law committee
passed three conflicting legal opinions — one in favor of gay rabbis and unions, and two
against.

In doing so, the committee left it up to individual synagogues to decide whether to
accept or reject gay rabbis and commitment ceremonies, saying that either course is
justified according to Jewish law.

"We believe in pluralism," said Rabbi Kassel Abelson, chairman of the panel, the
Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly, at a news conference
after the meeting at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York. "We recognized from the very
beginnings of the movement that no single position could speak for all members" on the
law committee or in the Conservative movement.

In protest, four conservative rabbis resigned from the law committee, saying that the
decision to allow gay ordination violated Jewish law, or halacha. Among them were the
authors of the two legal opinions the committee adopted that opposed gay rabbis and
same-sex unions.

One rabbi, Joel Roth, said he resigned because the measure allowing gay rabbis and unions
was "outside the pale of halachic reasoning."

With many Protestant denominations divided over homosexuality in recent years, the
decision by Conservative Judaism's leading committee of legal scholars will be read
closely by many outside the movement because Conservative Jews say they uphold Jewish law
and tradition, which includes biblical injunctions against homosexuality.

The decision is also significant because Conservative Judaism is considered the centrist
movement in Judaism, wedged between the liberal Reform and Reconstructionist movements,
which have accepted an openly gay clergy for more than 10 years, and the more traditional
Orthodox, which rejects it.

The move could create confusion in congregations that are divided over the issue, said
Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive director of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism,
which represents the movement's more than 750 synagogues with 1.5 million members in
North America.

"Most of our congregations will not be of one mind, the same way that we were not of one
mind," said Rabbi Epstein, also a law committee member. "Our mandate is to help
congregations deal with this pluralism."

Some synagogues and rabbis could leave the Conservative movement, but many rabbis and
experts cautioned that the law committee's decision was unlikely to cause a widespread
schism.

Before the vote, some rabbis in Canada, where many Conservative synagogues lean closer to
Orthodoxy than in the United States, threatened to break with the movement.

But Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University,
said: "I find it hard to buy the idea that this change, which has been widely expected,
will lead anybody to leave, because synagogues that don't want to make changes will
simply point to the rulings that will allow them not to make any changes. This is not
like a papal edict."

The question of whether to admit and ordain openly gay rabbinic students will now be
taken up by the movement's seminaries. The University of Judaism, in Los Angeles, has
already signaled its support, said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, its rector and the vice chairman
of the law committee. He co-wrote the legal opinion allowing gay ordination and unions
that passed on Wednesday.

The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, the flagship school in Conservative Judaism,
will take up the issue in meetings of the faculty, the students and the trustees in the
next few months, Chancellor-elect Arnold Eisen said in an interview. Mr. Eisen said he
personally favored ordaining gay rabbis as long as it was permissible according to Jewish
law and the faculty approved.

"I've been asking the faculty, and time and again I got the same answer," Mr. Eisen said.
"People don't know what they themselves think, and they don't know what their colleagues
are thinking. There's never been a discussion like this before about this issue."

The law committee has passed contradictory rulings before, on issues like whether it is
permissible to drive to synagogue on the Sabbath. But the opinions it approved on
Wednesday reflect the law committee's split on homosexuality.

The one written by Rabbi Roth upholds the prohibition on gay rabbis that the committee
passed overwhelmingly in 1992. Another rebuts the idea that homosexuality is biologically
ingrained in every case, and suggests that some gay people could undergo "reparative
therapy" to change their sexuality.

The ruling accepting gay rabbis is itself a compromise. It favors ordaining gay rabbis
and blessing same-sex unions, as long as the men do not practice sodomy.

Committee members said that, in practice, it is a prohibition that will never be policed.
The ruling was intended to open the door to gay people while conforming to rabbinic
interpretations of the biblical passage in Leviticus which says, "Do not lie with a male
as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination."

The committee also rejected two measures that argued for a complete lifting of the
prohibition on homosexuality, after deciding that both amounted to a "fix" of existing
Jewish law, a higher level of change that requires 13 votes to pass, which they did not
receive.

Rabbi Gordon Tucker, the author of one of the rejected opinions, said he was satisfied
with the compromise measure. "In effect, there isn't any real practical difference," he
said.

The Conservative movement was once the dominant stream in American Judaism but is now
second in numbers to the Reform movement. Conservative Judaism has lost members in the
last two decades to branches on the left and the right. Pamela S. Nadell, a professor of
history and director of the Jewish Studies program at American University, said, "The
conservative movement is wrestling with the whole question of how it defines itself,
whether it still defines itself as a halachic movement, and that's why there was so much
debate and angst over this."

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Conservative Jews Allow Gay Rabbis and Unions