Female rabbi in trouble for serving in NY "gay synagogue"
CBST (Congregation Beth Simchat Torah - the "gay synagogue") Rabbi Faces Expulsion Threat: Conservative movement cites violation of administrative rules, critics see ambivalence toward gay and lesbian rights.

Debra Nussbaum Cohen - Staff Writer
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=10391
Thursday, January 20, 2005 / 10 Shevat 5765

The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly says that one of its young members, Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, has flaunted its placement rules so flagrantly that next week it may decide to expel her.

Rabbi Cohen’s supporters say that her violations are relatively minor and that the threats are little more than a smokescreen for Conservative movement discomfort over gay and lesbian issues.

Rabbi Cohen, 30, has been working at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah since 2002, when she was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary and offered a newly created junior position at the synagogue. She had already been working at CBST, which with over 800 members is the world’s largest gay and lesbian congregation, after being placed there by JTS’ rabbinical student internship program.

After ordination, the Rabbinical Assembly’s placement rules require its 1,600 member rabbis to find work at a Conservative movement-affiliated synagogue or get a waiver exempting them.

When it wanted to hire Rabbi Cohen after her ordination, CBST’s senior rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum, contacted the United Synagogue about becoming Conservative affiliated, but was told “point-blank,” she said, that it would not be eligible. The congregation is closest to Conservative movement practice in its adherence to kashrut and other aspects of traditional observance, and the refusal of its rabbis to officiate at interfaith weddings.

Rabbi Cohen, who is heterosexual, accepted the CBST position before applying for a waiver, which, after much negotiation and tension with the Rabbinical Assembly, was granted to her for two years.

This week Rabbi Cohen was vacationing in Spain and unavailable for comment.

“Some of the leaders of the movement have been a little too zealous about keeping us apart from CBST,” says Rabbi Mark Loeb, one of eight rabbis who in December wrote a letter to the Placement Commission urging it not to sanction Rabbi Cohen. He is also a member of the RA’s Executive Council, or board of directors.

“Why the RA is so busy worrying about keeping Ayelet Cohen from serving a gay synagogue, which isn’t taking anyone’s job away, I don’t know. She’s one of the few people who is prepared to serve Jews who are gay.”

Both the RA and the United Synagogue in 1992 approved resolutions, which are still on record, supporting civil rights for gays and lesbians, and welcoming them into Conservative congregations.

“It’s a very confusing situation when there are signals on all sides totally in conflict with one another,” says Rabbi Loeb, who leads Baltimore’s Beth El Congregation.

Last July Rabbi Cohen signed a new, three-year contract to continue her work at CBST.

She did not apply for an extension of her waiver by a July 31 deadline, according to Rabbi Joel Meyers, the RA’s executive vice president. That, he says, is why sanctions are being recommended.

This is “a case of a rabbi who violated placement policies and procedures from the get-go,” said Rabbi Meyers. “Even though she may be making it sound as if she was just late in getting a request for a waiver in, she never really put in that request. She chose to completely ignore all of the placement policies and rules over a period of time.”

Next Tuesday and Wednesday, the recommendation will be considered by the RA’s Administrative Committee, which will interview Rabbi Cohen and then advise the RA’s Executive Council, which will issue a binding ruling.

Kicking out a rabbi for violating administrative rules is rare. It last happened two years ago though rabbis at risk of expulsion sometimes choose to quit instead, and seek membership in another movement, Rabbi Meyers said.

In the view of Rabbi Cohen’s supporters, the RA’s issue with her is rooted in the movement’s ambivalence about gay and lesbian rights.

“It all speaks to the fact that the movement is in a paroxysm of angst over this issue,” says Rabbi Kleinbaum.

The movement’s Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards ruled, in 1992, that openly gay and lesbian Jews may not serve as rabbis, cantors or in any other position of Conservative leadership. The overall issue has continued to roil the movement and, after being deferred for several years, will again be taken up by the law committee in April.

Yet that same year the Rabbinical Assembly adopted a resolution favoring the listing, as part of its placement process, open positions at gay and lesbian congregations “without consideration of the sexual orientation of its members.”

That resolution said that the community of gay and lesbian Jews was in a state of acute crisis, and that serving them presented “a genuine opportunity of fulfilling the mitzvah of hesed [lovingkindness] and compassion.”

Eight prominent Conservative rabbis wrote a letter to the Placement Commission on December 13th 2004 supporting Rabbi Cohen. In it, they wrote “The crisis facing us today is that gay Jews and their families feel deeply alienated from the Conservative movement and are turning away from it.”

In addition to Rabbi Loeb, the letter was also signed by Rabbi Gordon Tucker, a former dean of the JTS rabbinical school and a current member of the movement’s law committee as well as leader of Temple Israel in White Plains; Rabbi Burt Visotzky, professor of midrash at JTS; Rabbi Rolando Matalon of Manhattan’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun; and Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of CLAL.

“Surely the opportunity to have Rabbi Cohen serve a community of gay and lesbian Jews who seek a Conservative rabbi is too important to be thrown away in favor of punishing her for such a technical error,” the letter says.

Rabbi Daniel Isaak, spiritual leader of Congregation Neveh Shalom in Portland, Ore., also signed it. If, next week, sanctions against Rabbi Cohen are recommended, “there will be a very strong reaction from other members of the RA,” he said. “That eight will mushroom to a much larger number. In the minds of the rabbis, the issue here is not just about an administrative violation.”

- posted by Izak @ 10:47 PM