Conservative Judaism welcomes homosexuality into its ranks
Conservative Jews to vote on whether to ordain gays as rabbis
By Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/797390.html
Wed., December 06, 2006 Kislev 15, 5767

Twenty-five Conservative rabbis began a thorny debate on Tuesday on the
place of homosexuals in their movement. The debate will continue on Wednesday, in the hopes of reaching a decision, but regardless, a press conference has been called for noon. Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, said he finds it hard to believe that a decision will once again be postponed, as it was when the assembly first discussed the issue several months ago. The rabbis must decide: Can homosexuals become Conservative rabbis and cantors? Can Conservative rabbis cbonduct same-sex commitment ceremonies?

The Conservative Movement -once the largest Jewish movement in America, but now steadily shrinking- has been debating the issue for some time. In 1992, it rejected proposals for homosexual equality, but since then, the pressure has intensified. The problem, explained one Rabbinical Assembly member, is how to explain rabbinic decisions to Conservative laymen, many of whom "don't understand the halakhic issues involved. They live in a liberal society, and they simply want us to change the laws, just as America changed its laws to give homosexuals equal rights."

Anne Kaiser is one of those who favor such a change. Not that she wants to be a rabbi she likes her job as a Maryland state legislator, to which she was reelected last month as an avowed lesbian. And she said that her rabbi gave her to understand that she and her partner could hold a commitment ceremony in the synagogue, regardless. Nevertheless, she would like to see it official.

For opponents, however, such a radical break with tradition is not only
unacceptable, it could also even be grounds for leaving the movement. This is the most divisive debate the movement has experienced since its debate 30 years ago over equality for women.

Rabbi Joel Roth, who formulated the movement's 1992 opinion against any change in the status of homosexuals, said at the time he simply could not identify any halakhic loophole that would permit such a change and because the Conservative Movement defines itself as a halakhic movement, such a decision would require some basis in the religious sources.

"An inability to legitimate homosexuality halakhically makes no negative claim whatsoever about the humanity, sanctity, worth and dignity of homosexuals," he stressed in a lecture on the subject. But the Torah's blunt statement on homosexual relations that a man lying with another man as he would lie with a woman is an "abomination" (Leviticus 18:22) leaves no wriggle room, say Roth's adherents.

The Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards that will vote Wednesday in New York, however, is not that of 1992: Only nine of its 25 members are the same. Meyers said the current committee maintains a balance between "liberals" and "conservatives," but acknowledged that the generational change might also have changed the meaning of these terms, which in turn could result in a different outcome at Wednesday's vote.

Opponents of Roth's view argue that the Torah prohibition, as well as subsequent rulings by the rabbis, related to a different time and a different type of homosexuality. The Torah, they say, banned what existed then, but could not have banned today's homosexuality, because the current incarnation of same-sex relations is an invention of the modern world.

"Sex, in antiquity, was an activity, not an orientation," explained Rabbi Bradley Hartson, one of the advocates of this view. "The meaning of the activity was determined by its context. In the case of same gender sex, that context was always one that treated a human being as an object, or [one] of oppression." And that, he argues, differs from today's model of consensual, caring, same-sex relationships.

"The rabbis were never at a loss for ways to transform or circumvent a biblical institution when later on it came to be viewed as ethically unjustifiable," added Rabbi Howard Handler.

Five different rabbinical opinions have been submitted to the committee for consideration, ranging from no change through limited rights to complete equality for homosexuals. This gives the panel some room to maneuver, and the prevailing view is that it will opt for a compromise: It will adopt one opinion that forbids homosexual ordination and same-sex commitment ceremonies, and another that permits them.

The rules make such an outcome possible: The committee requires a majority of 13 to adopt a binding ruling, but only six votes in favor are needed to adopt a "responsum" defined as one possible interpretation of a halakhic issue, but not the only one. Thus the committee is widely expected to adopt two contradictory responsa but no binding ruling. That way, each Conservative congregation could decide for itself.

"Talkback" :

Simshalom:

Conservatives go the way of Reform and the middle ground caves in

As Conservatives are determined to keep up with Reform, lady rabbis & acceptance of gays, the day will surely come when the Reform and Conservative movements will merge because there will be nothing separating them.

But where will many tradionalist Conservative rabbis & Jews caught in this frenzy of the "urge to merge" go? They`ll be stranded and it won`t be easy for them to fit in with Orthodoxy, even with Modern Orthodoxy, because all the brands of Orthodoxy place the Shulkhan Arukh, Halakha and the 613 Mitzvot at the center of their lives avoiding the mass confusion that results in the constant watering-down and alteration of Judaism as it has been practiced for hundreds (actually thousands) of years.

To the Conservative rabbis who claim that "times have changed" so that gays can now be accepted: What about Maimonides who said that the Torah will never change? What`ll you sanction next? Interfaith unions since the gentiles are "nicer" in America today? Eating pork as in Reform?...

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Testing The Waters On Gay Ordination.

Before JTS’ Eisen makes final decision, thousands of Conservative Jewish leaders to be polled on views of controversial issue.

Stewart Ain - Staff Writer
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13421
Thursday, December 14, 2006 / 23 Kislev 5767

As the Conservative movement began grappling this week with the implications of the landmark Law Committee ruling paving the way for gay ordination, thousands of Conservative Jewish leaders are to shortly be polled for their opinion on the issue.

Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist commissioned by the Jewish Theological Seminary to conduct the survey, said several thousand Conservative Jews — synagogue presidents, their rabbis and other Conservative Jewish leaders — would be invited to complete a 60- to 70-question online survey “revolving around this one matter.” But he said there would also be questions about the person’s views of Conservative Judaism “to understand their answers to the central questions.”

“Their age, gender, region [of the country in which they live] and theological stance will also be important variables that will help us understand the results,” Cohen said.

He said he hoped to have the survey results by the end of January.

Arnold Eisen, the seminary’s chancellor-elect who will ultimately make the decision about whether to admit gays and lesbians to the rabbinical school, was unavailable for comment. But he said in a message posted on the seminary’s Web site that the results of the Cohen survey would be “in hand” before the decision is made. He said he also planned to meet with the heads of the Conservative movement’s four other rabbinical schools — in California, Argentina, Jerusalem and Budapest — “for a frank airing of the matter.”

In addition, Eisen said the deans of student life and the seminary’s five schools “will continue to consult and plan for both possible outcomes of this process.” And he noted that the seminary’s students and faculty would also have a chance to weigh in “over the next month or so.”

Benjamin Gampel, chair of the faculty’s executive committee, said the 55 full-time faculty members have met on this issue since November and expect to meet again in mid-January.

“We’re here to tease out the educational implications of the legal decision,” he said, adding that the January meeting would be a chance for the faculty to voice “reflected thought and opinion.”

Gampel said that after all views are aired, the matter might come to a vote or there might be an attempt to achieve a consensus. “We’re going to see,” he said. “We’re bringing the ball up slowly. We want to bring everybody on board. American society is split [on this issue]; we might be able to achieve a consensus.”

Asked how important the faculty’s opinion would be, Gampel said that although “ultimately it is the chancellor’s decision, if the faculty’s consensus was strong in one direction ... it would be advisory with heft.”

Burton Visotsky, a professor of Talmud and rabbinics at the seminary, said he believed a “good majority of the faculty ... would think for educational and administrative purposes that we should be admitting gays and lesbians.”

Among those anxiously awaiting Eisen’s decision is Aaron Weininger, 21, of Scarsdale, who said he is an openly gay student who will be graduating in June from Washington University in St. Louis and would like the option of applying to the rabbinical school at either the seminary or the University of Judaism in California, the other Conservative rabbinical school in the United States.

“I grew up in the Conservative movement and went through the Solomon Schechter school ... and to Camp Ramah in Wisconsin last summer,” he said. “I was president of my USY chapter at Beth El Synagogue in New Rochelle and I’m the High Holy Day cantor for the Conservative minyan on campus. So I’m pretty involved; the Conservative movement is my home.”

Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, met in Berlin this week with Conservative rabbis who serve congregations or other institutions in England and Europe. He said those from England said their congregants were like those in America — very interested in the issue and holding mixed views.

Rabbi Meyers said the rabbis working in Europe told him that their communities are conservative and would not support a change.

“It sounds to me like their view parallels [those] in the Toronto area of Canada,” he said.

Paul Kochberg, chairman of the regional presidents of United Synagogue and president of its Canadian region, said he was “aware there is discontent among synagogue leaders in the Toronto area over the general direction of the movement, and this decision would exacerbate that concern. ... I’ve heard talk in the abstract about a split [from the Conservative movement]. There is talk about it.”

But he pointed out that there are liberal, egalitarian Conservative congregations in some other areas of Canada, including eastern Canada. There will be a meeting in Toronto on Jan. 8 of local Jewish leaders to “talk about the direction of the movement and where we are going,” Kochberg said.

In its decision, the 25-member Law Committee on Jewish Law and Standards voted last week to approve two legal opinions — one that upholds the current ban on gay ordination and same-sex unions and the other permitting both. Members voted on each opinion separately, and each opinion received 13 votes.

Rabbi Adam Kligfeld of Congregation Eitz Chaim in Monroe, N.Y., said he voted for both opinions because “it was important for me that change happen as a result of a majority of the committee.”
“I had not decided anything with certainty until a half-hour before we voted, and I had been thinking about this issue nonstop for years,” he said. “I could not have been more pleased with the result — with the deliciously paradoxical vote and that each passed by a majority. I’m glad it turned out that way.”

Rabbi Ira Stone, spiritual leader of Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia, said he would have preferred adoption of the most liberal opinion, which would have approved of homosexual behavior without any caveats. The opinion approved sanctions gay ordination and same-sex unions but still retains the biblical prohibition against anal sex. Rabbi Stone questioned why it was necessary to retain that biblical prohibition since, he said, he believed that all members of the Law Committee believed the Torah was revealed by God to Moses and not dictated to him.

“My complaint is that there is no theological clarity,” he explained. “If we have a theology that does not support the idea that we are in possession of God’s exact words, then by implication we are in possession of human responses to God’s presence, which by virtue of being human is flawed.” But he said he believed the decision permitting Conservative rabbis to perform commitment ceremonies clears the way for him to perform actual weddings of gay and lesbian couples.

“The language of the [opinion] indicated some kind of celebration, and I am interested in doing some kind of sanctification,” he said. “I’m not adverse to calling that marriage.”

Asked the difference between a commitment ceremony and marriage, Rabbi Stone said they are different in terms of ritual.

“I would want to use a chupah and an act of what we call kidushin [holiness] on some level,” he said. “I don’t want to end up being marrying Sam, but I’d be open to any couple [wishing to marry] whether or not they are members of this congregation.”

Rabbi Meyers said he did not know of any Conservative rabbi who has married a gay couple.

“Whenever I tracked down rumors, it turned out not to be the case,” he said. Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said that in light of last week’s ruling, he would be discussing with his lay leadership the possibility of changing the organization’s policy regarding the hiring of staff.

“We require people who are role models to be shomer mitzvoth [in compliance with Jewish laws], and until now we said that a person who is gay or lesbian would not qualify to fill those positions because they did not behave in a way that conformed to halacha [Jewish law],” he said. “We are talking about regional youth directors and regional directors and staff for summer educational programs and directors of our youth and social action department.”

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Masortis Ponder Gay Ruling’s Impact.

Conservative sister movement says it is not bound by U.S. rabbis’ ruling.

Michele Chabin - Israel Correspondent
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13399
Thursday, December 14, 2006 / 23 Kislev 5767

Jerusalem — As the small but growing Masorti movement in Israel digests the landmark ruling by its sister movement in the United States to ordain openly gay and lesbian rabbis, Masorti officials are suggesting this week that the decision could pave the way for a new way to think about Jewish marriage.

And that could put the movement here in a bind.

“This is a huge issue,” Rabbi Einat Ramon, dean of the Schechter Rabbinical School in Jerusalem, said of the Conservative movement’s Committee on Law and Standards vote in New York last week. “Ultimately, this is leading to the redefinition of Jewish marriage.”

Exactly what comprises a Jewish marriage is a highly charged subject in Israel, Rabbi Ramon says, because many people who define themselves as Jews are not considered Jewish under Orthodox Jewish law, and consequently cannot be married by an Orthodox rabbi – the only kind of rabbi officially recognized in Israel.

“There are many people whose fathers are Jewish and who came under the Law of Return and serve in the army,” Rabbi Ramon notes. “They consider themselves Jews but halacha does not. The Masorti movement cannot marry them because of a 1986 decision by the Conservative movement’s International Rabbinical Body” rejecting patrilineal descent as the criteria for Jewishness.

If the Masorti Law Committee decides to follow the Conservative committee’s lead on the gay issue, “they will ask why our rabbis will marry two men or two women but will not marry people of patrilineal descent who are de facto Jews. Israelis would ask how a movement like this could be halachic. In Israel, ideology is very important,” Rabbi Ramon says.

Given Israeli society’s generally conservative bent (Tel Aviv and its suburbs being the exception), the Jerusalem-based Masorti movement is expected to take its time in adopting a position on gays and lesbians.

Much is at stake, not the least of which is the Masorti movement’s image in Israel, where it considers itself a homegrown institution. Despite its meager budget and the fact that its rabbis have no legal standing in Israel, the Israeli movement’s synagogues are vibrant and its rabbis sought out by people, including engaged couples and new parents, seeking a non-Orthodox alternative.

In a press announcement released during the Conservative movement’s deliberations, the Masorti movement in Israel said it “sees itself as a sister movement of the Conservative movement” and also “a movement that stands independently.”

“Officially, we’re independent of them, though we rely on their donations,” said Rabbi Ramon of the American Conservative movement. “There was a Zionist decision from the beginning that our Israeli Law Committee would make its own decisions and that the American Law Committee would make its decisions.”

Early next month, the Schechter Rabbinical School and the Masorti Rabbinical Assembly will each hold a study day devoted to their sister movement’s decision.

“This is not a decision that should be taken solely by me or Rabbi David Galinkin,” Rabbi Ramon says, referring to the president of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies and chairperson of the Masorti Law Committee. “It needs to be referred to a larger rabbinic body of Israeli Masorti rabbis, either to the Law Committee or the entire rabbinic membership of the Israel Rabbinical Assembly.”

Alice Shalvi, a leading Israeli feminist and former rector and president of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, lauded the “serious thought and deliberation” Conservative decision-makers in the U.S. gave to the gay issue.

“The ambiguity of the decision shows a greater openness than a simple favorable, pro stance. I hope the Israeli Law Committee will follow suit because it’s just as big an issue here as it is there,” Shalvi says.

While the decision by the Conservative movement’s Committee on Law and Standards has sparked a great deal of heated debate within the Masorti/Conservative establishment in Israel, and garnered kudos from the gay and lesbian community, it appears to be of limited interest to most heterosexual Israelis.

“I certainly haven’t been hearing about it in the cafes and taxis,” says Jerusalem Report columnist Stuart Schoffman, a close observer of religious-secular relations. “It’s not on most people’s radar.”

Schoffman attributes this apathy to the fact that the Masorti movement is relatively unknown to many mainstream Israelis, who tend to view Conservative and Reform Judaism (which they often lump together under the term “Reformim”) as American imports.

“In general, I think Israelis perceive non-Orthodox Judaism as an American eccentricity they don’t have much to do with,” Schoffman says. “When someone in Israel refers to themselves as ‘Masorti,’ they mean that they are traditional Jews, someone with a slightly mellower approach to Judaism. Someone who might go to shul in the morning and a football game in the afternoon.”

Though this description would apply to many Conservative Jews, Israeli Masorti Jews, many of them Sephardim, generally reject the notion that a woman, never mind a gay or lesbian, can serve as a rabbi.

Members of Israel’s gay/lesbian/bi-/transsexual community are heartened by the American movement’s decision, but doubt whether Israeli society is ready for a similar revolution.

In a Haaretz opinion piece, Yoav Sivan, a gay activist, wrote that the Conservative movement’s position provides “another example of the widening gap between the world’s two biggest Jewish communities, and showed the American Jewish establishment is way ahead of the Jewish State in seriously addressing the status of homosexuals in Jewish life.”

Sivan placed much of the blame on the “Orthodox monopoly” that “competes with itself in raising the bar of ignorance and extremism in Israeli circles,” and cited November’s gay pride march in Jerusalem as a prime example.

Just prior to the controversial parade, which prompted weeks of rioting by fervently Orthodox Jews, the Jerusalem police told organizers they would have to hold the event in a stadium. Between 3,000 and 8,000 people attended the gathering, according to various sources.

Their hopes for visibility dashed, gays and their supporters accused the police of caving in to religious hooligans.

Schoffman, who personally believes the gay marchers had every right to walk collectively in the streets of Jerusalem, says he knows “a lot of Jerusalemites, including a lot of secular, who on a cost-benefit basis felt the parade was gratuitously inflammatory.”

Although Shalvi regards Israel society as “much less tolerant” than American society, “I’m hoping the Israeli movement will have the courage to address the issue without worrying about how the ultra-Orthodox will respond.

“I hope we will lead the way and not bow to pressure,” she says.

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A tragic & telling decision.

To Those Halachic Conservatives: Go Orthodox!

Rabbi Avi Shafran

December 14, 2006
http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/11592/
and
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881880663&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Jewish clouds, like others, sometimes have silver linings. And so, some of us hope that a glimmer may surround the Conservative movement's recent endorsement of a position permitting commitment ceremonies between people of the same gender and the ordination as Conservative rabbis of people living openly homosexual lives.

To be sure, the decision is tragic and telling. Tragic because it turns halachah, or Jewish religious law, on its head -- and does so, moreover, in the name of a "halachic" process.

While some Conservative rabbis have labored mightily to present the issue in a positive light, the attempts are risible. Conservative Rabbi Judith Hauptman asserted "precedent" for sanctioning same-sex unions in the talmudic sage Hillel's construction of an entirely legal means to maintain loans through a sabbatical year. But equating employment of an entirely legal economic means with the abolishment of a moral law is like claiming that legitimate allowances in American tax law are grounds for permitting espionage.

And while the Conservative decision may technically claim to preserve the biblical prohibition on sodomy, it flouts clear halachic prohibitions on other forms of homosexual activity and de facto condones a homosexual lifestyle -- imagine limiting a heterosexual couple to only certain expressions of affection.

In the words of Conservative Rabbi Joel Roth -- who, to his credit, resigned in protest from the rabbinic committee that reached the decision -- it was "outside the pale of halachic reasoning."

None of which, of course, is to belittle the plight of those predisposed, or even bound, to same-sex attractions. Every Jew, whatever his or her life challenges, is precious in the eyes of God. But no matter how difficult the struggle to live by the Torah's prescriptions, that struggle is part of the very essence of what it means to be Jewishly observant. And so the Conservative abandonment of the unified response "We will do" that has echoed since Sinai is indeed a tragedy.

What's telling is that it conclusively gives the lie to the movement's claim of fealty to the halachic process.

More than five years ago, I made the case in Moment magazine that the Conservative movement's claim of halachic integrity was belied by earlier decisions it had embraced.

Unlike true halachic process, which entails the objective examination of verses mediated through the Talmud -- leavened with societal concerns at times, to be sure, but always within the letter of the law -- the Conservative process often has involved first deciding on a desired result, then manipulating the sources to yield that outcome.

In light of society's shifting mores, I predicted that it was just a matter of time before Conservative decisors would come to embrace same-sex relationships, too, despite thousands of years of halachic literature and explicit verses in the Torah.

My article was greeted with loud, angry protest.

But -- and herein lies the silver lining of hope -- there was much positive response, too, both from erstwhile Conservative Jews who had left the movement for Orthodoxy, and from members of Conservative synagogues who had come to suspect that things were as I described them and were grateful for the confirmation.

One Conservative correspondent wrote that while he couldn't imagine that his movement would abandon Judaism's forbiddance of homosexual conduct, he'd consider it impossible to maintain his affiliation if it did.

I don't know how many Conservative Jews truly respect the concept of halachah, but simply have accepted as fact the idea that their movement was committed to the traditional halachic process. However many there may be, they now have the benefit of a clear picture. It might not be pleasant to behold, but painful realizations often lead to spiritual growth.

Although Moment ran my piece with its own incendiary headline, the article I submitted carried the headline "Time to Come Home." It was, in the end, a plea to Conservative Jews committed to halachah to realize that their rightful place is really in the broad, variegated but halachah-respecting Orthodox world.

Many once-Conservative Jews already have blazed a trail of return to a halachic lifestyle. In the wake of this latest Conservative decision, I hope others will follow.

And what I hope no less fervently is that the Orthodox world will demonstrate its own self-improvement and commitment -- to other Jews, warmly welcoming all who wish to join us, into our shuls and our lives.

Rabbi Avi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.

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NY Jewish seminary to accept gay students

By Shlomo Shamir , Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/842238.html
Wed., March 28, 2007 Nisan 9, 5767

A Conservative Jewish seminary in New York has agreed to admit gays and lesbians who want to become rabbis and cantors, but declined to take a stand on whether rabbis should officiate at same-sex unions.

The Jewish Theological Seminary announced its decision yesterday, more than three months after the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards authorized the ordination of gays and lesbians.

While most Orthodox Jews ban same-sex unions or gay rabbis, and Reform Jews have accepted them for years, Conservative Jews have been split with sentiment growing for acceptance.

A survey commissioned by the seminary and released in January showed 65 percent of Conservative rabbis in favor of allowing gay and lesbian rabbis and cantors compared to 28 percent who were opposed.

"This is really historic. It took a lot of leadership," said Jake Goodman, a member of Keshet, a group at the seminary that has advocated gay rights within the Conservative movement.

The chancellor of the New York seminary, Arnold Eisen, told Haaretz that he made the decision after a long and tedious process of consulting with hundreds of Conservative Jews, rabbis, cantors, educators, students and lay leaders from the United States and abroad. He found there was widespread support for admitting gays to the seminar, he said.

"The immediate issue for congregations and rabbis is whether they are going to do commitment ceremonies. Each congregation will have to decide whether it hires gay and lesbian clergy," Eisen said.

The wider problem is how to remain faithful to tradition and halakha while being part of our society, he said.

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Labels: Conservative Judaism, Gay clergy, Homosexuality

- posted by Izak @ 11:43 PM