conservative jews to allow gay rabbbis and civil unions
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/us/07jews.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1165467600&en=541f66b96981e5a5&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin
Conservative Jews Allow Gay Rabbis and Unions
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By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: December 7, 2006
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.
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Photographs by Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Rabbi Joel Roth resigned from the law committee after the vote.
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.”
END
It is so good to see some enlightenment in religion.
Conservative Jews Allow Gay Rabbis and Unions
Sign In to E-Mail or Save This
Single Page
Reprints
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: December 7, 2006
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.
Skip to next paragraph
Photographs by Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Rabbi Joel Roth resigned from the law committee after the vote.
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.”
END
It is so good to see some enlightenment in religion.
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I'm troubled over this issue, not because I have anything against homosexuals, and I think that they deserve equal treatment, and equal rights under civil law. However, I am troubled because Conservative Judaism claims to be a movement which adheres to Halacha (Jewish law) and makes interpretations of that law, according to it.
However, this legislation was passed not in accordance with Halacha, but in accordance with morality. For me, this deviation of interpreting law by something else other than how the law itself works, poses a problem (they did not interepret this in a Halachic manner). This poses a problem for me as someone who has sometimes associated himself with the Conservative movement, but wants to be a Halachic Jew.
My issue with this is not really the issue of homosexuality in Judaism. I had the same problem when the Conservative movement passed legislation allowing people to drive to Synagague on the Sabbath. They were trying to look at it from a moral standpoint, as opposed to a Halachic one (adhering to Jewish law).
If the law committee had tried to make this decision adhering to Halacha, and not just morality (which I believe is possible), than I would have been thrilled. However, I see this as the begining (a little bit of a continuation) of deviating from acting/interpreting the law in accordance with Halacha, and for me that is the problem.
I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with this exactly. First, I'm going to talk to several Rabbis, Consevative and Orthodox, and try and hear what they have to say.
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Sure, I'll do my best, keep in mind that I'm not an expert. The way Halacah or Jewish Law works, is that, according to Jewish tradition there is Biblical or written law (coming from the Bible) and "Oral law". Oral law, has been passed down in the form of what is called Mishna (it is called Oral but was written down around 800-900 BCE and redacted at about 200 CE). What Rabbinic Judaism does, is try to interpret legal situations that arise according to the laws that are in the Bible and the Mishna. Now, over the past two thousand years, there has been much writing, and thousands of books trying to explain everything that is considered Jewish law. The biggest, and probably most important work, is the Talmud, which is basically the Jewish code of law. This is writings, that were put together in order to look like conversations trying to explain exactly what the Mishna meant, and how to interpret the law in certain situations. As you can imagine, after the Talmud was written, people then did the samething with the Talmud: try to explain what it meant and interepret the law in different legal situations that would arise in the next age (that was not accounted for in the Talmud). And so on, and so forth.
This is where my issue comes in with the legislation on homosexuality in Conservative Judaism. Conservative Judaism claims to be Halachic (adhering to Halacha, or Jewish law), which means to adhere to the law, and to interpret situations according to the understanding of the law. However, as far as I understand, the decision that was passed was not done in a way of interpreting Halacha in this situation, but passed because people thought it was immoral.
In my limited learning of this particular issue (I have done a lot of studying Jewish texts and law including spending a year in Israel in Yeshiva only studying Judaics - I still consider my learning very limited) I personally believe that there may be a Halachic solution and possibility of giving homosexuals equal rights in marriage and being ordained as Rabbis according to Halacha (and if there is, I believe it is imperative that they are granted this). However, because the decision was not come to in this way, it makes it particularly hard for me to be ok with this legislation, and further complicates my feelings of belonging in the Conservative movement.
Again, this does have anything to do with how I feel about homosexuality in general. To quote Rabbi Joel Roth "Just because something is politically correct, that doesn’t make it ipso facto halachically correct." I believe that the Conservative movement needed to make this decision in a Halachic manner, and not a moral one.
Hpoe that helped.
It doesn't strictly prohibit gay sex, and Judaism isn't a religion based strictly on the Bible. The issue much more complicated than the simplifaction that you're making.
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I'll try and do that. It might be a little while though becaus I'm up at school right now and won't be home for another week. I'll try and ask around then, and post what I hear.
Yes i know about the Mishna and basic concepts of judaism. But am not too familiar with all the sects.
Can you show me where in the Old Testament or jewish law it permits too civil unions between 2 men?
funny how you christians claim to know more about the old testament than the religion that wrote it and supposedly did not have it revamped by jesus christ.
i love this. it's great news and a huge fuck you to haters here in america.
not to try and take a shot at you, and i mean no harm, but it seems a little messed up to me that someone would adhere to an immoral law solely becos it is tradition written thousands of years ago. i mean, do you still follow those old laws about slavery and prisoners and stoning unfaithful women? im not trying to insult you, im truly curious. if they can figure a way to get around that, how is this any different?
How did i claim i knew more? Way to put words into peoples mouths.
let's see... jewish leaders say they are going to allow gay unions. you tell them they're wrong and the bible prohibits it. clearly they know something you dont about how to interpret that book you tout so highly and read without understanding.
You act like it was all jewish leaders that are completely for this. Again maybe you should try actually reading....it can help.lol
majority rules
Which is why GWB is in office!
i know. and why ive lost faith in the intelligence of america. we've proved twice now that the majority of americans are dumb.
Most countries are probaly worse.
Just look at Canada and England.
ill give you england. canada always seemed pretty nice to me though. ideally though, id pick the motherland and go back to ireland. they're about where we are now, but they're at least coming around to reason.
Yea but what has ireland ever done? besides produce Guiness?
Yeah, and you're still waiting on that promised Constitutional law banning gay marriages
how are we worse???
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GWB: Tony i want you to jump.
Blair: how high mr. Bush
GWb: As high as i say.....
Really? Because he did not get a majority of the votes in 2000.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
still havent said how we the british are worse. you have just stated how tony is a twat.
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Simon Cowell.
In the Hebrew Bible, it says nothing about civil union between men at all. The verse says, "A man shall not lie with another man the way he lieth with a woman, for it is an abomination". In my opinion, civil union and sex are very different things.
No offense taken. In fact, I think its a great and crucial question. The problem comes in, that I believe in Judaism and halacha and this legislation undermines Halacha. I think that there may be a way to come to this same conclusion while adhering to the law, but, because they did not pass this legislation in a halachic manner, it deligitimizes the Law Making body (in my opinion).
The question of morality is also complicated. You ask, and rightfully so, why someone who believes that this is immoral would still adhere to it. Well, the answer is, is that it is incredibly complicated what the verse in the Bible actually means, and what that means for gay men and women, and how to treat them while still adhering to halacha. For one to just say "fuck halacha cause I don't like this ruling" undermines all of Halacha, the entire system.
I personally do not know enough about this issue in Halacha to make a great argument for or against. But, if you'd like to browse, here is Rabbi Joel Roth's, one of the leaders of the Conservative movement, and often thought of as one of the more forwarding thinking, paper on Homosexuality in Judaism http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/teshuvot/docs/19912000/roth_homosexual.pdf.
Not all Jewish leaders, just the majority of the law making body of the Conservative movement. This does not include the Orthodox movement (which DOES NOT only mean black hat, side locks... many people who you could not distinguish from secular Jews by looking at them, or just hanging out with them, consider themselves Orthodox).
If I haven't explained or said something clearly, please feel free to ask me more questions. Just don't attack (not that anyone has).
Please don't call it an evolution without understanding the situation fully.
just tells you how outdated and wrong the Old Testament is. We have to evolve as a species..... (-;