The Conservative movement’s committee on Jewish law and standards has endorsed three conflicting opinions on homosexuality, one of which allows commitment ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples, as well as the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis.

Five tshuvot, or responsa, were presented last week in New York during a two-day meeting of the movement’s highest legal body, but only three papers garnered enough votes in the 25-member voting committee to pass.

Two opinions upheld earlier prohibitions on homosexual activity, but the third endorsed commitment ceremonies and the ordination of gay rabbis, while retaining the biblical ban on male sodomy.

Two other opinions that were under consideration, which would have removed all restrictions on gay activity, were declared takanot, or substantial breaks from tradition that would require a majority of the committee members for adoption. They were defeated.

< An opinion by Rabbi Joel Roth affirmed the movement’s traditional ban on gay rabbis and commitment ceremonies. Another, by rabbis Elliot Dorff, Daniel Nevins and Avram Reisner, reversed those positions while upholding the biblical prohibition on male intercourse. Both papers earned 13 votes, a majority of the law committee.

The decision on the latter paper “left open what that means in terms of commitment ceremonies, but it said that in general, because the Jewish tradition favours monogomy and because marriage stabilizes communities, etc., some ceremony down the road should be developed and it also said therefore that it should be permissible for gays and lesbians to apply to rabbinical school and to serve as rabbis or as cantors,” said Beth Tzedec Congregation’s Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl, who is a voting member of the law committee.

A third opinion, by Rabbi Leonard Levy, which earned the minimum six votes required for acceptance, also affirmed the movement’s traditional position on homosexuality while rejecting the now-common view that homosexuality is an orientation one cannot control.

Rabbi Frydman-Kohl, who voted for the traditional papers, said that one of the opinions expressed in Levy’s paper said that “ a sense of being locked in [by homosexuality] is true of most of the gay community, but not all of the gay community, and those people who are not locked in should seek… the kind of therapy that would help them, to place themselves in a heterosexual relationship.”

Rabbis Roth and Levy, along with rabbis Mayer Rabinowitz and Joseph Prouser, resigned from the law committee to protest its endorsement of the liberal Dorff paper.

Momentum has been building for years for a more permissive Conservative attitude toward homosexuality in the United States, despite the committee’s 1992 decision upholding the ban on gay rabbis and commitment ceremonies.

Paul Kochberg, the president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s Canadian region, said that although he wasn’t surprised that the law committee accepted a more liberal view on homosexuality, people shouldn’t expect any radical changes at their shuls.

“We have to remember that these decisions are not mandatory, they’re advisory. No one has to follow anything,” Kochberg said.

With files from JTA

return to main article

Hosted with Jvillage Network