Should homosexual Jews be able to become rabbis? Should rabbis perform Jewish marriage ceremonies for homosexual Jewish couples?
The movements at either end of the American Jewish religious spectrum seem to take relatively clear positions on these questions.
Orthodoxy says absolutely no, based on the condemnation of male homosexuality in the Torah (Leviticus 20:13) and of female in the Talmud (Tractate Yevamot) and Midrash (Sifra).
Reform and Reconstructionism say pretty much yes, although they respect individual choices of rabbis not to officiate at such marriages.
But what of the Conservative movement, the one that is supposed to be in the middle?
Two weeks ago, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, a body of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, met and had these issues on its agenda. The committee decided to postpone a final decision until December.
Until such a change is made, the movement remains committed to the position affirmed in 1992 that bars open homosexuals from its rabbinical schools and forbids Conservative rabbis from performing same-sex Jewish marriage ceremonies.
How do Conservative rabbis and their congregants in Wisconsin feel about these issues? The Chronicle asked rabbis at state Conservative-affiliated synagogues and received a range of responses that seem to reflect the ambivalence of the movement itself on the matter and the cautiousness with which it is moving.
Agree to disagree
To Rabbi Gideon Goldenholz, spiritual leader of Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue in Mequon, “the time now is not good” for “making such radical changes from the traditional point of view.”
“It’s an issue that is so divisive,” he said. “It would not be a positive thing for the movement to go in that direction.” If it did, the move “certainly will chip away at the movement in a very large way.”
Moreover, while “The Conservative movement is a movement that is based on tradition and change,” changes have to be based on “some solid halachic reasoning,” Goldenholz said. “I don’t believe the foundation is very solid” in this case.
Goldenholz emphasized, “this does not mean at all” that he opposes “gay and lesbian participation in services and community life. The community has to be inclusive.”
However, “there is a need to separate between sensitivity and openness and welcoming and outreach, and the basis of a specific religious norm that governs the character of a movement,” Goldenholz continued.
In contrast, Rabbi Kenneth Katz, spiritual leader of Beth Israel Center in Madison, said, “I think this change should be made,” though he also said that if it is made “it will always feel a touch odd for me personally. But I know that for my children it will feel perfectly natural.”
In that, Katz said the change may resemble the movement’s earlier decision to ordain women as rabbis, which “roiled the movement in the 1970s and 1980s.”
“It’s important that the Conservative movement arrive at a decision through its own internal due processes, which cannot be rushed, because we do not lightly transform the words of the written Torah,” he said.
However, Katz vehemently does not believe that the movement could divide or fall apart over these issues. In fact, he called speculation about such a development “complete nonsense.”
People who say this “don’t understand the strength and vitality of people agreeing to disagree,” Katz said. The “unity and strength” of the Conservative movement lies in its members ability to “disagree vehemently” and remain committed to upholding Jewish tradition, he said.
Two other Wisconsin Conservative rabbis told The Chronicle that they want to read and study the documents upon which the committee will deliberate or which the committee will issue when it does decide.
Rabbi Jacob Herber, spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel in Glendale, said in a telephone interview: “I think that because this is a very important issue that affects the lives of many, and because the Conservative movement is one that believes in the authority of halacha, it is important to study this issue in a way that will be sensitive to members of the lesbian and gay community, while at the same time enabling the movement to be faithful to our standards and to our adherence to the halachic framework.”
Moreover, “I understand that people are anxious and want to have a decision right away,” Herber said. “This is an extremely important decision that has got to be reached in a thoughtful way, which will require patience.”
Herber added that even if the committee allows Conservative rabbis to perform marriage ceremony for homosexual couples, that doesn’t mean all Conservative rabbis would have to do so.
Rabbi Shaina Bacharach, spiritual leader of Congregation Cnesses Israel in Green Bay, said something similar in an e-mail statement to The Chronicle. “I reserve comments on the contents” of the committee’s documents on these issues “until they are completed and presented to the Rabbinical Assembly membership and we can study them ourselves.”
“The national as well as Jewish media are full of rumors about the process,” she wrote. “That’s regrettable, for it inevitably demeans an important process and turns it into a political, not a religious, process.”
‘ Across the board’
And what of the congregants? It is possible that members of some Conservative synagogues may not feel the issue is pertinent to them.
Rabbi Saul (Simcha) Prombaum of La Crosse told The Chronicle in an e-mail that although he is neither a Conservative rabbi nor a member of the Rabbinical Assembly, his synagogue, Congregation Sons of Abraham, does belong to the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.
“To this point,” Prombaum wrote, Sons of Abraham members “have not discussed these issues with me. I am not certain how aware they are of what is going on the Conservative movement specifically, or their overall feelings, but I believe that the overall issue of gay rights, civil unions, participation in religious life as clergy or laypeople, etc., is something most members know about and have opinions about from years of media coverage given to America’s churches over these same issues.”
Goldenholz said, “I haven’t had much discussion on that topic with the congregation.”
Even so, “over the years, our congregation has prided itself on welcoming everyone.”
Herber said that he devoted a session of his “The Jewish Week That Was” class last week to examining the Conservative movement’s history on these issues. He said the participants’ feelings were “across the board; there was no one position I could tell.”
Katz said, “I guess my personal views and feelings are a pretty good reflection of my congregants,” that the movement is “moving forward at about the right pace,” and some will “feel a touch odd” about it but “will go ahead anyway.”
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