Q: What is the future of queer Jews in the Conservative Movement?
A: The Conservative movement in American Judaism does not allow ordinations of openly gay rabbis, but some aspiring rabbis and rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary, its main seminary in New York, think its time for a change.
“I really think it is a watershed issue for this movement,” said Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, a conservative rabbi at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, a gay and lesbian synagogue in New York. “It is a chance for the movement to speak up in an intelligent way about its commitment to Jewish law and commitment to the modern world.”
The more liberal Reconstructionist and Reform movements currently ordain gay rabbis, since 1984 and 1990 respectively. In 1992, the Conservative movement issued a public statement prohibiting gay ordination and marriage, and left matters such as gay participation in synagogue ritual and community leadership up to local discernment.
Yet prominent rabbis asked in 2002 to revisit the issue and last March it was reported that the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which guides the policies of the Conservative movement, indicated to the press that the ban could potentially be reversed.
In response to the Committee’s decision to revisit the issue and the impending retirement of the current chancellor of JTS, a student group called Keshet has aimed to influence the elders of the movement to reverse the ban.
Elizabeth Richman, co-chair of Keshet, is a former student at Hebrew College who returned to JTS partly after the issues emerged at her Conservative-affiliated synagogue. “This is one of the issues which kept me away and drew me back. I’m not a particular fan of denominations in general, but in terms of practice and ritual, I am Conservative.”
Richman attributes the increased activism to changing national norms.
Keshet co-organizer Daniel Klein insists that many rabbinical students in the movement would favor ordaining gays.
Speaking to the New York Times, he said, “Imagine what will happen 10 years from now when some of my colleagues are on the law committee, when people from my generation are on the law committee…It’s not going to be a close vote.”
Part of Keshet’s on-campus campaign includes distributing buttons that say “Ordination Regardless of Orientation.”
JTS student Kara Tav, 37, wears one of these rainbow buttons on her book bag.
“Jewish tradition respects all humans as created in God’s image,” she said.
Tav insists that the Conservative movement, which is poised between the Reform and Orthodox denominations in terms of observance, believes that Jewish law should be reexamined as the times change. While the book of Leviticus says that a man shall not lie with a man in the way he would lie with a women, Tav explained that the Torah also says that those who gather sticks on the Sabbath are to be stoned.
“That was reinterpreted,” she said. “I don’t see this decision as different.”
Eytan Kenter, 25, another student at JTS, believes that the issue goes far beyond just ordination. If the movement changes its decision on ordaining gays, Kenter says, it will in turn change the entire status of homosexuality for Conservative Jews, affecting issues such as gay marriage.
Kenter does not align himself with classmates like Tav.
“It’s not up to us,” he said. “It’s up to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards.”
The Committee met in March to discuss the issue, but has postponed a vote until an already scheduled meeting in December.
Ismar Schorsch, the chancellor of JTS who will be stepping down in June, is maintaining his hard stance against ordaining gays and is warning the movement not to modernize too much after he retires.
“If the Conservative movement chooses to do something at the expense of the halachic system,” he told The Forward, “then it’s going to pay the price down the road.”
Said Richman, “Part of the reason I came back was to help make change on this issue, because I care about the movement and I care about the people affected by the movement.”
