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February 14, 2003/Adar 12 5763, Vol. 55, No. 25
Conservatives may rethink gay stance
JOE BERKOFSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
On Sunday, the rabbi brought his boyfriend to the prom.
It's no mystery novel, but the real story of a young Conservative rabbi who took his Jewish partner to the big dance a few years ago at the Washington-area Jewish day school where he worked.
The rabbi had come out as gay since taking the job, so his date ruffled few feathers.
The rabbi and his date were openly accepted by his school, but he still shies from going public within the larger community.
His hesitancy reflects the Conservative movement's decade-old "don't ask, don't tell" ruling. That ruling embraced gays and lesbians as synagogue members but applied the biblical ban on homosexuality at seminaries, blocking openly gay and lesbian students from applying or from coming out at school, at the risk of expulsion.
Now, a clamor is growing among Conservative laity and the rabbinate to overturn that ruling - not only to fully accept gays and lesbians in synagogue life but to allow them to attend the University of Judaism's Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and the movement's three other seminaries worldwide.
Some rabbis say they also want to perform same-sex commitment ceremonies, as their counterparts in the Reform and Reconstructionist movements do.
But those involved in the issue say change, which is opposed by powerful figures in the movement, is unlikely to come any time soon.
Still, momentum to fully accept gays and lesbians has been building since the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards issued a consensus statement on the matter in 1992, some say.
The Rabbinical Assembly is the Conservative movement's rabbinical arm.
However, not all rabbis see such a rush to modernize the movement's standards on gays and lesbians.
Rabbi Paul Plotkin, at Temple Beth Am of Margate-Coral Springs, Fla., says he hasn't seen calls for change from congregants or others.
"There is no groundswell on either side" of the controversy, Plotkin says.
Yet debate has flared since reports revealed that Judy Yudof, president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents 800 Conservative congregations, intends to ask the Rabbinical Assembly's law committee to revisit the issue of homosexuality.
Contrary to reports that she is seeking a ruling on ordaining gays and lesbians, Yudof told JTA that she will ask the committee only to study whether homosexuality can be accepted under halacha, or Jewish religious law.
"Someone can learn to keep kosher, someone can learn to observe Shabbat, but I don't believe someone can learn to change their sexual orientation," Yudof says.
Yudof began drafting her request after hearing from many congregation leaders concerned about the marginalization of gays and lesbians, who she says "feel like second-class citizens" in the movement.
"The issue of openly gay and lesbian Jews serving as rabbis in the Conservative movement goes beyond the question of civil rights," said Rabbi Mark Bisman of Har Zion Congregation in Scottsdale. "I support the push for civil and economic rights for all citizens of the United States regardless of sexual orientation. However, the admissions policy to a religious seminary also requires a religious community to be able to state its ideals that it wants its future religious leadership to represent."
Several rabbis say any change should move beyond equal treatment of gays and lesbians in synagogue life to include a law committee position paper, or teshuvah, allowing gay ordinations and same-sex commitment ceremonies.
"My own prejudices lead me to want to retain the idea of 'kiddushin' exclusively for heterosexual unions," said Rabbi Bonnie Koppell of the Conservative Temple Beth Sholom in Chandler. "On the other hand, I am very sympathetic to gay and lesbian couples who want to anchor their relationships in holiness and affirm their commitment to each other in front of their communities. I have officiated at least one such ceremony, possibly two, and found it to be a joyous and meaningful experience." Koppell, not a member of the Rabbinical Assembly, was ordained through the Recon-structionist Rabbinical College, and said she has always had colleagues who are gay or lesbian. "This has very much affected my thinking on this issue," she said. "It is unimaginable to me that we might have lost so much talent in the rabbinate due to the sexual orientation of individual rabbis. Contemporary Jewish life has certainly been enhanced by their participation."
(The issue is) "much more important than 'Who is a rabbi' is 'Who is a Jew?' " says Rabbi Mark Loeb of Beth El Congregation in Baltimore.
Loeb is among those Conservative leaders who have publicly called for the movement to rethink its stance on homosexuality, and who backs such steps as commitment ceremonies.
Loeb also belonged to the Rabbinical Assembly's special Commission on Human Sexuality, which in 1996 drafted a letter to laity and to the law committee urging the committee to rethink its stance on homosexuality.
In a paper called "This Is my Beloved, This Is My Friend: A Rabbinic Letter on Intimate Relations," the commission urged that homosexuality "no longer be considered an abomination," as the Book of Leviticus calls it, Loeb says.
But the law committee requires a petition, in the form of a question, in order to consider a matter for religious debate. Yudof's request would set that process in motion.
Once the 25-member committee receives such a question, it would go before its Subcommittee on Sexuality and Family Life, which would ask its own members or other rabbinic authorities to write a position paper, members say.
The law committee next meets in June.
In the short term, such steps should include allowing openly gay and lesbian congregants to receive Torah readings on holy days; electing gays and lesbians to synagogue boards and leadership roles; letting gays and lesbians participate as counselors in youth groups; and recruiting qualified Jewish professionals from the gay and lesbian communities.
Managing Editor Leisah Namm contributed to this article.
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