CJLS

Tikkun Olam Issue Resources

Brian Fink — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:39:16 -0500

Below is a growing list of programmatic resources to aid congregations in their pursuit of Tikkun Olam, organized by issue, and type of resource.

The initial issues included are:

These represent the most common issues being addressed by Congregation Based Community Organizing (CBCO) groups throughout the country.

For a more expansive selection, please see the list of Tikkun Olam resources located within the JRF Resources Library, as well as specific resources on advocacy within congregations.

Jewish Theological Seminary to Ordain Gay and Lesbian Rabbis

Lisa Tuttle — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:41:01 -0400

Dr. Arnold Eisen, JTS ChancellorThe Jewish Theological Seminary (J.T.S.) announced on March 26, 2007 that it will begin accepting openly gay and lesbian candidates into its rabbinical and cantorial schools, and extend application deadlines to allow for prospective students impacted by the decision.

The announcement comes on the heels of the decisions expressed in December by the Conservative movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (C.J.L.S.), ending their movement’s ban on ordaining openly gay and lesbian rabbis and on sanctioning same-sex unions. Those teshuvot (rabbinic opinions) gave individual Conservative congregations and academic institutions the theological latitude to stake out their own positions.

The first Conservative rabbincal school to open its doors to gay and lesbian students following the C.J.L.S. vote was the Zeigler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, CA.

In a letter to the J.T.S. community announcing the decision, chancellor-elect Arnold M. Eisen said “The decision to ordain gay and lesbian clergy at J.T.S. is in keeping with the longstanding commitment of the Jewish tradition to pluralism. Pluralism means that we recognize more than one way to be a good Conservative Jew, more than one way of walking authentically in the path of our tradition and of carrying that tradition forward.”

In 1984, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College became the first rabbinical seminary to accept gay and lesbian students and was the first to endorse the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis. This was six years earlier than the Reform movement.

Read the full text of Dr. Arnold Eisen's announcement.

Oy Vey, the Rabbi is Gay: A Short Story by Rabbi Daniel Brenner

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 03:47:20 -0500

Rabbi Daniel Brenner has graciously submitted his short story, Oy Vey, the Rabbi is Gay to our resources library.

The story is designed for children, including young children. A closeted gay rabbi's sexual orientation becomes known to two of his members, one of whom is an angry Mr. Birnbaum. After some soul-searching and a heart-to-heart talk with the rabbi, Mr. Birnbaum realizes that the struggles he faced as a result of his choice of a life-partner were similar in many ways to what the gay rabbi faced.

Read the story.

In Response to the Conservative Movement, When Shall We Raise Our Cups?

R Elizabeth Bolton — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 23:17:46 -0500

Photo of Rabbi Liz Bolton.Ed. Rabbi Liz Bolton is the spiritual leader of Reconstructionist Congregation Beit Tikvah in Baltimore, MD.

Is it possible to deplore something and celebrate it at the same time? If so, then I suppose it would best reflect how I feel about the recent decision of the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards, and particularly about the celebratory discussion of the Dorff-Nevins-Reisner paper.

What is there to celebrate, from a queer/Jewish/rabbinic perspective? I can celebrate that the hard work over the years of my Conservative rabbinic friends has borne fruit; that their diligent activism and willingness to speak out and focus on this issue from within their movement provided the necessary impetus for the discussions, and this outcome. Yet the fact that the outcome will allow talented queer folk who wish to serve the Jewish people to do so as Conservative rabbis is just one of the aspects of this decision, and the years of discussion and activism, that leave me queasy.

I truly feel it viscerally when I think about the damaged, even broken, lives of talented people – those already ordained, those who sought ordination, and those who were still approaching those choices, particularly in the past twenty years. Where, when and how will the movement be held accountable for what they previously did, in the name of the same halakhic process they now celebrate?

I can’t help thinking about some of my friends who are plaintiffs in the same-sex marriage case just argued before the Maryland Court of Appeals. During oral arguments I listened to some specious claims about the particularities of marriage between and man and a woman, not analogous to but just as disturbing as statements about which sexual behaviors are permitted or forbidden according to interpretations of biblical passages. Lest the parallel seem too stretched, remember that the prevailing normative definitions of marriage are similarly based on constrained interpretations of verses from our canon.

Damage was done here as well, when one of the plaintiffs could not get information about her partner’s life-threatening heart condition in an emergency situation; when the heart patient could not later participate in decision making and support as the labor during their first-born’s birth took a difficult turn. I see the traumas replaying on their faces, ever so faintly, as the state’s attorney stumbles over the legalese holding that the passage of Maryland’s Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970’s affirmed that the benefits and institution marriage, while reserved for a man and a woman, are not discriminatory on the basis of sex.

Rabbi Danny Nevis, co-author of the permissive teshuvah, is himself very clear on the connection between heterosexual marriage/kiddushin and the lifting of the ban on homosexual rabbis. The term homosexual is explicitly used here, as nowhere in the discussion around this process have I read any allusions to lesbians. The focus clearly seems to be on gay male sex.

Sex. Our consideration of it can no longer be avoided, though the CJLS’s liberalizing folks would prefer that we not examine, or consider, what appears to be at best fear and suspicion of a particular sex act - one, I may add, that may also bring delight and enjoyment to men and women with each other, and women with women as well. They might prefer that we not consider genitals and orifices, body parts and sex toys.

But we shall not pussy-foot around. The decision determines that future rabbis may be who they are and do what they do professionally, and that same-sex ceremonies may now be presided over the movement’s rabbis, as long as there is no anal sex. Again, we presume, though it is not yet clear to me how the teshuvah spells it out, that only men-with-men are addressed here.

The CJLS, and particularly Rabbis Dorff, Nevins and Reisner, seem comfortable designating such a boundary in order to achieve their desired goal of keruv to future colleagues, and potential mates, under their denomination’s umbrella. Their view that the process had to be a halakhic one, as they define it, serves secondarily to cover any direct discussion of their making such an apparently intimate choice. Laughable images of potential enforcement practices of course only highlight the absurdity of the position (sic). Even Rabbi Nevins acknowledges as much in a commentary on his own paper, likening it to the absence of enforcement to taharat hamishpahah in the Conservative world, coupled with an assumption that since it is still “on the books” the movement can still attest to a halakahic view of the issue.

In the same commentary, Rabbi Nevins writes: “It is forbidden to humiliate another person, and yet our policy on homosexuality is clearly humiliating.” That he intended this statement to refer to the previously-held policy only highlights the offense.

The current policy, too, is indeed humiliating. Yet I ask, again, can I deplore and celebrate it simultaneously? Can I celebrate the work it took to achieve this change, celebrate the uninhibited joys in study, in celebration, in spiritual life, in partnership, that will ensue and be Jewishly celebrated, while deploring the appalling hubris and degrading attitude that buttress its purported religious reasoning?

I think I’ll hold off on my le'chayyims for now, and perhaps reserve them for other occasions, ones that more powerfully honest, more unambiguously healthy, more proudly trangressive. Le'chayyim to the children who are now confronting their sexual and gender identities in loving and supportive families. Le'chayyim to the congregations, like the one I serve, who celebrate me, my partner and my family without attachment to state or rabbinic definitions of commitment. Le'chayyim to those who held on, despite the psychic battering, to their emotional health while battling those who would ask them to divide their sexual and spiritual selves. And a bittersweet le'chayyims to those who could not.

Recon Rabbi Serving Conservative Congregation Lauds CJLS Decision

Rabbi Rick Brody — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 13:25:20 -0500

Ed. note: Rabbi Rick Brody serves Temple Ami Shalom in West Covina, CA. He is a 2002 graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

As a member of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association I stand in proud and joyful solidarity with the more progressive members of the Rabbinical Assembly (Conservative rabbis' group) who have won a major victory for Judaism and humanity. More specifically these beneficiaries include:

folks who wish to stand under a chuppah with their gay partner and an officiating Conservative rabbi;
the folks who, gay or straight, wish to be that rabbi;
those who wish to be out, real, whole and be Conservative rabbis, cantors, education directors, teachers, administrators etc.

I know there are some in the Reconstructionist movement who are focusing on the many contradictions in yesterday's decisions. The most glaring of these is that the responsum that was passed permitting ordination and same-sex commitment ceremonies affirmed Leviticus' ban on male-male intercourse. Sure, we in the Reconstructionist world addressed this issue long ago. We should rejoice in an expanding of the egalitarian/humanitarian ethic that, as has now been demonstrated, can not only steer the course for those of us who subscribe to a post-halakhic evolution of Jewish civilization, but now for those who adhere to a halakhic process as well.

Those who voted for Rabbi Elliot Dorff's teshuvah (Jewish legal opinion—in this case the one allowing ordination of gays and lesbians and same-sex unions but affirming Leviticus) are advancing the process of halakhic change. They have established that basic human ethics, discoveries in the hard and social sciences, and the experience of pain and alienation among gay and lesbian Jews are critical factors in halakhic decision-making.

The four resigning members of the Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards (CJLS) disagree, but they know their narrowness is on the losing side here, even though Roth's contradictory teshuvah passed alongside Dorff's.

Regarding the apparent contradictory nature of Dorff's position, he admits that he himself preferred the teshuvot (plural of teshuvah) that argued for more comprehensive change. Those proposals were deemed takanot(a major change to the law which requires a higher vote threshold) and didn't pass. He saw his approach as pragmatic.

Dorff wanted something to pass. He wants to be able to ordain out gays and lesbians as rabbis (which, quite likely, will now occur this spring). He wants to advance the acceptance of same-sex commitment ceremonies. There was no reason for those goals to be deferred any longer. Dai kvar (enough already)!

Advocates for change within the Conservative movement see this teshuvah as not the greatest statement on the issue, but it remains worlds better than the status quo. Political deal-cutting, pragmatism, and moderation is a reality. Such machinations got Lincoln elected and thus helped end slavery. So, I say, thank God for Elliot Dorff.

There are implications that result from the contradictions of Dorff's teshuvah. There remains an official condemnation of anal penetration between men. However, the teshuva does not condemn any other form of intimacy. Nor does it question the validity of loving partnerships between members of the same sex.

Furthermore, the progressives within Conservative Movement leadership have made it clear that they have no interest—and there will be no presumption&mdashof expecting any kind of accountability or enforcement regarding this "ban;" it is really in name only with no practical application. It simply represents the movement's imperfect way of addressing problematic Torah texts. The real-life changes "on the ground," rather, are significant.

Sure, the Reconstructionist desire for complete equality and intellectual honesty prefers that we resolve such remaining relics of an outdated system, in this case the homophobic condemnation of an act between two adults that can be a deeply personal expression and celebration of their love. We in our movement HAVE resolved this potential problem by reading Torah not as a final word but rather in its civilizational context. But we should note that the liberal wing of the Conservative movement wishes to take this approach as well in its ethics-centered understanding of halakhah. Its adherents all wish they could have overcome the Levitical ban.

On a more personal note, I am very proud to say that my partner, Rachel Kobrin, in the rabbinical program at the University of Judaism, has made news as a vocal advocate for change on this issue. She penned a letter to the CJLS that 75% of UJ students signed advocating change. The Forward's recent article quoted her and mentioned the letter campaign.

Finally, as a rabbi in a USCJ congregation, I took advantage of the upcoming vote this past Shabbat to teach on the issue and encourage honest discussion—a move that was received very positively and that allowed many liberally-minded congregants to speak up in favor of change. So, at the least, this process has helped move the conversation along. We, the Jewish People, are definitely not standing still.

Linkroll for Conservative Decision on Gay Inclusion

Rabbi Shai Gluskin — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 13:06:36 -0500

Check out our linkroll which includes mainstream press, blog entries, and basic information regarding the recent actions of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative movement. Links to stories about the Law Committee's Decision: