BALTIMORE — Two Bay Area rabbis who attended a gathering of nearly 500 Conservative rabbis here last week expressed strong disappointment at the group’s failure to address the issue of gay ordination.
Rabbis from around the world attended the 99th annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization representing 1,500 Conservative rabbis, to discuss the future of their movement.
But issues not found on the official agenda were perhaps more interesting than the scheduled seminars.
There were no sessions on some of the major hot-button issues affecting the Conservative movement: the recent barring of intermarried congregants from lay leadership positions, the lack of affordable Conservative day schools and — most contentiously — gay ordination.
Assembly officials insisted there was a strong desire to keep controversial issues off the table, which explains the withdrawal of a formal resolution by gay advocates to prohibit job discrimination against openly gay members.
On the assembly’s failure to confront the issue of gay ordination, Rabbi Mark Diamond of Oakland’s Temple Beth Abraham did not split hairs.
“I’m disappointed that the convention didn’t address it. Many of us here in the Bay Area have strong feelings on this — it’s a powerful ethical issue,” he said.
Rabbi Ted Alexander of Congregation B’nai Emunah in San Francisco agreed.
“Bad habits die very slowly,” said Alexander, who also attended.
Alexander pointed out that in the Bay Area, where some Conservative congregations have openly gay staff members and gay chavurahs, “the question has already been answered. It’s just a question of the reactionary elements holding us back.”
Other area rabbis who attended the assembly were Gordon Freeman of Congregation B’nai Shalom of Walnut Creek, Stuart Kelman of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, Daniel Pressman of Congregation Beth David in Saratoga and Leslie Alexander, community chaplain at the Jewish Federation of Greater San Jose.
The struggle over gay rights has escalated over the last two months in the Conservative movement.
At the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, a group of rabbinical students launched an effort to gain grassroots support to change the Conservative ban on ordaining gay and lesbian rabbis.
The action followed a heated meeting between the students and JTS Chancellor Ismar Schorsch, who reiterated his long-standing opposition to overturning the ban against openly gay rabbinic students.
The ban prohibits openly gay students from attending the rabbinic school, but allows them entry into the school’s other divisions, such as the graduate and undergraduate schools.
At a March 23 forum, Schorsch angered a group of student advocates when he stated that there is a consensus in the Conservative movement against ordaining gay rabbis, according to students who attended.
Schorsch’s main statement was that rabbinic students “are a small elite group that cares about this issue, and that Conservative rabbis in the field and the laity don’t care,” said one participant.
Ted Alexander called that statement “absolutely untrue.”
“There are people on the East Coast who aren’t exposed to the issue that gay people exist,” he continued. “I love Chancellor Schorsch, but I disagree with almost everything he says on this issue.” Alexander predicted that the issue of gay ordination will follow the path of women’s ordination. After years of vehement opposition, JTS decided to accept women into its rabbinic studies program in the early 1980s.
“In 10 years, nobody will be against the ordination of gay rabbis,” Alexander said.
Diamond agreed that the gay ordination hits close to home.
“As a rabbi here in the East Bay, the issue is important to me and to my congregation,” he said. “With respect to Chancellor Schorsch, I’d have to say that we part company on this one.”
Diamond and Alexander both affirmed that they would support any future resolution to ordain gays.
Advocates of gay ordination say there is more support for their position than the chancellor acknowledges.
Joshua Levine Grater, a fourth-year rabbinical student and one of the leaders of the effort, told the Jewish Week that he intends to organize a rally and plan other actions to galvanize that support.
“We can no longer be silent,” said Grater, who is married.
Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow of New York said she is attempting to reinvigorate a group called B’tzalmaynu, Hebrew for “in God’s image,” to push for a change in the Conservative movement’s policy.
She said that in June 1993, 120 Conservative rabbis signed a petition supporting full rights for gays in the movement.
“There is a growing number of rabbis wanting to make B’tzalmaynu a more active organization to raise awareness that this is an ongoing issue, and to get the issue revisited. Dr. Schorsch thinks this is going to go away, but it’s not going to go away.”
Schorsch did not return several phone calls. A spokeswoman said he was unavailable for comment.
Grater said he first approached Schorsch about the issue in January, when he presented the chancellor with a petition signed by about 25 students who supported a change of seminary policy against gay ordination.
“I think it’s a form of racism that we have,” Grater, a rabbinic fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York, said of the gay policy. “I’m of the opinion that we have a new, totally different understanding of what the Torah was talking about” when it bans homosexuality in one passage in Leviticus.
Alexander agreed, commenting, “I believe this section of the Torah…has been completely corrupted and mistranslated on purpose.”
The petition presented to Schorsch states that “no longer can we, the undersigned, sit silent while our institution, as well as our movement, continues to ignore the issue of gay and lesbian ordination and investiture. We recognize that there are complexities which surround this issue, not the least of which is halachah. Yet we are prepared to talk about it openly and honestly.”
The seminary policy on not allowing openly gay rabbinical candidates was adopted in 1992 by a 19-3 vote. The assembly stated: “We will not knowingly admit avowed homosexuals to our rabbinical or cantorial schools, or to the Rabbinical Assembly or the Cantors Assembly.”
But the policy adds: “At the same time, we will not instigate witch hunts against those who are already members or students.”
Paasche-Orlow argues that the statement was meant to be a temporary measure, pending further study and reflection.
Meanwhile, a lesbian rabbi has been called before the Rabbincal Assembly’s ethics committee.
The case of Rabbi Benay Lappe, a fellow at the New York-based CLAL-the National Center for Leadership and Learning, is being examined after it became public that she is gay.
Lappe, whose sexuality became public after it was disclosed in newspaper articles, has declined to discuss the matter.