Rabbi Jerome Epstein compares Conservative Judaism to cruising down Interstate 5. While you may feel a compulsion to speed, the law insists on 70, so 70 you must drive.
“I can’t say to the policeman, ‘I don’t accept that speed limit. It’s not meaningful to me. I think I could drive 85,'” said Epstein, the executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.
“There are branches of Judaism where Jewish law per se is no longer important. We say law is important; it just has to be reinterpreted…Jewish law may change the same way U.S. laws change from time to time, but whatever the law is, it’s the law. It’s not just that it’s a good value to stop at a red light, that’s what the law is.”
For Epstein — who will serve as a scholar-in-residence at Palo Alto’s Congregation Kol Emeth Friday and Saturday, Nov. 8 and 9 and will attend the Nov. 10 Northern California regional biennial in Saratoga — the issue of altering Jewish laws has raised considerable friction when it comes to the subjects of homosexuality and intermarriage.
USCJ guidelines do not permit the non-Jewish partner in a mixed marriage to become a member of a congregation. Nationally, people married to non-Jews would not be hired for positions in which the USCJ determines the occupant should be held to a halachic standard.
“Conservative congregations are for Jews,” explained Epstein by phone. “Yet we understand that there are individuals who are part of the family who may want to associate with the congregation, and we have no objection to that. We welcome them and embrace them, but not as members. They can’t vote. They can’t be the chair of the education committee or youth committee or an officer of the congregation. Can they come to services? Absolutely. Can they take part in programming? Absolutely.”
The USCJ, based in New York, professes a similar position on openly gay men and women. The organization’s guidelines advise against congregations employing a homosexual in a position such as rabbi, cantor or religious-school educator, and, nationally, an open homosexual would be limited to non-halachic positions within Conservative organizations.
“My guess is my chief financial officer does not have to be” held to a halachic standard, said Epstein. “I wouldn’t hold my CFO in that regard. I wouldn’t hold a director of public relations in that regard. But a person who might be director of our education department, I would.”
While emphasizing that “all people who are Jewish” are welcome in Conservative congregations, he pointed out that open homosexuals will not be accepted as students in Conservative rabbinical schools.
“I’m not sure the seminaries are wrong,” said Epstein. “If the law committee of the Conservative movement maintains that homosexuality is not within the confines of Jewish law, to take a rabbi who says he won’t observe this Jewish law may provide a conflict the same way we wouldn’t expect to take a rabbi who came to the seminary and said, ‘I won’t observe Shabbat, but I will observe everything else.'”
Disagreements on these positions and others, such as kashrut, have led to some congregations disassociating from the USCJ, which boasts roughly 770 shuls. In the past decade, Epstein recalls roughly a dozen conversations with congregations behaving in a manner the organization saw as unfit, but only three cases of a congregation being asked to leave over policy matters.
Epstein likened an unaffiliated Conservative shul to a doctor who is not a member of the American Medical Association or a lawyer who is not a bar member. He said he has no idea how many Conservative congregations remain unaffiliated, noting that “we don’t have a copyright on the term ‘Conservative.'”
The Bay Area currently is home to two unaffiliated congregations: Berkeley’s Netivot Shalom and Oakland’s Temple Beth Abraham. The latter, however, recently voted to rejoin after a multiyear absence, and Epstein sees no reason why the motion shouldn’t pass easily at December’s board meeting.
The rabbi described the overall mission of the USCJ as strengthening the Jewish ties of the affiliated and reaching out to the unaffiliated. He assesses the organization as having done “a great job, but we have a lot more to do.”
“It’s easy for the haredi community; the ultra-Orthodox say, ‘So many of your Conservative Jews are not totally committed like our members are.’ And that’s true,” said Epstein, now in his 16th year at the helm of the USCJ.
“But we’re reaching out to those people who are not committed, and trying to bring them along the way.”