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Hazak Hazak V’nithazek: Celebrating Strength Through Inclusion
by Rabbi Andrew Sacks Exactly one year ago, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), the Conservative Movement’s flagship institution, opened its doors to gay and lesbian rabbinical and cantorial students. The decision, announced on March 26, 2007, by JTS chancellor Dr. Arnold Eisen, came three months after the movement’s Rabbinical Assembly (the professional network for Conservative/Masorti rabbis) issued a legal ruling allowing rabbinical schools to ordain gay and lesbian rabbis. The decisions announced by the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) also allowed for commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples who wish to celebrate their union. Because the Conservative Movement’s theology requires that decisions be guided by and based in halacha (Jewish law), it took years of debate and struggle before the decision was issued. Even so, there were more traditional positions retaining the movement’s ban on gay rabbis that were accepted as equally valid by the CJLS. Yet the more liberal view is what created headlines. Both JTS and the Conservative Movement’s Los Angeles-based seminary embraced the more liberal view and moved to accept openly gay students. The movement’s rabbinical school in Israel continues to embrace the traditional view and (openly) gay and lesbian students are barred from applying. For many years the traditionalists held that the push for gay inclusion was a case of the tail wagging the dog. They claimed that a small number of radical rabbis were leading the fight but that the people in the pews cared little about the issue. In fact, once an academic survey was released in January 2007, it established that an overwhelming majority of Conservative Jews, both lay and professional, were in support of gay and lesbian ordination. But the decision was not merely an exercise in legalistic study. Real people have felt the effects of the outcome. Until the mid-1980s, the Conservative world (called Masorti outside the United States) was denied the benefit of women rabbis. Fifty percent of our potential leadership were unable to study for the rabbinate. I can not think of a single negative consequence that emerged from the ordination of woman. Instead, I see countless blessings. Before the landmark decisions in favor of gay and lesbian inclusion by the CJLS and the movement’s North American seminaries, how often were adolescents in Conservative-affiliated families, confused over the issue of their own sexuality, told that their homosexual feelings were a phase that would pass? If only they would pray and act righteously they would feel normal. They had no rabbinic role models with whom they were able to publicly identify. Nobody to mentor and nobody to inspire. That will now change. Many of us grew up thinking that we knew nobody who was gay. We attended grade school, high school, and university (I dare say even seminaries) without realizing that we were sitting side by side with gay and lesbian people. But many of our fellow gay and lesbian students were either too frightened or too unaware of their own reality to acknowledge this. Today, one would be hard pressed to find a person under the age of 35 who did not have a roommate, family member, teacher, or friend who was openly LGBT. Still, many LGBT people within the Jewish community remain closeted – particularly those who grew up in less inclusive eras or who live in more socially conservative communities. This will now begin to change. But the struggle for full participation has not ended with the decision of one year ago. Here in Israel, my friend Netanel, openly gay, may still not apply for the rabbinate. Instead, he will earn a PhD in philosophy. My friend Stella can not apply. She is lesbian and will not hide this. She hopes to become pregnant and will not lie about the circumstances. And what of the American gay and lesbian rabbinical students who must spend a year in the Israeli program (a requirement for students attending the North American seminaries)? They must suffer the humiliation of studying in an institution where much of the administration sees homosexuality as a choice – and one that flies in the face of acceptable religious morality. Indeed just this week, the students and faculty at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America observed a day commemorating the one year anniversary of this momentous decision. Their Committee on Inclusion is an official organization with a faculty advisor. But students of JTS who are spending their required year in Israel were unable to hold a corresponding event. They were prohibited from using their seminary building or even the front lawn for an observance of the anniversary. Like criminals, they had to skulk away into a nearby woods during a 50-minute lunch break in order to meet. And what was the goal of this nefarious meeting of recalcitrant students who felt the need to disrespect the position of their dean? The hoped to hear, first hand, from someone who grew up within the Conservative Movement and went through the coming out process, and how they, as future rabbis, could learn to help create a more welcoming atmosphere for lesbian and gay Jews. They hoped to hear what obstacles the speaker encountered that they could be sure to avoid. One would hope that even the most ardent among the traditionalists would want to prepare rabbis to be accepting of all people (one who hates the “sin” can be welcoming of the sinner). Yet, the students studying here in Israel had to hold their program a kilometer from the rabbinical school. Nearly all of the students attended, but not a single faculty member. Judaism recognizes that all people are created in God’s image. That is not to say that all behaviors must be considered legitimate. Scholars and lay people may differ on what is, and what is not, legal and moral. But they should never differ on the need, within the academic world, to respect free thought and to foster a climate of inquiry. So a year has passed. Conservative Judaism is richer for becoming more open and inclusive. The pain that openly gay and lesbian Jews felt at having the doors rabbinical ordination closed to them has been eased. Some who are deeply in the closet may now find greater acceptance from the community and perhaps from within. But we still have light years to go. The struggle is not to make all Conservative Jews of one mind. Judaism recognizes that there are “many faces to the Torah” and that differing approaches may both be “the word of the living God.” But until all gay, lesbian, transgender and questioning Jews can feel welcome there is still work to be done.
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