In the wake of Conservative Judaism’s historic vote to permit the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis, the movement’s West Coast seminary has accepted its first openly gay students.
Two gay applicants — one man, one woman — have been accepted for the fall by the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles. The move reflects the school’s longstanding position that it would immediately begin considering gay candidates once the movement’s top lawmaking body — the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards — sanctioned gay and lesbian clergy.
The decision comes as the movement’s flagship institution, the New York-based Jewish Theological Seminary, is still weighing whether or not to accept gay and lesbian students. A decision, insiders say, could come within the next several weeks.
Last December, the 25-member law committee approved a rabbinic opinion, known as a teshuvah, in favor of gay ordination and same-sex unions. At the same time, the committee passed two opinions upholding the ban on gay ordination, leaving it up to individual congregations and educational institutions to choose which decision to adopt.
Advocates of the newly liberal policy, which was passed after a hard-fought battle spanning more than 15 years, say the move signals that the law committee’s decision is having an impact on the ground.
“It means that there wasn’t just a change in writing,” said Rachel Kobrin, a fifth-year student at the Ziegler School who serves as co-coordinator of the school’s pro-gay ordination group, Dror Yikra. “It’s a change that’s going to have some follow-through.”
Kobrin portrayed the admission of gay students at U.J., which launched its rabbinic training program in 1996, as a first step toward what she hopes will be the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in Conservative Jewish life. While Kobrin and other gay ordination activists took December’s law committee vote as a victory, they say that the rabbinic opinion that passed didn’t go far enough, since it upheld the biblical ban on anal sex.
Ultimately, pro-gay activists say, a more liberal teshuvah should be passed containing no restrictions on homosexual behavior. Meanwhile, traditionalists in the movement have criticized the liberal opinion that was approved.
An opinion that sanctioned gay ordination and lifted the ban on homosexual anal sex was first submitted to the law committee in 1992 by the dean of the Ziegler School, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson. That paper failed to pass. The opinion that ultimately opened the door to gay and lesbian ordination was co-authored by another U.J. faculty member, Rabbi Elliot Dorff.
According to Artson, despite the passage of Dorff’s opinion, “not that many” gay and lesbian students have applied. Artson, citing federal privacy regulations, declined to say exactly how many applications were received from either gay or straight students. And the school refused to identify the two gay students who were accepted.
Dorff said the fact that the school was not inundated with applications from gay candidates simply reflected that gays are a minority. “The sheer number of gay and lesbian students who want to become rabbis is very small, because the population in general is very small,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Reconstructionist movement — a liberal breakaway from Conservative Judaism — is set to elect a lesbian rabbi, Toba Spitzer, to serve as president of its rabbinical association. Spitzer will be the first openly gay or lesbian rabbi to head a national rabbinical body.
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I live in Berlin where Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a German Jew who was forced to flee to France during the Nazi period, founded the first institute devoted to the study of sexuality in 1919. Hirschfeld campaigned to abolish the anti-Gay 175 paragraph in germany. The West Coast seminary is continuing Hirschfeld's legacy. Fantastic!
Mazal Tov to the newly admitted Rabbinical school students!
Leviticus 18:22 "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination." So let me get this straight... We take people who EXPLICITLY DON'T AGREE WITH THE TORAH, and then try to teach them the ways of Judaism... And then we call them Rabbis? I can't respect a Rabbi who cant respect the principles of his own religion
What does the WORD OF GOD say about homosexualality? Are they wanting to get out of the sin? Is this why they are wanting to become Rabbi's? That situation is like taking a shower with a raincoat on!
What does Torah say about homosexualality? TNK Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a male as one lies with a woman, the two of them have done an abhorrent thing; they shall be put to death -- their bloodguilt is upon them. What is happening is not a good sign
It makes me angry to read comments like Rick's and Jim's. If the Church could reexamine its doctrine to obviate the Jews of their "bloodguilt" for Christ's murder, I don't see why Jewish religion can't show a similar flexibility with respect to the readings of its own traditions. That is precisely what Rabbi Dorff's opinion did.
Why have Jews turned away from their God? It is amazing that the Christians continue to support us despite our never-ending shortcomings.
I would have issue admiring or looking to anyone for spiritual leadership who seems to be uncomfortable with the fact that HaShem created them to be a male or a female....
It is wonderful to see Jewish lead the way in excepting what God has made. Sexual orintation is a gift from God
Some of the comments here have obviously misunderstood the question. The Torah forbids anal sex between men. The school will be admitting students who do not engage in anal sex between men. The Torah does not forbid those whom God created able to love those of the same sex rather than the opposite sex from learning and teaching alongside their sisters and brothers. Nor are those whom God made in this way "uncomfortable" with being male or female, as one person suggested. Quite the opposite: what we are discussing is a group of people who have become comfortable enough with an awareness of how HaShem created them, in spite of the hardships involved with coming to that realization, to recognize truth where others would prefer that they deny it and deny too God's gifts of perspective and understanding that come with an unchosen, unalterable minority status.
My rabbi shaves his beard and wears clothing made of mixed fibers. Does that make him unfit? He happens to be straight, but even if he was gay he'd still be a fantastic rabbi who loves torah, teaches with passion, and sees the holiness in every person. Mazel tov to the two students in L.A., and may all of their teachers and fellow students see the holiness in them.