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Yom Kippur Sermon, 5764
Later today during our
Afternoon Service we’re going to again take out the Torah scroll and read
a verse from the book of Vayikra, Leviticus, which reads “And a man shall
not lie with a man as he does with a woman. It is a toevah,
an abomination.”
How do we reconcile this
verse with changes going on in our culture? Gays and lesbians no
longer need to deny who they are, or who their partners are, in order to
be accepted in straight society. Here in Canada same-sex couples can
now get married.
Do we have to choose
whether to ignore the Torah or to deny what we see around us?
When asked why the
Conservative movement refuses to ordain openly gay and lesbian persons as
rabbis, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological
Seminary in New York said: “There is no doubt that such a step would
fracture the movement, and in a very severe way. If you want to see the
end of the Conservative movement, that's the step to take now."
I strongly disagree with
the esteemed Chancellor. Rather than seeing the debate as a bad
thing that could lead to the destruction of the movement, I see it as a
positive sign that the movement is alive and well, and committed to the
principles on which it is based.
In fact, the fact that
we’re debating this issue is one reason why I’m a Conservative Jew and not
associated with some other denomination.
People sometimes ask me
“why did you choose to become a Conservative rabbi?” It’s not the
movement I grew up with—when I was a kid the shul we did NOT go to was
Orthodox. I could also have chosen one of the three “R’s”:
Reform, Renewal, or Reconstructionist. So why be a Conservative Jew?
It’s because the
Conservative approach to Judaism is the only one that really makes sense
to me, that resonates with my soul. Ever since the destruction of
the Temple nearly 2000 years ago, Judaism has had to struggle to reconcile
tradition and change. On the one hand, we need to be faithful to our
God, to our Torah, and to the traditions of our ancestors. It’s what
makes us Jews. On the other hand, we are a part of the world around
us, we are influenced by both advances in scientific knowledge and changes
in that larger society of which we are a part. Adapting to those
changes is what has kept Judaism a dynamic, living, vital spiritual
practice, and not just a relic, a museum-piece dedicated to showing us the
way things once were. It’s far more important that Judaism be able
to tell us the way things are.
And change is a part of the
way things are. In the late 1700s and early 1800s the Haskalah, the
Enlightenment, was sweeping through the Jewish world. Jews in
Western Europe were being freed from the ghettos, they were given full
rights as citizens of the countries they lived in. It was a heady
and exciting time. A number of Jews embraced this new freedom
wholeheartedly and set out to reform Judaism, to make it more modern, to
make it more like the worship followed by our non-Jewish countrymen.
There were experiments with the liturgy, with the language of prayer, even
with moving the main day of synagogue attendance to Sunday. The
Conservative movement traces its origins to 1845, when Rabbi Zecharias
Frankel in Germany broke away from his Reform colleagues because they said
that Hebrew was not necessary in the prayer service. Frankel felt
they had gone too far in the direction of “change.” Interestingly,
the Orthodox rabbis of the time also did not approve of Frankel, because
he said it was OK to change the prayerbook—just not that radically!
And that is where
Conservative Judaism has been ever since that day in 1845—the
philosophically most difficult and nuanced place in the spectrum of
religious thought: not blindly wedded to tradition, which is easy to
justify because, well, it’s the tradition—and not throwing out the
tradition in favor of wholesale changes simply because it’s a new world.
That effort to balance
tradition and change plays itself out in the Conservative approach to
halacha, to Jewish law. Halacha is the intersection of belief and
action. As it says in Emet Ve-Emunah, the Conservative movement’s
statement of principles, “Halacha consists of the norms taught by the
Jewish tradition, how one is to live as a Jew.” The word itself,
halacha, comes from the same root as the word “holach” which means to
walk. Halacha is the Jewish Walk, the Jewish Way. Halacha is
what our community understands to be God’s will. And that is a
crucial point. Conservative Judaism understands halacha to be
binding on us all. As my teacher Rabbi Daniel Gordis put it,
“mitzvah does not mean suggestion.” We call them the Ten
Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions. We are obligated to follow
the commandments. That sense of being commanded by God is
fundamental to the spiritual path that is Judaism. It defines us in
a unique kind of relationship with God and the Jewish people.
In that way, we are similar
to the Orthodox, who also maintain that we are bound by halacha, and
UNlike the Reform, who maintain that the ritual commandments are not
binding. Where we differ from the Orthodox is in our approach to
halacha: the way in which we decide what is the law, the way in
which we determine what we believe to be God’s will.
As Rabbi Elliott Dorff says
in an article he wrote for a symposium at San Francisco State University,
“unlike the Orthodox, Conservative Jews study the Jewish tradition --
including its laws -- in their historical context. Sometimes the
scientific, social, economic, or moral conditions are relevantly different
from what they were when a particular law, judicial ruling, or custom
became normative, in some cases the rabbis of the current generation find
those differences to be sufficient to warrant a different ruling.”
That willingness to take
scientific, social, economic and moral conditions into account when
deciding what should be the law is what has led to the most acrimonious
debates within the Conservative community. People of integrity and
good intentions can strongly disagree about when changes in those external
factors merit a change in halacha. Even though everyone in the
Conservative movement might agree in principle that we are about balancing
tradition and change, we do NOT always agree about exactly what that
balance should be.
For many issues, the fact
that we don’t all agree isn’t a problem. The Conservative movement
is a pluralistic movement. For example, most Conservative Jews know
that there’s a teshuva, a Jewish legal opinion, that it’s OK to drive to
the synagogue on Shabbat and holidays. What most Conservative Jews
might NOT know is that there is also a teshuva which says it is NOT
permissible to drive anywhere on Shabbat, even to shul. So what do
you do if you’ve got two rules: one says driving to shul is OK, and
the other says it isn’t? The answer is that each individual rabbi,
as the mara d’atra, the decision maker, for the community can decide which
teshuva is correct, or which is correct for his or her community.
There are many issues
besides the driving issue where we have no agreement in the Conservative
community. There are Conservative rabbis who say it is OK to use
electricity on Shabbat, and there are those who say it isn’t. There
are those who say it is OK to eat dairy meals in non-kosher restaurants,
and there are those who say it is not. There are those who will
allow women to sign as witnesses on ketubot and gets, and those who will
not. While most Conservative shuls are egalitarian, there are a few
back East that will not give women an aliyah, allow them to read the Torah
or to lead services.
This pluralistic approach
to Judaism is the one which I believe is most authentically in keeping
with the spirit of Judaism. I love Talmud—I spend at least half an
hour every day studying it. And you cannot study a single page of
Talmud without seeing argument, debate, and an acceptance of different
approaches to the law. There are many sources in our tradition which
can be drawn from to come to radically different solutions, both credibly
within the framework of the tradition and within the bounds of halacha.
The Talmud is full of debates between the school of Shammai and the school
of Hillel. One time when both sides claimed the halacha was with
them, a heavenly voice cried out and said “eilu v’eilu divrei Elokim
chayim,” both these and those are the words of the living God. They
are both valid. They both may be right for their community.
When this pluralistic
approach becomes difficult to maintain is when it comes to issues that
effect the movement as whole. In the 1980s the movement went through
a very difficult and divisive debate about ordaining women as rabbis.
There were those who argued
that to allow women to serve as rabbis would be to ignore 2000 years of
rabbinic understanding of the Torah. One rabbi argued that “anyone
who will contribute in any way towards enabling women to be admitted to
the Rabbinical School will be transgressing the biblical injunction,
‘Before one who is blind, do not place a stumbling block.’ He will
also be violating the rabbinic prohibition to assist transgressors.”
In other words, he was saying that if you even lobby in favor of ordaining
women, you are committing a sin by leading others astray.
Foreshadowing Rabbi Schorsch, Rabbi Simon Greenberg wrote,
“There are those who predict that the question of the ordination of women
at present agitating the Conservative Movement will inevitably result in
the dissolution of the Movement.” Guess what? It didn’t
happen.
To be sure, the halachic
issues surrounding ordaining gays and lesbians are different from the
issues that surround ordaining women. But the overall
context of the debate is strikingly similar. The social circumstance
in the world around us had changed: how were we going to respond?
Earlier this year, Judy
Yudof, the President of United Synagogue, called on the rabbinical
leadership in the movement to readdress the status of homosexuals within
the movement.
There are two major issues
surrounding our treatment of gays and lesbians in our community.
1. Should we ordain openly gay clergy? And 2. Should
Conservative rabbis conduct same sex marriages or commitment
ceremonies?
She made this request
because many congregations are not satisfied with current “official”
position on homosexuality, referred to as the “Consensus Document.”
Approved in 1992, the consensus document says the following:
1)
Conservative rabbis should not perform same-sex commitment ceremonies
2)
Gays and lesbians who are out of the closet will not be admitted to
rabbinical school, cantorial school, or admitted to the RA or CA.
Witch hunts will not be conducted regarding people currently enrolled.
3)
Whether homosexuals may function as teachers or youth leaders in our
congregations and schools will be left to the rabbi authorized to make
halakhic decisions for a given institution within the Conservative
Movement.
4)
Whether or not to give homosexuals synagogue honors or allow them to
serve in lay leadership positions in the synagogue is up to the rabbi
and lay leadership.
5)
In any case, we hereby affirm gays and lesbians are welcome in our
congregations, youth groups, camps, and schools.
There are many people in
the Conservative movement, myself included, who are very troubled by this
consensus document. And I would not call it a “consensus” document
anymore, because it certainly does not reflect a current consensus.
To start with, saying that
synagogues can choose not to give gays and lesbians honors, or can refuse
to allow them to serve in lay leadership positions, seems homophobic.
Let’s accept for a minute the argument that homosexuality is a sin (which
I don’t accept, but we’ll come to that). There is no logical reason
to single out this particular
sin for special treatment. Yes, the Torah says that if a man lies
with a man as a woman, it is a toevah,
an abomination. However, the Torah also says that if
you eat clam chowder it is an abomination. If we’re going to say
we’ll only give aliyot to Jews who don’t break
any
of the commandments, we’re going to have a hard time getting 8 up to the
bima on a typical Shabbat. To say that gays and lesbians are
“welcome” in our congregations, but that the synagogue leadership can
decide not to give them aliyot, or even allow them to open the ark, is
disingenuous. How welcome would YOU feel if treated in such a
manner?
The current policy
regarding gay clergy has been criticized as a “don’t ask, don’t tell”
policy. Only gays who are in the closet can be ordained. If
our chazzan—the wonderful, amazing, talented Andrew Lippa—were to decide
to quit his day job and become a full time cantor, he would be turned down
by the Cantorial School at JTS. And any of you who have been here
over the holidays could testify, this would be a tremendous loss to the
Jewish world.
The fact that Beth Tikvah
is a community that is welcoming to all Jews regardless of gender, race,
or sexual orientation speaks well to the value we place on being
inclusive. The fact that we accept gay clergy shows that we are
ahead of the official position of the movement on this issue.
The consensus document is
advisory in nature: it is not binding on individual rabbis, who are free
to make their own decisions. There are many Conservative rabbis who
will perform same-sex commitment ceremonies. My views on this topic
are already known from talks I’ve given in other forums: I do not consider
homosexuals in loving committed relationships to be sinners, and I
therefore favor ordaining gays and lesbians as clergy. I would be
willing to conduct a ceremony celebrating their relationship for a same
sex couple.
However, rabbis do not make
their decisions in a vacuum. Because something is permitted does not
mean it is mandatory, and it is a community decision whether or not to
allow same sex commitment ceremonies in the synagogue sanctuary, and how
to handle the membership status of gay couples. Individual
synagogues do not need to wait for the movement as whole to take a
position before taking a position of their own.
For example, Beth El
Congregation, the largest Conservative synagogue in Baltimore, recently
voted to allow its rabbis to perform same-sex commitment ceremonies in the
sanctuary. Last month, two women became the first couple to take
advantage of the new policy. Some Conservative rabbis on the West
Coast have been doing commitment ceremonies for at least ten years.
In both the cases of
ordaining openly gay clergy and conducting same-sex commitment ceremonies,
the underlying question is the same. Is homosexuality a sin?
If it is a sin, as a movement committed to halacha the Conservative
movement would no more ordain an openly gay clergy person than it would
ordain someone who openly did not keep kosher. If a gay relationship
is a sinful relationship, a rabbi would not acknowledge it with a public
ceremony. But if it is not a sin, there are no barriers to ordaining
gays and lesbians as clergy, or to conducting commitment ceremonies.
The process though which we
make the decision about whether homosexual relationships should be viewed
as sinful is at the heart of efforts to balance tradition and change.
The details of the debate
go far beyond the scope of what I could cover in a high holiday sermon.
There is just one aspect of the debate I want to touch on, and that is
whether in the face of the verse we have in this afternoon’s Torah
reading, we can make such a change and still call ourselves a movement
governed by halacha. The answer is most certainly yes! The
Torah itself gives us the power to do so. In Deuteronomy 17:8-9 we
are told that if a controversy arises in your gates, you should go to the
“judge who shall be in those days
and inquire.” The Talmud understands this as giving the judge “in
those days”—in every generation—a great deal of leeway in determining what
is the right answer for the community at that
time.
We have many examples of
things that are explicitly mentioned in the Torah that have changed over
time. Going by the Torah it’s OK to own slaves, and it’s OK for a
man to have more than one wife. All debts are supposed to be
forgiven every seven years. A rebellious son is supposed to be put
to death. None of those rules is operable today. Most Orthodox
halachic authorities hold that it is a matter of Biblical law that women
cannot lead services or serve as witnesses. The Conservative
movement has obviously come to different conclusions. The Torah
prohibits the offspring of forbidden unions from marrying into the
congregation; the Torah prohibits Kohenim from marrying divorcees.
The Conservative movement has taken positions contrary to what it says in
the Torah because we feel changing circumstances compel us to do so.
The real question is not
whether we CAN change the law, but whether we
should. And that will be a discussion for
another time.
Teshuvot, Jewish legal
opinions, have been written on both sides of this argument. I’ll
make copies of those teshuvot available in the office for anyone
interested in reading them. In the next few months, I plan to hold a
teaching session where we will study some of these teshuvot. The
other Conservative congregations in Vancouver are also looking at this
issue and we plan to have a joint meeting between all three Vancouver-area
congregations in December or January so that all three congregations can
hear the opinions of all three local Conservative rabbis. It’s my
hope that out of those discussions will emerge a consensus which could
form the basis for synagogue policy.
Even though I have studied
the issue at length and have come to a conclusion, I still feel that the
fact that we are grappling with this issue is a very good thing. If
we were to say “tradition!” and stop the discussion, it would be wrong,
because we would be denying the reality of the world around us. If
we were to simply say, “of course we should change, why should there be
any prejudice against this group of people?” it would mean we are not
giving sufficient consideration to thousands of years of tradition.
Halacha should not immediately respond to every change in society.
Major changes should be made slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully.
As we consider this issue,
I believe we are truly straining to understand the will of God. May
God grant us the wisdom, courage, and compassion to come up with the
proper balance between tradition and change.
Amen.
It is a great mitzvah to serve God with great joy,
always...R. Nachman of Breslov
Rabbi Barry Leff
Beth Tikvah Congregation
9711 Geal Road
Richmond, BC V7E 1R4
phone: (604) 271-6262
fax: (604) 271-6270
web: www.btikvah.ca
email: rebbarry@yeladim.org
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