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Conservative Jews

Allow Gay Rabbis and Unions

December 7, 2006
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

The highest legal body in Conservative Judaism, the centrist movement in worldwide Jewry, voted yesterday to allow the ordination of gay rabbis and the celebration of same-sex commitment ceremonies.

The decision, which followed years of debate, was denounced by traditionalists in the movement as an indication that Conservative Judaism had abandoned its commitment to adhere to Jewish law, but celebrated by others as a long-awaited move toward full equality for gay people.

“We see this as a giant step forward,” said Sarah Freidson, a rabbinical student and co-chairwoman of Keshet, a student group at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York that has been pushing for change.

But in a reflection of the divisions in the movement, the 25 rabbis on the law committee passed three conflicting legal opinions — one in favor of gay rabbis and unions, and two against.

In doing so, the committee left it up to individual synagogues to decide whether to accept or reject gay rabbis and commitment ceremonies, saying that either course is justified according to Jewish law.

“We believe in pluralism,” said Rabbi Kassel Abelson, chairman of the panel, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly, at a news conference after the meeting at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York. “We recognized from the very beginnings of the movement that no single position could speak for all members” on the law committee or in the Conservative movement.

In protest, four conservative rabbis resigned from the law committee, saying that the decision to allow gay ordination violated Jewish law, or halacha. Among them were the authors of the two legal opinions the committee adopted that opposed gay rabbis and same-sex unions.

One rabbi, Joel Roth, said he resigned because the measure allowing gay rabbis and unions was “outside the pale of halachic reasoning.”

With many Protestant denominations divided over homosexuality in recent years, the decision by Conservative Judaism’s leading committee of legal scholars will be read closely by many outside the movement because Conservative Jews say they uphold Jewish law and tradition, which includes biblical injunctions against homosexuality.

The decision is also significant because Conservative Judaism is considered the centrist movement in Judaism, wedged between the liberal Reform and Reconstructionist movements, which have accepted an openly gay clergy for more than 10 years, and the more traditional Orthodox, which rejects it.

The move could create confusion in congregations that are divided over the issue, said Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive director of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents the movement’s more than 750 synagogues with 1.5 million members in North America.

“Most of our congregations will not be of one mind, the same way that we were not of one mind,” said Rabbi Epstein, also a law committee member. “Our mandate is to help congregations deal with this pluralism.”

Some synagogues and rabbis could leave the Conservative movement, but many rabbis and experts cautioned that the law committee’s decision was unlikely to cause a widespread schism.

Before the vote, some rabbis in Canada, where many Conservative synagogues lean closer to Orthodoxy than in the United States, threatened to break with the movement.

But Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, said: “I find it hard to buy the idea that this change, which has been widely expected, will lead anybody to leave, because synagogues that don’t want to make changes will simply point to the rulings that will allow them not to make any changes. This is not like a papal edict.”

The question of whether to admit and ordain openly gay rabbinic students will now be taken up by the movement’s seminaries. The University of Judaism, in Los Angeles, has already signaled its support, said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, its rector and the vice chairman of the law committee. He co-wrote the legal opinion allowing gay ordination and unions that passed on Wednesday.

The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, the flagship school in Conservative Judaism, will take up the issue in meetings of the faculty, the students and the trustees in the next few months, Chancellor-elect Arnold Eisen said in an interview. Mr. Eisen said he personally favored ordaining gay rabbis as long as it was permissible according to Jewish law and the faculty approved.

“I’ve been asking the faculty, and time and again I got the same answer,” Mr. Eisen said. “People don’t know what they themselves think, and they don’t know what their colleagues are thinking. There’s never been a discussion like this before about this issue.”

The law committee has passed contradictory rulings before, on issues like whether it is permissible to drive to synagogue on the Sabbath. But the opinions it approved on Wednesday reflect the law committee’s split on homosexuality.

The one written by Rabbi Roth upholds the prohibition on gay rabbis that the committee passed overwhelmingly in 1992. Another rebuts the idea that homosexuality is biologically ingrained in every case, and suggests that some gay people could undergo “reparative therapy” to change their sexuality.

The ruling accepting gay rabbis is itself a compromise. It favors ordaining gay rabbis and blessing same-sex unions, as long as the men do not practice sodomy.

Committee members said that, in practice, it is a prohibition that will never be policed. The ruling was intended to open the door to gay people while conforming to rabbinic interpretations of the biblical passage in Leviticus which says, “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination.”

The committee also rejected two measures that argued for a complete lifting of the prohibition on homosexuality, after deciding that both amounted to a “fix” of existing Jewish law, a higher level of change that requires 13 votes to pass, which they did not receive.

Rabbi Gordon Tucker, the author of one of the rejected opinions, said he was satisfied with the compromise measure. “In effect, there isn’t any real practical difference,” he said.

The Conservative movement was once the dominant stream in American Judaism but is now second in numbers to the Reform movement. Conservative Judaism has lost members in the last two decades to branches on the left and the right. Pamela S. Nadell, a professor of history and director of the Jewish Studies program at American University, said, “The conservative movement is wrestling with the whole question of how it defines itself, whether it still defines itself as a halachic movement, and that’s why there was so much debate and angst over this.”

    Conservative Jews Allow Gay Rabbis and Unions, NYT, 7.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/us/07jews.html

Families Challenging Religious Influence in Delaware Schools

July 29, 2006
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

GEORGETOWN, Del. — After her family moved to this small town 30 years ago, Mona Dobrich grew up as the only Jew in school. Mrs. Dobrich, 39, married a local man, bought the house behind her parents’ home and brought up her two children as Jews.

For years, she and her daughter, Samantha, listened to Christian prayers at public school potlucks, award dinners and parent-teacher group meetings, she said. But at Samantha’s high school graduation in June 2004, a minister’s prayer proclaiming Jesus as the only way to the truth nudged Mrs. Dobrich to act.

“It was as if no matter how much hard work, no matter how good a person you are, the only way you’ll ever be anything is through Jesus Christ,” Mrs. Dobrich said. “He said those words, and I saw Sam’s head snap and her start looking around, like, ‘Where’s my mom? Where’s my mom?’ And all I wanted to do was run up and take her in my arms.”

After the graduation, Mrs. Dobrich asked the Indian River district school board to consider prayers that were more generic and, she said, less exclusionary. As news of her request spread, many local Christians saw it as an effort to limit their free exercise of religion, residents said. Anger spilled on to talk radio, in letters to the editor and at school board meetings attended by hundreds of people carrying signs praising Jesus.

“What people here are saying is, ‘Stop interfering with our traditions, stop interfering with our faith and leave our country the way we knew it to be,’ ” said Dan Gaffney, a host at WGMD, a talk radio station in Rehoboth, and a supporter of prayer in the school district.

After receiving several threats, Mrs. Dobrich took her son, Alex, to Wilmington in the fall of 2004, planning to stay until the controversy blew over. It never has.

The Dobriches eventually sued the Indian River School District, challenging what they asserted was the pervasiveness of religion in the schools and seeking financial damages. They have been joined by “the Does,” a family still in the school district who have remained anonymous because of the response against the Dobriches.

Meanwhile, a Muslim family in another school district here in Sussex County has filed suit, alleging proselytizing in the schools and the harassment of their daughters.

The move to Wilmington, the Dobriches said, wrecked them financially, leading them to sell their house and their daughter to drop out of Columbia University.

The dispute here underscores the rising tensions over religion in public schools.

“We don’t have data on the number of lawsuits, but anecdotally, people think it has never been so active — the degree to which these conflicts erupt in schools and the degree to which they are litigated,” said Tom Hutton, a staff lawyer at the National School Boards Association.

More religion probably exists in schools now than in decades because of the role religious conservatives play in politics and the passage of certain education laws over the last 25 years, including the Equal Access Act in 1984, said Charles C. Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, a research and education group.

“There are communities largely of one faith, and despite all the court rulings and Supreme Court decisions, they continue to promote one faith,” Mr. Haynes said. “They don’t much care what the minority complains about. They’re just convinced that what they are doing is good for kids and what America is all about.”

Dr. Donald G. Hattier, a member of the Indian River school board, said the district had changed many policies in response to Mrs. Dobrich’s initial complaints. But the board unanimously rejected a proposed settlement of the Dobriches’ lawsuit.

“There were a couple of provisions that were unacceptable to the board,” said Jason Gosselin, a lawyer for the board. “The parties are working in good faith to move closer to settlement.”

Until recently, it was safe to assume that everyone in the Indian River district was Christian, said the Rev. Mark Harris, an Episcopal priest at St. Peter’s Church in Lewes.

But much has changed in Sussex County over the last 30 years. The county, in southern Delaware, has resort enclaves like Rehoboth Beach, to which outsiders bring their cash and, often, liberal values. Inland, in the area of Georgetown, the county seat, the land is still a lush patchwork of corn and soybean fields, with a few poultry plants. But developers are turning more fields into tracts of rambling homes. The Hispanic population is booming. There are enough Reform Jews, Muslims and Quakers to set up their own centers and groups, Mr. Harris said.

In interviews with a dozen people here and comments on the radio by a half-dozen others, the overwhelming majority insisted, usually politely, that prayer should stay in the schools.

“We have a way of doing things here, and it’s not going to change to accommodate a very small minority,’’ said Kenneth R. Stevens, 41, a businessman sitting in the Georgetown Diner. “If they feel singled out, they should find another school or excuse themselves from those functions. It’s our way of life.”

The Dobrich and Doe legal complaint portrays a district in which children were given special privileges for being in Bible club, Bibles were distributed in 2003 at an elementary school, Christian prayer was routine at school functions and teachers evangelized.

“Because Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, I will speak out for him,” said the Rev. Jerry Fike of Mount Olivet Brethren Church, who gave the prayer at Samantha’s graduation. “The Bible encourages that.” Mr. Fike continued: “Ultimately, he is the one I have to please. If doing that places me at odds with the law of the land, I still have to follow him.”

Mrs. Dobrich, who is Orthodox, said that when she was a girl, Christians here had treated her faith with respectful interest. Now, she said, her son was ridiculed in school for wearing his yarmulke. She described a classmate of his drawing a picture of a pathway to heaven for everyone except “Alex the Jew.”

Mrs. Dobrich’s decision to leave her hometown and seek legal help came after a school board meeting in August 2004 on the issue of prayer. Dr. Hattier had called WGMD to discuss the issue, and Mr. Gaffney and others encouraged people to go the meeting. Hundreds showed up.

A homemaker active in her children’s schools, Mrs. Dobrich said she had asked the board to develop policies that would leave no one feeling excluded because of faith. People booed and rattled signs that read “Jesus Saves,” she recalled. Her son had written a short statement, but he felt so intimidated that his sister read it for him. In his statement, Alex, who was 11 then, said: “I feel bad when kids in my class call me ‘Jew boy.’ I do not want to move away from the house I have lived in forever.”

Later, another speaker turned to Mrs. Dobrich and said, according to several witnesses, “If you want people to stop calling him ‘Jew boy,’ you tell him to give his heart to Jesus.”

Immediately afterward, the Dobriches got threatening phone calls. Samantha had enrolled in Columbia, and Mrs. Dobrich decided to go to Wilmington temporarily.

But the controversy simmered, keeping Mrs. Dobrich and Alex away. The cost of renting an apartment in Wilmington led the Dobriches to sell their home here. Mrs. Dobrich’s husband, Marco, a school bus driver and transportation coordinator, makes about $30,000 a year and has stayed in town to care for Mrs. Dobrich’s ailing parents. Mr. Dobrich declined to comment. Samantha left Columbia because of the financial strain.

The only thing to flourish, Mrs. Dobrich said, was her faith. Her children, she said, “have so much pride in their religion now.”

“Alex wears his yarmulke all the time. He never takes it off.”

    Families Challenging Religious Influence in Delaware Schools, NYT, 29.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/29/us/29delaware.html

Six Are Shot at Seattle Jewish Center

July 29, 2006
The New York Times
By WILLIAM YARDLEY and JODI RUDOREN

SEATTLE, July 28 — Five people were injured and one was killed Friday afternoon when a man who expressed anger toward Jews opened fire in the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, the authorities said.

The Seattle Police did not identify the suspect. They said he was arrested 12 minutes after the first report came in to emergency dispatchers. At 4:03 p.m., according to Assistant Chief Nick Metz, dispatchers received a call saying people had been shot and hostages taken at the offices of the federation, a fund-raising and planning organization at the edge of downtown.

Two minutes later, 911 dispatchers were on the phone with the suspect, said Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske of the Seattle Police, at a news conference Friday night.

Because of what the suspect said in that conversation, which the chief would not disclose, the shootings are being treated as a hate crime, he said. Chief Kerlikowske said the suspect was Muslim.

The authorities said they did not think the suspect was acting as part of a terrorist group.

“We believe at this point that it’s just a lone individual acting out some kind of antagonism toward this particular organization,” said David Gomez, the Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who heads its counterterrorism unit in Seattle.

Mr. Gomez said his agency had been “monitoring” both Jewish and Muslim organizations, and reaching out to their leaders “for the last couple of weeks, since the beginning of hostilities in the Middle East.”

Frederick Dutt, an F.B.I. agent, said the agency had issued two bulletins, on July 21 and on Wednesday, urging “vigilance” at organizations and religious locations in light of the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in the Middle East. “Not specific targets because we didn’t have that information, to be honest,” he said.

Mr. Dutt noted there was an attack on a mosque in Seattle after Sept. 11, 2001. And the F.B.I. investigated two mosques for ties to Al Qaeda.

Marla Meislin-Dietrich, who works in the federation’s development department but was not in the office at the time of the shooting, said a colleague told her that one shooting victim said she had heard the gunman say “that he was a Muslim-American and that he was angry at Israel.”

“That’s all I know,” said Ms. Meislin-Dietrich, who spent the day working — and learning to bake challah — at the home of Amy Wasser-Simpson, the federation’s vice president. “I talked to the person who was running out of the building with the person who was shot in the arm. She gave me the quote.”

“The news is quoting us, and we don’t know,” she added. “We don’t know who’s dead, we don’t know for sure.”

Sgt. Deanna Nollette of the police said she believed all of the victims were women.

Ms. Meislin-Dietrich said that about 25 people typically work in the group’s offices, which occupy the entire second floor of a modest building on Third Avenue in the Belltown neighborhood. Fewer were there Friday afternoon because of the onset of the Sabbath and because it is summer, she said.

The police found a vehicle they believed belonged to the suspect and planned to test it for explosives although they did not expect to find any, Chief Metz said.

The police closed off several blocks around the federation’s offices and briefly required people to stay inside other buildings nearby. At one point there was concern among people nearby that a gunman was on the rooftops, but Rich Pruitt, a spokesman for the Seattle Police, said those fears were unfounded.

The police said they recovered a handgun that the suspect put down before he surrendered.

Laura Laughlin, special agent in the F.B.I.’s Seattle office, said that the suspect was a United States citizen and that agents were interviewing his relatives.

Mayor Greg Nickels said at the news conference, “This is a crime of hate, and there’s no place for that in the city of Seattle.”

Asked whether the suspect had links to a local mosque, Mr. Nickels said, “He’s not a resident of the city, and we know of no other connection he has.”

    Six Are Shot at Seattle Jewish Center, NYT, 29.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/29/us/29seattle.html?hp&ex=1154232000&en=7819ededebc5cac1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

As Mideast Churns, U.S. Jews and Arabs Alike Swing Into Action

July 28, 2006
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

With Israel at war again, American Jewish groups immediately swung into action, sending lobbyists to Washington, solidarity delegations to Jerusalem and millions of dollars for ambulances and trauma counseling, just as they always have.

But this time there is a parallel mobilization going on in this country by Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans in support of Lebanese and Palestinian victims of the war. These Americans, too, are sending lobbyists to Washington, solidarity delegations to the Middle East and boxes of lentils, diapers and medicine to refugees.

Both sides are worried about friends and relatives under bombardment or driven from their homes. Both are moved to act by the scenes on television of their suffering kin.

“The world in which I live is filled with people who are deeply connected to Israel,” said Rabbi Steve Gutow, a New Yorker who is executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella group for 125 local councils and 13 national groups. “For almost everyone I know, there’s no distance. It’s hard for me to turn the TV off at night, and I wake up in the middle of the morning and turn the TV on to find out how things are going.”

Although people in both diasporas are glued to their television screens, the parallel ends there. While the American Arab and Muslim groups say they are better organized than ever before, they say they have not made a dent in American foreign policy. Their calls for an immediate cease-fire by Israel have been rebuffed by the White House and most legislators on Capitol Hill.

“I’m devastated,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, in Washington. “I thought we’d come further. We’re doing well, so far, in terms of our capacity to deal with everything from the humanitarian crisis to identifying families and working to get people out. What is distressing is the degree to which this neoconservative mindset has taken hold of the policy debate. It’s like everyone has drunk the Kool-Aid.”

Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said, “This is probably the only issue in Washington where there’s no real debate.”

Jewish leaders say there is surprisingly little debate even inside usually contentious American Jewish circles about Israel’s decision to bomb Lebanon and send in troops to rout the militants of Hezbollah, who are launching rockets into Israel.

The most coordinated dissent by American Jews so far is a campaign by the liberal Tikkun magazine and the Network of Spiritual Progressives, both founded by Rabbi Michael Lerner in Berkeley, Calif., to raise money for newspaper advertisements calling for a cease-fire by both sides and an international peace conference.

Any criticism of Israel is “very marginal,” said William Daroff, vice president of public policy for United Jewish Communities, an umbrella organization of 155 Jewish federations in the United States. Mr. Daroff said he had also found an astounding degree of consensus among American politicians.

Last week he helped organize a Washington lobbying blitz by more than 40 Jewish leaders who, he said, spent the day essentially expressing their thanks to officials in the White House and the State Department and on Capitol Hill.

“From Nancy Pelosi on the liberal wing of the Democratic Party to Rick Santorum on the conservative wing of the Republican Party, I have literally heard unanimous approval and support for Israel’s right to defend itself,” Mr. Daroff said.

“Certainly there are concerns by all parties about civilian deaths in Lebanon,” he said, “but there’s also great understanding on the Hill that when Hezbollah uses civilians as shields and folks have a rocket launcher next to their dining room table, it makes them a target in addition to it being a violation of international law by Hezbollah.”

Arab and Muslim American leaders say they have tried to meet with the White House and many legislators but have been rebuffed.

Ahmed Younis, national director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said he had finally succeeded in arranging a meeting with Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, for next week. While Jewish groups field 40 lobbyists, Mr. Younis’s Muslim group is sending one Muslim leader, one rabbi and one Christian minister to meet the senator.

Jewish groups have also excelled at emergency fund-raising. United Jewish Communities, only one of several major Jewish groups, has raised $21 million in the past two weeks for its Israel Crisis Fund.

Another group, American Friends of Magen David Adom, which supplies ambulances and emergency medical care in Israel, initiated a fund-raising effort it calls Code Red.

The organization has raised $38,000 a day over the Internet for the past 10 days, said David Allen, the executive vice president, several hundred times more than it usually raises in a day. Mr. Allen said he was in talks with 10 donors who were considering giving enough for 10 ambulances in the next week, at a cost of $80,000 to $100,000 each.

Arab and Muslim groups have been raising money for humanitarian aid for Lebanese who were trapped in cities shelled by the Israelis and for those who fled.

The Council on American Islamic Relations is encouraging American Muslims to send boxes of lentils, powdered milk and diapers — rather than money — to Life for Relief and Development, a charity based in Southfield, Mich. It is discouraging direct financial contributions because many American Muslims fear they will be investigated by the American government if they donate to a Muslim charity.

Khalil Jassemm, chief executive of the organization, said the contributions had amounted to “a bit less than we had really hoped,” worth no more than $3 million. The reason, Mr. Jassemm said, could be “donor anxiety” about giving to Muslim charities.

“We need to fully analyze what’s going on,” he said, “but we think that donors are asking themselves, ‘If I do help, am I going to be in trouble?’ ”

Both sides are also working to sway public opinion. Jewish groups have held rallies in almost every major American city, Mr. Daroff said.

The Council on American Islamic Affairs has sponsored news conferences around the country in which Lebanese-Americans and others recount traumatic stories of escaping from Israeli bombardment.

“People can’t believe what they’re seeing,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the council. “The United States is actively supporting the systematic destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, a friendly nation, using American weapons. Not only do they not seek to stop the destruction, they actually provide the bombs to accomplish the destruction.”

The pro-Israel lobby has held sway over American policy, Mr. Hooper said, but that could be changing.

“The American Muslim community has reached a point where it has a little more political maturity, a little more ability to speak out, to reach out to elected officials and to opinion leaders,’’ he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be that American politicians can get away with making speeches pledging allegiance to Israel and nobody’s going to challenge them. I think those days are over.”

    As Mideast Churns, U.S. Jews and Arabs Alike Swing Into Action, NYT, 28.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/us/28homefront.html