Posted on: Saturday, January 4, 2003

Jews' ban on gays revisited

By Rachel Zoll
Associated Press

Conservative Judaism may be about to reopen discussion of the denomination's ban on same-sex unions and ordaining homosexuals — a move critics say could fracture the centrist branch of U.S. Jewry.

Judy Yudof, lay president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, wants the movement's lawmaking body to decide whether its condemnation of gay sex still holds under current interpretations of religious law. The Torah's prohibition against homosexual behavior is the reason Conservative Judaism bars gays from serving as rabbis and cantors.

Yudof plans to submit the question to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, a panel of 25 rabbis, within the next month.

Yudof said she is not advocating a particular outcome. She said she's simply seeking answers for Conservative Jews, who make up the second-largest branch of American Judaism, with just less than a million Jews describing themselves as Conservative.

"I've just felt there is some concern out there — in the lay world at least — about the status of homosexuals within our movement," Yudof said.

The slightly larger and more liberal Reform movement ordains homosexuals and blesses same-sex couples, while the smaller and stricter Orthodox does not.

The last time Conservative Jews reviewed the policy on gays was in 1992 in a fierce debate that ended in a compromise. The committee barred homosexuals from rabbinical schools but promised not to investigate students' sexual orientation. The panel also urged congregations, youth groups, camps and schools to welcome gays.

Rabbi Joel Meyers, head of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly, is among those who believe the policy should stand.

"People who are from within the gay community themselves are treated just fine," Meyers said. "There is no discrimination."

But Idit Klein, Boston chapter head of Keshet, an advocacy group for gay Jews, called the policy unacceptable and said she knows many people who left the movement because of it.

The committee chairman, Rabbi Kassel Abelson, who wants to maintain the ban, has the authority to take up the issue, but he plans to step down in April.