USCJ Commission to Inspire a Commitment to Halakhah

• USCJ Commission to Inspire a Commitment to Halakhah
• Online Video Clips and Full Audio Downloads
• Guiding Questions
• The Conservative Movement in the Next Ten Years
• Commitment to Halakhah - Why? A Panel Discussion
• The Structure and Process of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
• A Statement About the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
• Guides to the Teaching of Teshuvot
• How to Buy DVDs of the Presentation

USCJ Commission to Inspire a Commitment to Halakhah (COMICH)

Open our eyes to Your Torah, help our hearts cleave to your mitzvot. Unite all our thoughts to love and revere You. (Shaharit/morning service)

A generous grant by the Temple Zion Israelite Center of Miami, Florida makes this endeavor possible.

Mission of the Commission

The mission of the Commission to Inspire Commitment to Halakhah shall be to develop, test and implement strategies and provide resources that will inspire Conservative Jews to understand and appreciate the nature, development, and importance of halakhah within Conservative Judaism.

The Commission seeks to encourage Conservative Jews to embrace halakhah as binding, spiritual and wise and to influence them to live by the tenets of Jewish law as promulgated and understood in every era, including our own, by interpreters of halakhah accepted as authoritative by the Conservative movement.

The Purpose of the Commission Site

This site provides resources for Conservative Jews, individually and in groups, to explore ways of thinking about halakhah and how it is developed by the Conservative movement.

It includes short video clips and full audio downloads of some of the talks and presentations made at United Synagogue's biennial convention, held in Boston in December 2005. DVDs of this material are for sale here. We will add resources on the site as they become available.

We hope to stimulate discussion about the role of halakhah in the lives of Conservative Jews.

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Online Video Clips and Full Audio Downloads

Each of these talks or presentations was delivered to United Synagogue's biennial convention in Boston in December 2005. See below for guiding questions.

1. What Does It Mean to be a Conservative Jew? - On the video clip, Rabbi Harold Kushner, rabbi laureate of Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, talks about life as a quest for holiness. Click here for a full audio download of his talk.
2. The Conservative Movement in the Next Ten Years - On the video clip, Rabbi Neil Gillman, the Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary, talks about God's role in revelation. Click below to hear the three installments for the full audio download of his talk.
   • Part 1
   • Part 2
   • Part 3
3. Panel Seminar: Commitment to Halakhah-Why? Video Clips
   • Fran Immerman, who is deeply engaged in a personal journey toward greater observance, talks about her relationship to God and halakhah
   • Rabbi Menachem Creditor of Temple Israel in Sharon, Massachusetts, founder of Shefa, the Conservative Jewish Activist Network, answers the question, "Do you see halakhah as binding?"
   • Professor Elliot Dorff, Rector and Anne and Sol Dorff Distinguished Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, discusses halakhah as a way he locates himself in his world
   • Listen to the full audio download of the talks by Rabbi Creditor, Professor Dorff, and Ms. Immerman
4. Explaining the Commmittee on Jewish Law and Standards Video Clip - In a video clip, Rabbi Kassel Abelson, chair of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, explains what happens if there is a difference of opinion on the committee. In the full audio download, he talks about the structure and process of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards

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Guiding Questions - What Does It Mean To Be a Conservative Jew?

by Rabbi Harold Kushner, Rabbi Laureate of Temple Israel, Natick, Massachusetts

By making these presentations available, we hope to stimulate discussion about the role of halakhah in the lives of Conservative Jews. To spark and guide those discussions, we have included questions for each presentation. The questions will prove most helpful if you read them before you watch the clips or DVDs or listen to the audio downloads.

1. What does Kushner consider to be the characteristic that distinguishes Judaism from Christianity? What are the implications of that characteristic?
2. How does the respect for truth manifest itself in Conservative Judaism?
3. According to Kushner, if life is the quest for holiness then what is the purpose of mitzvot?
4. What is the implication of the Conservative movement's understanding of the import of history?

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The Conservative Movement in the Next Ten Years

by Rabbi Neil Gillman, Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Jewish Philosophy at The Jewish Theological Seminary

To Help Understanding

1. Why does Gillman reject the formulation that Conservative Judaism is a "halakhic movement"? Why does he say that it "dies the death of a thousand qualifications"?
2. Gillman suggests that we should consider the defining characteristic of Conservative Judaism to be the embracing of tension. In his view, why is our approach to halakhah a superb paradigm of living in tension?
3. What does Gillman understand to be the basis for the authority of Torah?
4. How does he understand revelation?
5. How does he articulate a theology of revelation that "maintains a role for God in revelation and yet accords the substantive role to the human community"?
6. What is Gillman's understanding of God-talk - of the type of language we use when we, as human beings and as Jews, talk about God or address God? What is his reason for making a distinction between God-talk and most of our talk?
7. What does Gillman claim to be the features that differentiate the Conservative movement from other movements?

To Stimulate Discussion

1. What question(s) would you want to ask Rabbi Gillman about his position?
2. What do you most agree with? What do you most disagree with?
3. In what ways do you think it is useful to talk about Conservative Judaism as being a halakhic movement? In what ways is it not useful?
4. Gillman quotes Emet Ve-Emunah: The Statement of Principals of the Conservative Movement, "As such we reject relativism, which denies any source of authoritative truth; we also reject fundamentalism and literalism, which do not admit a human component in revelation, thus excluding an independent role for human experience and reason in the process." How do you interpret this statement? What does Gillman says about it?
5. Gillman says, "The hallmarks of our ideology are subjectivity, relativism, uncertainty, and tension." How do you relate to this claim?
6. What do you think the Conservative movement is about? What does it stand for?

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Commitment to Halakhah - Why? A Panel Discussion

As you listen take note of the dominant metaphor-mind pictures-each of the presenters has of his or her relationship to God.

1. How do they describe their relationship to God?
2. How do they describe their relationship to halakhah?
3. How do they understand the relationship of God and halakhah?
4. With which aspects of halakhah does each of the presenters wrestle?
5. In what ways do they see halakhah as spiritual, binding, and important in their relationship to God?
6. How does each of them relate to halakhah? What do they share, if anything? Where do they differ?
7. What positions do you identify with? What positions do you agree with? What position challenges you?

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The Structure and Process of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards

by Rabbi Kassel Abelson, Chair of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards

1. What is the source of the committee's authority?
2. Who sits on the committee?
3. How are lay people represented in the committee's decision-making process?
4. What are the processes that give rise to a teshuvah?
5. What is the significance of the statement that a position receiving a minimum of 6 votes "is an official opinion of the CJLS?"

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A Statement About the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards

From the Rabbinical Assembly's website

The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards sets halakhic policy for Rabbinical Assembly rabbis and for the Conservative movement as a whole. Its membership consists of twenty-five rabbis who are voting-members, as well as five non-voting lay representatives of the United Synagogue and one non-voting cantor representing the Cantors' Assembly. The Committee discusses all questions of Jewish law that are posed by members of the Rabbinical Assembly or arms of the Conservative movement. When a question is placed on the agenda, individual members of the Committee will write teshuvot (responsa) which are discussed by the relevant subcommittees, and are then heard by the Committee, usually at two separate meetings. Papers are approved when a vote is taken with six or more members voting in favor of the paper. Approved teshuvot represent official halakhic positions of the Conservative movement. Rabbis have the authority, though, as marei d'atra, to consider the Committee's positions but make their own decisions as conditions warrant. Members of the Committee can also submit concurring or dissenting opinions that are attached to a decision, but do not carry official status.

When reviewing teshuvot, it is important to remember that each of these papers was written in response to a specific question posed by a Conservative rabbi. Questions about religious practice should be brought to your local Conservative rabbi. Each rabbi is the mara d'atra, or local religious decisor, of a particular community. While the teshuvot on this website provide an invaluable source of learning, they are not meant to, nor can they, substitute for the opinions of a local rabbi.

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Guides to the Teaching of Teshuvot (.pdf)

From time to time, the Commission will provide study guides for teshuvot from the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. We hope that groups will be established in our congregations to study teshuvot, and through that study members will come to a understanding of how the Conservative movement develops Jewish law and how it articulates its values through teshuvot.

• "Hesed or Hiyyuv?" The Obligation to Preserve Life and the Question of Post-Mortem Organ Donation - Teshuvah by Rabbi Joseph Prouser, guide by Rabbi Alvan Kaunfer
• "Regarding the Inclusion of the Names of the Matriarch in the First Blessing of the Amidah" - Teshuvah by Rabbi Joel Rembaum, guide by Rabbi Paul Schneider

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How to Buy DVDs of the Presentations

The $30, two-DVD set features Rabbi Harold Kushner on "What It Means to Be Jewish," Professor Neil Gillman on "The Conservative Movement in 10 Years," and the panel discussion, "Commitment to Halakhah - Why?" with talks by Fran Immerman, Rabbi Menachem Creditor, and Professor Elliot Dorff.

It is sponsored by United Synagogue's Commission to Inspire a Commitment to Halakhah.

To order, fill out the information below and either email it, with your credit card number, to education@uscj.org or mail it, along with a check, to:

United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism,
Department of Education Rapaport House
155 Fifth Avenue
New York NY 10010

Name________________________________
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_____ Kushner/Gillman/Panel DVD @ $30 each

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