Opening Doors
After months of discussion, our shul has opened the door. Our senior rabbi ruled that same-sex unions may be blessed on the bimah, and our board voted to allow same-sex weddings to occur in the building.
In the debate leading up to these decisions, I found my voice hoarse, my hands trembling, when I stood to express my views. I wondered at the strength of my emotion. I am not lesbian. I have several close friends who are, but no one in my immediate family. Why all the passion?
With the debate finished and my hopes satisfied, my passion has quieted. Instead I see the pain of those who think they’ve lost: lost the debate, lost their shul, lost the Conservative movement. A few people left the shul altogether, losing their weekly community to avoid blessings that might be said once or twice a year. Others want to leave but don’t know where to go. I wonder for them, as I wondered for myself before: Why? Why is this so important?
One friend explained to me: “I made the decision to drive to shul on Shabbat. But that is a personal decision. I do not want to see halachah changed for me,” and she doesn’t want it changed for others either. People can and should make their personal choices, but, she felt, halachah is communal and must be steady. I’ve never seen my friend look so pale.
Eighteen people signed a letter to the shul’s rabbis and board, pleading against change. “It is surprising to realize that the law committee only needs 13 votes out of 25 to change halachah,” the letter said. And they are right. How can 13 rabbis unlock doors that had been closed for a millennium?
A cornerstone of Conservative doctrine is an understanding that halachah does change. Maimonides would have been horrified to know that synagogues routinely hire shabbos goyim, or that halachic Jews sell their cupboards filled with bread, pasta, and half-eaten boxes of crackers at Pesach, fully intending to reclaim their chametz an hour after the holiday ends. He would disapprove of the modern eruv encompassing an entire town, with Shabbat-observant Jews carrying their belongings along major thoroughfares. And just what would he have said if he knew that women today not only study Torah alongside men, but read from the Torah scroll on Shabbat morning? To quote the 1988 statement of principles of the North American arm of our movement: “The sanctity and authority of halachah attaches to the body of the law, not to each law separately, for throughout Jewish history halachah has been subject to change.”
Rabbis have the authority to legitimize halachic change, but these changes rarely if ever originate entirely with the rabbis. Piskei halachah, rabbinic legal rulings, reflect the needs, beliefs, and practices of the community. Careful reading of classic sources shows that halachah has evolved through changes in communal practice. Conservative sources merely are more explicit about it. To quote a responsum by Rabbi David Fine, addressing whether women may count in the minyan or serve as prayer leaders: “Since most Conservative congregations count women in the minyan, the answer to the question must by necessity turn to analysis of the proposed halachic bases for why women may count in the minyan and serve as shelichot tzibur (prayer leaders).” In other words, since the majority of our community already is engaged in the practice, the best rabbinic option is to justify that practice, not change it.
On our issue, it feels as if a small group of rabbis pushed this change through. The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards voted 13 to 12 to permit ordination of gay rabbis, a conscious break with tradition. But this permissive vote only reflects communal opinion. According to the recent survey by Professor Steven Cohen, 68 percent of our lay leaders would have voted the same.
I think I understand, in part, why some of my friends feel lost. They needed halachah to be solid, to anchor them against the rush of our generation. They could stand against a ruling of 13 people, especially when one of those voted on both sides of the issue. But the change did not originate with these 13 rabbis. It emerges from the beliefs of a majority of our community, and my friends feel overwhelmed by the current.
Religion should open us up. It should open our minds to inspiration, our souls to godliness. We cannot open if we are adrift in the tide. Through its codes of prohibition and obligation, halachah gives us structure, so we can stand to open and receive. We need our structure to be strong.
I, too, stake my life on halachic structure. But I know the structure must have some flexibility, or it can become a shackle. In the early days of my marriage, I belonged to an Orthodox world where couples believed they must consult a rabbi before using contraception. The rabbi, of course, would be male, and unlikely to be sympathetic to the wife’s career aspirations. Another example, less personal but no less emotional for me: Halachah states that only a man may initiate divorce. As a result, hundreds of women have been trapped in dead marriages, and tens of thousands of women have had to pay their husbands’ extortionist demands to buy their freedom. And the final example: In my Conservative shul, before the door opened, a Shabbat- and kashrut-observant lesbian was driven to public tears, saying, “They are comparing my marriage to a piece of bacon.”
Pitchu li sha’arei tzedek. “Open for me the gates of righteousness, I will pass through them to thank God.” As a new gate opens for Conservative Judaism, some of the community rush through, some hold back. Is it the gate of righteousness or the gate of sheol? We cannot see through until everyone has passed, and we cannot all fit at once. But I believe we have opened the door to goodness. Zeh ha’sha’ar la’Adonai. “This is the gate of Adonai, righteous people will keep passing through.”
Dr. Ilana Goldhaber-Gordon is a biochemist and science writer and an active member and teacher at Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto, California. She is about to enter the rabbinical school of the Academy for Jewish Religion in California.
