03.26.07
Conservative Jewish Seminary To Admit Gay Rabbinical Students
The Jewish Theological Seminary announced Monday that it will begin accepting LGBT students into its rabbinical and cantorial schools.
The decision comes three months after a panel of scholars who interpret Jewish law for the Conservative branch of Judaism voted to allow the seminaries to decide on their own whether to admit openly gay students.
But the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards left enough leeway to allow synagogues that consider same-sex relations contrary to Jewish law to bar gay clergy from their pulpits.
The decision also comes two weeks after the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, based at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, admitted a gay man and a lesbian for the fall semester.
The Jewish Theological Seminary, based in New York City, is the movement’s flagship rabbinical school.
Following the ruling by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards in December the JTS initiated a study in which the views of a wide range of constituencies were solicited and seriously weighed, and likely consequences considered the JTS said Monday.
Chancellor-elect Arnold M. Eisen said he personally heard from hundreds of Conservative Jews on the matter during his travels around the country this year and through correspondence, email, and the JTS website.
“The immediate issue was the ordination of gay and lesbian students as rabbis and cantors for the Conservative Movement,” he said.
“But the larger issue has been how we can remain true to our tradition in general and to halakhah in particular while staying fully responsive to and immersed in our society and culture. How shall we learn Torah, live Torah, teach Torah in this time and place?”
Eisen said that “I believe that the nature of our communities in contemporary America, the moral convictions we hold, and the mission of JTS, argue strongly for accepting gay and lesbian students for ordination.”
Reform and Reconstructionist branches of Judaism have admitted LGBT students for some time.