Conference on Conservative Judaism

For the past two days, I have been attending the International Conference on Conservative Judaism: Halakhah, Culture and Sociology at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. (Well worth missing classes.) I have heard leaders of the Conservative movement in Israel, the US and South America speak about the role, position, and challenges of Conservative Judaism and the future of the movement. ( I do have to admit that it seems a little weird to listen to Israeli panelists speak in Hebrew about JTS and the American Conservative Movement.)

This morning, after one of the panels on Gender and Tradition in the movement, the chair was taking questions and some great questions were asked- one of them was fantastic from a freind of mine who is involved in the movement, his masorti shul, and with the Jerusalem Open House asked the question- what is the role of the movement if not to allow committed Jews to be involved? As a gay male, he could not study to be a rabbi in this country and the movement here in Israel is not serving a large percentage of the Jews who want to be involved. The person who asked the question would love to be a rabbi and struggles with the idea of wanting to be part of a movement who does not accept who he is. With Schechter's policy still against Gay Ordination, homosexuals in this country are feeling like they are not welcomed, don't belong and are not equal members of the movement to which they want to be connected. It is hard when you have been rejected by orthodoxy, are too "religious" for reform and generally feel connected to the process and platform of the conservative movement. His statement received applause- the only one.

Apparently, the interactive nature of lecture and participation is not limited to the classroom. There was one point in the questioning where they mentioned that they were going to take one more question. A man across the room shouted out- why are you not looking at this side of the room. Chair responds- I looked and no one was raising their hand. He responded- I was, I was the first one with my hand up...(They ended up taking 3 more questions, including his.)

This conference was also amazing in relation to the participants and panelists who were there. This afternoon, I was honored to be present for a panel on which David Halivni spoke about his experience at JTS and what made him go there (the top scholarship in the country) and his relationship with Saul Leiberman. While I am happy that JTS has changed, for my sake, and I hope that it continues to change, I am able to respect that it once was a center for scholarship and learning unparalleled in the US. What made a great presentation even better was that two of the three people who asked questions were Rabbi Joel Roth and Rabbi David Golinkin. (The third was Basa- a former student of Halivni's) Roth asked about education and students. Halivni turned the question right back and said you can answer that. It was great!