The New York Times

Thursday, March 30, 2000

Reform Rabbis Can Officiate at Gay Unions

By GUSTAV NIEBUHR

GREENSBORO, N.C., March 29 - The rabbis of Judaism's Reform movement declared today that gay relationships were "worthy of affirmation" through Jewish ritual and that Reform rabbis who decided to officiate at same-sex ceremonies would have the support of the branch's rabbinical body, as would those who decided they would not.

The decision by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, through a resolution at its annual convention here, makes the conference the largest group of American clergy to affirm that its members may conduct gay unions.

The conference represents about 1,800 rabbis who lead nearly 1.5 million Jews in the United States and Canada.

Although the conference was already on the record as favoring a right to civil marriage for gays, the resolution it adopted today uses the term "union" to describe a gay relationship and leaves it up to individual rabbis to decide the type of ritual to use to bless one. Still, conference officials and some other rabbis said they considered the decision to be of great symbolic importance.

"The breakthrough is that it's a major religious group that says unequivocally it will support its rabbis if they participate in these ceremonies," said Rabbi Paul Menitoff, the conference's executive vice president.

Rabbi Menitoff said he also regarded the resolution as a strong weapon against antigay bias.

Rabbi Valerie Lieber, head of a Brooklyn congregation and an official of the Gay and Lesbian Rabbinic Network, a caucus within the conference, said, "I would say that it truly means we have gone beyond a time of tolerance and acceptance to a time of embracing the souls of gay and lesbian Jews."

Yet the resolution also drew qualified support from rabbis who said they would not officiate at a same-sex union. They were particularly gratified by wording that was added to the text last week to indicate that a diversity of opinion about the subject exists within the Reform rabbinate and to say explicitly that the conference will support those who do not officiate.

"I think it's a compromise," Rabbi Clifford E. Librach of Sharon, Mass., said.

Rabbi Librach called the resolution "a victory for diversity and intellectual tolerance" and said he felt that Jewish tradition barred him from officiating at a same-sex union, as it did from officiating at a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew.

Another conference member who said he would not officiate at same-sex unions, Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin of Port Washington, N.Y., said there was a "large bloc of silent people" unhappy with the resolution, but that those people also believed "that reasonable people can come to different conclusions."

Until the new wording was added to the resolution, the two men had planned to offer a substitute motion that would have called for welcoming gays to Reform congregations and defending their civil rights but making no statement on same-sex ceremonies.

The vote, after about an hour of discussion, came in a session closed to reporters.

Conference officials later said that about 400 rabbis attended and approved the resolution overwhelmingly by voice vote. The deliberations took place in the Joseph S. Koury Convention Center in this central North Carolina city, as the conference concluded a four-day meeting.

Several participants said that immediately after the vote, participants stood and sang the prayer "Thank God for bringing us to this moment," which is commonly used to mark such events as a bar or bat mitzvah, a person's arrival in Israel or other significant events.

Until today, only two smaller religious bodies, the Unitarian-Universalist Association and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, which represents Jews in Reconstructionist synagogues, had adopted statements supporting clergy members who decide to officiate at gay unions.

Some other religious bodies have taken a different tack. In 1996, for example, the United Methodist Church adopted a rule forbidding its ministers from conducting same-sex unions, which led to one pastor's being defrocked and another suspended after church trials.

Although the Reform resolution is bold in this context, it is nonetheless a nuanced document, reflecting divisions within liberal Judaism over the issue. It contains a background section discussing the evolution of the conference's positions on homosexuals, noting that two separate committees within the conference reached opposite conclusions on whether Jewish tradition would permit same-sex unions.

Nevertheless, the resolution fits in with recent trends in the Reform movement. In 1977, Reform rabbis called for an end to discrimination against gays and decriminalization of homosexual activity between consenting adults. In 1990, the conference voted that sexual orientation should not be a bar to serving as a rabbi.

While it may be impossible to know how many gay men and lesbians are in the Reform rabbinate, the three-year-old Gay and Lesbian Rabbinic Network has about 50 members.

One of them, Rabbi Karen Bender of Great Neck, N.Y., predicted that the resolution would inspire rabbis to create services for gay couples.

"The beauty of it is, it leaves it open what rabbis will call it," Rabbi Bender said. "Some will call it marriage, some will call it a commitment ceremony."

Although the number of such ceremonies is not known, in recent years, a growing number of Reform rabbis have said they would conduct them. One who did so three years ago was Rabbi Charles A. Kroloff of Westfield, N.J., now the conference's president.

In an interview, Rabbi Kroloff said he spent a year "educating the congregation" about the ceremony before officiating. He held adult classes, discussed it in the temple bulletin, even mentioned it during Friday services, as a way to gain acceptance among members for the event.

"There was a transformation in the congregation from beginning to end," Rabbi Kroloff said.

And Rabbi Shira Stern, director of a Jewish chaplaincy program in New Jersey and a leader of the Women's Rabbinic Network, the caucus that wrote the resolution, said it was a mandate to create liturgies for use in same-sex ceremonies.

Before today's vote, some rabbis said they worried that the resolution would undercut efforts by the Reform movement to expand its small minority presence in Israel, where the majority of citizens are unaffiliated and the largest religious group is the Orthodox, who regard biblical prohibitions against homosexual activity as legally binding.

But Rabbi Uri Regev, director of the Center for Religious Action, an organization in Jerusalem, said in an interview here before the vote that he expected the resolution to produce "diverse reactions," with some Israelis upset and others supportive.

"I think that Israeli society is not as progressive yet as we would like to see," Rabbi Regev said. "But at the same time, it is certainly opening up to understanding of the rights and the plight of homosexuals in a way that is gratifying."