Some defense of the range on Halakhic opinion in the Conservative Movement

re: the conversation on morthedoxy I’ve posted here because I can’t find Michael/Garnel’s contact information and I think it’s off topic for that blog.

Garnel Ironheart Says:
June 30, 2009 at 7:00 pm

The real fundamental difference between Conservative and Orthodox decision making is that the Conservatives decide on the answer first and, if the halacha does not agree with it, they simply ignore the halacha. When they decided to ordain women, for example, the JTS Talmud faculty researched the subject and reported back to Ismar Schorsch that it couldn’t be done. So he went and held an open vote at the school including the lay faculty and guess what? The majority ruled. That’s halachic decision making? How about their recent approval of gay marriage which abrogates not just the Oral Law (which they don’t accept as binding anyway) but the Written Law (which until now they had)? It’s one thing to dredge up an unused minority opinion, quite another to invent one. Bottom line: a system in which the answer to ever question is always “yes” isn’t a real system.

You should read all the teshuvot before making blanket statements about the Conservative movement.  Simon Greenberg has a book called “The Ordination of Women As Rabbis” that prints out most of them.   There are also some from the Israeli wing at responsafortoday.com (e.g. האם מותר לבית המדרש ללימודי היהדות להסמיך נשים לרבנות?: הרב דוד גולינקין) that you can read.  The one accepted by Joel Roth at JTS was radical, but still conservative.  Women could only lead services if they accepted upon themselves all positive time-bound commandments.  But, his was not the only teshuva.  Some were for, and some were against. And it was decided by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, not the the media.

• http://www.jtsa.edu/prebuilt/women/roth.pdf
• More teshuvot
• Some more interesting history here, in particular of R’ haLivni

Regarding the teshuva accepted recently that Eliot Dorff wrote, you should read that as well.  His is never oker ikar min haTorah as some try. It is a very conservative approach to a real problem.

• http://rabbinicalassembly.org/teshuvot/docs/19912000/roth_homosexual.pdf
• http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/docs/Roth_Final.pdf
• http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/teshuvot/docs/20052010/dorff_nevins_reisner_dignity.pdf
• http://www.shefanetwork.org/glbt_inclusion

The problem from a leadership perspective with the movement is that its tent is too large.  Many now lament that driving teshuva, but if you read it, it actually is also misunderstood.  It is a sha’at dehak only for people who would never go on Shabbat if they didn’t drive. It’s not a heter to live far away and drive to ballgames or anything.

My point is that the movement is halakhically pluralistic and which includes various approaches to halakha which its own members at times vehemently disagree with.