Last month, after the scholars who guide Conservative Judaism lifted the ban on gay rabbinic ordination, the Conservative movement’s flagship institution, the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, said it will start accepting avowedly gay and lesbian applicants to its rabbinical school.

According to JTS’s incoming chancellor, Arnold Eisen, the decision was made after "extensive discussion with faculty and students, a survey on views of the issue within the movement, and a meeting of the school’s trustees."

The Conservative movement and JTS have come a long way since the days of its president, Rabbi Dr. Solomon Schechter (1902-1915), who said that the seminary’s "aim was to preserve and sustain traditional Judaism in all its integrity … to bring back to the consciousness of Jewry its heroic past, which must serve as a model if we were to have a glorious future, or any future at all …" (Tradition and Change, p182).

An unbiased perusal of Leviticus 18: 22 ("You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, it is an abomination" or alternately, an "abhorrence") and its sister passage, Leviticus 20: 13 ("A man who lies with a man as one lies with a woman, they have both done an abomination …"), attests to the Torah’s horror of the homosexual act. These Scriptural verses are the primary sources of the Torah’s ban on homosexuality.

While the Torah explicitly forbids only male homosexual sex, the Sages extended the prohibition to include female homosexual sex as well. In fact, the Talmudic Sages, when they discuss the sinful "practices of Egypt" to be avoided at all costs, give as prime examples "a man marrying a man, and a woman marrying a woman" i.e., non-promiscuous, stable, – possibly even "loving" - same-sex unions. (See Leviticus 18: 3, Torah Shleima, Acharei Mot, Torat Kohanim etc.)

None of the other forbidden relationships listed in Leviticus 18 or Leviticus 20 is called abominable, clearly a term of absolute revulsion and disgust. Very likely, it is because the other prohibitions involve normal sexual activity, though with proscribed partners. Homosexual activity, male and female, was seen as unnatural and, therefore, abominable.

I personally am not aware of machlokot (disputes) over these rulings in the two Talmuds (Bavli and Yerushalmi) or among the rishonim, such as Rabbi Shlomo Itzchaki (Rashi), Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides or the Rambam), or Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman (Nachmanides or the Ramban). The Rambam prohibits male homosexuality in Hilchot Isurei Bi’ah 1: 14 and lesbianism in Hilchot Isurei Bi’ah 21: 8. Lesbianism, "women rubbing against each other," is specifically condemned as one of the detested "practices of Egypt" to be studiously avoided.

The Conservative movement traces its origin to the "positive-historical Judaism school" of Rabbi Zachariah Frankel (1805-75). Unlike the extreme 19th century Reformers, Rabbi Frankel asserted that halacha, the central corpus of Jewish law, must be observed. However, unlike the "benighted Orthodox," he also maintained that the halacha contains human, historical, dynamic elements that make change, evolution, and development possible.

Rabbi Schechter, the real founder of Conservative Judaism in America, wrote in the introduction to his "Studies in Judaism" that "it is not a mere coincidence that the first representatives of the historical school were also the first Jewish scholars who proved themselves more or less ready to join the modern school of Biblical Criticism, and even to contribute their share to it…Tradition becomes thus the means whereby the modern divine compensates himself for the loss of the Bible …"

"The center of authority is actually removed from the Bible and placed in some living body ... the collective conscience of Catholic Israel and embodied in the Universal Synagogue," he wrote, meaning that decisions on Jewish Law are to be determined largely by the practices of klal Yisrael, the whole of the (observant) Jewish community.

"It is neither Scripture nor primitive Judaism [sic], but general custom which forms the real rule of practice," he wrote.

The ultimate implication of this "empowerment" of the Jewish masses at the expense of the Divine, was rarely explicitly mentioned out loud in Conservative circles until relatively recently. Practically speaking, it meant that, in the eyes of the coalescing Conservative movement, as articulated by JTS Professor of Philosophy Rabbi Neil Gilman, "Torah in its broadest sense as the entire body of traditional Jewish teaching lost its distinctive status" as the embodiment of G-d’s will as ordained on Sinai.

This represented a radical break from the traditional methods of understanding, studying, and interpreting Torah. Once the Conservative movement took this decisive step and replaced Revelation with the proclivities of "Catholic Israel," halachic authority perforce diminished and, once denuded of Divine sanction, began to wither away.

Despite obfuscations to the contrary, it was obvious from the beginning that the emerging Conservative movement would never take unpopular stands because of halachic considerations. On the contrary, by abandoning inconvenient halachic principles and by not emphasizing personal observance, the Conservative movement made itself the address for hundreds of thousands of upwardly mobile, religiously apathetic Eastern European immigrants and their children who wanted to "Americanize" their Judaism, and for whom Classical Reform was not an option. The period between 1920 and 1965 was the "Conservative moment," an era of incredibly rapid expansion.

In 1913, Rabbi Schechter founded the United Synagogue of America, the union of Conservative congregations. He inserted in the preamble of its constitution, "It shall be the aim of the United Synagogue of America, while not endorsing the innovations introduced by any of its constituent bodies, to embrace all elements essentially loyal to traditional Judaism …"

At the founding convention, Rabbi Schechter clarified which "innovative" congregations were to be courted for his new organization: "all such congregations as have not accepted the Union (Reform) prayer-book nor perform their religious devotions with uncovered heads."

Dr. Cyrus Adler (1902-1940), Rabbi Schechter’s successor and the builder of the JTS campus on the Upper West Side, admitted his inability to halachically influence his member synagogues.

"I recognize that we cannot control either the rabbis or the congregations, but I have always hoped that the result of the Seminary's teaching would be the maintenance of the traditional worship," he wrote.

Despite Dr. Adler’s sentiments, the history of many traditional synagogues in the first six decades of the 20th century is largely a record of squalid fights between "progressive innovators"—encouraged by elements in the Seminary—who wanted to abolish the mechitza, the halachically mandated physical separation between men and women during synagogue worship, and loyalists who fought to retain it.

It is a fact that, during this period, when scores of communities were split and literally hundreds of Orthodox synagogue were subverted and turned into Conservative temples, the leadership of the Conservative Movement, the primary beneficiaries of this conflict, never bothered to justify themselves halachically. In their eyes, the halachot that governed synagogue worship were simply not an issue.

In one of the three or four vague references to the "mechitza controversy" in the massive 477-page anthology, "Tradition and Change, the Development of Conservative Judaism" (published in 1958) and edited by Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, the editor baldly admits that "certain forms of synagogue procedure, such as the seating of men and women together at a service, were widely adopted by congregations and never subject to [halachic] examination and legal debate" (pg. 349).

Rabbi Robert Gordis, former president of the (Conservative) Rabbinical Assembly, summarized the "mechitza controversy" from his vantage point in a study entitled "A Modern Approach to a Living Halacha": "Mixed pews which have become the norm without recourse to the halacha…represent fields of thought and action which are open to us today."

In an article in the journal "Conservative Judaism," Conservative ideologue, Rabbi Jacob B. Agus, a prominent member of the Rabbinical Assembly and chairman of its Prayer-book Committee, admitted that the Law Committee of the Rabbinical Assembly had only "condoned" rather than "approved" the institution of "family pews."

The pro-Conservative propaganda in the targeted synagogues centered so exclusively on the issue of "mixed seating" that Dr. Bernard Segal, executive director of the United Synagogue of America, complained in the "United Synagogue Review" (1958) that "we have introduced family pews, organ music, English readings. Our cantors have turned around to face the congregations … All of these were never intended to be ends in themselves or principles of the Conservative movement … Unfortunately, in the minds of too many, these expedients have come to represent the sum and substance of the Conservative movement."

In 1950, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (the CJLS) of the Rabbinical Assembly, by a majority decision widely referred to as the "Driving Teshuva," ruled that "when attendance at services would be unreasonably difficult otherwise, driving to synagogue for services is not regarded as being a violation of Shabbat."

The decision on driving was in the nature of an emergency decree, overriding what the authors saw merely as "rabbinic law." Though this ruling "became infamous within the observant Conservative Jewish community" ("… [and] straining halachic credulity" in the words of Rabbi Dr. Ismar Schorsch, former JTS chancellor), and the CJLS was forced to issue clarifications in 1961, the masses of Conservative Jews believed their movement had given them a blanket dispensation to drive on Shabbat anywhere and for any reason they chose.

In the words of Rabbi Pesach Schindler, former director of the Center for Conservative Judaism in Jerusalem and Rosh Yeshiva of the Conservative Yeshiva, driving on Shabbat "had evolved from a sha’at hadchak (emergency) contingency to normative accepted behavior."

The philosophic difference between simply passively ignoring halachic issues in the "mechitza controversy" (and of course reaping the material benefits) and actively permitting something that was previously forbidden cannot be overestimated.

Rabbi David Novak, a professor of religion and philosophy as well as chairman of the Jewish Studies Department at the University of Toronto, is also the founder, vice-president, and coordinator of the Jewish Law Panel of the Union for Traditional Judaism, and a faculty member of the Institute of Traditional Judaism in Teaneck. He is quoted by Avram Hein in an essay entitled "Reflections on the Driving Teshuva," recently published in "Conservative Judaism."

In a private email to Mr. Hein, Rabbi Novak wrote: "The effect on the Conservative movement of the permission to drive to the synagogue on Shabbat was to make more and more serious young people raised as Conservative Jews, and who had become Shomer Shabbat through their experiences in USY and Camp Ramah, join Orthodox communities once they began their own families. I saw that happening already in 1971."

In "Reflections," Mr. Hein also quotes an unpublished comment by Rabbi Pesach Schindler evaluating the ramifications of permitting driving on Shabbat: "The driving heter [that permitted driving] was an earthquake which sent shock waves throughout the halachic foundations of the Conservative Movement and questioned the basic halachic premises of many decisions subsequently taken by the Law committee."

Pamela Nadell, author of the important study, "Conservative Judaism in America, A Biographical Dictionary and Source Book" described the philosophical ramifications of the "Driving Teshuva": "The Conservative rabbis set for themselves the task of accommodating halacha to America" according to their preset "agenda" (pg. 18).

During the decades that he served in the Conservative rabbinate, Rabbi Paul Plotkin, chairman of the Kashrut subcommittee of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards and spiritual leader of Temple Beth Am in Margate, Fla., noted a process that could only be called the Conservative movement’s accelerating "disengagement" from serious halachic commitment.

In a brilliant analysis, "Losing Conservative Judaism," Rabbi Plotkin, wrote candidly as an insider, "We [the Conservative movement] went from having a rabbi keeping all the observances for you, to having a rabbi who would ‘not observe’—just like you."

"Part of this was aided and abetted by us Conservative rabbis ourselves who, through Law Committee decisions over the years, reflected on what I would call ‘the Koola [the least stringent position] Factor.’ Whenever possible, a decision that could make a question in Jewish law easier for the people, regardless of other considerations, was adopted. Soon it [the Koola] became the accepted and often even the maximal level of behavior. Laws pertaining to driving on the Sabbath or laws in different areas of kashrut are but two areas. For example, rather than having the anticipated benefit of more participation in synagogue and Jewish life by allowing people to drive, and rather than having more kashrut observed at a wider level by allowing certain compromises in terms of fish, the opposite has been achieved—not only for the layman who is often not observing in the first place, but for the rabbis as well," he wrote.

Rabbi Plotkin continued, "There are now numbers of Conservative synagogues across the country, congregations in good standing in the United Synagogue, where, if a rabbi is not prepared to drive on Saturday, he may not even apply for the position. The decision pertaining to driving intended that, if absolutely necessary, then it was permitted to drive to the nearest Conservative synagogue and back. I know of rabbis in Conservative congregations who [drive] pass two or three other Conservative congregations on the way to their congregation. The ‘Koola Factor’ has struck…[Or] if the rabbi would choose not to compromise on that point [a lower permitted level of Kashrut], the [interviewing] congregation in essence told him that he was not a suitable candidate to even apply, for his decision not to exercise a ‘Koola,’ a compromise, a diminution of standards, made him totally unacceptable to that congregation."

Writing just recently about "Same-Sex Attraction and Halacha," Rabbi Lowel Weiss, a member of the CJLS, agreed with Rabbi Plotkin,

"I think the change in attitude [towards halacha] began in the early 1950s. It was then that the CJLS approved the ‘Driving Teshuva’ giving sanction to Jews who chose to drive to synagogue on Shabbat and Festivals. It was a revolutionary teshuva, not only because it permitted something that was traditionally forbidden but also because it legitimized a [forbidden] private act in the public sphere,
wrote Rabbi Weiss.

"A person who chooses to drive on Shabbat is making an autonomous, private choice that affects only that person. To ask the community to accept that decision as legitimate and normative robs the community of its ability to create standards and expectations. A community without standards is not a community; it is just a group of private individuals," he wrote.

Rabbi Weiss continued, " … the ‘Driving Teshuva’ legitimized with the halacha of the Conservative Movement that private choices, even those that go against halachic norms, were to be respected. We see it throughout the Conservative Movement. Jews who do not observe kashrut or Shabbat or those who are intermarried are treated with the same honor and respect as those who follow these norms…In fact, despite all of our educational attempts, our members continue to think that Jews who observe Shabbat and kashrut are ‘Orthodox.’"

In short, unlike in Orthodox circles, a Conservative leader who violates halacha in public can continue to play a leadership role in the Conservative Movement without being penalized in any way.

In his piece, Rabbi Plotkin recalled that originally "one of the attractions that Conservative Judaism had for me, both prior to my coming to the Seminary and during my studies there, was the intellectual discovery and the intellectual honesty practiced."

"It was shown to us how Judaism has always continued to evolve using the flexibility implicit in the oral traditions, but that there was both a boundary to the change and a specific modus vivendi of change. As long as the changes in Jewish life brought about through an interpretive method could be justified within the parameters established, Judaism remained both true to its Torah source, yet flexible enough to accommodate the necessary changes in society."

According to Rabbi Plotkin, "it was in the area of the ‘women's issue’ that a flagrant exception was blatantly manifested by some members of the Rabbinical Assembly."

"The issue of women counting in a minyan, after being debated back and forth by the Law Committee, was finally conceded to be one in which the halacha allowed no room for re-interpretation vis-à-vis its definition of who would constitute a minyan. Therefore, the Law Committee went outside of the established boundaries of interpretive Judaism as perceived through our historical analyses and, instead, began to legislate new rules based on a ‘higher morality’ outside of the traditional mode. The thrust in the Rabbinical Assembly pushing for the change, in essence, said that ‘if the tradition does not allow for an adaptation, we will discard the value system implicit in the traditional halacha and we will superimpose our own value system which we deem to be of a higher ethical level and we will change Jewish law accordingly,’" he wrote.

This cavalier attitude towards traditional halacha was evident when Dr. Gershon Cohen, then Chancellor of JTS and a strong advocate of the ordination of women, decided to empower a commission composed overwhelmingly of "lay people"—men and women lacking expertise in Talmudic literature and the Codes though not uneducated in other fields—to determine the "feasibility" of female ordination.

Realizing that the seminary’s Talmud faculty—those most knowledgeable of the relevant halachic sources –opposed this innovation, he allotted them only one seat out of 14. In a work published by JTS, Dr. Cohen is reported to have confided to friends his intent "to ram the commission’s report down the faculty’s throat."

He was successful.

It is said that "Contemporary Conservative Judaism" was born in 1983 when JTS began to admit women to its rabbinical school. It should be noted that this occurred immediately after the death of Rabbi Dr. Saul Lieberman, the world-class Talmud professor who had dominated the JTS Talmud department for over 40 years. Most observers agree that Professor Lieberman, a powerful personality, would never have tolerated such a drastic step.

The ordaining of women was the final step toward institutionalizing complete "egalitarianism" in the Conservative movement. Most Conservative leaders, ever more "sensitive to gender issues," embraced the move with open arms; a minority saw it as a betrayal of tradition and a perversion of halacha.

A number of JTS faculty members — including its leading Talmud scholar (after the demise of Professor Lieberman), David Weiss Halivni — left the school after the ruling and formed the Union of Traditional Conservative Judaism, now the Union for Traditional Judaism.

The increasing diminution of the status of halacha in Conservative Judaism is reflected in practices throughout the movement.

Rabbi Barry Leff, spiritual leader of the Beth Tikvah Congregation of Vancouver, BC, explained in his Digest (#59), "The Torah prohibits offspring from forbidden unions from marrying into the congregation; the Torah prohibits Kohanim from marrying divorcees. The Conservative movement has taken positions contrary to what it says in the Torah because we feel that changing circumstances compel us to do so."

Rabbi Stuart Kelman of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, (1995) wrote, " … there is at least one instance where we, as Conservative Rabbis, disregard [the Biblical concept of] to’eivah – abomination--completely. We may, according to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, officiate at a marriage involving the offspring of an adulterous couple (mamzer) to a non-mamzer," even though it contradicts a specific verse in the Torah, "A mamzer shall not enter the Congregation of the Lord …" (Deuteronomy 23: 3).

Examples are legion.

Many see the Conservative movement’s legitimizing homosexuality as "the "Driving Teshuvah" all over again. "The CJLS is again being asked to legitimate a [forbidden] private act in the public sphere. It is the ‘Driving Teshuva’ all over again," said Rabbi Lowel Weiss, who warned against the long-term ramifications of legitimizing homosexuality.

Ya’ir Sheleg, in a penetrating article in Ha’aretz, quoted, "a senior source" who fears the long-term implications for the Conservative movement of permitting the ordaining of homosexuals and lesbians and countenancing "commitment ceremonies" for same-sex couples.

According to Mr. Sheleg, after a halachic concession on the homosexual issue, the movement would find it difficult to insist on any halachic position on any issue.

"If the movement recognizes homosexuals, it will lose its halachic character completely. In that case, we will also have to concede our position that we do not recognize as Jewish a person whose father is Jewish but whose mother is not, and then there will really be no difference between us and Reform," said the source.

Mr. Sheleg went on to quote female Rabbi Einat Ramon, dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Israel, who had no trouble understanding why the "senior source" insisted on anonymity.

"This issue involves an element of pure intellectual totalitarianism,’ said Rabbi Ramon. "People are afraid to openly voice opposition to the [pro-homosexual] initiatives, for fear they will immediately be labeled ‘benighted.’ That is the main reason for the split [in the Conservative movement] being inevitable, as well as due to the contempt that the liberals are displaying toward the conservatives."

Rabbi Elliot Dorf, one of the authors of the "Teshuva Legitimizing Homosexuality," rector of the Conservative movement’s University of Judaism Rabbinical School in California, and a major supporter of the campaign to ordain homosexuals, airily dismissed the possibility of deleterious developments based on the acceptance of homosexuality.

"Some [Conservative seminaries] may decide to ordain gays and lesbians and others may not," he said, adding that both attitudes would "continue to live with each other."

However, "intellectual totalitarianism" against "politically incorrect" positions at the supposedly "live-and-let-live" JTS has an unfortunate history.

Rabbi Joel Roth, a former dean of the JTS Rabbinical School and former chairman of the CJLS, recalled that when the CJLS voted to ordain women in 1983, the rabbinical school organized an egalitarian minyan in addition to the traditional, separate-seating minyan that had existed since the seminary’s founding in 1886. According to Rabbi Roth, the traditional, non-egalitarian minyan "survived ten years until the upstairs egalitarian minyan claimed that any Conservative Jew who was not egalitarian was immoral and [therefore] delegitimate."

"The student body to this day reviles students who go to the [newly re-started] non-egalitarian minyan, and if it were up to most of them, it would not exist," said Rabbi Roth.

In the "Legal Findings" at the conclusion of "Homosexuality, Human Dignity & Halakhah, a combined Responsum for the CJLS" (approved Dec. 6, 2006), responding Rabbis Elliot Dorf, Daniel Nevins, and Avram Reisner wrote that their ruling "effectively normalizes the status of gay and lesbian Jews in the Jewish community" (with the sole proviso that "gay men are instructed to refrain from anal sex").

"Furthermore, gay or lesbian Jews who demonstrate the depth of Jewish commitment…shall be welcomed to apply to our professional schools and associations," wrote the rabbis.

"Some have argued that even if gay and lesbian Jews are to be welcomed in our communities, they still should not be ordained as clergy who are expected to represent our ideal of Torah observance. Although we agree that the clergy should be role models of the mitzvot that apply to all Jews, they are also entitled to the same consideration of human dignity, as are other Jews. As our Talmudic examples have demonstrated, considerations of human dignity were extended to the rabbis of antiquity and we should not discriminate against the clergy of today" (pg. 27).

The responsum sanctimoniously ends, "We pray that the work of our hands will strengthen the Jewish people in its sacred task of establishing holy communities, raising Jewish children [sic], and sharing the light of Torah with the entire world …‘The pious will rejoice in dignity; singing upon their couches’" (Psalm 149).

When one studies a document of this nature, it is vital to consider the "tendenz"—the intention of the authors, their weltanschauung or "world view," and the perspective of those that stand behind it. Rabbi Dorf openly reveals his tendenz. "In many Conservative decisions, moral injustice, or the opportunity to encourage greater moral sensitivity, has been the primary motivation for revising the law," he wrote ("Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors to Our Descendants", p.160).

In a controversial but perceptive article in "Moment" magazine, Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for the Orthodox Agudath Israel of America, summarized his view of the Conservative position and its "tendenz." Moment’s editors called his piece "The Conservative Lie," a title Rabbi Shafran vociferously, though unsuccessfully, opposed.

"The law of probability leads us to expect that there will be times when the halachic result will be more lenient than one might expect, and other times when it will be more demanding. Tellingly, though, and practically without exception, Conservative ‘reinterpretations’ of Jewish law have entailed permitting something previously forbidden. Whether the subject was driving a car on the Sabbath, the introduction of ‘egalitarian’ services, or the Biblical prohibition of certain marriages, the ‘reevaluations’ have virtually all, amazingly, resulted in new permissions. That is a clear sign not of objectivity but of agenda, of a drastically limited interest in what the Torah wants from us, and a strong resolve to use it as a mere tool to promote personal beliefs," said Rabbi Shafran.

In an article in "Commentary," Reform Rabbi Clifford Librach came to virtually the same conclusion. "On social and cultural issues, the tilt of Conservatism’s slope is away from the norms of law and tradition and towards the permissive; and the slope is a slippery one," he wrote.

In fact, as far back as 1955, sociologist Marshal Sklare, author of the seminal "Conservative Judaism, an American Religious Movement" wrote that Conservative "rabbis now recognize that they are not making [halachic] decisions or writing responsa, but merely taking a poll of their membership."

At the Conservative movement’s United Synagogue convention in December 2005, JTS Jewish Philosophy Professor Rabbi Neil Gilman raised more than a few eyebrows when, as part of his keynote address, he recognized that it is both intellectually dishonest and pointless for Conservative Judaism to continue to describe itself as "a halachic movement."

Though there were some protests, many people thanked Rabbi Gilman for saying out loud what they had been thinking for many years.

In a widely quoted article in the "Jerusalem Report," Rabbi Gilman wrote, "It is disingenuous to say we are a halachic movement when we are bound only until we don’t want to be…We have stretched the parameters of permissible changes to the point that they are no longer recognizable. We make a decision that’s largely sociological and then we say it’s halachic."

According to Rabbi Gilman, halacha is, at most, merely one of the guidelines that the Conservative movement may consult in arriving at its positions, but those positions are ever evolving "according to aggada, or changing social and cultural norms."

The hallmarks of Conservative belief, he argued, are "relativity, uncertainty, and tension."

In a few years, JTS’s newly minted homosexual (and lesbian) rabbis—avowed, avid, ideological practitioners of the sole prohibition branded by their sacred Scriptures and their Oral Tradition as "abominable"—will fan out across America and become "spiritual leaders" to Conservative congregations throughout the land.

In the words of the "Legal Findings" of the CJLS Responsum, these homosexual and lesbian rabbis will serve as "role models" in "establishing holy communities, raising Jewish children, and sharing the light of Torah with the entire world."

And they will do so with the hechsher—the official imprimatur—of the Rabbinical Assembly and the Conservative movement.

The Conservative movement has indeed come a long way!