520 A History of Judaism
themselves, and Yeshiva University hosted a forum on understanding and
acceptance of orthodox homosexuals without any suggestion of con-
doning homosexuality on halakhic grounds.^8
Within the Reform and Reconstructionist movements and other con-
stituents of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, such as Liberal
Jews in the United Kingdom, recognition of gays and lesbians as full
members of the community has been naturally far more rapid and whole-
hearted. Following the partial decriminalization of male homosexual acts
in private in the United Kingdom in 1967 and the era of militant gay
liberation in the United States after the Stonewall riots in New York, the
World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jews was founded in 1972, with self-
consciously gay and lesbian congregations established in metropolitan
areas around the world – many to be attached in due course to the Reform
or Reconstructionist movements. The Conservative movement character-
istically weighed up the different sides of the argument with great care, as
noted in a passage in the ‘rabbinic letter’ sent by Elliot Dorff to the Rab-
binic Assembly in 1996 about the deliberations in 1991 and 1992 of the
movement’s Law Committee, which was charged with interpreting Jew-
ish law and ethics for the movement as a whole:
The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards passed four responsa on the
issue of homosexual sex. Three rejected it either as a toevah (abomination)
or as undermining family- centred Judaism or as requiring an impermis-
sible uprooting of a law of the Torah. One maintained that homosexual
sex should not be seen as a toevah and recommended a commission to
study the entire issue of human sexuality. The Committee on Jewish Law
and Standards determined that commitment ceremonies should not be
performed and that sexually active homosexuals should not be admitted
to the Movement’s rabbinical and cantorial schools. The fourth respon-
sum qualified both of these last provisions as subject to further research
and possible revision. It was left to each synagogue rabbi to determine the
extent to which homosexuals could be teachers or youth leaders within the
congregation and the extent to which homosexuals would be eligible for
positions of synagogue leadership and honors within prayer services.Ten years after this letter, in 2006 the Conservative movement decided
to open up most of their rabbinical training to openly gay and lesbian
applicants. For lesbian rabbis like Rebecca Alpert, there has been a real
‘transformation of tradition’. Lesbians are well aware that their new
role is ‘like bread on a seder plate’, but the personal and religious dilem-
mas of the congregants of Beth Simchat Torah in New York, founded in