WJW Intern

A local rabbi says the Conservative movement owes the gay and lesbian movement an apology.

"The Conservative movement is just playing catch-up, but it has not fully caught up to some of the other movements, such as the Reform movement," Rabbi Bob Saks of Bet Mishpachah, the District's only lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender congregation, told some 90 people Saturday evening.

"The first thing the Conservative movement should have done is apologize for how they have relegated the LGBT people in their community to second-class within their community," Saks said.

Saks was one of three panelists as the Washington DC Jewish Community Center's Stuart S. Kurlander Program for Gay and Lesbian Outreach and Engagement (GLOE) celebrated its one-year anniversary with an event called "My First Big Gay Jewish Wedding" and looked at the Conservative movement's move toward inclusion of same-sex commitment ceremonies.

Since its founding, GLOE has partnered with film and music festivals, hosted a Purim party, participated in community service and most recently brought in Jewish gay pop and R&B star Ari Gold.

Saturday's event also featured the presentation of GLOE's first leadership award to Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, the vice president of American Jewish University (formerly the University of Judaism) and dean of its Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, as well as one of the first to call on the Rabbinical Assembly to accept the ordination of openly gay students. The R.A. is the Conservative movement's rabbinic arm, and in December, its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards issued a ruling that openly gay men and women could be ordained.

"Rabbi Artson is the recipient because he epitomizes the type of courage we talk about, but don't often see," Kurlander said in making the presentation.

Artson described his own personal evolution on the idea of same-sex unions.

The first thing he did while a student at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary in the 1980s, he said, was write what he called a credo.

"I wanted clarity to who I was. I wrote, 'I insist God is loving and compassionate,' and then glued it in my prayer book so that every day when I pray, I am reminded of who I am called to be," Artson said.

He also described a five-page paper assignment, a final for one of his rabbinical school classes, that turned into a 45-page paper where he was forced to wrestle with his beliefs and come up with a resolution of some sort. Through his study of history and legal issues, Artson concluded that the Torah cannot be cruel and cannot discriminate against Jews. He received an A for the paper, but his struggle was not over. The paper made its way to the CJLS, which at that time was in the process of looking to ban same-sex unions.

"People would come up and yell at me without even introducing themselves," Artson recalled. "But I never gave up hope that eventually my colleagues in the Conservative movement would come around."

During the panel ‹ which also featured District Rabbis Toby Manewith of the Reform Temple Micah and Jeffrey Wohlberg of the Conservative Adas Israel Congregation ‹ Saks attributed the large number of LGBT Jews who do not belong to synagogues to their having have been turned off by the lack of acceptance.

Although Wolhberg did not directly respond to Saks' criticism, he stressed the Conservative movement's commitment to Torah and halachic process, but also said that a level of caution must be maintained in order to avoid losing the substance of Judaism.

"We have tried to treat Jewish law and Torah with great delicacy and care. We must be careful of what we do, though, because it is easy to destroy, but difficult to build," he said.

Wohlberg, who is chairing an R.A. committee that will recommend how Conservative commitment ceremonies for same-sex unions may be structured, acknowledged that there was a long way ahead in the navigation and implementation of the issues surrounding same-sex commitment ceremonies.

He also related the struggle of the LGBT community within Judaism as similar to that of women 30 years ago, when they were fighting for the right to be ordained.

In his remarks, Saks said he believed that wedding ceremonies for gay couples should be no different from those for straight couples.

Manewith noted that when she officiates, there is little difference.

She did note one distinction, however. "Sometimes people ask for an eighth blessing, one about hoping for the day when this type of ceremony isn't considered 'different,' " she said.

J.T. Taransky, a District resident at Saturday's event, was intrigued by the varied views presented. "It is always interesting when rabbis get together, you get to see the different points of view. I think that the Conservative movement has a lot of questions to answer," she said.

Erica Gloger, a GLOE committee member, said she has seen frustration in the gay community. "Gays want to be traditional Jews," she said. "I think there is some anger because they want to be treated in the same manner and don't want the religion to be diluted for them."