Gay Jews Praise New Seminary Leader
 Professor Arnold M. Eisen |
Arnold M. Eisen, the Stanford University Religious Studies Department chair who was recently named chancellor of New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary, has said that he supports ending the ban on gay rabbis.
The seminary is a leader in U.S. Conservative Judaism. Local LGBT Jews reacted favorably to Eisen’s recent statements, which were made to the New York Times earlier this month.
"I’d like to see it possible for gay and lesbian students to be ordained," Eisen told the Times .
The position of chancellor at the 120-year-old Jewish Theological Seminary, Conservative Judaism’s main rabbinical school, makes him one of the highest-ranking spokespeople of Judaism’s Conservative movement. A leading author and speaker on secularization’s effect on U.S. Judaism, Eisen is only the second non-rabbi to lead the school, and will replace Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, who retires in June. Eisen’s opinion on gay rabbis is based on "knowing gay and lesbian people, friends, students, co-workers, and the sense that Judaism has always adapted itself to changing circumstances," reported the Stanford news service.
"Arnie Eisen promises to be an outstanding leader of Conservative Judaism," said Rabbi Camille Shira Angel of the primarily LGBT Reform Synagogue, Sha’ar Zahav, in San Francisco. "By selecting him the Conservative movement made a terrific choice."
"In the Jewish academic world, not too many people come close to him," said Michael Sarid, a former Jewish Theological Seminary graduate student. "The West Coast leadership is more liberal, more willing to make change, more progressive than their counterparts on the East Coast."
"By choosing someone from the mainstream California community, we can expect him to be an outspoken proponent for queer visibility, women’s visibility, and social justice," said Eisen’s longtime personal friend Rabbi Yoel Kahn, director of the Jewish Community Center’s Taube Center for Jewish Life.
The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California called Eisen "universally regarded as one of the nation’s foremost scholars in the field of modern Jewish thought."
Conservative Judaism occupies a shrinking centrist middle ground between the liberal Reform movement and strict Orthodox Judaism, distinguishing itself by adhering to Jewish law and tradition, while in some cases, studying, analyzing, and adapting to modern world contemporary issues.
The Conservative movement’s 760 synagogues have lost members since 1990 while Reform and Orthodox Judaism have grown.
Eisen has said that ignoring Jewish tenets or practices will lead to disaster and that the issue of same-sex union ceremonies is up to individual rabbis, though some Conservative rabbis are already doing them. Eisen is an active member of Palo Alto’s LGBT-friendly Congregation Kol Emeth.
"The Conservative movement is going to survive," said Kenny Altman, administrative manager at Parents’ Place, a parenting resource and education center of Jewish Family and Children’s Services. "As more and more young people come out of the closet, the Conservative movement will need to embrace them or lose them to Reform Judaism."
Altman, who started LGBT outreach at San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Sholom with the blessing of then-Rabbi Alan Lew, helped increase the Richmond District synagogue’s LGBT membership from 10 to 40 in the past eight years.
"It’s true that Judaism has always adapted," said Angel. "Wherever and whenever they’ve been, they always found a way to adapt." Rabbi J.B. Sacks-Rosen, the first openly gay rabbi in the Conservative movement, will be a visiting scholar at Congregation Beth Sholom this weekend, April 28-30. Sacks-Rosen will be speaking about his personal and professional journey, the Jewish texts that prohibit homosexuality, and gay and lesbian parenting.
After Sacks-Rosen came out to his New Jersey congregation, before his partner died of AIDS, the couple had a commitment ceremony. He currently serves in Riverside, California while completing his doctorate.
For more information about Sacks-Rosen’s visit call (415) 221-8736, ext. 249.