Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove
December 2, 2006

This coming week the Conservative movement will come to an end.  Or at least that is what people would have you believe.  The long awaited meeting of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards will take place in New York City on Tuesday and Wednesday to deliberate on the status of Homosexuals in the movement.  The results of the deliberations will determine whether openly gay men and women may be ordained Conservative Rabbis and Cantors, and the future of commitment ceremonies and/or weddings of same-sex couples. 

And while the issue itself is of deep significance, it has taken on much larger meaning, serving as a sort of referendum on the soul of the movement.  One side of the discussion has claimed that if the deliberations legitimize same sex relationships then the halakhic integrity of the movement will be undermined.  If homosexual relations are “normalized” then we are no different than Reform Judaism, and thus our movement has effectively ended. The other side has said with equal passion, that if the deliberations do anything other than “normalize” same sex relationships, then our movement will have strayed from its raison d’etre.   As one leader of the movement wrote: “If the historical method, to which we are committed as the Conservative movement, means anything, it requires us to consider the historical realities behind the relevant texts on any given issue and to apply them with as clear a vision of their historical context as we can muster.  We then must compare that context to our own to see if the same norms should apply.”

And so, it would seem, one way or the other, this week the Conservative movement will come to an end, the emperor, the movement, will be revealed to have no clothes. 

Now, I do want to point out, that this is not the first time we have heard that the sky is falling.  All the major decisions of the Law Committee, from reconciling the problematic condition of the mamzer (illegitimate child), to the status of the agunah, to the driving responsa, to the ordination of women or egalitarian prayer, the issues have always been phrased with ominous overtones.  It is the first rule of polemics, from politicians to parents, to always frame an issue in persuasive rhetoric.  When I want my three year old to get dressed, I never say, “Can you get dressed?”  Rather, I say “are you a big girl or a little girl?” Why? Because everyone knows big girls know how to get dressed.  And so for me, the real task as a parent or as a rabbi is to define the terms of the debate, which means that the big question on the table is not so much the particulars of the positions, but the question of what it means to be a big girl or a little girl, more directly - what does it actually mean to be a Conservative Jew – this is the question. 
   
Let me try to get to the heart of it, by way of one verse from this week’s parasha.  This week we read the story of Jacob in the house of Laban. Fleeing from his brother Esau, Jacob heads eastward back to Haran. In the house of Laban, he marries Leah and Rachel, and, working for his father in law grows exceedingly prosperous in wealth and family. The turning point eventually, perhaps inevitably, comes as Jacob realizes it is time to move on.  Why? The text remarks:

“Jacob saw that Laban’s countenance towards him was not as it had been in the past.”

God calls out to Jacob to return to the land of his fathers for God will be with him.  So, Jacob calls Rachel and Leah and says:

“I see your father’s countenance is no longer as it had been in the past.  But the God of my father has been with me.”

To make a long story short, Jacob and his family steal away from Laban’s household and set out for the next stage of his adventures.

In this one verse, I think one can understand clearly and concisely the ideological underpinnings of Conservative Judaism.  Jacob’s faith called upon him to recognize two impulses.  On the one hand, he knew that who he was and could be was tied into the God of his predecessors.  He understood his destiny to be part of something much larger, the transmission of which was not just through him, but contingent on him. 

And yet, in the midst of this constancy, he also had the wisdom to know that his context and circumstances were changing.  He saw that he had outgrown the conditions in which he lived and that it was time to move on.  In Laban’s house but really throughout his life, it was Jacob’s intuitive sense of knowing when it is time to move forward which is his most distinguishing characteristic.  And so, we arrive at Jacob’s comment to his wives.  “I see that today is not as it was yesterday and the day before, and the God of my father has been with me.”  Not only are the two halves of the verse not contradictory, but they are interdependent.  It is as if to say, for God’s promise to endure, we need to be able to move forward; but in order for us to move forward, we must view ourselves as trustees of God’s promise.

Let me read to you from what is often considered to be the founding document of the Conservative movement, the statement of Zecharia Frankel called “On Changes in Judaism.”  It was written in 1845 in Germany.  Frankel had been aligned with the founders of the Reform movement.  At a rabbinical conference in 1845, the issue of Hebrew as the language of prayer was on the table.  As the Reform movement proposed changing the language of prayer to the German vernacular, Frankel walked out in protest.  Frankel believed that Hebrew was the non-negotiable language of the Jews, and to gesture in a direction otherwise was a line which he could not cross.  The movement is called Conservative Judaism, because at the time it sought to “conserve” that which the liberal movement was willing to reform. And so he wrote the following:

"We must…take into consideration the opposition between faith and conditions of the time.  True  faith, due to its divine nature, is above time, and just as the nobler part of man is not subjected to time, so does faith rise above all time, and the word which issued from the mouth of God is rooted in eternity.  But time has a force and might which must be taken account of. There is then created a dualism in which faith and time face each other, and man chooses either to live beyond time or to be subjected to it.  It is in this situation that the Jew finds himself today; he cannot escape the influence of the conditions of the time and yet when the demands of faith bring him to opposition with the spirit of the time, it is hoped that he will heed its call-find the power to resist the blandishments of the times.  This third party, then, declared that Judaism must be saved for all time. It affirms both the Divine value and the historical basis of Judaism, and, therefore, believes that by introducing some changes it may achieve some agreement with the concepts and conditions of the time."

It is precisely the situation that Frankel describes which Jacob found himself, and in which we find ourselves today.  To be a Conservative Jew means, if nothing else, that we begin every Jewish conversation by asking the question of what is the timeless Jewish ideal, and what are the needs of the time.  Faith, observance, ritual, tradition, adherence to Jewish law are not merely nostalgic and wistful buzz words.  To be Jewish means that you, a descendent of Jacob, understands the God of your predecessors to be yours.  The argument that times have changed is a factor but not a decisive one.  If anything our Torah reading illuminates the disorienting effects of time, years can feel like mere days, and sometimes one must steal away in the middle of the night because lingering a moment too long spells disaster.

And given our commitment to see the Judaism we love passed down to the next generation, we dare not treat it like a museum artifact.  Judaism is nothing if it does not serve the needs of Jews.  Louis Finkelstein, the former Chancellor of the Seminary was fond of quoting the story of the famous Jewish sage Rabbi Israel Salanter.  “The synagogue in Kovno, like all Lithuanian synagogues, never had a stove.  When someone proposed to install some heating apparatus, opposition was raised on the ground that it would be untraditional, “It has never been done,” the intransigents argued.  “Why depart from the ways of our fathers?”  Rabbi Israel overwhelmed them in a moment.  “Do you mean to say…that because our ancestors have done a foolish thing for a hundred years, we must continue their folly forever?”  And the stove was installed. 

The significance of the Conservative movement is not so much that it has answers to the vexing religious questions of every age.  The significance, the ongoing, if not increasing significance, is that it is asking the right questions of every age.  We allow for the possibility that the Torah contains elements both Divine and Human, even as we acknowledge that we will never know which is which.  It is messy process this thing called Conservative Judaism, but there is no other movement that pulls at my heart, my soul and my intellect in the way that it does.  There is no other religious conversation which I would want to be a part of.  If I have one gentle criticism of the movement, it would be that our problem isn’t that we don’t get it. Our problem is that we can’t sell it.  The greatest challenge we have is not what we believe, but how we package it in a compelling manner to the Jewish community.

Let me conclude, not by telling you where I stand on the anticipated issue, but where you should stand, where we should all stand.  As I said, in the week ahead there will be people who will announce that the movement has ended.  I imagine that there may be prominent leaders who may even break off from the movement as they did when women were ordained over twenty years ago.  I would also like to say that there will be people, here in this room, who will be either validated or disenfranchised by whatever decision is made. 
With this in mind, the first thing you need to do is be a mensch.  As members of a movement, we put our trust in the wisdom of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, but as Jews, our first reflex must always be to tend to the needs of those in our midst.  I have no idea what the committee will decide on Wednesday, but I know that I will be at minyan on Thursday morning praying to the same God, in the company of the same Jews who I am lucky enough to call my community.

Finally, when someone tells you that the movement is irreversibly derailed, that this is the long awaited death blow to Conservative Judaism, look right back and gently tell them they are wrong. Because whether you agree or disagree with the decision, you have every confidence in Conservative Judaism.  You do, because you, like me, like Jacob, may find yourself saying: I believe that my God is the God of my biblical forbearers.  And, I believe in my God given wisdom to recognize when my conditions differ to those of my very predecessors. And I would hope, most importantly, that any Judaism to which I ascribe sees these values as the necessary and interdependent prerequisites to a dynamic Jewish life.
Shabbat Shalom