alison yin and adm golub
We have repeatedly stated that Jewish Rabbis, even conservative Jewish Rabbis are not at all the paragons of faith and the word of God that bible beleiving and spirit filled preachers have made them out to be.
These men are as vile and and corrupt as theire fathers were at the time of Jesus Christ. Their beleifs from that day until now have not been based upon the word of God, but upon the cunningly crafted fables and perverted writings of the Babylonian Talmud. So it is of little surprise that they would come out all in favor of homosexual marriage. For these it is all done for the money, and the favor of their Rabbi peers.
Published May 31, 2012,
issue of June 08, 2012.
When Gerald
Skolnik, the president of a group of 1,600
Conservative rabbis, was asked to officiate at a gay wedding last year, he
didn’t know where to start. “I was flying by the seat of my pants,” he said.
Should the wedding look like a heterosexual ceremony,
or something else entirely?
Now he has guidelines to turn to. After years of deliberation, the
Conservative Rabbinical Assembly has provided guidance to rabbis for performing
same-sex marriages.
On May 31, the assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
approved templates, culminating a six-year-long process that began in 2006 when
Conservative leaders first officially sanctioned gay relationships. Created by
Rabbis Daniel Nevins, Avram Reisner
and Elliot Dorff, the ritual guidelines detail two types
of gay weddings, as well as gay divorce. “Both versions are egalitarian,” said
Nevins. “They differ mostly in style—one hews closely to the traditional
wedding ceremony while the other departs from it.”
The guidelines passed on a vote of 13 to 0 in the Committee on
Jewish Law and Standards, with one rabbi abstaining.
Neither template includes kiddushin, a
step in the ceremony in which the groom presents his bride with a ring. It is
regarded by most traditionally observant Jews as the essence of the ceremony
that constitutes it as an act of marriage.
Instead, the templates detail a ring exchange that is based on
Jewish partnership law, an established halachic
concept, said Nevins.
“We acknowledge that these partnerships are distinct from those
discussed in the Talmud as ‘according to the laws of Moses and
The committee’s templates are meant not as exclusive formulations
that the rabbis would be required to use but as guidelines that Conservative
rabbis can rely on. The three authors of the templates, who consulted with gay
and lesbian rabbis, among others, in preparing their proposals, have stressed
that that they understand individual rabbis retain significant autonomy in
interpreting law. Rabbis, they said, will continue to explore and improvise in
this still new area of Conservative Halacha.
In the traditional Jewish marriage ceremony that has been
performed through the ages, the rabbi recites the first blessing over the wine
and a second over certain prohibited sexual relationships. Next is the ring
ceremony, followed by the reading of the ketubah, or
the legal agreement. Finally, the rabbi recites another seven blessings, known
in Hebrew as the sheva brachot.
Then comes the breaking of a glass underfoot, followed by a hearty “mazel tov!” Conservative rabbis
have used this model as a jumping-off point for gay unions.
For gay weddings, the forms are still evolving. With the assembly
releasing its own marriage templates, four Conservative rabbis, some new to gay
commitment ceremonies and others familiar with them, shared their rituals with
the Forward:
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Rabbi Menachem Creditor, who helms
congregation Netivot Shalom in
In the 10 years that he has been conducting gay marriages,
Creditor has changed virtually nothing in the conventional marriage ceremony,
adjusting only gendered language where appropriate. “I see every traditional
form as pregnant with meaning,” he said.
Creditor’s perspective is not uncommon among Conservative rabbis.
For instance, across the country, Rabbi David Lerner of
But Creditor goes a step beyond most rabbis, maintaining language
that might strike others as inapplicable to gay couples. Creditor keeps most of
the text in the last of the seven blessings, which refers to the rejoicing of
brides and grooms. He changes only the last line to refer to a groom and a
groom — or a bride and a bride. The wording “is not an imposition on a gay
couple that they should be straight,” he said. “It is an admission that sexual
orientation is not a reason to limit joy.”
Rabbi Gerald Skolnik
In contrast to Creditor, Skolnik has
used a service that hints at the traditional Jewish wedding but ultimately
deviates from the ancient rites.
Skolnik, president of the Rabbinical Assembly,
roots his ceremony in a foundational Jewish ritual: the blessing over the wine.
But for the second blessing dealing with sexual prohibition, he substitutes a
prayer from the sheva brachot, which
blesses God “who creates man in your image.” “It was an acknowledgment that
whether gay or straight, you are a sacred human being,” said Skolnik.
Skolnik created the ceremony last year for a gay
male couple at Forest Hills Jewish Center, where he is a pulpit rabbi. By his
own admission, Skolnik was hesitant in applying
traditional Jewish marriage rites to a homosexual union. “My effort was to try
and craft some kind of ceremony that would be spiritual and Jewish, but not a
clone” of traditional marriage, he said.
The ceremony did not take place under a chuppah,
nor do the grooms break glasses underfoot. Rather than use the traditional
prayer over the ring exchange, Skolnik replaced it
with language he found on a liturgical website called Ritualwell.
Though a surrogate ketubah
was present, the seven blessings were not.
Though Skolnik was reluctant to map
traditional wedding rites onto a gay union, he had no qualms about marrying the
couple in the eyes of the state. Since gay marriage is legal in
Rabbi Ayelet Cohen
“My starting point,” said Ayelet Cohen,
former rabbi at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah,
Cohen, who first drafted a ceremony for her lesbian sister,
maintains the broad structure of Conservative rites, but alters the liturgical
language to square with contemporary mores. The wedding takes place under a chuppah and includes the first blessing over the wine. For
the second blessing, she thanks God for sanctifying human sexuality. “Blessed
are You, our God, Source of Life, who frees us from
fear and shame and opens us to the holiness of our bodies and their pleasures,”
she says.
In traditional weddings, a man gives a woman a ring. Like many
Conservative rabbis, Cohen makes this portion of the service a reciprocal ring
exchange. But she does not change the liturgy. “For people who are familiar
with the traditional Jewish wedding, this is one of the pieces that feels most authentic.”
Cohen reads the ketubah and then recites the seven blessings,
changing the wording about a bride and a groom to refer to same-sex
individuals. The fifth blessing, which describes a barren city now filled with
children, troubles Cohen in its implication that a couple would be happy only
if they procreate. Instead, Cohen changes the language to rejoice in the
“uprooting of senseless hatred” from the earth.
“I think it is about the couple repairing the world through a
commitment to perpetuating the next generation,” she said. “I don’t think it
has to be about them actually raising their own children.”
Rabbi Stuart Kelman
Rabbi Stuart Kelman
Rabbi Stuart Kelman, now retired from
Congregation Netivot Shalom, formulated a ceremony
that parallels, but does not replicate, a Jewish heterosexual wedding. “I
wanted to develop something that is equal in function to the traditional
ceremony,” he said. “You can easily change the words so long as the words do
the same thing as the original.”
At the time he drafted his ceremony, Kelman
said, gay marriage was such a new phenomenon that “I felt that it needed a name
to distinguish it from a heterosexual union.” But he points out that today the
practice is commonplace.
Kelman’s model is not a wedding but a Brit Reyut, or “covenant of love.” His ceremony utilizes a new
terminology. Instead of a chuppah, the couple marries
beneath a sukkah.
The ring ceremony is a chalifin,
the Hebrew term for exchange. Kelman utilizes a shtar, or a
deed, in place of a ketubah.
The service begins with the blessing over the wine. But in place
of the prohibition on sexual activity, Kelman
substitutes the shehecheyanu, a prayer for special occasions.
And both partners break glasses.