JTS Head Says Ordination of Women Rabbis is Still on Agenda

Dr. Gerson Cohen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, declared that the vote last month by a majority of the seminary’s Faculty Senate to table a proposal to admit women to the seminary as rabbinical candidates “must not be taken as a defeat of the idea of women in the rabbinate” and he urged a long-range effort to “create a climate of opinion” in the Conservative movement to bring about seminary approval of such ordination.

The 25-19 vote on Dec. 20 ended for the time being a battle in the movement, led by a majority of the members of the Rabbinical Assembly, the association of Conservative rabbis, for seminary agreement to accept women for ordination. Cohen gave his assessment at a plenary session of the seminary’s faculty and student body Tuesday night which he had called to discuss the significance of the Faculty Senate vote. The proposal that women be admitted for ordination had been the key recommendation of a report by a 14 member commission which Cohen had named, with himself as chairman, representing what he said was the entire spectrum of opinion in the movement.

The chancellor held that what the vote “really means is that the majority of the Senate — the 25 members who voted to table — did not sense the existence of a climate of opinion” in the movement “for a major change” on the issue. He added that “any major change in the structure of religion requires a sort of populist recognition of a need for change.”

“Such a climate of opinion presupposes a laity with full knowledge of both the present practice and the implications of change,” Cohen said, adding that the majority of the Faculty Senate felt that the Conservative movement was seriously divided on the issue. He said the Faculty Senate, in the Dec. 20 vote, had placed a higher priority on preserving the integrity of the movement than on the ordination of women.

He said those Conservative Jews who believe women should be ordained, “who feel that such change is theologically and halachically permissible and ethically and spiritually mandated now have the task of creating the climate of opinion” in the movement “which will make such change possible.”

WOMEN WILL HAVE TO SHOULDER TASK

Commenting that while “the challenge” confronts all who favors that change, Cohen asserted that “the task will inevitably fall most heavily on the women themselves,” who had been denied “immediate fulfillment of their dearest aspirations.” He added that, “in living with that frustration,” he hoped the women would “find the courage to serve the Jewish community in para-rabbinic functions.” He said this would help to teach Conservative Jews “the importance” of accepting women “in new roles.”

The battle on the issue began when delegates to the 1977 RA convention approved a resolution calling on the seminary to admit women as rabbinical candidates. The resolution was withdrawn when Cohen promised to name the commission, with the additional promise that he would bring its findings, which he clearly expected to be pro-ordination, to the Faculty Senate early in 1979.

But last April, Cohen announced he had agreed to a request by seminary faculty members to defer until early 1980 action on the commission’s report, which declared that the commission found nothing in Jewish Law barring women from the rabbinate. Mounting pressure from seminary faculty members and from a substantial number of RA members, who opposed seminary acceptance of women for the rabbinate, forced Cohen to schedule the Faculty Senate vote for Dec. 20, instead of in January, as previously scheduled.