Conservative Rabbis Issue Guidelines for Sexual Relations

Casting aside an unofficial but long-standing policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” with regard to all things sexual, a committee of Conservative rabbis hopes to shine a flashlight of Jewish values and teachings into the bedrooms of their congregants.

The hope is embodied in a draft pastoral letter on sexuality issued this week by the Commission on Human Sexuality of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly. It was released in conjunction with the rabbinical group’s annual convention, which is taking place here this week.

The letter was given to the Rabbinical Assembly’s authoritative Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which must approve it for it to become official Conservative policy.

The 35-page letter strongly advocates marriage and calls on Jews to have three or four children.

But it also asserts that even without marriage, committed and loving relationships “can embody a measure of holiness.”

The letter also discusses Jewish sexual values within marriage, analyzes Jewish teachings on contraception and delicately sums up the debate over homosexuality that has rocked the movement since 1990.

Also included in the report is what is believed to be the first call on Conservative Jews to consider observing the laws of family purity. These include the biblical prohibition forbidding sex during a woman’s menstrual period, followed by the woman immersing herself in the mikvah.

Rabbi Kass Abelson, chairman of the Law Committee, hailed the pastoral letter and accompanying report of the sexuality commission as “a real step into the real life of our community.”

Noting that most couples who ask him to perform their wedding ceremonies are already sharing an address, “now I feel I can talk with them on a different level,” he said.

APPLYING TRADITION TO THE PRESENT

Rabbi Elliot Dorff, who drafted the pastoral letter on behalf of the commission, said that the discussion of non-marital sex should not be seen as liberalizing the Jewish ideal of marriage.

Instead, he said, it actually endorses a conservative approach, since it applies traditional values to the situation of many American Jews.

“Even if they are disobeying the Jewish tradition by having sex outside of marriage, they still have to abide by Jewish moral norms. It’s not all or nothing,” Dorff said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The moral norms spelled out in the letter — which apply to marital relations as well — include respect for others, modesty, honesty, fidelity, health and safety and maintaining the Jewish quality of the relationship.

The difficulty of following these demands in a non-marital relationship, the letter said, “is a major reason why Judaism understands marriage to be the proper venue for sex in the first place.”

In keeping with Jewish law, under which “saving a life is a value of the highest order,” the letter requires AIDS prevention measures, including “full disclosure of each partner’s sexual history from 1980 to the present”; “HIV testing for both partners before genital sex is considered”; and “careful and consistent use of condoms until the risk of infection has been definitely ruled out.”

While the letter set guides for those in non-marital sexual relationships, the commission posed questions to the Law Committee, asking that committee to address the gap between current practice and halachah, or traditional Jewish law.

Issues raised include the traditional prohibitions on masturbation and on physical contact between unmarried members of the opposite sex, laws central to Orthodox discussions of sexuality but until now little noticed by Conservative Jews, as well as mikvah and family purity.

Regarding homosexuality, it asked the Law Committee to explain how to balance the biblical description of homosexuality as a toevah, or abomination, and the calls by the R.A. and the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism for equal civil rights for homosexuals.

But one member of the Law Committee indicated that he doubted the body would move quickly to reopen that particular can of worms.

When the Commission on Human Sexuality was established by the R.A. in 1992, the move was seen as an effort by the movement’s liberal camp to undermine a ruling of the Commission on Jewish Law and Standards affirming traditional Jewish opposition to homosexuality and barring the ordination of gays.

For that reason, the R.A.’s sister Conservative organizations –the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism — loudly declined invitations to join the commission on sexuality.

‘THEY DON’T WANT JUDAISM TO CHANGE’

In fact, JTS Chancellor Ismar Schorsch had ridiculed the commission, saying, “Our laity isn’t asking you for advice on infidelity or premarital sex. They know what Judaism says, and they don’t want Judaism to change on those issues.”

Schorsch was decidedly more upbeat about the commission, praising its report as “an excellent statement, filled with concern for the individual along with love for the tradition.

“It succeeded in defusing an effort that was born in a political storm and turned its energy into a very constructive pastoral letter,” he said.

The letter acknowledged the deep split in the Conservative movement over homosexuality and called for no radical changes in policy.

An it did not make any direct statement about the possibility of holiness in homosexual relationships. But it wrote that the concepts and values that Judaism demands for relationships “apply to homosexuals as well.”

Rabbi Gerald Zelizer, who this week ended his term as R.A. president and who appointed the commission, said this report reflects “a new sense of self-respect” for the Conservative movement, whose motto is “Tradition and Change.”

“On the one hand, it shows we are not fearful any longer of asserting parts of the tradition we shied away from, such as family purity,” he said.

“On the other, we are not fearful of confronting difficult sexual realities in our society on which we might not have said anything in the past.”