Orthodox Group to Study Future Relations with Reform Movement

The Rabbinical Council of America, the largest of the American Orthodox rabbinical organizations, has announced a commission and appointment of a consultant on the problem of whether it should continue its association with the Reform movement.

The Rabbinical Council is the Orthodox rabbinical representative on the Synagogue Council of America (SCA). The Synagogue Council’s other rabbinical members are the Reform Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly.

The Rabbinical Council has for years been under pressure from other Orthodox agencies to withdraw from the SCA, as part of such pressure on all Orthodox rabbis to withdraw from agencies which have Conservatives and Reform membership, such as the New York Board of Rabbis, the Jewish Welfare Board’s Chaplaincy Commission, and local boards of rabbis.

However, the appointment of a commission, headed by the Rabbinical Council’s past president, Rabbi Sol Roth, and the appointment of Chaim Waxman, a sociologist, as consultant to that commission, is believed to be the first specific response by the Rabbinical Council to such Orthodox pressures.

In announcing the appointment of Waxman, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University, Rabbi Gilbert Klaperman, Rabbinical Council president, said the rabbinical group was “finding it more difficult to maintain its relationship with the Reform movement.”

BASIS FOR THE ACTION

Klaperman explained that the Rabbinical Council’s action was triggered by adoption by the CCAR, at its annaul convention last March in Los Angeles, of a resolution that any child of a mixed marriage, whether or not the mother was Jewish, would be considered a Jew if he or she had carried out “appropriate and timely public and formal acts of identification with the Jewish people.”

Klaperman noted that the Rabbinical Council had gone on record as denouncing the CCAR resolution as “destroying the oneness of the Jewish people and publicly inviting and encouraging intermarriages.” He added that the appointment of Waxman was “a sign of the vitality of the commission and the fact that its pursuing the matter seriously, objectively and intensively.”

He also said the commission will distribute a questionnaire to determine the attitudes of Rabbinical Council members and of Jewish communal leaders about the continued association of Orthodox rabbis with the Reform movement.