Stormy debates are expected at next week’s Rabbinical Assembly 79th annual convention in Los Angeles, which will take up the question of the ordination of women as rabbis within the Conservative movement. Some observers had been under the impression that delegates to the RA convention would vote on the issue. However, the situation was clarified this week by Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, executive director of the RA.
According to Kelman, the 1977 resolution establishing the Commission for the Study of the Ordination at Women a Rabbis stated only that the delegates to the 1979 convention were to receive the Commission’s report. It would be unnecessary for RA members to vote on the report, Kelman said, since the RA does not have the power to ordain rabbis. After discussing the report, the delegates will refer it to the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS).
Upon creating the Commission, Dr. Gerson Cohen, Chancellor of the JTS committed himself to personally backing the Commission’s findings before the members of the Seminary faculty. But as Kelman explained, the final decision of whether or not to accept the Commission’s findings will be the “sole prerogative of the faculty.
Meanwhile, Rabbi David Weiss Halivni, Professor in Rabbinics at the JTS, pointed out that he continues to remain opposed to the ordination women, by way of pointing out that an ambiguity in an earlier report made it appear that he had been opposed in the past but had changed his stance.
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