Theologian Siegel Dead at 61

Funeral services were held here Thursday for Rabbi Seymour Siegel, a theologian who brought a liberal approach to Conservative Judaism and a conservative approach to polities. Siegel died Wednesday at age 61 after a long illness.

As Ralph Simon professor of ethics and theology at the Jewish Theological Seminary and as chairman of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly, both Conservative institutions, Siegel was guided in his interpretations of Torah law by an adherence to ethical standards.

The committee ruled in 1973 that women could be counted in a minyan, the ten-person quorum required for communal prayer, and in 1985 to allow women to be ordained as Conservative rabbis.

Siegel also was an authority on Jewish medical ethics and had been preparing a book on the topic.

“Without ever being aggressive or militant, he reflected the dignity of Jewish tradition,” said Rabbi Gerson Cohen, chancellor emeritus of the seminary and a long-time associate of Siegel.

As a leading rabbinical figure in the “neoconservative” movement, which drew a number of Jewish intellectuals dissatisfied with political liberalism, Siegel maintained close ties with both the Nixon and Reagan administrations.

He served on the President’s Commission on Ethics in Medicine and Biomedical Research and on the Advisory Council of the Republican National Committee. For two years he served as the executive director of the United States Holocaust Council.

Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine and a major neo-conservative thinker, praised Siegel’s thinking.

“Siegel was a man of extraordinary political courage because he took unpopular positions and stood by them. He believed the world out there had changed in a way Jews were reluctant to recognize, and Jewish interests were no longer served by the old political alliances in the liberal community,” he said.