by joe eskenazi
staff writer
When Rabbi Elliot Dorff went to high school, he didn’t know what the word “homosexual” meant. And “gay people?” Weren’t they just, you know, really happy?
But, then again, Dorff is 63 years old.
Last month, however, the long-time professor at Los Angeles’ University of Judaism was one of three Conservative rabbis who wrote a groundbreaking teshuvah that paved the way toward ordination of homosexual rabbis.
The move has generated a media firestorm, and Dorff has received both praise and criticism from partisans on all sides of the issue.
But he hopes, as the generation that equated the word “gay” with “joyous” fades away, the issue may as well.
“The vast majority of people under 40 simply see this as a civil-rights issue,” said the rabbi, who will serve as a scholar-in-residence at Walnut Creek’s B’nai Shalom from Friday, Jan. 26 to Sunday, Jan. 28.
When the Conservative movement began seriously debating the homosexual issue in 1992, he says, “from the very beginning, I’ve thought this was largely a generational issue.”
The University of Judaism announced shortly after the December decision by the Conservative movement’s law committee that it would be open to receiving applications from homosexuals. The New York-based Jewish Theological Seminary has commissioned a far-reaching survey of its students, staff and American Jews to better inform Chancellor-designate Arnold Eisen in his decision, which has no timetable.
Dorff credits two key factors for the success in 2006 that eluded him and his colleagues 14 years back.
First, scientific research has gone a long way toward establishing that homosexuality is not an overt choice but a product of genetics. And secondly, there are far more openly gay and lesbian members of society now than in even the recent past, making rabbis’ decisions less conceptual and more personal.
While some of Dorff’s ideological opponents predicted strife, rancor and a fragmentation of the Conservative movement as a result of his work, the rabbi doesn’t see it that way at all.
“The Conservative movement has always been a fairly big tent, and we managed to live and let live on the women’s issue. Women are more than 50 percent of the population, so the changes in women’s roles was much more visible than this will be. And we were able to weather that storm.”
Dorff predicts that some individuals will leave Conservative Judaism over the homosexual issue, but he thinks more may join it. He points out that the Reconstructionist rabbinical college was founded in 1968 “largely because the Conservative movement did not move fast enough enfranchising women,” and that cost the Conservatives far more members than the few congregations that dropped out in 1983 over the decision to allow female rabbis.
While Dorff feels his teshuvah was “the right move at the right time,” some on the left have told him he didn’t go far enough: His teshuvah still upholds the traditional biblical ban on anal sex between males. But Dorff adds that his position — and the Torah’s — isn’t exactly so clear cut.
“In our teshuvah, we made it clear that we have no interest, and no right, to be in people’s bedrooms. What gay men do privately in their sexual relationships is, frankly, their business,” he said.
If a gay couple asked him what he believes the Torah had to say about their sex lives, he’d tell them the Torah is not exactly clear on the matter, but generations of rabbis have understood it as a prohibition on anal sex between men. And while Dorff quickly concedes he’s never fielded such a question, he notes that he’s never been asked about sexual prohibitions by a straight couple, either.
“It is equally an abomination for a straight couple to have sex during the woman’s period. The same word is used: ‘to’evah,’ which means ‘an abomination’ or ‘a disgusting thing.’ … The vast majority of rabbis who talk to couples about marriage — and talk about a lot of things — probably do not talk about that.”
Dorff’s hand in the December decision transformed him, for a spell, into perhaps the most sought-after rabbi in the nation. He was besieged with emails, phone calls and letters.
“It’s beginning to die down,” he said with a laugh.
“And I really do talk about other things.”
For more information on Rabbi Elliot Dorff’s Jan. 26-28 weekend at B’nai Shalom, 74 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek, visit www.bshalom.org/dorff or call (925) 934-9446.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California