Chasm over gays deepens among Conservative Jews

The Boston Globe ^ | April 9, 2006 | Charles A. Radin

[ConservativeStatement]

The reading of the Torah ended, and Cantor Charles D. Osborne led the congregation at Temple Emanuel in Newton in a poignant prayer for renewal.

It was time for the sermon.

Rabbi Michelle Robinson rose and delivered the most stirring sermon of her young career -- an impassioned demand that the Conservative movement in Judaism sanction same-sex unions and other Jewish rituals for gays and lesbians. If movement leaders, who are in the midst of a deep debate over these issues, disagree, Emanuel, one of the wealthiest and most influential Conservative synagogues in New England, should sanctify such unions anyway, she said.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Point taken.

Have a happy and kosher Pesach!

[juliej]

She is into promoting herself. They sanction gay rabbis, etc., I'm gone. Then they don't understand why more conservative people are leaving or even converting to other religions. I can imagine what this broad says about partial birth abortion - probably thinks it's just lovely.

[juliej]

I enjoy the Conservative service. Women don't read from the Torah but they can read other prayers. Has a lot of Hebrew but some English.

[Sam Cree]

Thanks, Julie, for that reply. I've liked the Conservative services for the most part that I've been to, but the high point was the one in Key West, where the rabbi excoriated Bill Clinton during his sermon.

Sadly, since then, arsonists recently burned the Key West synaguoge to the ground, the meeting place of a congregation over one hundred years old, one of America's oldest Jewish communities.

I'll have to ask my old buddy, who belongs there, if they ever found the perpetrators.

[freedumb2003]

Oh well I know of groups who have cut down the number of Commandments from ten to nine to even to zero.

From the original fifteen ;)

[juliej]

This is a terrible desecration. My own rabbi said to me that if the Conservative movement allows gay rabbis, he will become Orthodox. True conservative Judaism and orthodoxy are very, very similar.