Religion: End of a Vigil

For years Judaism’s Conservative branch struggled over whether women should become rabbis. Reform Jews, more liberal, have ordained women since 1972, and 71 are now rabbis. But the Conservatives warily delayed, until in 1983 the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary voted to train and ordain women. Last week, with the first female seminarian about to graduate, the cycle was completed when the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Conservative rabbis in the U.S. and Canada, announced it would admit to membership anyone ordained by the seminary, male or female.

Ready and able to join after her May ordination is Amy Eilberg, 30. “The long vigil is over,” she said gratefully. During the next few years she will be followed by 18 other women now in the rabbinical program at the New York City seminary, the only such school in the Conservative branch. Eilberg’s assembly membership provides critical recognition for her as a Conservative rabbi. The rabbi-to-be, who is married to a religion scholar, is considering a hospital chaplaincy or a job at a synagogue in southern Indiana near her home. The Conservatives’ change “creates a synthesis of Jewish tradition and contemporary reality that can only be for the best,” said Eilberg, although “there is certainly some tension now.”

Last week’s decision was opposed by 30% of the Conservative rabbinate, and women were admitted only through parliamentary finesse. A three-fourths majority is normally necessary to approve an individual candidate. In 1983 and 1984 the Rabbinical Assembly convention fell short of that vote on a move to allow a woman rabbi to transfer from the Reform branch. But the new measure, automatically admitting seminary graduates, was passed as a constitutional amendment requiring only a two-thirds majority.

The decision thus moves the Conservatives closer to liberal Jews and widens the gap with the Orthodox on the right, who deem the change unthinkable because traditional religious law limits several customary rabbinical duties to men. Rabbi Pinchas Stolper, executive vice president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, notes that when the Conservative movement arose a century ago, “they viewed themselves as a moderate wing of Orthodoxy. Through this decision they have broken all pretense of being part of Jewish tradition.”