Conservative Jewish Legal Decision Makingand the Question of Gay and Lesbian Jews

by Michael Pitkowsky

Brad Artson

(1993-http://www.columbia.edu/cu/law/svara/ svara_3-1_artson2.pdf)1.“Halakhah generally utilizes a method of reading the Torah and rabbinicsources as a way of developing applications of old rulings to new circumstances,or to generate new rulings when no established precedent exists. This processof legal development relies frequently on the evolution of knowledge, technology,and moral standards.”2.“Committed, permanent, exclusive homosexual relationships betweenequals were unknown until the modern era, and therefore could not have beenexplicity prohibited by earlier Jewish law.”3.“In every way, the examples of antiquity-as correctly condemned by theserabbinic sources-fail to address the nature of homosexual relationships madepossible by modernity.”

Joel Roth

(1992-http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/teshuvot/docs/ 19912000/roth_homosexual.pdf)1.“[Brad Artson

s] interpretation, if successful, would be a radical, butdefensible, interpretation which might take halakhic decision-making into newterritory, with far-reaching conclusions.”2.“Any competent decision-maker would know immediately that such a radicalinterpretation would require incontrovertible proof, for many reasons.”3.“But, a competent decision-maker who is utilizing information gleaned fromsources external to the Halakhah will be extremely careful to insure that thesources relied upon are not a matter of dispute among authorities of thatdiscipline, in this case, authorities on homosexuality.”4. (from 2006-http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/teshuvot/docs/20052010/ roth_revisited.pdf)“I have long admitted that I am not an expert in legalphilosophy, but since the idea of a chain novel, I believe, originates with RonaldDworkin who, together with Robert Cover, are the two favorites of theConservative naturalists, I wish to quote two paragraphs from an article of hisentitled “Natural Law Revisited,”...quote from Dworkin:“A naturalist judge might ﬁnd some principle that hasnot yet been recognized in judicial argument, a brilliantly unifying account of pastdecisions that shows them in a better light than ever before…Nevertheless, theconstraint, that a judge must continue that past and not invent a better past, willoften have the consequence that a naturalist judge cannot reach decisions thathe would otherwise, given his own political theory, want to reach.”