A Sad Day for Judaism

All predictions are that on March 29, the Reform rabbinate will take another step toward doctrinal incoherence when it endorses having rabbis officiate at gay "marriages." It will be a sad day for American Judaism.

Jews, like Christians, have a concept of "holy matrimony," and the ceremony and status of marriage are infused with religious meaning. The legal committee of the Reform rabbis' organization, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, has ruled against allowing rabbinical officiation at same-sex unions. Now the Reform rabbis seem determined to ignore not only Jewish law in general but even their own version of it--overruling the "responsa" that their legal committee issued and tossing it into the dustbin of Reform history.

As it is, American Jewry is facing assimilation, intermarriage, and low birth rates. Fostering gay marriage can only worsen these problems.

And American Jews are deeply divided along denominational lines--especially since the Reform movement unilaterally abrogated 5,000 years of Jewish law and practice by throwing matrilineal descent out the window. Now American Jews can't even agree on who is a Jew: someone born of a Jewish mother, as had always been the case, or someone born of a Jewish father and gentile mother as well? The decision to officiate at gay sacraments will once again separate the denominations on a sensitive issue of Jewish law.

Moreover, it will hurt the Reform movement in Israel. Reform rabbis there, already struggling for recognition against the prejudices of the Orthodox rabbinate, have always opposed a gay-marriage resolution. They know it will invite mockery and abuse from their critics and will set back their fight for equal treatment.

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