
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 26, 1990                   TAG: 9006260473
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SEATTLE                                LENGTH: Medium

REFORM JUDAISM OKS GAY, LESBIAN RABBIS

Reform Judaism, the most liberal of the religion's three main branches, broke with 4,000 years of Jewish tradition and voted to accept gay and lesbian rabbis. But it stopped short of endorsing homosexual unions.

The decision Monday by the 1,550-member Central Conference of American Rabbis makes Reform Judaism the biggest religious group to officially recognize homosexual clergy. The decision applies in the United States and Canada.

Participants said Reform Judaism already has rabbis who are homosexual and that the vote merely recognizes reality.

"It's a breakthrough for our Reform movement," said Rabbi Yoel Kahn of Sha'ar Zahav in San Francisco, a primarily homosexual congregation.

"It is certainly a breakthrough for gay and lesbian Jews and I think it's an important step for religious liberalism in this country."

There are about 1.5 million Reform Jews worldwide, including about 1.3 million in the United States.

The voice vote came after 45 minutes of debate at the conference's 101st annual convention, attended by about 500 rabbis. A 17-member committee studied the issue four years before issuing a report endorsing gay and lesbian rabbis.

Jewish law, embodied in the Torah and other texts, condemns homosexuality as an abomination.

But "out of concern for human dignity one is permitted to violate the prohibitions of Torah," said Rabbi Samuel Karff of Houston, conference president and a member of the committee.

The panel's minority inserted a statement affirming that homosexual unions can fulfill a Jew's religious duty to create a traditional Jewish home. But the report states that heterosexual marriage remains the Jewish ideal.

In Reform Judaism, many Jews do not observe traditional dietary laws or cover their heads in prayer. These are among key differences with Conservative and Orthodox Jews.

Reform Judaism became the first major branch to ordain women rabbis in 1972. The Conservative Jewish movement has had women rabbis since 1985 but does not openly accept homosexual rabbis. Orthodox Judaism opposes ordination of women or homosexuals as forbidden by Jewish law.

Judaism's smaller Reconstructionist movement and the Unitarian Universalist church openly accept homosexual clergy, and some other Christian denominations approve ordination of homosexuals if they remain celibate.

by CNB