Notes & News

NOTES & NEWS Same Old Song from Cantors Assembly: No Women Allowed The defeat of the motion to include women in the Conservative movement's Cantors Assembly earlier this year dismayed Conservative...

...The WCN is not organizing any campaigns to lobby the Assembly members, although individuals have been writing letters and speaking out on the issue...
...Our agenda focuses on trying to bring Judaism out of the synagogues and into the homes...
...The time will come when women are included in the Cantors Assembly," says Cohen, ' 'and we're doing all that we can, all the time...
...One of my favorite symbols of this is the board room at JTS...
...It would be nice to be included because it's like a union—with job protection and other professional benefits...
...The seminary's ideology is more like Mordechai Kaplan [founder of Reconstructionism] than Conservative...
...In New York, the films will be shown at the Jewish Museum...
...Price, who was assistant dean of the rabbinical school at JTS and dean of the faculty in the late 1970s, says that there aren't many traditional rabbis left at JTS because of the increasing liberalization of the seminary, and the movement away, as he sees it, from traditional Judaism...
...Cohen says that the exclusivity of the Assembly has had no effect on the number of jobs available to women cantors, especially since there is presently a shortage of Conservative cantors...
...Will the UTCJ succeed in keeping women out of the Assembly...
...The women cantors took the rejection in stride, according to Doris Cohen, vice president of the Women Cantor's Network (WCN), an organization of women cantors from the Reform, Reconstruc-tionist and Conservative movements...
...in Washington, at the American Film institute...
...Women cantors also have the support of the Women's League for Conservative Judaism, which represents sisterhood groups and women's clubs in Conservative congregations...
...NOTES & NEWS Same Old Song from Cantors Assembly: No Women Allowed The defeat of the motion to include women in the Conservative movement's Cantors Assembly earlier this year dismayed Conservative women cantors but pleased members of the Union for Traditional Conservative Judaism (UTCJ...
...Sometimes it's more important what you do than what you say...
...Kristallnacht to be Commemorated A six-part series of new films about the Holocaust and about present-day anti-Semitism is being shown in New York City and Washington, D.C, during the month of November to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, November 9,1938, the night when Nazi authorities organized large-scale riots against Jews and Jewish property...
...Cohen and Price both attribute the outcome of the vote to another factor— the unilateral decision of JTS Chancellor Ismar Schorsch to allow women to be ordained as cantors...
...One of the previous chancellors rearranged the paintings in the room and put the portraits of the founders outside, in the hallway...
...This decision is a step backward for Conservative Judaism...
...For more information, write The Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10128, or the District of Columbia Jewish Community Center, 2028 P St N.W, Washington, DC 20036...
...Probably the liberals will succeed...
...It's going to happen eventually...
...This vote was the last chance to stop the steamroller of change, and to make people think about and analyze the direction we are going in...
...We are naturally characterized as sexist misogynists," UTCJ's Price said, "but we feel that there is a deep, significant difference between secular life and ritual life, and Jewish men and women simply have different acting roles...
...Keeping women out of the Assembly— if it fails, it fails...
...others focus on such subjects as the many forms of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust the transmission of memory from generation to generation, and neo-Nazi activities today...
...We are a presence, we are out there in the Conservative synagogues and learning at JTS...
...Jews need to practice Judaism in their homes, not just when they go to synagogue...
...One film offers footage of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps...
...Our significant goal is not to keep women out but to challenge the leadership of the Conservative movement into thinking about the significance of halacha in Conservativism," Price told MOMENT...
...He only left one portrait in the room...
...Many male cantors and rabbis felt that he made his decision without properly consulting any Conservative Jewish body, such as the Panel of Halachic Inquiry or the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards...
...It hangs over the head of the chancellor, and that picture is of Mordechai Kaplan...
...We are opposed to women becoming rabbis and cantors because it is un-halachic...
...Probably not," admits Price...
...The group's president, Evelyn Auerbach, responded to the Assembly's vote by saying, "The measure of a person's ability should be the hallmark of membership in the Cantors Assembly—not their sex...
...But at least we have people thinking...
...Many male cantors have been very supportive," says Cohen, "and women have already been attending the Cantors Assembly meetings as observers...
...The UTCJ had made a concerted effort to rally the cantors together against the motion, according to Rabbi Ronald D. Price, its executive director...
...Getting acceptance from the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) was the real feat, says Cohen, and it is only a matter of time before the doors of the Cantors Assembly open to women...
...The series, "An International Lens on the Holocaust," includes documentaries released during the last four years by filmmakers in Austria, Canada, Great Britain, Israel, the Netherlands, the United States and West Germany...
...The disgruntled male cantors have chosen this issue, the vote to allow women into the Assembly, as their forum for protesting Schorsch's process...

Vol. 13 • November 1988 • No. 8


 
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