CCAR RESPONSA
5761.3
Rabbinical Autonomy and Collegiality
She’elah
A Jewish woman from a nearby congregation recently contacted me. Her congregation does not currently have a rabbi, so she asked me to perform a baby naming ceremony for her daughter. She then informed me that although her husband is not Jewish, the rabbi who performed their wedding had “given him a Hebrew name,” and she asked that this name be included on her daughter’s naming certificate. Because I regard a Hebrew name to be a symbol of Jewish commitment to the covenant at Sinai, it is not my custom to assign Hebrew names to non-Jewish spouses. On the other hand, the rabbi who did assign the Hebrew name to this man is my colleague. If another rabbi has set the precedent of giving a Hebrew name to a non-Jew, is it my obligation to honor that act? (Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis, Flower Mound, Texas)
T’shuvah
Your question touches upon a classic conflict in Reform Jewish practice between two deeply felt religious principles. On the one hand, we are firmly committed to the idea of rabbinical autonomy. Each Reform rabbi functions, in his or her congregational community, as the mara d’atra, the local religious authority. This status, to be sure, does not grant the rabbi autocratic power to decide questions of religious practice. In our movement these are resolved cooperatively between the rabbi and the congregation. Yet within this cooperative model the rabbi enjoys a certain sphere of authority over issues of practice. When we speak of “rabbinical autonomy,” we mean that no other rabbi has the right to interfere in the recognized prerogatives of the rabbi of the congregation. The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), our rabbinical association, recognizes the autonomy of its members over questions of religious observance. Although the Conference may adopt resolutions that formulate a communal rabbinical position on these matters, these resolutions are seen as nonbinding upon its members. The individual Reform rabbi retains the freedom to determine his or her own standards of religious practice.1 Thus, from this standpoint, you are entitled set your own policy concerning the assignment of Hebrew names in your congregation regardless of the policies adopted by other rabbis.
On the other hand, the Reform rabbinate is more than an aggregation of isolated individuals. We are a community; as you pointedly note in your sh’eilah, we regard each other as colleagues, as fellow practitioners, as co-workers in a common enterprise. We therefore accept that our individual rabbinical autonomy is limited to some extent by a sense of collegial responsibility, the desire to honor and respect the actions of our colleagues in the exercise of their legitimate rabbinical functions. For this reason, you quite rightly feel an obligation to affirm your colleague’s decision concerning the granting of a Hebrew name to the non-Jewish spouse.
This conflict between personal autonomy and collegial responsibility is difficult to resolve. We cannot simply choose one side and reject the other out of hand, because we believe quite strongly in both. Yet we think there is a way of successfully negotiating between these opposing commitments. This path is pointed out by the Jewish legal tradition. The halachah, too, is beset by a tension between rabbinical freedom of decision and deference to communal standards. How Jewish law deals with this tension may suggest to us a method of dealing with our own.
In classical Jewish legal thought, the Babylonian Talmud is the supreme source of halachic authority. This is the case, writes Maimonides, because all Israel accepted or ratified the Talmud as their binding legal standard. It follows that the post-Talmudic legal decisors—Maimonides uses the term geonim to describe them all—enjoy no such authority. The halachic scholar is free to rule in accordance with his own reading of the Talmudic sources, even if this ruling is contradicted by the view of other authorities.2 In this respect, we can say that the Jewish legal tradition recognizes a high degree of rabbinical autonomy in the interpretation of Torah and halachah. Yet the tradition also contains an opposing view, that of R. Avraham b. David of Posquierres (Rabad; twelfth century), who holds that the rulings of the geonim have now attained the status of decided law; “we no longer have the authority to dispute their rulings on the basis of our own interpretation, unless the matter is a kushya m’fursemet,” that is, a long-standing controversy in the legal literature. In the absence of such a controversy, says Rabad, when there is a legal consensus among the post-Talmudic scholars, we are obligated to accept that position even when we disagree with the legal reasoning that supports it.3 This idea, in turn, is criticized by R. Asher b. Yechiel (Rosh; thirteenth to fourteenth century), who upholds the doctrine of rabbinical autonomy in no uncertain terms. He writes, “If the contemporary scholar disagrees with the words of the geonim and if he can bring persuasive Talmudic evidence to support his view, then ‘Jepthah in his generation is equivalent to Samuel in his generation,’4 that is, on any matter that is not decided in the Talmud, a judge may argue as he sees fit, even if he disputes the words of the geonim.”5 The pendulum swings back by the sixteenth century with the creation of the Shulchan Aruch, the legal “code” whose authors, R. Yosef Caro and R. Moshe Isserles, declare the halachah according to the consensus view among earlier scholars.6 Yet even that great compendium did not bring an end to rabbinical independence; halachists continue to this day to modify, adjust, and alter the Jewish legal consensus by writing commentaries, compendia, and responsa.7
This back-and-forth debate between autonomy of decision and the constraint of consensus exists because both principles are indispensable. It is in the nature of Jewish law that the interpretation of the legal sources is the prerogative of the individual scholar, who must declare the truth as it appears to him or (nowadays) her, regardless of the opinion of others. Yet no rabbi is an island; the study and practice of Torah are a communal concern. When scholars derive conclusions from halachic texts, they do so not for themselves alone but for an entire community, to whom they are ultimately responsible. The accepted, “consensus” standards of ritual and ethical observance are not merely the opinions drawn by rabbis through a purely intellectual investigation of the texts. They belong to the people; they are the lines and the parameters by which the members of the community define themselves as Jews and within which they live their Jewish lives. Rabbis should be careful not to challenge this consensus in the absence of good and sufficient reason, for the members of the community are entitled to expect that the substance of their Judaism will remain reasonably consistent over time. Rabbis must therefore continually seek a proper balance between their freedom to interpret the Torah as they see fit and the reasonable expectations of the community that looks to them for guidance.
The same applies to Reform rabbis. We, too, cherish our freedom, but we know that our rabbinate is a communal practice. We as individuals do not define what a rabbi is and what a rabbi does. That is the task of the Jewish community and tradition, which delineate our roles and empower us to serve as “teachers in Israel.” We are “rabbis,” in other words, only to the extent that we act in a manner coherent with the tradition that has created the term and that gives it meaning. Our autonomy must therefore fit within the life of community and tradition; it must be balanced against the reasonable expectations of the colleagues with whom we work and of the people to whom we render our service.
Just what are those “reasonable expectations”? Since we are Reform rabbis, our colleagues and people are entitled to expect that we will conduct ourselves as members of that distinct and identifiable rabbinical community. Since our rabbinate, like all others, is a communal enterprise (i.e., since we cannot function as “rabbis” except in association with our colleagues in that endeavor), we can be expected to make every effort to honor and respect the actions our colleagues perform in the discharge of their rabbinical duties, even when those actions do not reflect our own standards of practice. Yet precisely because we are Reform rabbis, our colleagues and people know that we can and frequently do disagree among ourselves over important matters of religious practice. That is the nature of Reform Judaism and of the Reform rabbinate. We cannot reasonably be expected to alter our practice simply because a colleague “does it differently,” especially when the disagreement is a machloket l’shem shamayim, one that rises to the level of high principle.
How do we distinguish between those cases in which we can be expected to compromise and those in which we cannot? Here, the Rabad’s notion of kushya m’fursemet is helpful. When a particular dispute over an issue of deep significance has been identified as a “long-standing controversy” within Reform rabbinical practice, a rabbi is entitled to adhere to one side or the other as a matter of religious principle. In such a case, although the rabbi may choose to alter or modify his or her principled stance in the name of collegiality, there can be no reasonable expectation that he or she will do so. In a similar way, although resolutions of the CCAR and the responsa issued by this Committee exert no obligatory power over the religious practice of the individual Reform rabbi, such statements and rulings serve to inform our community as to the standards of practice that they can “reasonably expect” of the rabbi. Thus, if the Conference or this Committee has endorsed a particular practice, the rabbi is fully entitled to adopt that standard as his or her own and cannot be reasonably expected to compromise that position out of a sense of collegial responsibility to a rabbi whose standard differs. The following hypothetical cases may serve to illustrate our point.
CASE 1
A person converts to Judaism under the guidance of Rabbi A, who does not require t’vilah (ritual immersion) as part of the conversion procedure. The Jew-by-choice then joins the congregation of Rabbi B, who does require t’vilah for conversion. Rabbi B should accept this individual as a true proselyte, because there is a consensus of practice within the American Reform Movement to accept converts even if they do not undergo the traditional rites of circumcision and immersion.8 This stance has been affirmed by this Committee, even though our responsa have tended to encourage Reform rabbis to insist upon these rites,9 as well as by the Conference as a whole in its “Guidelines for Rabbis Working with Prospective Gerim,” adopted in 2001, even though that document encourages rabbis to educate potential Jews-by-choice concerning the traditional rites.10 A conversion has the status of a maaseh beit din, a “court action”;11 each Reform rabbi is expected to give “full faith and credit” to such actions performed by other Reform rabbis.
CASE 2
Rabbi A is scheduled to officiate at a wedding ceremony between a Jew and a non-Jew. At the last minute, the rabbi is called out of town and asks Rabbi B to officiate in his place. Rabbi B does not officiate at mixed marriages, and while she may agree to help Rabbi A in this instance, she is under no collegial obligation to do so. It is well-known that Reform rabbis are deeply divided over the propriety of officiating at mixed marriages. The Conference and this Committee are both on record as opposing the practice,12 and it is the consensus among us that the Reform rabbi has every right as a matter of religious principle to refuse to officiate at a mixed marriage. Thus, a colleague or congregant cannot reasonably expect that a rabbi who does not officiate at mixed marriages will change that position out of collegial considerations.
CASE 3
A family has scheduled a bar mitzvah service at the congregation of Rabbi A, who takes the view that non-Jews are not called to the Torah. The family at one time lived in another community, whose rabbi permitted such participation to non-Jews, including this family’s own non-Jewish relatives at the bat mitzvah service of their older child. Since it is well- known that issues of synagogue policy are matters of local custom and rabbinical prerogative, the family cannot reasonably expect Rabbi A to alter this practice, whether out of a sense of collegiality toward the other rabbi or out of a desire not to “discriminate” between the two children.
The foregoing helps to shape our thinking concerning your sh’eilah. The issue you face—the Hebrew name given by a colleague to a non-Jewish spouse—is not the private business of this man and his family. As you correctly note, there is really no such thing as a “Hebrew” name. The names we bestow are Jewish names; they testify to our membership in the Jewish people and to our participation in the covenant. This is not, in other words, a matter of little consequence but rather of high religious principle; it is precisely the sort of question on which you can be reasonably expected to take a principled stance and upon which you cannot be reasonably expected to change your practice for collegial reasons. In addition, this Committee has recently issued a responsum that supports your position in full: the “Hebrew” name we bestow is a covenantal name and not a biological one, and it is therefore inappropriate to grant such a name to a person who remains outside the covenant.13
For these reasons, the action of your colleague, while lying within his own prerogative, does not serve as a binding precedent upon you. The woman who has contacted you has every reason to expect that you will maintain your current practice. You are under no communal or collegial obligation to change it.
NOTES
1. See, for example, the section entitled “Historical and Halachic Notes” in Rabbi’s
Manual (New York: CCAR Press, 1988), 220: “The Notes do not establish or create a new Reform Halacha; rather, they aim to inform the rabbi of prevailing practice based on the historic continuities and discontinuities of Reform. From the beginning, Reform Judaism has been fed by two streams: by the authority of tradition and the freedom of the individual. These Notes are designed as a guide to our colleagues so that they may reach their decisions on the basis of both contemporary requirements and traditional practice.” In other words, while the rabbi’s decision ought to be informed by historical communal considerations, the decision ultimately rests in the rabbi’s own hands.
2. Yad, Introduction.
3. Rabad’s comment originates in Katuv Sham (ed. Jerusalem [1990], 198), his hasagot (critical notes) to the Sefer HaM’orot of R. Zerachyah Halevy. It is cited by R. Asher b. Yechiel, Hil. HaRosh, Sanhedrin 4:6.
4. See BT Rosh HaShanah 25b, on Deut. 17:9.
5. Hil. HaRosh, Sanhedrin 4:6.
6. On the codificatory work of Caro and Isserles, see Menachem Elon, Jewish Law (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1994), 1309– 66. While both Caro and Isserles utilize halachic consensus as the key to determining the authoritative law, each follows his own method of identifying that consensus. Caro announces that he will accept the majority view from among the three great “pillars of halachic judgment”—Alfasi, Maimonides, and R. Asher b. Yechiel—unless the predominant practice follows a different view; see the introduction to his Beit Yosef. Isserles uses the rule hilch’ta k’vatra-ei, “the law follows the latest authorities”; i.e., he rules in accordance with the consensus view among the German and Eastern European scholars (his own teachers) of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; see the introduction to his Darchei Moshe.
7. For a detailed argument that the contemporary halachist retains the discretion to rule as he/she sees fit, even in contradiction to the Shulchan Aruch, see Joel Roth, The Halakhic Process: A Systemic Analysis (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1988), 81–113. See as well Moshe Zemer, Evolving Halakhah (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1999).
8. The CCAR declared in 1892 that Reform rabbis are permitted to perform conversions “without any initiatory rite, ceremony, or observance whatever” (CCAR Yearbook 3 [1893]: 94 –95; American Reform Responsa, no. 68, pp. 236–37).
9. See Reform Responsa for the Twenty-first Century, no. 5756.13, vol. 1, pp. 99–120, which is largely taken up with a detailed critique of the reasoning cited in support of the 1892 resolution, at notes 35 and 36. There, too, we state the following: “In general, the tendency of this Committee is to urge in the strongest terms that all proselytes undergo the traditional rites for entry into the covenant. We do so not because we suppose that Orthodox Jews will recognize the validity of our conversions, but because we regard these practices as a positive Jewish standard that applies to us as it does to all other Jews. This testifies to our conviction that when we accept a ger or giyoret into our midst, we convert him or her to Judaism. Although we presume that our proselytes will remain firm in their commitment to a Reform approach to our faith and tradition, we do not require that they do so; we do not make their conversion contingent upon their staying within our fold. We are not in the business of creating a separate sect, cut off from the rest of our Jewish family. Rather, when we accept a proselyte, we admit this person into Am Yisrael, the Jewish community as a whole, a living and historical enterprise of which we are an organic part. We therefore believe that it is appropriate and preferable to mark the moment of conversion not simply with liturgy of our own creation but precisely with those rituals that are and have been for centuries employed by the Jewish community as a whole.”
10. The “Guidelines” are available at http://ccarnet.org/glgerim7.html. On the traditional rites, see section 8b; on the acceptance of conversions performed by colleagues, see section 10.
11. SA, YD 268:3.
12. CCAR Yearbook 83 (1973): 97; Rabbi’s Manual, 242– 43; American Reform Responsa, no. 147.
13. Reform Responsa for the Twenty-first Century, no. 5760.6, vol. 2, pp. 85–91, at notes 14 –17.