A Reform Rabbinical Student's Perspective

Justus Baird

5th year Rabbinical Student, HUC

 At HUC-JIR there are two areas of required behavior that are written down and enforced.  Since I'm a rabbinic student, I'll call this the written law.  Of course, there is also the oral law – community standards that are not written down but nevertheless govern much practice and behavior of HUC-JIR students.  I'll discuss both the written and oral law on practice at HUC, and then I'd like to share what I consider to be the biggest challenge for HUC students regarding behavior and practice.
The two areas of required behavior fall into the areas of romantic relationships and studying in Israel.  With regard to romantic relationships, every student who applies to study at HUC (rabbinic, cantorial, education and communal service) must sign and return a "Policy Consent Form" with their entrance application that includes the following language:

"I understand that it is the policy and practice of HUC-JIR that any student currently engaged, married, or partnered/committed to a person who is not Jewish by birth or conversion will not be ordained or invested.  Therefore, no person currently in the aforementioned circumstances shall be accepted to the rabbinical program of HUC-JIR."

In other words, someone who is openly involved in a committed relationship with a non-Jew is not able to apply to HUC, and a student who enters such a relationship after matriculating will not be ordained or invested.  The chief admissions administrator for the College, Vice Provost John Braunstein, told me that every once in a while an applicant asks about the policy, and that the policy is held strictly.  My colleagues and I know of no one who has broken this policy and subsequently been ordained or invested.

The second required behavior is the fulfillment of the "Year in Israel" program.  All students to whom this requirement applies (rabbinic, cantorial, and HUC-LA education students) must complete the program, and there is no process for exemption based on personal or family concerns, inconvenience, or even fear.  As I once heard our President David Ellenson say, "The road to ordination / investiture goes through Jerusalem." Occasionally an exemption is given to an advanced student who has lived in Israel for an extended period of time and who can show mastery of all the requirements of the first-year program in Israel.  But studying in Israel is not an option at HUC – and to my knowledge, no other American Jewish seminary is as strict about this requirement.

Avoiding interfaith relationships and studying in Israel are the two required behaviors of HUC students.  There are other standards of practice at the College – all catered events at HUC-NY must be kosher, for instance – but there are no other behaviors that are required of students and enforced.  That's the written law.

About the "oral law" at HUC I would say the following: there is a respected culture of engagement and experimentation with Jewish practice at HUC.  Starting with the admissions process, faculty and administrators look for a willingness and interest among applicants to seriously engage with Jewish practice.  During the first year of study in Israel, the students – many of whom have never seriously engaged in certain Jewish practices before, and I include myself in this category – start a process of learning about and "trying on for size" a wide variety of Jewish practice and behavior.  Among my colleagues at HUC, this engagement included such practices as daily prayer regimens, laying tefillin, keeping kosher, strict observance of Shabbat, and observing family purity laws.  You can imagine that different students end up in wildly different places as a result of this engagement.  But we all take seriously the expectation to engage with and learn about these traditions, and, in the spirit of Reform, to decide for ourselves which practices bring meaning to our lives and restore our Jewish souls.   

I suspect that last sentence will draw a reaction from my JTS colleague.  I'd like to offer one last thought which may also add some controversy to the discussion, something I consider to be the biggest challenge for us HUC students regarding Jewish practice.  Many of us experience a significant gap between the Jewish practice that we embrace as HUC students and the Jewish practice of the congregations we serve.  Imagine a rabbinic student whose Shabbat observance includes a Friday evening meal at home and not spending money.  On her first visit to her student pulpit, her congregants invite her to dinner at Denny's on Friday night after services.  What should she do?  
 

A Conservative Rabbinical Student's Perspective

Rachel Kahn-Troster

4th year Rabbinical Student, JTS

During orientation week for rabbinical school, my dean, Rabbi William Lebeau, teaches incoming students the sixth mishnah of the sixth chapter of Pirkei Avot, which is otherwise known as the Baraita of Rabbi Meir.   In it, Rabbi Meir explains that Torah is acquired through 48 different virtues, such as study, an open heart, loving all of God’s creatures, and generosity.  As we studied each of the virtues, Rabbi Lebeau explained that many qualities were needed to become effective leaders of the Jewish community, and that each of us would come to understand and embody many different virtues during our journey in rabbinic school. While the list was somewhat overwhelming (especially given that one of the virtues is a minimum of sleep!), I appreciated that Rabbi Lebeau framed the path on which we were embarking in terms of the acquisition of a good character and an understanding outlook. Moreover, since we were studying these values as a community, I understood that we were accepting a shared covenant based neither on a checklist of tasks to be accomplished over the next five years nor an agreement to be molded in a certain way, but centered around models of ethical and loving behavior.  The message was that although adhering to the halachic boundaries of the Conservative Movement was important, our halachic framework should reflect the moral values of the Jewish tradition.

I have been thinking about the Baraita of Rabbi Meir, as I reflect on last year’s controversy at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) regarding a new set of admissions guidelines on halachic behavior for rabbinical and cantorial students. Previously, the rules had been very vague, stating that students were expected to follow halacha, as seen through the lens of the Conservative Movement and its Committee of Jewish Law and Standards.  However, the University of Judaism (the other Conservative seminary in Los Angeles) had much more explicit guidelines for admission, and it was felt by many at JTS that a similar set of guidelines would assist incoming students by giving them more direction in how they would be expected to conduct themselves.  The intentions behind the creation of the guidelines were positive, and were meant to assist students during their formation as rabbis.

Tension arose once a draft of the guidelines became public.  From my perspective, I felt that by making explicit what had been implicit, it would create fear and suspicion that the students were being watched, or that certain, more liberal halachic rulings of the Movement would be excluded the guidelines. I had the concern that the guidelines focused primarily on ritual life and not on ethical or moral values: why by specific on kashrut and not on plagiarism?  And I also realized that two different needs were being expressed: the first was for standards for admission, but the second was a need for a community covenant, one that would set the boundaries for accepted behavior while still allowing the students the space to struggle with their observance, experiment with different expressions of halacha, and develop a rabbinic identity.

I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask a Conservative rabbinical student to follow halacha within the boundaries of the Movement. Rabbinical students need to develop an authentic connection between their religious lives and the Judaism they explore and teach with their communities. This is true on both a ritual and ethical level: both fall under the broad category of halacha, the laws meant to create both a religious community and an ethical society. Rabbinical school is different than a graduate degree in Jewish studies: the Torah and the rabbinic tradition are living texts. It would be unfair to a rabbinic student to expect them to engage with those texts in a vacuum, with no guidelines as to how they are expected to absorb the information and behave. Moreover, it would be unfair to Conservative communities to send them rabbis unable to explain what it meant to be a Conservative Jew, not just on a theoretical level, but by being able to explain their own personal journey and struggles with living a Jewish life.

However, I worry that in the rush to create explicit guidelines, the pluralism of the Movement might be lost. Any one of us would be guilty of allowing our personal outlook to influence the guidelines we create.  Explicit rules also create the expectation of enforcement: there needs to be space for exploration without looking over your shoulder. One of the strengths of JTS for me has always been the mentors and rabbis with whom I have been able to reflect and grow, and I would never want to see that jeopardized. Finally, explicit rules run the risk of codifying what should be an ongoing community and personal discussion about what a Conservative rabbi should look like in the broadest sense, while still allowing for individuality and creative expression. While I was pleased that, ultimately, students were equal partners in creating the final draft of the guidelines with deans, I hope that we will continue to revisit them every few years.  We should struggle together as rabbis and future rabbis with what we should be learning and how we should be behaving.

One of the virtues of the Baraita of Rabbi Meir has been particularly meaningful for me as of late: studying Torah in order that one might perform mitzvot (ha’lomed al m’nat la’asot).  What one learns in a community of Torah can not be divorced from how one lives one’s life; if I didn’t expect what I learned at JTS to have an impact on me, how can I possibly expect Torah to be meaningful in practice for the future communities that I serve? Study should be expected to leads to action.  However, just as Torah is best studied in community, practice happens in community as well. We are all engaged in dialogue about how to balance halacha of the past with the reality of the present, and it is by embodying these tensions that we learn to become rabbis.