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Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager

Reform Needs Standards

The Reform rabbis\’ recent resolution on same-gender officiation affirms two mutually contradictory actions: It supports any Reform rabbi who wishes to perform a same-sex ritual, including, though not so specified, marriage; and it supports any Reform rabbi who refuses to perform same-sex rituals.In an important way, there is nothing new in this resolution. A Reform rabbi could always have performed a same-sex commitment service. Nothing in Reform Judaism would have prevented Reform rabbis from doing so 10, 20, or 50 years ago, because there are no religious standards in Reform Judaism (this is not criticism, it is description). Reform rabbis can do anything they want ritually. So a Reform Jew can celebrate Shabbat on Tuesday. Indeed, for decades many Reform synagogues held Shabbat services on Sundays.

Opinon

Imagine that it is 1940, and Great Britain is fighting Hitler\’s Nazi Germany almost alone. Imagine, further, that an American who loves both America and England and hates the Nazis works in American intelligence and has access to secret files concerning Germany that, for whatever reason, the United States has not shared with Great Britain. This American gives the secrets to England and is caught.

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