What does CJLS stand for?

In December, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards voted to allow the seminaries to decide on their own whether to admit openly gay students.

The complicated decision by the Conservative movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards leaves it up to individual seminaries whether to ordain gay rabbis and gives individual rabbis the option of sanctioning same-sex unions.

In August 2003, after the Beth El Congregation of Baltimore authorized same-gender unions, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards reiterated the ban on same-gender unions and on the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis.

She is a member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards and one of the editors of Etz Hayim Torah and Commentary.

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism has not taken an official stance but generally believes "it is not evil to do this research," said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, vice chairman of the denomination's committee on Jewish law and standards.

He is a member of the Rabbinical Assembly's Executive Council and its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards.

At the Executive Council's first meeting in June 1992, and after much political posturing by all sides, a resolution was passed which charted the way of the Human Sexuality Commission:(6) "The Commission is charged to investigate the multiple areas and issues on human sexuality in order to inform the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards about the findings and understandings that its studies generate" (emphasis mine).