Unafraid of proclaiming his beliefs on Conservative Judaism and homosexuality, renowned author and scholar Elliot Dorff spoke to a packed room at Hillel on Tuesday evening.
Sponsored by the Conservative Jewish Community and the Jewish Bisexual Gay and Lesbian Student Group, the event brought together two organizations that have rarely convened in the past.
Dorff, who is best known for his revolutionary and bold published works, spoke to students, faculty and local Philadelphians about the treatment of homosexuality in Conservative Judaism, as well as how historic texts treat the issue.
He explained that “homosexuality is prohibited for men in the Torah and for women by rabbis.”
Yet he went on to justify the choice of sexuality in the Jewish religion by explaining that as the interpretation of texts has evolved throughout time, so have the people.
“Homosexuality is almost completely a generational issue,” Dorff said.
College junior and Co-Chair of CJC Debbie Schub said “the topic Elliot Dorff spoke about was perfect for the circumstances.”
She added that “most people at Penn know someone who is gay, so it is important that we can hear why sexuality shouldn’t be an issue.”
Jason Goodman, Penn junior and co-chair of JBaGeL, agreed.
“About a year ago, I asked myself if I could get married as a gay Conservative Jew,” he said. “So I asked Rabbi Mike [Uram, associate director of Penn Hillel] to help us get a speaker who could talk about it.”
One of the more memorable moments occurred when Dorff discussed reproduction trends among Jewish-Americans.
Dorff explained that American Jews currently have a reproductive rate of 1.8 but would need to increase that rate to 2.1 in order for the population to grow.
Dorff even encouraged college students to contribute to the population, reminding students that the older they become, the less likely they are to have more children.
“If any of you have a mate right now in college, don’t forget — it’s not too early!” he said.
Jokingly, he added, “And you thought I was going to just speak about homosexuality!”
After the event, Rabbi Mike commented on the juxtaposition of this event to the Westboro Baptist Church protest outside of Hillel earlier this week.
“It’s amazing how rich university culture is when on Monday there is an anti-Semitic hate group, and on Tuesday there’s a profound scholar speaking about bioethics and Judaism,” he said.
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