Rabbis shed light on Jewish movements

Approximately 40 students and members of the Penn Hillel community gathered to learn about various Jewish denominations in a panel discussion Tuesday evening.

Bassini Jewish Studies Interns, a group that allows students to pursue Jewish studies outside of the classroom, invited rabbis Yonah Gross, Eric Yanoff, David Straus and Dan Ehrenkrantz to speak at a panel about Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements. These four rabbis came together in the Shotel Dubin Auditorium at Penn Hillel primarily to answer students’ questions about their respective denominations.

Director of the Jewish Studies Program Beth Wenger asked the rabbis to respond to controversial questions developed by the event’s student coordinators. For the majority of the program, audience members listened to the rabbis’ views on interfaith marriage, gender and sexuality issues and post-denominationalism. Rabbis Yanoff, Ehrenkrantz and Straus agreed that interfaith marriage is becoming increasingly inevitable in America and described the ways they include non-Jewish members in their communities. On the other hand, Gross said that Orthodox Judaism does not approve of intermarriage.

Additionally, rabbis Ehrenkrantz and Straus claimed Reconstructionist and Reform movements encourage complete equality between the sexes, while Rabbi Yanoff said the Conservative movement is also moving in inclusive ways. In contrast, Rabbi Gross said Orthodox Judaism does not hold everyone equal and emphasized that “men and women have been assigned different roles because they have different strengths and weaknesses.”

A subsequent question-and-answer section broached issues such as the importance of Israel and the distinction between ideals and practice in each movement.

Ultimately, students felt they learned much more about the commonalities rather than the differences between movements. “The way they tried to merge their ways of thinking was fascinating,” said Michal Yablong, a visiting junior from Northwestern University.

Furthermore, students believed the event did contribute to a greater understanding of other movements. The wide variety of Jewish denominations at Penn makes this issue particularly relevant to the community, which is “the best it could be anywhere, but not ideal,” said College sophomore Melissa Goldstein. The event was thus “a good start to creating a more unified and vibrant community at Penn,” College freshman Elie Peltz added.

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