Gay Rabbi Breaks Ground at Temple Judea

When Temple Judea in Tarzana installs Donald Goor as senior rabbi this week, the Reform congregation will become the country’s largest mainstream synagogue to have an openly gay man as its spiritual leader.

The liberal Reform branch of Judaism dropped religious barriers to ordaining gay and lesbian rabbis seven years ago, but only a few congregations have picked gay clergy for assistant or senior pulpit posts, according to rabbinical estimates.

None of those synagogues are as big as Temple Judea--900 families and growing--which also boasts one of the largest Jewish religious education programs in the nation, with more than 1,000 students.

By all accounts, Goor was an easy choice as senior rabbi for Temple Judea, where he has been a well-liked associate rabbi for 10 years.

“He’s exactly what clergy should be--sensitive to older congregants and involved with the youth,” said temple President Michael Rudman, a certified public accountant. “He is not a one-dimensional rabbi.”

Most Temple Judea members “knew him as a person and a rabbi before they knew him as a gay person,” said Ellen Franklin Silver of Agoura Hills. She headed a committee that never looked beyond the synagogue walls for a successor to Rabbi Akiva Annes, who retired July 1.

Only two or three people, out of about 350 people in focus groups involved in the selection, expressed displeasure at the choice, Rudman and Silver said. More than a year before Annes retired, in May 1996, Goor was chosen as the future senior rabbi by a unanimous voice vote of the congregation.

“I’m a rabbi who happens to be gay,” said Goor, 39, “but the congregation and I have been able to build a relationship where it isn’t the primary issue.”

At the same time, the rabbi said, he doesn’t avoid gay issues, either. “I’m comfortable discussing homosexuality. There’s nothing that’s hidden,” said Goor, who has lived with the same companion for 12 years.

When Reform rabbis hold their national convention in Anaheim next year, Goor said he will be among the delegates urging colleagues to approve same-sex, wedding-like ceremonies for Jewish gay and lesbian couples--a controversial issue at last year’s meeting.

“Temple Judea should be commended for looking beyond prejudice and stereotypes to keeping an outstanding rabbi,” said Rabbi Janet Marder, the regional director of Reform Judaism’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations. “He’s a very, very gifted rabbi with strong social-justice concerns and Torah knowledge who happens to be gay.”

Goor’s installation at the temple Friday night will feature Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman of Cincinnati, president of the four-campus Hebrew Union College, and New York City Rabbi Joel Goor, father of the new senior rabbi.

In weekend festivities, Evan Kent, the temple’s new cantor, will be featured Saturday night in a concert. A 5-foot-long tallit, or prayer shawl, sewn and embroidered by synagogue members, will be dedicated Sunday morning.

Rabbis attending the installation will include Denise Eger, who leads the predominantly gay Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood--one of three Reform temples in Southern California serving the gay and lesbian community.

“I’d say there are 15 to 20 gay rabbis in Southern California now, mostly in the Reform branch,” said Eger, who came out as a lesbian 10 years ago. The numbers have grown at the national level so much, she said, “I don’t know all the gay rabbis anymore.”

Many gay rabbis in Southern California serve in campus, social agency or other non-synagogue positions, Eger said. The handful of gay rabbis serving temples are assistant rabbis or are the lone rabbis at small congregations.

Orthodox and other traditional Jewish leaders say that homosexual activity violates Jewish law, thus ruling out any accommodation in synagogue life.

In the centrist Conservative wing of Judaism, however, some rabbis have argued for a more sympathetic approach to gay and lesbian Jews--notably Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, which formed a support group five years ago for families of gays and lesbians and will host a conference Nov. 16 titled “At the Crossroads to Equality.”

One dissenter to the acceptance of gay behavior in Jewish religious life is writer and radio talk-show host Dennis Prager, a conservative Jewish commentator.

“I would have intellectual respect for the [gay] movement to equate homosexual relations with heterosexual relations if that movement took a different position on bisexual behavior--because bisexuals have a choice,” Prager said. “That the homosexual movement supports bisexual behavior . . . means that their position is not at all based on the argument that homosexuals have no choice.

“Rather, it is an attempt to undo the 3,000-year-old Jewish battle to make heterosexual, monogamous love the human ideal.”

He declined to comment on Goor.

Responding to Prager’s remarks, Rabbi Jerry Danzig, executive director of Valley Beth Shalom, said that human makeup is so complex “that I would not be so presumptuous to say even bisexual people are choosing at any one moment.”

Goor said the only real issue on the table is this: “Is there potential for holiness, love and committed relationships between two people of the same sex? Clearly, there are attempts in Reform and Conservative Judaism to recognize that they too are created in God’s image.

“In Jewish tradition, we live in dialogue in each generation between the ancient text and our lives,” Goor said. “The text itself is never a clear, black-and-white statement.”

Goor said he is convinced that the majority of Reform rabbis are leaning toward approval of same-sex ceremonies for gay couples and has performed such ceremonies as an associate rabbi at Temple Judea. Those rites have been away from the temple--but only because no one requested them at the synagogue, he said.

“The policy of this synagogue has always been complete freedom for the rabbis to perform whatever ceremonies they choose,” he said.

More significant than his rabbinical freedom, however, is providing recognition at life-cycle events, “sacred moments” from birth to death within one’s own religious community, he said.

“A same-sex ceremony could be categorized as a new ritual,” Goor said. “So could, for instance, a ceremony that we do with someone who has lost a child” through miscarriage.

Goor’s unconventional approach to Jewish spiritual life includes his “healing services,” a blend of contemporary sensibilities with ancient Jewish liturgy.

Even before he assumed senior rabbi duties in July, Goor led four monthly Jewish healing services in the spring, attracting more than 150 people who prayed together and drew strength from one another as they shared problems and hopes. The Thursday night services probably will be resumed later, he said.

“We are in need of healing, whether it is spiritual, psychological or physical healing,” he said. “We usually say that’s not religion’s expertise; for that we go to the doctor or the psychiatrist. But I think it’s much more important to see our lives in a holistic sense--that religion can have an impact in every area.”

In his Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur sermons this month, Goor made no references to sexual orientation. In the first, Goor spoke of revitalizing worship, adult education and becoming a more caring congregation--standard subjects for pulpit exhortation. His Yom Kippur sermon on Saturday urged members to fight times of despair with faith in God, in the ultimate goodness in others and in “the best within ourselves.”

He cautioned that faith does not mean that a believer can be hopeful at every moment and in every situation. “Faith does mean that when we struggle we can find perspective, we can look beyond the moment and see the opportunities for hope.”

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Rabbi Donald Goor

* Position: Senior rabbi, Temple Judea, 5429 Lindley Ave., Tarzana

* Age: 39

* Born in New York City, raised in San Diego

* Graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and modern Hebrew literature from UC Berkeley, 1980. Worked as a bank financial analyst in San Francisco, 1980-82. Graduated with a master’s degree from Hebrew Union College, New York, 1985. Ordained at Hebrew Union College, 1987.

* Joined the staff at Temple Judea as assistant rabbi in 1987, named associate rabbi in 1991 and became senior rabbi in July 1997, with formal installation to be Oct. 17.

* Was co-chair of the Jewish Federation’s Cults and Missionaries Commission (now inactive) of the Jewish Community Relations Committee. Co-founded Hope Network, the Valley Interfaith Council’s homeless project. Served as 1996 chairman of the Jewish Federation/Valley Alliance Jewish Community Relations Committee.