TORONTO — The First Narayever Congregation – an unaffiliated, traditional egalitarian synagogue and the largest shul in downtown Toronto – has voted overwhelmingly in favour of its rabbi officiating at same-sex marriages.
Of 175 voters on the same-sex marriage issue, which took place at the congregation’s annual general meeting June 14, 164 people – 93.7 per cent – voted in favour, effective immediately.
No same-sex marriages are currently booked at the synagogue, but an aufruf is scheduled for next month. The couple will be married elsewhere by a friend, said Rabbi Ed Elkin, the Narayever’s spiritual leader since 2000.
The Brunswick Avenue congregation, which began life as an Orthodox synagogue and was revitalized in the 1970s when the egalitarian services were first held, first faced the same-sex marriage issue when a lesbian couple approached Rabbi Elkin shortly after he became the shul’s rabbi to ask if he would officiate at their wedding.
Instead of making a unilateral announcement, he “wanted to lead the congregation to a point where they were comfortable with it,” the rabbi said in an interview.
The synagogue’s board then struck a committee to examine the question of same-sex marriage.
Randal Schnoor, a Toronto sociologist whose PhD dissertation examined how gay Jewish men balance their Jewish and gay identities, recalled that the committee, which he sat on, met for a year to study Jewish texts and other literature on the issue, then issued a 40-page report.
The committee recommended to the shul’s board that same-sex couples’ milestones be recognized from the bimah, for example by offering an aliyah and wishing couples “Mazel tov.” But there wasn’t consensus on the issue of marriage, which was put to a general membership vote, as was the recognition issue.
The votes, held in 2004, resulted in an
“overwhelming” majority in favour of recognition from the bimah, said Schnoor, a 40-year-old married father of two.
As well, there was a 71 per cent majority in favour of having same-sex marriages at the shul, but the constitution at the time required an 80 per cent majority. It has since been amended to 75 per cent for matters of ritual change.
Schnoor attributes the increase in acceptance of same-sex marriage in part to the December 2006 acceptance of a responsum – albeit a controversial one – by the Conservative movement’s committee on Jewish law and standards that endorsed the celebration of same-sex unions in a Jewish context, as well as to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Canada in 2005.
“It’s been a challenging issue for the shul,” Schnoor said. “[But now that] it has such overwhelming support, I think it’s not going to cause any further controversy.”
The Narayever has “only a handful” of gay or lesbian congregants, said Rabbi Elkin, who was ordained in 1990 by the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College.
Demographically, the shul’s almost 600 adult members range in age from their 20s to 90, but “I think we skew a bit younger than average,” said the rabbi. “We have quite a few young couples, singles and young families.”
“We daven from an Orthodox prayerbook, we do a full Torah reading, we daven Musaf, we have a kosher kitchen, we observe all the laws of Shabbat and Yom Tov – we don’t turn lights on and off, we don’t have photography, and there’s no microphone,” Rabbi Elkin said, explaining how tradition is expressed at the shul.
At the same time, women have “complete equality” in services and are counted in minyans along with their male counterparts.
“We’re not terribly different from most Conservative shuls in the States,” said the rabbi.
On the other hand, he added, “I don’t know who else is exactly like us. We’re kind of quirky.”
It was a small group of young, heterosexual members, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who raised the issue of same-sex marriage for the second time, the rabbi noted.
Before this month’s vote, the shul held two information sessions on the issue.
Rabbi Elkin told The CJN that early in his career, he wasn’t sure what his stand would be on same-sex marriage.
“There were gays and lesbians in the class with us in rabbinical school. I felt they would make fine rabbis. I was glad I was studying at an institution that recognized that.”
It wasn’t until he attended the 2000 convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis – the Reform movement’s rabbinic organization – that he reached a turning point, voting in favour of a resolution supporting the decision of individual rabbis to officiate, or not, at Jewish same-gender ceremonies.
Rabbi Elkin said he feels “very good, very proud,” about the outcome of his shul’s vote.
“I’m very pleased it passed so overwhelmingly, and I’m hoping that bodes well in terms of maintaining the unity of the congregation,” he said. “It’s a lovely, vibrant congregation. I hope and anticipate we’ll continue in the same way, only we’ll be fully including another segment of the Jewish community that has not been fully included to this point.”
Bruce Rosebrugh, 54, who served as shul president for two years until the recent AGM, said that, “in the end, it was simple. This isn’t a political statement… It’s just an extension of what we are in terms of being a caring community.”
