As Solomon Schechter noted, "however great the literary value of a code may be, it does not invest it with infallibility, nor does it exempt it from the student or the rabbi who makes use of it from the duty of examining each paragraph on its own merits, and subjecting it to the same rules of interpretation that were always applied to Tradition".
The prominent Conservative rabbi Mordecai Waxman has written that "Reform Judaism has asserted the right of interpretation, but it rejected the authority of legal tradition.
For examples of this view, see rabbi David Golinkin's essay "The Whys and Hows of Conservative Halakhah", Elliot N. Dorff's "The Unfolding Tradition" (esp.
See Roth's "The Halakhic Process", Louis Jacobs "A Tree of Life", and Robert Gordis "The Dynamics of Judaism: A Study in Jewish Law" (stressed in introduction and chapters 8, 9).
The CJLS has on a number of occasions accepted teshuvot, which include moral and aggadic reasoning alongside and within a strict precedent-based halakhic framework.
The CJLS cites cases in the Talmud in which Biblical laws became inoperative, such as when the Sanhedrin stopped meeting at its seat in the Temple in Jerusalem where it was required to meet in order to administer capital punishment and the abolition of such practices as the rite of Sotah (the ordeal of a suspected adulteress) and the breaking of the heifer's neck in a case of suspected murder as precedents for refusing to administer Biblically mandated procedures on moral grounds.
[5] As classified by Menachem Elon's Ha-Mishpat Ha-Ivri, the legal sources of Jewish law include Torah interpretation, legislation, and custom (minhag).
Through its own deliberations, Conservative Judaism modifies or adds to pre-modern and Orthodox halakha through several literary forms, primarily responsa.
[6] For handling the agunah problem, the CJLS approved a Jewish marriage contract (ketubbah), supplanting a 1935 plan by Louis Epstein, prepared by Saul Lieberman).
[7] In addition, Conservative halakha may be found in academic and popular writings, including an effort at codification (Isaac Klein's A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice).
Finally, the movement's major liturgical publications—its prayer books and new chumash – constitute de facto halakhic choices about Conservative Jewish religious practice.
In 1989, the first collection of responsa was published by three Israeli Masorti rabbis in the Va'ad Halacha (Jewish law committee) of the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel.
A primary source of such information about this gap is Jewish Identity and Religious Commitment: The North American Study of Conservative Synagogues and Their Members, 1995–96, edited by Jack Wertheimer (1997).
[8] Conservative Jewish practice, however, is significantly stronger than that found in Reform Judaism, such as following Shabbat, Kashrut, life-cycle events and holiday observances.
[9][10] There is a substantial committed core of Conservative Jews, consisting of the lay leadership, rabbis, cantors, educators, and those who have graduated from the movement's religious day schools and summer camps, that do take Jewish law very seriously.
The CJLS consistently refused to pass several proposed takkanot concerning the Levitical prohibitions on male-male anal sex as well as other forms of homosexual intimacy.
The responsa was entitled, "Homosexuality, Human Dignity & Halachah: A Combined Responsum For The Committee On Jewish Law And Standards"[12] In June 2012, the American branch of Conservative Judaism formally approved same-sex marriage ceremonies in a 13–0 vote.
The one significant difference between Orthodox and conservative interpretations of halakha is that in the 1960s, the CJLS accepted a responsum that stated that American wines, being manufactured automatically rather than "by gentiles", might be viewed as kosher.
Rabbi Goodman details the Talmud's ruling that rabbis have the right to uproot Biblical prohibitions in three cases, and examples of how this was done in practice (Solemnizing the Marriage Between a Kohen and a Divorcee) p. 2 (bottom) p. 3 (top) Unlike the Klein responsum, which, like the Orthodox view, regarded kohanim in and offspring of prohibited marriages as disqualified from performing priestly functions or receiving priestly honors and benefits, the Takkanah held that they are to be regarded as Kohanim in good standing.
In declaring its willingness to "do explicitly what was largely implicit in the past" and get rid of the applicability of the category entirely, the CJLS expressly declared that it did not consider a classical rabbinic understanding of this subject to be "the final word" regarding the Divine Will, and that "Aggadah", its evolving conception of morality, can and should override Biblical injunctions when the two come into conflict: On December 6, 2006, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards adopted three responsa on the subject of Niddah.".
In the keynote address to the December 2005 Biennial convention, JTS philosophy professor Neil Gillman urged Conservative Judaism to "abandon its claim that we are a halakhic movement", which he called "irrelevant to the vast majority of our laypeople".
However, whereas according to the Thirteen Principles of Faith of Orthodox Judaism, the halakha contains a core reflecting a direct Divine revelation that represents God's final and unalterable word to the Jewish people on these matters, Conservative Judaism does not necessarily consider portions of the halakha, and even Biblical law, as a direct record of Divine revelation.