Gordon Tucker

Tucker has served as chairman of the Board of the Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism in Israel, and as a member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly.

"[2] Tucker's liberalism and interest in philosophy reflect his role in Conservative Judaism as a leading scholar and interpreter of the works of Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972).

Heschel, a rabbi who escaped the Holocaust in Europe through the help of Hebrew Union College and ultimately joined the faculty of Jewish Theological Seminary, became famous not only for his many religious and philosophical commentaries, but also for his social activism and support of the civil rights movement.

According to Neil Gillman, a historian of Conservative Judaism, "Heschel insisted that his turn to political activism was prompted by his experience of living in Europe in the decades before World War II.

He writes that Judaism has developed a precedent over time that rejects "the practice of punishing people, and causing them undue suffering, for things they are not responsible for."

[4] Tucker's prominence as both a political and theological liberal within Conservative Judaism is reflected in the role he played in the movement's 2006 debates on the issue of homosexuality.

As a member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), he authored a proposed teshuvah (responsa) arguing that the biblical prohibition on male homosexuality should be overturned.

Conservative Judaism has adopted takkanot only for a few exceptional matters, such as the abolition of the biblical category of mamzer (a child whose mother is married to a someone other than the biological father or is the product of an incestuous relationship).

On December 6, 2006, The CJLS adopted three different responsa, somewhat contradictory, on issues that address the participation of male homosexuals in Conservative Judaism: The Committee rejected Gordon Tucker's takkanah.

"Gordon Tucker (and Rabbi Leonard Levin) have done a superb job of assembling, editing, abridging, and translating a huge, not-quite-finished manuscript.

Or N. Rose, a reviewer of Heavenly Torah, praised Tucker and Levin for capturing the qualities of Heschel's original manuscript in their translation.

"Not only is this English version a lucid and thoughtful reworking of the original text, but Tucker and Levin even manage to introduce into their translation a measure of the poeticism readers have come to expect of Heschel.

He was previously married to Hadassah Freilich (now Lieberman), with whom he has a son, Rabbi Ethan Tucker, a rosh yeshiva at Yeshivat Hadar.