On November 10th and 11th, the CJLS met for its fall meeting at JTS. During the meeting, the committee passed two papers. The first was Rabbi Danny Nevins’ paper about Halakhic Perspectives on Genetically Modified Organisms. In the paper, he provides a detailed description of recent developments in this technology and how the traditional discussions about kilayim and kiyum hamin can lead us to accept the benefits of many of these technological advancements while remaining cautious about some of its ethical and theological issues.
The other approved paper was Rabbi Loel Weiss’ paper on the kashrut of dishwashers. He argues that it is possible to both kasher a dishwasher and use the same racks for meat and dairy dishes with the preferred practice of waiting twenty-four hours between meat and dairy cycles.
The CJLS began discussion on two papers, one by Rabbi David Golinkin and one by Rabbis Amy Levin and Avram Reisner, which both argue for the permissibility of eating kitniyot on Passover. The authors are responding to the committee’s comments with the hope that they will be able to present a final draft of the teshvuah to the CJLS before this Passover.
Discussion began on a paper discussing new perspectives on tzni’ut by Rabbis David Booth, Ashira Konigsburg, and Baruch Frydman-Kohl. Their goal is to incorporate the values of modest dress and speech into our contemporary discourse without falling into the trap of using language of modesty to control self-expression.
Rabbi Frydman-Kohl also presented a paper on the ritual of post-mortem circumcision for male infants who died before brit milah or for adult males who were never circumcised. He traces the history of the practice and how it went from being a discouraged practice to normative halakhah, and how this history teaches us that the ritual is not a requirement for burial in a Jewish cemetery.
Discussion also began on a paper discussing the status of non-Jews in Jewish law by Rabbi Reuven Hammer. The goal of this paper is to combat the rise of extremist views that draw upon the sources, bred during times of persecution and anti-Semitism, which express racism towards non-Jews.
The CJLS continued discussing papers about the use of E-readers on Shabbat by Rabbi Elie Spitz and the ethics surrounding physician strikes by Rabbi Jay Stein.