דובר אמת – SPEAKING TRUTH:
“Our RA will seek ways to exemplify moral leadership on issues of social justice. Our membership is politically diverse and sometimes polarized. Though mindful of our diversity, we find ourselves in a world that needs strong, wise rabbinic voices, grounded in Torah, on issues of the day. In the spirit of empowering colleagues, our focus shifts to both taking strong public stands (while respectful of the diverse points of view of our membership) and helping individual colleagues to be the voice of the rabbinate.” --The Our RA Vision Plan
Why and How We Make Public Statements:
Our RA makes public statements on pressing issues because:
- Our RA has a sacred responsibility to the Jewish people and the world to bring our rabbinic voice to the pressing public conversations of our time.
- We believe that the voice of the Conservative rabbinate adds to the debate, and allows our positions to be heard in the public square.
- Our Torah seeks to make a difference in how issues are understood.
- We take responsibility to raise the level of civil discourse in our communities while empowering rabbis to take a vocal stance.
- To provide language and teaching to colleagues for use in their communities
- We need to be able to “maintain a seat at the table” in important communal discussions.
Here’s how the process of putting out a statement happens:
- A decision is taken to draft a statement with some guidelines as to what needs to be said. (Parties to that decision include: CEO, President, COO, SJ consultant, and the Social Justice Commission chair.)
- The draft statement is crafted to reflect Jewish ideas, concepts and sources and when relevant, in accordance with existing resolutions and past statements reflecting the consensus of the membership.
- The draft is shared with the individuals above for the first round of editing and feedback.
- Once the statement draft is finalized it may be shared with the Administrative Committee for their comments.
- In order to assure that a statement has a basis in a wide swath of colleagues’ opinions:
- If (as is the case in the majority of instances) the statement is rooted in one or more resolutions that have been passed by the membership there is no further approval required.
- If there is no relevant resolution then the draft statement is put to a vote by the Executive Council, as the elected representatives of our RA, for final approval.
- Statements are distributed to RA members, posted to social media, and publicized to the media simultaneously.
As always, any member can contact our professional staff or our officers to discuss when a statement may be needed or with thoughts about specific statements.
Learn more about the resolutions process.