In an incident that underlines the tension between the US and Israeli branches of the Conservative Movement over ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis, the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem clashed this week with a group of visiting American rabbinic students.

Schechter's administration refused to allow a group of about 35 students to mark on Wednesday the one-year anniversary of the groundbreaking decision by the Jewish Theological Seminary, the movement's flagship rabbinic school in New York, to accept gay and lesbian rabbinical and cantorial students.

According to a press release put out by Schechter, Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon, dean of the Schechter Seminary, met with the rabbinical students last week and requested that the event include an expression of the more conservative, equally authoritative, halachic opinion adopted by the Law Committee of the Conservative Movement that maintained the status quo by prohibiting the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis.

This was the opinion adopted by the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary a year ago....

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