Daniel S. Nevins
Encyclopedia
Daniel S. Nevins (born March 18, 1966) is an American rabbi
and an adherent of the Conservative Movement
who was named the Dean of the Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
on January 29, 2007, succeeding Rabbi William Lebeau
. He was previously the spiritual leader of Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, Michigan
, where he served for 13 years in his first pulpit. He is an authority on Jewish Law who co-authored a responsum (legal opinion) that was passed by the Conservative Movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
paving the way for the Conservative Movement to allow gay marriage and rabbis.
. He attended the Frisch School
, and then Yeshivat HaMivtar
in Jerusalem. In 1989, he graduated from Harvard College
with a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in history. He earned a masters in Jewish studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
in 1991, and was ordained as a rabbi in 1994. Nevins also received a graduate fellowship from the Wexner Foundation
in Columbus, Ohio
.
Nevins serves on the Rabbinical Assembly
's International Executive Council and is also a member of its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
, where he chairs a subcommittee on disabilities and Jewish law. He has written responsa on the participation of Jews who are blind in the Torah service, and also on contemporary criteria for the determination of death. Together with Rabbis Elliot Dorff and Avram Israel Reisner, he authored the responsum on Homosexuality, Human Dignity and Halakha. He is past president of the Michigan
region of the Rabbinical Assembly
, of the Farmington Area Interfaith Association, and of the ecumenical Michigan Board of Rabbis. Rabbi Nevins was a founding board member of the Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit, now the Frankel Jewish Academy, and the Detroit chapter of the National Coalition for Community and Justice. He was awarded the 2006 Reverend James Lyon's Dove Award by the Dove Institute for his leadership in interfaith understanding.
Rabbi Nevins has written on the subject of mamzer
ut, disagreeing with an approach that would declare the category inoperative and proposing instead an approach more in line with the halakhic methodology used by Orthodox
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef
used to discredit and exclude potential evidence of mamzer status. He noted that this approach would cover virtually all cases of inquiry in the types of situations a congregational rabbi would be likely to experience, and suggesting that Conservative rabbis should similarly not abolish or declare opposition to problematic Biblical categories but should rabbinically limit their scope and effect.
His responsum on blind Torah readers argued that while Torah reading can be performed for the congregation only by a sighted reader from a kosher Torah scroll, people who are blind have many other options for leadership in the service. They may serve as prayer leader (shaliach tzibbur), chant haftarah, and receive aliyot to the Torah. They may also serve as a meturgaman, translating the Torah as the Talmudic blind sage Rav Yosef did. Nevins also allowed that a blind reader could use a braille text to chant the maftir portion for the congregation. Should future technologies allow a blind person to read directly from the scroll, that might satisfy the Talmudic requirement of chanting "min haketav" (from the script).
The responsum on brain death argued that Jewish law has long favored respiratory criteria for the determination of death, rather than cardiac standstill. Contemporary protocols of declaring brain death culminate in the apnea test, in which the patient is removed from a ventilator. If carbon dioxide levels in the blood rise to a determined level, then the patient is deemed permanently incapable of respiration, and is declared dead. This protocol, Nevins argued, also satisfied the halakhic requirement that a patient is shown to be permanently incapable of respiration in order to be considered dead. The persistence of heartbeat while the patient is artificially ventilated is to be considered pirkus (post-mortem convulsions). A patient declared dead in this manner may be removed from artificial support systems, and his or her vital organs may be donated with permission from the family in order to save the lives of other people.
The opinion on homosexuality noted that sexual orientation has been shown to be an integral part of human identity that is largely impervious to change, forcing homosexuals who wish to be observant Jews to attempt to live celibate lives. This state of affairs has imposed terrible suffering and indignity on gay and lesbian people, their families, friends and communities. Rabbis Nevins, Dorff and Reisner demonstrated that the biblical prohibition is limited to anal sex between men, whereas the broader prohibitions on gay and lesbian intimacy were instituted by the rabbis in Midrash Sifra. Although Maimonides and the Tur/Shulchan Arukh viewed the resulting prohibition as biblical, Nachmanides argued that it is a rabbinic interpolation. This distinction is significant, because rabbinic prohibitions may be set aside in cases where human dignity is undermined by a rabbinic norm. This principle of "Gadol Kvod habriot shedocheh lo ta'aseh baTorah" (so great is human dignity that it supersedes a prohibition of Torah) is found in Talmud Brakhot 19b and many other places in rabbinic literature and law. For example, Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg used this principle to allow hearing-impaired Jews to use battery-operated hearing aids on Shabbat. Rabbis Nevins, Dorff and Reisner argued that for gay and lesbian Jews, the demand that they lead solitary lives with no possibility for social or sexual intimacy was a violation of their dignity. For this reason, the accretion of rabbinic prohibitions could be waived on their behalf by the CJLS, with only the explicit biblical ban on male anal sex remaining in force. This decision, which was approved by a majority vote of 13-12, specifically permitted gay and lesbian Jews to be ordained as rabbis and cantors, and also allowed for ceremonies of same-sex commitment. However, it did not equate such ceremonies with traditional Jewish marriage (kiddushin). A committee of the Rabbinical Assembly is working to define the parameters of commitment ceremonies with pin the jurisdiction of this psak halakhah (legal decision).
Rabbi Nevins has been an active leader in the broader Jewish community and an ambassador to peoples of other faiths. He led a group of Protestant and Catholic leaders on a May 2005 trip that included Pope Benedict XVI
's first public audience, Holocaust Memorial Day
at Titus's Arch in Rome and a week in Israel
.
Rabbi Nevins has joined a new leadership team at the Jewish Theological Seminary headed by Chancellor Arnold Eisen and provost Alan Cooper. Together they are engaged in a process of evaluation of rabbinic education. Rabbi Nevins and his family live in New York City.
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
and an adherent of the Conservative Movement
Conservative Judaism
Conservative Judaism is a modern stream of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s.Conservative Judaism has its roots in the school of thought known as Positive-Historical Judaism,...
who was named the Dean of the Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
Jewish Theological Seminary of America
The Jewish Theological Seminary of America is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism, and a major center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies.JTS operates five schools: Albert A...
on January 29, 2007, succeeding Rabbi William Lebeau
William H. Lebeau
William H. Lebeau is an American rabbi, and former Dean of The Rabbinical School, Vice Chancellor and Chairman of the Department of Professional Skills, and Lecturer of Professional Skills at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America of Conservative Judaism in New York City.Lebeau stepped down on...
. He was previously the spiritual leader of Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, Michigan
Farmington Hills, Michigan
Farmington Hills is a community in southeastern Michigan. It is the largest city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. Its population was 79,740 at the 2010 census...
, where he served for 13 years in his first pulpit. He is an authority on Jewish Law who co-authored a responsum (legal opinion) that was passed by the Conservative Movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards is the central authority on halakha within Conservative Judaism; it is one of the most active and widely known committees on the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly. Within the movement it is known as the CJLS...
paving the way for the Conservative Movement to allow gay marriage and rabbis.
Biography
Nevins grew up in River Vale, New JerseyRiver Vale, New Jersey
River Vale is a township in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 9,659. The community was ranked #29 on the 100 Best Places to Live 2007 survey published by CNN/Money magazine....
. He attended the Frisch School
Frisch School
The Frisch School, founded in 1972 by Rabbi Menachem Meier and Alfred Frisch, is a coeducational yeshiva secondary school located in Paramus, New Jersey, which adheres to the tenets and practices of Modern Orthodox Judaism...
, and then Yeshivat HaMivtar
Yeshivat HaMivtar
Yeshivat Torat Yosef - Hamivtar is a men's yeshiva located in Efrat in the West Bank. The Roshei Yeshiva are Rabbi Yonatan Rosensweig and Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. The institution is primarily focused on post college-aged students and is part of the Ohr Torah Stone educational institutions founded by...
in Jerusalem. In 1989, he graduated from Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
with a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in history. He earned a masters in Jewish studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
Jewish Theological Seminary of America
The Jewish Theological Seminary of America is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism, and a major center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies.JTS operates five schools: Albert A...
in 1991, and was ordained as a rabbi in 1994. Nevins also received a graduate fellowship from the Wexner Foundation
Wexner Foundation
The Wexner Foundation is a charitable organization designed to enhance Jewish leadership founded by Leslie Wexner, CEO of Limited Brands and his wife, Abigail Wexner in Columbus, Ohio...
in Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
.
Nevins serves on the Rabbinical Assembly
Rabbinical Assembly
The Rabbinical Assembly is the international association of Conservative rabbis. The RA was founded in 1901 to shape the ideology, programs, and practices of the Conservative movement. It publishes prayerbooks and books of Jewish interest, and oversees the work of the Committee on Jewish Law and...
's International Executive Council and is also a member of its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
Committee on Jewish Law and Standards
The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards is the central authority on halakha within Conservative Judaism; it is one of the most active and widely known committees on the Conservative movement's Rabbinical Assembly. Within the movement it is known as the CJLS...
, where he chairs a subcommittee on disabilities and Jewish law. He has written responsa on the participation of Jews who are blind in the Torah service, and also on contemporary criteria for the determination of death. Together with Rabbis Elliot Dorff and Avram Israel Reisner, he authored the responsum on Homosexuality, Human Dignity and Halakha. He is past president of the Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
region of the Rabbinical Assembly
Rabbinical Assembly
The Rabbinical Assembly is the international association of Conservative rabbis. The RA was founded in 1901 to shape the ideology, programs, and practices of the Conservative movement. It publishes prayerbooks and books of Jewish interest, and oversees the work of the Committee on Jewish Law and...
, of the Farmington Area Interfaith Association, and of the ecumenical Michigan Board of Rabbis. Rabbi Nevins was a founding board member of the Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit, now the Frankel Jewish Academy, and the Detroit chapter of the National Coalition for Community and Justice. He was awarded the 2006 Reverend James Lyon's Dove Award by the Dove Institute for his leadership in interfaith understanding.
Rabbi Nevins has written on the subject of mamzer
Mamzer
The Hebrew noun mamzer in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish religious law, is a person born from certain forbidden relationships, or the descendant of such a person. A mamzer is someone who is either born of adultery by a married woman, or born of incest , or someone who has a mamzer as a parent...
ut, disagreeing with an approach that would declare the category inoperative and proposing instead an approach more in line with the halakhic methodology used by Orthodox
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef
Ovadia Yosef
Ovadia Yosef is the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, a recognised Talmudic scholar and foremost halakhic authority.He currently serves as the spiritual leader of the Shas political party in the Israeli parliament...
used to discredit and exclude potential evidence of mamzer status. He noted that this approach would cover virtually all cases of inquiry in the types of situations a congregational rabbi would be likely to experience, and suggesting that Conservative rabbis should similarly not abolish or declare opposition to problematic Biblical categories but should rabbinically limit their scope and effect.
His responsum on blind Torah readers argued that while Torah reading can be performed for the congregation only by a sighted reader from a kosher Torah scroll, people who are blind have many other options for leadership in the service. They may serve as prayer leader (shaliach tzibbur), chant haftarah, and receive aliyot to the Torah. They may also serve as a meturgaman, translating the Torah as the Talmudic blind sage Rav Yosef did. Nevins also allowed that a blind reader could use a braille text to chant the maftir portion for the congregation. Should future technologies allow a blind person to read directly from the scroll, that might satisfy the Talmudic requirement of chanting "min haketav" (from the script).
The responsum on brain death argued that Jewish law has long favored respiratory criteria for the determination of death, rather than cardiac standstill. Contemporary protocols of declaring brain death culminate in the apnea test, in which the patient is removed from a ventilator. If carbon dioxide levels in the blood rise to a determined level, then the patient is deemed permanently incapable of respiration, and is declared dead. This protocol, Nevins argued, also satisfied the halakhic requirement that a patient is shown to be permanently incapable of respiration in order to be considered dead. The persistence of heartbeat while the patient is artificially ventilated is to be considered pirkus (post-mortem convulsions). A patient declared dead in this manner may be removed from artificial support systems, and his or her vital organs may be donated with permission from the family in order to save the lives of other people.
The opinion on homosexuality noted that sexual orientation has been shown to be an integral part of human identity that is largely impervious to change, forcing homosexuals who wish to be observant Jews to attempt to live celibate lives. This state of affairs has imposed terrible suffering and indignity on gay and lesbian people, their families, friends and communities. Rabbis Nevins, Dorff and Reisner demonstrated that the biblical prohibition is limited to anal sex between men, whereas the broader prohibitions on gay and lesbian intimacy were instituted by the rabbis in Midrash Sifra. Although Maimonides and the Tur/Shulchan Arukh viewed the resulting prohibition as biblical, Nachmanides argued that it is a rabbinic interpolation. This distinction is significant, because rabbinic prohibitions may be set aside in cases where human dignity is undermined by a rabbinic norm. This principle of "Gadol Kvod habriot shedocheh lo ta'aseh baTorah" (so great is human dignity that it supersedes a prohibition of Torah) is found in Talmud Brakhot 19b and many other places in rabbinic literature and law. For example, Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg used this principle to allow hearing-impaired Jews to use battery-operated hearing aids on Shabbat. Rabbis Nevins, Dorff and Reisner argued that for gay and lesbian Jews, the demand that they lead solitary lives with no possibility for social or sexual intimacy was a violation of their dignity. For this reason, the accretion of rabbinic prohibitions could be waived on their behalf by the CJLS, with only the explicit biblical ban on male anal sex remaining in force. This decision, which was approved by a majority vote of 13-12, specifically permitted gay and lesbian Jews to be ordained as rabbis and cantors, and also allowed for ceremonies of same-sex commitment. However, it did not equate such ceremonies with traditional Jewish marriage (kiddushin). A committee of the Rabbinical Assembly is working to define the parameters of commitment ceremonies with pin the jurisdiction of this psak halakhah (legal decision).
Rabbi Nevins has been an active leader in the broader Jewish community and an ambassador to peoples of other faiths. He led a group of Protestant and Catholic leaders on a May 2005 trip that included Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI is the 265th and current Pope, by virtue of his office of Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign of the Vatican City State and the leader of the Catholic Church as well as the other 22 sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See...
's first public audience, Holocaust Memorial Day
Yom HaShoah
Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah , known colloquially in Israel and abroad as Yom HaShoah and in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Day, is observed as Israel's day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews and five million others who perished in the...
at Titus's Arch in Rome and a week in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
Rabbi Nevins has joined a new leadership team at the Jewish Theological Seminary headed by Chancellor Arnold Eisen and provost Alan Cooper. Together they are engaged in a process of evaluation of rabbinic education. Rabbi Nevins and his family live in New York City.