Sitting next to the heart-shaped bathtub in my dying congregant’s home, I started to consider some of the halakhic questions about her impending funeral that she and her husband posed to me during hospice care. While some of these inquiries may have had clear-cut answers, others could not be resolved so easily. As I had done so many other times during nearly two decades of serving as a pulpit rabbi, I called Rabbi Joel Roth. As always, Rabbi Roth was accessible, attentive, compassionate, informative, comprehensive, and nuanced in his response. He did not just provide “the answers,” he also gave me a front-row seat to his thinking and approach to halakhic decision making. For Rabbi Roth, halakhah is not just a compendium of Jewish laws and observances; it is the process by which decisions are made within the Jewish legal framework.
This personal vignette encapsulates the larger intellectual and spiritual commitments that have defined Rabbi Roth’s life and legacy. For over half a century, he has been a formidable presence in the world of Conservative Judaism, bridging the traditional demands of halakhic fidelity with the evolving needs of contemporary Jews. The interviews, conducted in Jerusalem in April 2025, offer rich autobiographical and ideological insights into Roth’s career and halakhic worldview.1 This article synthesizes and analyzes key themes emerging from the interviews, highlighting Roth’s impact on Jewish law and the Conservative Movement, with an emphasis on the teaching of halakhah to rabbinical students, rabbis, and lay people in Conservative communities.
Early Life and Educational Background
Although Roth’s immediate family members were not Shomrei Shabbat, they kept a kosher home and supported young Joel’s Jewish education and increasing religious observance. Growing up in Detroit, Roth’s grandparents played a significant role in his Jewish development. His maternal grandparents, who lived in the same house, were founding members of the Conservative synagogue, B’nai Moshe. His paternal grandparents, who were Orthodox, lived just a short walk away. For ten years, Roth attended Camp Ramah in Wisconsin. Roth’s early role models and formative experiences provided him with the building blocks for his lifelong commitment to balancing Jewish tradition and innovation.
Roth’s Jewish education in Detroit began in an Orthodox day school, but he spent most of his childhood studying at a Conservative supplementary school. His Hebrew school experience was generally positive, especially in Hebrew language and Jewish history, but he found it lacking in core content. As he recalls, “I didn’t learn any halakhah. I didn’t learn any Talmud.” From an early age, he craved access to classical Jewish sources.
A critical turning point in Roth’s religious and intellectual formation occurred when his father, who had previously attended night school with a gifted teacher named Rabbi Paneth, arranged for young Joel to study Talmud with Paneth privately for over ten years. It was the extended one-on-one tutelage from Rabbi Paneth that gave Roth a strong foundation in talmudic analysis, which later enabled him to enter the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in 1962 on an accelerated four-year track for budding Talmud scholars. These formative years set the stage for a young scholar’s growing realization that Jewish law was not just a set of religious observances but, first and foremost, a process of methodical reasoning and set of analytical insights that would become central to Roth’s lifelong project of upholding and teaching halakhah as a legal system.
Academic Career
Roth’s academic career at JTS began even before his ordination, which was strategically delayed by his supervisors to enable him to teach younger rabbinical students and to avoid military conscription. “They wanted to appoint me to the faculty,” he recounted, but they said, “if we ordained you in ’66, you’d have to go into the army.” Instead, a clever workaround enabled Roth to begin teaching rabbinical students in the mekhinah program in 1965 and to continue serving on the faculty even after his ordination, since working at JTS was considered “a hardship pulpit.”
After being officially appointed to the faculty in 1968, Roth continued his studies at JTS as a doctoral student in Talmud, graduating with his Ph.D. in 1973. He studied with many of the gedolim (“great ones,” or luminaries) of the Conservative Movement, including Professors Saul Lieberman, Louis Finkelstein, Hayyim Dimitrovsky, and David Weiss Halivni, whom he considered to be his rav muvhaq, or the teacher from whom he received most of his knowledge. Roth taught at JTS for nearly five decades, leaving an indelible mark on generations of rabbis. For four of these years, he served as dean of the rabbinical school.
Considered an expert in halakhah, Rabbi Roth was appointed to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) in 1978 and served as the Law Committee’s chair for eight years. Between 1981 and 2006, he wrote twenty-one teshuvot (responsa) on various topics, including Torah reading by minors (1982), synagogue honors for intermarried Jews (1984), the ordination of women as rabbis (1984), the status of daughters of kohanim and leviyim for ʿaliyot (1989), organ donation (1999), and the status of homosexuals in Jewish law (1992 and 2006). In addition, Roth authored Sefer ha-Mordecai: Tractate Kiddushin (1973) and The Halakhic Process: A Systemic Analysis (1986). Three of his essays, including “Is Theology the Handmaiden of Halakhah?” (2013), are included in HaKol Kol Yaakov: Responsa and Essays (2023) by Joel Roth, along with nineteen of his teshuvot.
Other positions that Rabbi Roth held during his illustrious career include rosh yeshivah of the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem and the director of the Melton Research Center for Jewish Education. In addition, for nearly twenty-five years, he taught at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires during the summers.
Philosophy of Halakhah, Halakhic Methodology,
and Halakhic Change
While interviewing Rabbi Roth and asking him to reflect upon his pedagogical approaches to teaching halakhah, it became clear that the term “halakhah” itself needed to be defined before we could even begin to discuss pedagogy. It seems that many rabbis, educators, and other leaders in the Conservative Movement may not have been successful in properly educating both laity and clergy in the definition, principles, and methodology of halakhah. “Halakhah is not a checklist of observances,” he insisted. “It is a system—a legal system—governed by rules and precedent.”
As Roth lamented, “The number of Conservative Jews who even know the word ‘halakhah’ is probably so small…it could be under 10%.” For those who do recognize the term, he added, “they do not understand it to mean a functioning legal system. They probably understand halakhah to mean something like observances, such as lighting Shabbat candles or keeping kosher.” This lack of awareness among the laity, Roth contended, undermines the very premise of one of the Conservative Movement’s ideological foundations. He elaborated: “I doubt that there are very many Conservative Jews who know that the Conservative Movement is ideologically committed to recognizing and accepting and living by this functioning legal system.” Roth acknowledged that “there are Conservative Jews who keep kosher. There are Conservative Jews who light candles for Shabbat and there are some who may daven.” However, he noted that “they may not recognize that the Conservative Movement affirms that that’s obligatory….and they are probably considered by others who belong to the shul as being Orthodox.”
He recalled his experiences at Camp Ramah and in adult educational settings, noting the absence of courses or discussions that addressed halakhah as a legal methodology. “I do not remember having a course in camp on halakhah and how the legal system works,” he reflected. “I just don’t think that Conservative Jews understand that that’s what the term means.” In the interviews, he recounted how few adult education courses in Conservative communities engage directly with codes literature or the halakhic process.
Roth emphasized that this gap is not confined to the laity. “That applies somewhat to rabbis too,” he said, expressing concern over rabbinical students’ discomfort with halakhic material and insufficient training in applying the interpretive tools of halakhah. He believed that greater fluency would enable rabbis to model and transmit halakhic thinking to their congregants.
It also seems, according to Rabbi Roth, that most Conservative Jews (including perhaps some rabbis) may be ignorant of the distinction between deʾoraita and derabbanan laws. During the interviews, Roth was particularly animated in discussions of how to assess whether a law was deʾoraita (Torah-based) or derabbanan (rabbinically instituted), using real examples from classical and modern texts. For Roth, it is critical to understand the distinction between deʾoraita and derabbanan when attempting to make halakhic changes or grant halakhic leniency in a particular case.
I remember on one occasion, when my father z″l, was hospitalized on a Friday, I called Rabbi Roth and inquired if there was any way to halakhically justify driving to the hospital to visit my father on Shabbat. Rabbi Roth’s response to me was similar to one that he had recently given to a colleague in a similar situation that involved driving on Shabbat:
What I thought would be acceptable, not that this is something that I would recommend constantly, but if you make a prearrangement with a cab driver to pick you up at such-and-such an address on Saturday morning at such-and-such a time and you have prepaid him, then I think the isur (“prohibition”) would only be derabbanan. It would be a deʾoraita transgression if you call the cabbie on Saturday morning or if you pay the cab driver when you get to the location.
This response reflects Roth’s desire to balance a responsiveness to real-world concerns with commitment to halakhah. In The Halakhic Process, Roth similarly bridges fidelity to tradition with responsiveness to real-world concerns when it comes to enacting halakhic changes.
During the interview, Roth referred to chapter 9 of that book (“Extralegal Sources in the System”), which describes two primary patterns of halakhic development that have been, as he told me, “utilized from time immemorial to bring about changes in deʾoraita laws. The first pattern says: When the original justification is the only defensible rational reason for the observance of the law, and it no longer obtains, the norm can be modified or abrogated.” He cautioned that this pattern requires precision, since most laws in the Torah do not explicitly state their rationale. “There could be a maḥloqet between posqim on what the original justification for the norm was,” he noted. Even if consensus forms around the original rationale, one must still determine whether any secondary rationales justify continued observance. Roth told me that he often warned his students: “You’re going to give sermons that say the original reason no longer applies—but others will argue there are new compelling reasons to keep it.” The second pattern, he said, is more subjective but equally important: “When compliance with the norm would be more detrimental than noncompliance, the norm can be modified or abrogated.” By “detrimental,” he meant that adherence to legal norms may sometimes unintentionally lead to human suffering or other consequences that may appear immoral.
Roth emphasized that both patterns must operate within the halakhic system, not outside of it. Halakhic change must emerge from within the system, not from external ideological commitments. If a law is changed just because of societal pressure, without using the halakhic process, that undermines the authority of our sacred foundational texts.
In the book-lined study of Rabbi Roth’s Jerusalem apartment, a room that doubles as a mamad,2 there is a humorous plaque that was gifted to him by his children. It bears an image of the Ten Commandments, headed by the quip, “I didn’t call them the Ten Suggestions.” The phrase “ten suggestions” is sometimes used dismissively by anti-religious people to indicate that the commandments are not unconditionally binding, as opposed to the more traditional understanding of the Ten Commandments being absolute moral laws that were issued by God. While Rabbi Roth, like other Conservative rabbis, believes that some aspects of the commandments are open to human interpretation, he also believes that there is a divine element to these laws, and that rabbinic interpretation must have legal accountability and be done within certain parameters. Beneath the humor of the quote on Roth’s plaque, there is a serious conviction: the Torah is an authoritative sacred source of Jewish law.
Reflections on Controversial Teshuvot
In Roth’s remarks about the other 2006 teshuvot on homosexuality, he critiqued Rabbi Gordon Tucker’s responsum as departing from halakhic parameters by questioning the authority of biblical texts.3 While acknowledging the pressing pastoral concerns underlying Tucker’s teshuvah (“responsum”), Roth argued that to deny the halakhic authority of verses in Leviticus was to step outside the halakhic system itself because, as Roth expressed, “it claimed that the verses in Leviticus were P, and P is not reflecting the will of God.” For Roth, this placed the paper outside of acceptable halakhic discourse: “That’s unacceptable within the halakhic system. It means that even the Torah itself is subject to debate over whether it applies or doesn’t apply.”
Making an analogy to the American legal system, Roth said,
It would be roughly the equivalent of the Supreme Court saying, “The passage in the Constitution that says that you have to be thirty-five years old to be the president of the United States is age discrimination. Age discrimination is immoral and the world has changed, and therefore we, the Supreme Court, undo the requirement.” That would be outside of the parameters of the framework of the American legal system. If the Supreme Court wants to stay within the way the legal system functions, the only way to change the age requirement would be through an amendment.
The analogy in Jewish law is a taqqanah, which is a halakhic change whereby one tries to undo something that the Torah says. “To undo something that the Torah says is very difficult,” asserted Roth, “but it sometimes can be done if the change is made within the parameters of the halakhic process.”
In contrast to his rejection of Tucker’s teshuvah on homosexuality, Roth affirmed the legitimacy of other more methodologically grounded responsa, even when he personally disagreed with their conclusions. “I don’t think that the Dorff-Nevins-Reisner teshuvah was outside the framework of Jewish law. I’m just saying that they misunderstood certain texts and that they ignored alternative views that should have been weighed.” This capacity to distinguish between within-the-system and outside-the-system argumentation is central to Roth’s approach and his halakhic integrity. As he explained, “You can disagree with me—say I’m wrong in my reading of the Gemara, or that I misapplied a Tosefta—but if you’re inside the system, you’re still doing halakhah.” The interviews made clear that, for Roth, staying within the halakhic system is not only a methodological discipline but a theological imperative.
This conviction is reflected in Roth’s reflections on his own landmark responsum on the ordination of women as rabbis (1984). He posited that women could voluntarily accept upon themselves those religious obligations from which they were traditionally exempted; namely, the positive time-bound commandments (mitsvot ʿaseh shehazeman geramah). Roth recalls the critical support of Professor Halivni, who, despite his opposition to women’s ordination, endorsed Roth’s halakhic reasoning as valid within the system. After Roth’s teshuvah was distributed to the whole JTS faculty, he approached his mentor multiple times. In his final conversation with Halivni before the vote, Roth asked, “Mori, Rabbi, please tell me. I presented fifteen sugyas in this paper. Did I misunderstand any of those sugyas?” Roth described the rest of this interaction with Professor Halivni in vivid detail, as follows:
Then I asked, “Well, is Lieberman going to say to me, “Why did you ignore so-and-so about this sugya?” or “you quoted the Munich manuscript. Why didn’t you quote the Budapest manuscript, which would have led you to a very different conclusion?”
He said to me, “No.”
Then I said, “I quoted the Tosafot, and I quoted the Rif, and I quoted the Ran. Did I misunderstand any of the things that they said?”
And he said, “No.”
Well, when we finally got to the day that the faculty was discussing all these papers and were going to vote on whether or not I had made the case for women to be ordained as rabbis, all of my teachers disagreed with me. Finkelstein, Lieberman, and many others, they didn’t want women admitted to the school. And I had no idea how the vote was going to come out.
Towards the conclusion of the meeting, Professor Halivni said, “You all know that I am not really in favor of the ordination of women. But if we’re gonna do it, we should do it Joel’s way because that way is at least halakhic.” Halivni could accept Roth’s view because he was demonstrating fealty to the halakhic process, even though he may have disagreed with Roth’s conclusion. Following in the footsteps of his mentor, Roth similarly sets the same standard when evaluating teshuvot written by others.
Pedagogy
In the classroom, Rabbi Roth’s teaching was marked by a distinctive pedagogical method. He insisted on clarity, consistency, and intellectual honesty. Among the many courses that Roth taught to JTS rabbinical school students were Talmud, Introduction to Codes Literature, Critical Methodologies, Senior Codes Class, and halakhah lemaʿaseh (“practical halakhah”) in topics such as the laws of mourning, kashrut, and daily prayer. Rabbi Roth viewed teaching not merely as the transmission of content, but as a mission to inculcate a halakhic worldview and provide students with the methodological tools needed to engage in the traditional halakhic process. His pedagogy emphasized the importance of rigorous textual analysis, conceptual precision, and deep moral responsibility. His classes also reflected his signature commitment to halakhah as a living legal system.
During the interview, it was noted how few halakhah classes rabbinical students were required to take during Rabbi Roth’s tenure at JTS.4 Most Practical Halakhah courses at JTS, including courses in such fundamental areas as Shabbat and kashrut, were merely electives. In his reflection on rabbinic training, Roth also highlighted the lack of halakhic methodology instruction. “I don’t think we learned enough about how to do halakhah,” remarked one of his former students during the interview. Roth agreed. “If rabbinical students had gotten more and felt comfortable with it, they would have transmitted some of it…to their lay constituents.”
As an example of how important it is to teach methodology, Roth first reflected upon the way he taught Introduction to Talmud. In these classes, Roth selected dozens of sugyot across many different subject areas, but, as he pointed out,
What I was doing in that course was emphasizing the words and phrases that would be helpful for students who are trying to learn how to study Gemara. For example, if you know that hatanya means you’re going to raise a qashya (“difficulty” or “challenge”) from a baraita and that hatnan means you’re going to raise a qashya from a mishnah, that helps you understand what the argument is. And that’s what I tried to emphasize in all of those sugyot—not that I didn’t want interesting content, but I didn’t pick them davqa for the content, but as much for what they had to say about how a sugya works.
Roth applied the same pedagogical philosophy to his Introduction to Codes Literature course. He utilized texts to demonstrate how the halakhic system works. In describing the texts he used and the types of points he tried to emphasize in class, Roth recounted:
I spent some time working on the Rif, some time working on the Rambam, some time working on the Tur, some time working on the Shulḥan Arukh, and each of them with their nosei kelim, or commentaries on each of these legal codes. If, for example, we read something in Rambam’s Mishneh Torah, where the Rambam says X. And you have one noseh kelim say, “Here’s his source,” and another noseh kelim say, “No, here’s his source,” I would emphasize….that it was very important to understand how this system functioned to be able to figure out: What do I believe is the source of the pesaq [or, Jewish legal decision]? And then: what are the implications of saying that that is the source?
Furthermore, Roth noted, “I would point out what this noseh kelim is likely to be focusing on, as opposed to what this noseh kelim is likely to focus on, so that you can anticipate what are the types of things that they’re gonna argue about.” After highlighting the aspects of the commentaries that Roth deemed to be important for halakhic analysis, he would then prompt his students to consider: What would be the difference if two nosei kelim understand the Rambam somewhat differently? Could that distinction lead two later posqim (halakhic Jewish legal decision makers) to give conflicting pisqei halakhah lemaʿaseh (practical halakhic legal decisions)?
Another example of how Rabbi Roth would teach halakhic methodology to rabbinical students in a codes class is reflected in the following comment, in which he once again spoke animatedly about the distinction between whether a law is deʾoraita (“from the Torah”) or derabbanan (“from the rabbis”):
If we were studying the nosei kelim on the Rambam, one might say something like, “It seems like the Rambam is calling this law deʾoraita.” And the other one might say, “No, it looks like the Rambam is calling it derabbanan.” And then I would say, “Now I want to do two things: One, on what grounds did this commentary say it was deʾoraita and on what grounds did this other commentary say it was derabbanan? And [secondly], what is the practical implication of saying that the Rambam is claiming that this law is deʾoraita or derabbanan?
The ensuing class discussion would revolve around the following questions that Roth would present to actively engage rabbinical students in understanding the halakhic process:
- What methodology could lead to a difference of opinion between two commentaries on the Rambam as to whether a law is deʾoraita or derabbanan?
- On what grounds might a later posek decide whether it is deʾoraita or derabbanan?
- What difference would it make if it is deʾoraita or derabbanan?
- What would be the halakhic implications of that distinction?
- What would be the difference in terms of the right of the poseq to modify, to simplify, to take a more maḥmir (“stringent”) or a more meqil (“lenient”) approach?
- On what grounds might a later poseq undo an earlier decision?
In describing the details of how he would teach codes classes, Roth was passionate about accentuating how the halakhic system works and providing his rabbinical school students with methodological tools they could use to analyze texts.
This emphasis on methodology was especially evident in the codes class that most senior rabbinical students were required to take, in which Rabbi Roth taught a methodology of “how to” read and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of teshuvot. Close readings of the sheʾeilot uteshuvot literature using the methodological tools that Roth provided enabled students to “reflect about how the halakhic system functions.” For the final project, students had to select a teshuvah that had been approved by the CJLS and evaluate it based on criteria that they learned during the course of the year:
- Does the teshuvah cite all of the relevant rabbinic and medieval sources from the Torah, Talmud, and codes literature to support his position?
- Are these textual supports applicable to this situation?
- Does the teshuvah demonstrate how this issue is similar to a previous teshuvah on a similar topic (or one that uses some of the same halakhic principles)?
- Does the teshuvah read the Gemara sugyot it is citing correctly? Or are any of the sugyot misquoted or misinterpreted?
- Does the teshuvah demonstrate how the halakhic change being proposed invokes a certain traditional pattern (from Roth’s book)? For example, do the benefits of overriding a halakhic norm outweigh the costs of overriding the norm? Are the consequences of complying with the law worse than the consequences of noncompliance?
- Does the teshuvah acknowledge all possible objections and dismiss them?
- Does the teshuvah adequately discuss and dismiss all of the possible halakhic objections that other posqim might have to this halakhic change?
- Does the teshuvah adequately describe and dismiss all of the possible objections that ʿamkhah (lay people; lit. “your nation”) might have to the pesaq?
In addition to evaluating a responsum based on its content, Rabbi Roth also equipped students with the methodological tools for assessing the strength of a teshuvah based on its form. For example, does the author of the teshuvah clearly differentiate between halakhic and extrahalakhic arguments (i.e., additional moral, psychological, and other reasons to support the halakhic arguments)?
Students consistently encountered this type of methodological framework in Roth’s courses on halakhic literature. Whether analyzing contemporary teshuvot, the Rambam, the Tur, or the Shulḥan Arukh, Roth emphasized the rigorous process that undergirded halakhic decision making. He modeled a system in which even maḥloqet (“disagreement”) was not a sign of breakdown but a feature of legal vitality, governed by internal logic and interpretive consistency.
Shortcomings in the Teaching of Halakhah to Rabbinical Students, Rabbis, and Lay People in the Conservative Movement
Interwoven in Roth’s reflections about his pedagogy was an acknowledgment of some of the shortcomings of the JTS rabbinical school’s halakhah curriculum during the years when he was a student, as well as when he was on the faculty. During that period, most halakhah classes emphasized content over methodology. In addition, most practical halakhah classes were not required; these were offered as electives.
Although Rabbi Roth’s primary audience during most of his career was rabbinical students and rabbis, he also had many occasions to teach lay people in the Conservative Movement—at Melton, Ramah, and the Conservative Yeshiva and during scholar-in-residence weekends at synagogues. In these contexts, he also noted some shortcomings in the teaching of halakha to lay people. Most notably, Roth lamented the paucity of classes on halakhah offered to members of Conservative synagogues: “That’s what I think that we as a movement have not done at all with our lay constituency. I mean, do you know of a synagogue that had an adult education course in codes?” Furthermore, Roth observed, “Terms like deʾoraita and derabbanan and minhag (“custom”) and horaʾat shaʿah (extenuating circumstances; lit. an exception just for the “hour”) rarely come up in rabbinic sermons that I’ve heard.”
Another shortcoming in teaching lay people, according to Roth, was the failure to address the theological issue of modern Bible scholarship and its impact on people’s understanding of halakhah and halakhic change in the Conservative Movement. One story that Rabbi Roth told about his experience as director of the Melton Research Center for Jewish Education reflects the challenges that he faced (and that he presumed other Conservative rabbis and educators may face) in integrating traditional approaches to Jewish text with modern scholarship. According to Roth, the Melton curriculum’s approach to teaching Bible was to focus on the construction of the Bible, based on the Documentary Hypothesis and source criticism. While Roth embraced these modern theories, these were his concerns:
I’m not rejecting the historical evolution of the document we call the Torah. The Melton curriculum did succeed in being able to teach how to read the text carefully, notice differences, and lead you to the conclusion that there may have been different authors…but it didn’t take the religious steps necessary to make it clear that the Torah didn’t lose its sanctity. If they [students] see evidence of J, E, P, and D sources in biblical texts, does that undo the sanctity of Torah, or can the Torah still be the constitutional basis of all of Judaism?
Roth admitted
I didn’t want to teach the kids in Conservative day schools or Conservative Hebrew schools with Orthodox underpinnings that I really don’t buy. But I also didn’t want to teach them with Conservative underpinnings that I do buy that might result in their thinking that the Torah is therefore worthless. That’s a big problem.
Suggestions for Improvement
To rectify some of these shortcomings in the teaching of halakhah and Bible to Conservative laity and rabbinical students, Roth advocates for an educational renaissance in Conservative Judaism, grounded in deep study of halakhic sources, interpretive methodology, and theological integration. He emphasizes that such efforts must present not only the “what” of halakhah but also the “how” and the “why,” including how rulings are derived and why they carry authority. As Roth repeatedly articulated throughout the interviews, “It is critical for our laity to understand that the Conservative Movement is committed to the authority and the required nature of Jewish law.”
Roth believes that congregational rabbis should teach their congregants halakhic concepts using real examples from responsa literature, present contrasting opinions on halakhic issues, and enable people to understand how interpretations differ depending on whether a law is considered deʾoraita or derabbanan. He urged educators to explore the question: “What would be some of the halakhic implications that could lead to different pisqei din5 in the next generation?”
Furthermore, Roth suggested:
I would prescribe that, educationally, we should really work out an adult ed course that teaches small sections of halakhic literature in such a way that enables them to see how the halakhic system actually works. For example, by analyzing two teshuvot written by two different posqim on the same question who disagreed with each other—that could be a starting point of talking about how the legal system allows for maḥloqet and embraces the concept of “elu v’elu divrei Elohim ḥayyim.”6
I want them to see that in any legal system, you’re going to end up having disagreements and arguments. I wanted them to be able to see what was the basis of the disagreement between this one and that one. And I wanted them to understand how to evaluate these different opinions. It is possible to reject one of these arguments by saying, “What X said is wrong because he misunderstood the Talmud.” But it is possible for someone else to react by saying, “No, both X and Y understood the Talmud in exactly the same way and correctly, but X believed that this law is deʾoraita and Y believed that this law is derabbanan.”
Then if I really had time and could pull it off, I would then show how posqim of the subsequent generation, some would follow the view of the one who said it was deʾoraita, and others would follow the view of the one who said it was derabbanan, and we could see if we could figure out what prompted this one to see that the guy who said it’s deʾoraita is correct, and what prompted this one to say that the one who said it’s derabbanan is correct. And this way, I would reinforce the idea that deʾoraita and derabbanan are critical elements of the halakhic system. And you have to understand that in order to understand how the system functions.
What I think that more rabbis should be willing to do [in teaching lay people], though parenthetically I do not think a lot are eager to do this, is to utilize the type of example I gave you [when describing how I taught rabbinical students]—to look at two different commentaries on Maimonides, when one ends up saying it’s deʾoraita and the other that it’s derabbanan, and then see how each of those got to the conclusion that they got to. And then deal with what would be some of the halakhic implications that could lead to different pisqei din in the next generation over a specific question. Because if I follow the one who says Maimonides said it’s derabbanan, then I can say since it’s derabbanan, we don’t have to insist on it being obeyed the way it’s stipulated because the things which are derabbanan are generally more meqil7 than things which are deʾoraita.
Roth is a proponent of Conservative rabbis incorporating these topics and messages into adult education courses to “help clarify what are the limits of legitimate argumentation within the legal system” and to underscore the essential role of halakhah and halakhic reasoning within the Conservative Movement.
Rabbi Roth’s Legacy
The April 2025 interviews encapsulate Roth’s unwavering belief in the viability of halakhah as the axis of Jewish life. His insistence on methodological integrity, his courage in engaging difficult questions, and his pedagogical passion render him a pivotal figure in Conservative Judaism. Roth emerges as a scholar who seeks not only fidelity to tradition but also intellectual honesty and communal responsibility. For him, halakhah is not a set of ossified rules but a living system of divine and human collaboration.
His reflections also underline the deep emotional and ethical weight that he attaches to the role of the poseq. “It’s not just about being a rabbi who knows some laws,” Roth told his interviewers. “It’s about being someone trusted to think carefully, honestly, and halakhically when people’s lives are on the line—emotionally, spiritually, even physically.”
Rabbi Roth has always taken his role as a poseq very seriously, in large part because he believes that halakhah reflects God’s will, in combination with human interpretation. During the 1984 deliberations on the ordination of women rabbis, Roth recalls asking Chancellor Gerson Cohen for a fifteen-minute recess when his teshuvah was being discussed. This is how Roth describes what he did during that break:
I ran down to what used to be called Stein Chapel. And in those days, we never locked the aron qodesh. So I opened the aron qodesh and I stood there in front of the sifrei Torah and said to the ribbono shel ʿolam, “What do you want me to do?”
Rabbi Roth’s commitment to remaining within the halakhic framework, even in the face of immense social and political pressure, reflects an integrity that has won him admiration even from ideological opponents. He never claimed that halakhah was static or unchanging; rather, he believed that change must arise from within—by using the tools of the tradition, not bypassing them.
Roth’s vision poses a challenge to the Conservative Movement itself—namely, to embrace its claim to halakhic legitimacy not only through rhetoric but also through rigorous education, transparent legal reasoning, and a recommitment to intellectual integrity. As he warned, without halakhic literacy and commitment, the movement risks becoming detached from the very tradition it seeks to preserve and renew. Roth’s unwavering belief in the viability of halakhah as a central component of Jewish life, his insistence on methodological integrity, his courage in engaging difficult questions, and his pedagogical passion elevate him to a prominent place among the luminaries of Conservative Judaism.
Roth’s legacy is both institutional and personal. He authored numerous teshuvot that have become foundational in modern halakhic discourse, and he shaped rabbinical education at JTS as a teacher of Talmud and halakhah to generations of Conservative rabbis. In reflecting on Rabbi Roth’s teaching, his former students fondly recall how he taught with humor and clarity. They also note how thorough he was and admire his halakhic integrity. Moreover, they characterize him as being passionate about his subject matter and caring toward his students. One rabbi, who had been a student of Rabbi Roth in the 1980s, commented, “There was a real caring about teaching halakhah that really came through. And that was something that I didn’t feel with most other professors or other teachers. You can’t dismiss the personal factor.”
In addition to being a dynamic classroom teacher, Rabbi Roth also served as an ongoing mentor and guide to his former students. His responsiveness to student and rabbinic inquiries—often through informal emails, phone calls, or conversations in hallways—demonstrated a model of Torah lishmah grounded in humility and availability to his students, former students, and colleagues. A rabbi who graduated from JTS in 2001 and who has, admittedly, written to Rabbi Roth with dozens of halakhic questions over the years, expressed this quite well in his comments, directed partly to Rabbi Roth himself:
He has always responded with a prompt and thorough and helpful answer. And sometimes the helpful answer was laying out what the issues were and saying, “Now you have to decide,” which is very empowering.
If we invited the other thousand students that could be sitting at the table right now and we asked them where they learned from you, they might be able to come up with if it was in a level three Codes class or whatever, but it’s important to recognize that there was another access point of learning and that is shared by all of those students—to be able to turn to you personally.
In a classroom, there are always two things going on. It could be the content itself. But for some—I’m going to say for almost all of the students—there was also the lesson of why learning this is great, why it’s exciting to be learning Gemara or halakhah or whatever it might be. I’m going to guess that sometimes when people turn to you with a sheʾelah, they might actually already know the answer but be excited by the opportunity to connect with you and to learn with you.8
The story with which I opened this article is but one of many that could be told by rabbis, students, and colleagues who have turned to Rabbi Roth not simply for answers, but for a personal connection and mentorship in how to think halakhically. “I don’t just want to tell them what to do,” Roth once said. “I want to show them how to think about what to do.” In that sense, Roth’s true legacy lies not only in his responsa or published works, but in the countless conversations in which halakhah came alive as a disciplined, compassionate, and sacred process. Whether teaching or advising students informally, Roth’s presence modeled what it meant to be a poseq—not just someone who answers questions, but someone who reasons through complex situations using the internal logic of halakhah.
Rabbi Roth’s legacy of teaching halakhah continues to inspire the students who were blessed enough to study with him. They not only learned valuable lessons from him in the classroom, but they have also continued to learn from him in their one-on-one interactions with him well after the classes were over. Indeed, Rabbi Joel Roth is truly the living embodiment of Yehoshua ben Peraḥiah’s teaching in Pirqei Avot 1:6: עֲשֵׂה לְךָ רַב וּקְנֵה לְךָ חָבֵר, “Appoint for yourself a master teacher, and acquire for yourself a friend.”
Rabbi Lisa Malik is a passionate Jewish educator, pastoral counselor, writer, editor, Israel advocate, and lifelong learner. Lisa, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania College of Arts and Sciences and Wharton Business School, was ordained by JTS in 2004. Before ordination, Lisa earned a Ph.D. in Education at Stanford University, served as Education Director of Congregation Beth Sholom’s Religious School in San Francisco, and was a brand management executive at Procter & Gamble. For two decades, Rabbi Malik served as a congregational rabbi, first in the Philadelphia area and then in Aberdeen, New Jersey. She is currently on the board of the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition and works with Ethiopian Israelis as a volunteer for English B’Yachad.
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1 Special thanks to Rabbis David Ebstein (JTS 1988), Steven Schwarzman (JTS 2008), and Todd Zeff (JTS 2001) for participating in the second interview that I conducted on April 24, 2025. I graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2004.
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2 A mamad is a bomb shelter inside a dwelling (in this case, Roth’s apartment). It is a Hebrew acronym that stands for makom mugan dirati.
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3 Roth authored two teshuvot on the status of homosexuality in Jewish law, one in 1992 and another in 2006 (“Homosexuality Revisited”). Roth’s 2006 teshuvah expressed empathy for homosexuals and the wish that he could have found a way to normalize the status of gay and lesbian Jews in a way that maintained the integrity of the halakhic system. Regrettably, after being unable to find a halakhic way to rule leniently, this teshuvah affirmed the Torah’s prohibition on homosexual activity, denied ordination to homosexuals, and prohibited same-sex commitment ceremonies and marriages. His was one of three teshuvot that were approved by the CJLS on December 6, 2006. Two of these teshuvot—the one authored by Roth and the one authored by Rabbis Elliot Dorff, Daniel Nevins, and Avram Reisner (“Homosexuality, Human Dignity, and Halakhah”)—obtained clear majority support; it retained the Torah’s explicit prohibition, which was understood by these rabbis to be a ban on male anal intercourse, but argued for the full normalization of the status of gay and lesbian Jews. Much of this teshuvah was rooted in the Jewish value of kevod habriot (or, respect for living creatures), which it argued could supersede rabbinic prohibitions for the sake of human dignity. Under their pesaq (“ruling”), gay and lesbian Jews could be ordained as clergy and their committed relationships could be recognized, although not as sanctified marriage. Roth’s teshuvah passed with thirteen in favor, eight opposed, and four abstentions. The teshuvah authored by Dorff, Nevins, and Reisner passed with thirteen in favor, twelve opposed, and zero abstentions. The teshuvah authored by Rabbi Leonard Levy passed with six in favor, eight opposed, and eleven abstentions. Other teshuvot that were not approved were those authored by Rabbis Myron Geller, Robert Fine, and David Fine; Rabbi Tucker; and Rabbi Loel Weiss. Rabbi Tucker’s teshuvah, “Drosh vekabel saḥar: Halakhic and Metahalakhic Arguments Concerning Judaism and Homosexuality,” proposes a radical “enhanced halakhic practice” to argue for the full normalization of gays and lesbians. In this teshuvah, Tucker not only permitted openly gay and lesbian individuals to be admitted to rabbinical school and ordained as Conservative rabbis, but he also advocated for complete sexual-preference egalitarianism in the Conservative Movement at large based on an overturning of the Torah’s prohibition against homosexual activity.
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4 This is based on the personal experiences of rabbis who studied at the seminary between 1983 and 2008.
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5 Pisqei din are Jewish legal decisions.
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6 “These and those are both the words of the living God’’ (b. Eruvin 13b).
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7 The word meqil means “lenient.”
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8 A sheʾelah is a question about Jewish law.