A bid to lift a ban on gay rabbis and same-sex unions is posing a challenge for Conservative rabbis whose U.S.-based world movement prides itself on balancing Jewish tradition with modernity.

Conservative rabbis meeting in Mexico City this week say it is no easy task for a group that once dominated American Judaism but in 15 years has been overtaken by the more liberal Reform movement as the biggest in the United States.

"One doesn't easily overturn thousands of years of tradition," Kenneth Cohen, a rabbi to students at American University in Washington, D.C., said at the meeting in Mexico.

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But the rabbi said that, like most of his constituents, he favored lifting the ban. "Judaism never has existed in a vacuum," he said. "'Halakha' - Jewish law - is the application of Jewish values to real life."

The last time the movement considered the homosexuality issue, in 1992, it said gays and lesbians would be welcome in the movement but it barred gay behavior, ordination, membership in the Rabbinical Assembly and same-sex commitment ceremonies.

A growing number of Conservative rabbis have voiced support for lifting the ban. They say homosexuals want to come out of the closet, be ordained at rabbinical schools and receive religious blessings the same as heterosexual couples.

Other clergy are watching closely. Some Christian denominations are at odds over the same issues.

Mexican President Vicente Fox opened the five-day convention on Sunday, welcoming both in Spanish and Hebrew some 350 of the Conservative movement's 1,600 rabbis to the five-day Rabbinical Assembly convention.

It is the first time the movement has met in Latin America, where it has nearly 60 rabbis and a seminary in Buenos Aires. Founded in the United States about 100 years ago, the movement claims more than 2 million of the world's 13 million Jews.

Seeking a middle path
Conservatives long have sought a middle path between Orthodox Jews who adhere to the strictest interpretations of Jewish law and the Reform, who already have cleared the way for openly gay and lesbian members and clergy.

Following in the Reform movement's footsteps, Conservatives first allowed women rabbis in 1985. For that and other changes, they insist they acted within the constraints of Jewish law and tradition.

Some congregations already have made changes.

Rabbi Alan Cohen of Overland Park, Kansas, said his synagogue, in a show of sensitivity to gays, years ago replaced a traditional Bible reading on the afternoon of the Yom Kippur Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year.

His congregation dropped the reading that included Leviticus 18:22, which says: "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination."

The Conservatives' Committee on Jewish Law and Standards is due to decide its position on homosexuality in December. Earlier this month the committee received four written opinions - two for and two against - but sent them back for more work.

The Rabbinical Assembly's executive vice president, Rabbi Joel Meyers, likened his movement's dilemma to the choices customers have at Starbucks coffee shops.

"It's tough to be a middle movement when you can have Judaism your way in every other movement," he said in an interview at a Starbucks branch across from the group's Mexico City hotel.

Rabbis are jostling over how many of the law committee's 25 voting members can be required to affect a change. Some say the committee may even adopt conflicting positions, each with the support of at least six committee members.

But Kenneth Cohen said that need not be all bad.

"The way to handle this is to accept that we are what we've always been - a pluralistic movement."