Rabbi Morris Allen heads Beth Jacob Congregation, a Conservative congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn. Allen is behind a push to make kosher food meet certain ethical standards, such as paying workers a fair wage. The result, Magen Tzedek, or “justice certification,” is gaining ground in many Conservative synagogues and households. He blogs about keeping ethically kosher.

Deborah Dash Moore is director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She teaches a course in American Jewish history and is an expert on women in Reconstructionist Judaism. Her specialty is 20th-century Jewish urban history.

Shaul Magid is a professor of Jewish studies and religious studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. Among his specialties are Jewish ethics, and contemporary conceptions of Jewish religiosity, renewal and fundamentalism.

Judith Katz is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Among her areas of expertise is representation of Jews in the arts and popular culture.

Rachel Baum is deputy director of the Sam & Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she also teaches courses on the Holocaust, contemporary American Jewish identity and Jewish feminism. Additionally, she co-directs the Stephen Weinstein Holocaust Symposium, an international gathering of Holocaust scholars.

Andrea Greenbaum is an associate professor of English at Barry University in Miami Shores, Fla. She is the editor of Jews of South Florida and is also an expert on Jewish graphic novels.

Annelise Orleck is a history professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. She is an expert on Jewish-American immigrants, especially Soviet immigrants.

Read this July 15, 2009, Chicago Tribune article about the Episcopal Church, the American arm of the Anglican Communion, voting to make gays and lesbians eligible for any ordained ministry.

Read this May 3, 2012, New York Times article about the United Methodist Church voting overwhelmingly not to change language in its books of laws and doctrines about homosexuality, including ordination of gay clergy.