In 1983, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), the main educational institution of the Conservative movement, voted, without accompanying opinion, to ordain women as rabbis and as cantors.  Paula Hyman, among others, took part in the vote as a member of the JTS faculty. There had been a special commission appointed by the Conservative movement to study the issue of ordaining women as rabbis, which met between 1977 and 1978, and consisted of 11 men and three women; the women were Marian Siner Gordon, an attorney, Rivkah Harris, an Assyriologist, and Francine Klagsbrun, a writer. Amy Eilberg became the first female rabbi ordained in Conservative Judaism in 1985. In disapproval of such developments, several members of the JTS separated in 1984 and formed the Union for Traditional Conservative Judaism. Later, in 1989, some of the dissidents founded the Institute of Traditional Judaism, an organization committed to "Genuine Faith and Intellectual Honesty", a direct counter-establishment to the liberation of women in religious practice and Jewish society