Features
Conservative Judaism: A Requiem
The numbers are in, and they are devastating. The Pew Research Center’s “A Portrait of Jewish Americans” portrays a community in existentially threatening dysfunction. Some of the numbers are already well-known: Intermarriage rates have climbed from the once-fear-inducing 52 percent of the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey to 58 percent among recently married Jews on the whole. (The rate would be about 70 percent if one were to leave out the Orthodox, who very rarely intermarry.) Only 59 percent of American Jews are raising their children as Jews “by religion,” and a mere 47 percent of them are giving their children a Jewish education. And the communal dimension of Jewish life, which has for millennia been the primary mainstay of Jewish identity formation, is all but gone outside the Orthodox community; only 28 percent of those polled believe that being Jewish is essentially involved with being part of a Jewish community.
Stakeholders in the status quo are running for cover, questioning the Pew methodology, and quibbling with its results. But one fundamental conclusion is inescapable: The massive injection of capital into the post-1990 study “continuity” agenda has failed miserably. Non-Orthodox Judaism is simply disappearing in America. Judaism has long been a predominantly content-driven, rather than a faith-driven enterprise, but we now have a generation of Jews secularly successful and well-educated, but so Jewishly illiterate that nothing remains to bind them to their community or even to a sense that they hail from something worth preserving. By abandoning a commitment to Jewish substance, American Jewish leaders destroyed the very enterprise they claimed to be preserving.

Jewish denominational identity. (Courtesy of the Pew Research Center. From “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” © 10/1/2013.)
Nowhere is this rapid collapse more visible than in the Conservative movement, which is practically imploding before our eyes. In 1971, 41 percent of American Jews affiliated with the Conservative movement, then the largest of the movements. By the time of the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, the number had declined to 38 percent. In 2000, it was 26 percent, and now, according to Pew, Conservative Judaism is today the denominational home of only 18 percent of Jews. And they are graying. Among Jews under the age of 30, only 11 percent of respondents defined themselves as Conservative.
Barring some now unforeseeable development, the movement’s future is bleak. As Rabbi Edward Feinstein, one of the movement’s leading pulpit rabbis noted at the recent post-Pew United Synagogue Convention, “Our house is on fire . . . If you don’t read anything else in the Pew report, [you should note that] we have maybe 10 years left. In the next 10 years, you will see a rapid collapse of synagogues and the national organizations that support them.”
The likely demise of Conservative Judaism greatly saddens me. I was raised in a family deeply committed to the Conservative movement. My paternal grandfather, Rabbi Robert Gordis, was in his day one of the nation’s leading Conservative rabbis, a long-time member of the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary, one of the Conservative movement’s most articulate spokespeople, and president of the Rabbinical Assembly. My mother’s brother, Rabbi Gershon Cohen, was chancellor of JTS from 1972 until 1986. There are other Conservative rabbis strung along our family tree, me among them. I came of age in the Camp Ramah system, was ordained at JTS, and was the founding dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, the Conservative movement’s West Coast rabbinical school. Even if I’ve long since meandered to a different religious community, the impending demise of Conservative Judaism means the disappearance of the world that shaped me.
My personal sadness, though, is of no account compared to the loss this represents for American Jewish life. Not long ago, it appeared that Conservative Judaism might be an option for those for whom the rigors of Orthodoxy were too great, but for whom Judaism as a conversation framed around profound issues and texts was still compelling. That was the era in which Conservative rabbis, reasonably conversant in Jewish classical texts and able to teach them to their flocks, could mitigate the increasingly pervasive tendency of liberal Judaism to recast Jewishness as an inoffensive ethnic version of American Protestantism-lite.
But this reframed Judaism, saying little and welcoming all, has proven irresistible to an American Jewish generation to which difference is offensive and substance is unnecessary. Gabriel Roth’s response to the Pew report in Slate is a case in point. He notes, inter alia, “Here are some of the things I cherish about Jewishness: unsnobbish intellectualism, sympathy for the disadvantaged, psychoanalytic insight, rueful comedy, smoked fish.”
That Jewish self-conception must be offensive to Protestants and Catholics, who are entitled to believe that they, too, are capable of unsnobbish intellectualism, sympathy for the disadvantaged, and psychoanalytic insight. But the real issue is that Judaism recast as a variant of American upper-crust social sensibilities simply says nothing sufficiently significant to merit survival. Indeed, Roth then predicts quite convincingly, “For my grandchildren, the fact that some of their ancestors were Jewish will have no more significance than the fact that others were Welsh.”
Conservative Judaism was supposed to have prevented the American Jewish slide into this abyss. Despite the triumphalism so in vogue in contemporary American Orthodoxy, the fact remains that a plurality of American Jews will not adopt the halakhic rigors that lie at the core of Orthodox communal expectations. There are theological, moral, intellectual, and “lifestyle” reasons for that. For those people for whom Orthodoxy was not an option, it was Conservative Judaism that offered a vision of Jewish communities colored by reverence for classical Jewish learning and for Jewish tradition, even if with a somewhat looser adherence to its particulars.
Sans Conservative Judaism, the vision of a traditional, literate non-Orthodox Judaism will be gone. And that is a terrible loss, for Orthodoxy no less than for American Jewish life at large.
Given the enormity of the loss, it behooves us to ask, “What went wrong?” There were many factors, of course. America’s openness proved a Homeric siren-like allure too powerful for many to resist. And then, with no courage of whatever convictions they might have had and animated primarily by fear, leaders of all varieties of liberal Judaism decided to lower the barriers in order to further constituency retention. They expected less of their congregations, reduced educational demands, and offered sanitized worship reconfigured to meet the declining knowledge levels of their flocks. In many cases, they welcomed non-Jews into the Jewish community in a way that virtually eradicated any disincentive for Jews to marry people with whom they could pass on meaningful Jewish identity.
But those, of course, were precisely the wrong moves. When people select colleges for their children, professional settings in which to work, or books to read, they seek excellence. Lowered expectations mean less commitment and engagement; less education means greater ignorance—why should that attract anyone to Jewish life? It didn’t, as it turns out.
Much ink has been spilled on these and other causes of the Conservative movement’s demise, and this is not the place to review the arguments. But one factor has been almost entirely overlooked, and it ought to be raised, because if we can articulate where Conservative Judaism went wrong, we can begin to describe some of the characteristics of what one might hope will arise in its place.
Because many of the leading Conservative ideologues of the mid-20th century had hailed from Orthodox circles, it was important to them to sustain the claim that Conservative Judaism was halakhic Judaism. Yes, they acknowledged, Conservative Jewish life looked very different from Orthodoxy (women could assume roles that they could not in Orthodox settings, for example), but that was simply because Conservative Judaism was reclaiming the “dynamic Judaism” to which the rabbis of the Talmud had actually been committed. It was Orthodoxy that was a corruption of authentic Judaism, they insisted, and Conservative Judaism had come on the scene to protect (“conserve”) the genius of legal fluidity that had always been key to rabbinic Judaism.
That argument was not entirely wrong. In somewhat different and obviously much-softened language, it has even been adopted by some leading modern Orthodox rabbis. Nor was what doomed Conservative Judaism the incessantly discussed vast gulf in practice between the rabbis and their congregants. What really doomed the movement is that Conservative Judaism ignored the deep existential human questions that religion is meant to address.
As Conservative writers and rabbis addressed questions such as “are we halakhic,” “how are we halakhic,” and “should we be halakhic,” most of the women and men in the pews responded with an uninterested shrug. They were not in shul, for the most part, out of a sense of legally binding obligation. Had that been what they were seeking, they would have been in Orthodox synagogues. They had come to worship because they wanted a connection to their people, to transcendence, to a collective Jewish memory that would give them cause for rejoicing and reason for weeping, and they wanted help in transmitting that to their children. While these laypeople were busy seeking a way to explain to their children why marrying another Jew matters, how a home rooted in Jewish ritual was enriching, and why Jewish literacy still mattered in a world in which there were no barriers to Jews’ participating in the broader culture, their religious leadership was speaking about whether or not the movement was halakhic or how one could speak of revelation in an era of biblical criticism.
Who really cared? Very few people, it turns out.
To the irrelevance of the central argument at the core of much Conservative discourse must be added its hypocrisy. These men and women of the pews were not talmudic scholars, but they were sufficiently educated and had enough common sense to know that if combustion on Shabbat was prohibited, then driving on Shabbat simply had to be a violation of Jewish law. So when Conservative Judaism declared, in its (in)famous 1950 “Responsum on the Sabbath” that it was permissible to drive to synagogue on Shabbat, Conservative Jews smelled a rat. Whatever Conservative Judaism was advocating, it was not Jewish “law.” They appreciated, perhaps, being told that they were not sinning when driving to the synagogue (not that “sinning” was a terribly central facet of their religious worldview), but they also knew that a game was being played.

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Some rabbis called it like they saw it. Rabbi Emil Schorsch (father of Ismar Schorsch, who later served as chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary) asked, “Too many of our people do not want to observe the Sabbath, whatever excuse or reason you may give them. Why should we play ball with this insincerity?” But by and large, the Conservative movement succumbed to the pretense that Rabbi Schorsch the elder was too honest to sustain.
Slowly but surely, the rank and file understood that they were witness to what was more than a bit of a charade. Yes, a small intellectual elite subscribed to Conservative Judaism’s unique brand of halakhic life coupled, for example, with principled gender egalitarianism, but the vast majority of kids who came back from Camp Ramah or from the movement’s Israel programs seeking a halakhic community found themselves, in the space of a few short years, in the bosom of Orthodox synagogues (a significant and telling phenomenon, however statistically small, that flies entirely under the Pew radar). And those who remained in the movement, by and large, encountered a conversation that simply did not address their need to define their place in the cosmos.
So self-referential has the Conservative conversation become that the movement today continues to insist on the centrality of Jewish law, without so much as even trying to make a case for it. In its recent much-ballyhooed publication The Observant Life: The Wisdom of Conservative Judaism for Contemporary Jews, a massive 981-page tome, Conservative Jews are exposed to discussions of kashrut and Shabbat but also pornography, employing gays in synagogues, neutering animals, and biodiversity. The Table of Contents is both revealing and devastating; astonishingly, there is not a single chapter on why they should care about halakhain the first place.
Instead, the conversation that hasn’t worked for half a century is trotted out once again. In the volume’s Foreword, Chancellor Arnold Eisen reflects the historical bent of most of JTS’s chancellors and writes:
“Law and tradition” has long been the watchword of “Positive-Historical” or Conservative Judaism. That was particularly so in early decades when the movement’s major thinkers in Germany and America struggled to explain what was unique about their approach to Judaism . . . [Solomon] Schechter and [Zacharias] Frankel would have welcomed The Observant Life, I believe; I certainly do.
Eisen is one of America’s greatest Jewish scholars. Yet half a century after Conservative Judaism began its precipitous decline, his language with respect to the centrality of history as a central facet of Conservative Judaism is identical to what my grandfather was saying in the 1940s. Given all that has changed in the world, who is likely to read the 981 pages that follow?
Could matters really have ended otherwise? To be honest, I don’t know. But we also didn’t really try. Looming unasked in Conservative circles is the following question: Can one create a community committed to the rigors of Jewish traditional living without a literal (read Orthodox) notion of revelation at its core? Are the only choices that American Jews have Orthodoxy (modern, or less so), radicalized liberal Jewishness with its wholesale abandonment of tradition, or aliyah to Israel?
American Jews deserved more choices, and a Conservative Judaism with a different discourse at its core might have provided one. Conservative Judaism could have been the movement that made an argument for tradition and distinctiveness without a theological foundation that is for most modern Jews simply implausible; instead of theology, it could have spoken of traditional Judaism and its spiritual discipline as our unique answer to the human need for meaning.
Imagine that instead of discussing whether or not it was halakhic, Conservative Judaism had said to its adherents something like, “None of us come from nowhere. Not so very deep down, we know that we do not want to be part of an undifferentiated human mass, loving all of humanity equally (and therefore loving no one particularly intensely), abandoning the instinct that our people—which has been speaking in a differentiated voice for millennia—still has something to say to humanity at large.”
Imagine that instead of inventing arguments that somehow sought to maintain an effective claim for revelation even after the movement’s infatuation with biblical criticism (which, of course, undermined the most obvious argument for the authority of Jewish law), Conservative Jewish leaders had invoked an argument similar to that of the Catholic theologian Charles Taylor, who reminds his readers:
What is self-defeating in modes of contemporary culture [is that they] shut out history and the bonds of solidarity . . . I can define my identity only against the background of things that matter . . . Only if I exist in a world in which history, or the demands of nature, or the needs of my fellow human beings, or the duties of citizenship, or the call of God, or something else of this order matters crucially, can I define an identity for myself that is not trivial.
That is the sort of argument that mainstream Conservative Judaism (which celebrated Abraham Joshua Heschel’s poetic take on Jewish life but marginalized him from the halakhic-Jewish practice conversation) could have and should have invoked. Life is about asking important questions (think the Talmud), and yes, much of contemporary American culture is self-defeating. And meaningful life is about demands and duties. “That is why we are here,” Conservative leaders could have said. “We need bonds of solidarity, duties of citizenship, and yes, the call of God. Otherwise, we are trivial.”
The movement never wrote the way that Taylor writes, and it never taught its rabbis to think or to speak with that kind of deep existential and spiritual seriousness. It could have, though. It could have invoked Jewish intellectuals, like Michael Sandel, who wrote in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, that:
[W]e cannot regard ourselves as independent . . . without . . . understanding ourselves as the particular persons we are—as members of this family or community or nation or people, as bearers of this history, as sons and daughters of that revolution, as citizens of this republic . . . For to have character is to know that I move in a history I neither summon nor command, which carries consequences nonetheless for my choices and conduct. It draws me closer to some and more distant from others; it makes some aims more appropriate, others less so.
Arguments such as those would have put the most human, most self-defining, most existentially significant questions of human life at the center of Conservative Jewish discourse, and the result might well have been a very different prognosis for the only movement that was primed to raise these questions. It is true that young Americans might still have opted for triviality; but they might also have returned to something less vacuous as they grew older and wiser.
The moral of the sad story of Conservative Judaism is this: Human beings do not run from demands that might root them in the cosmos. They seek significance, and for traditions that offer it, they will sacrifice a great deal. Orthodoxy offers that, and the results are clear. Liberal American Judaism does not, and it is paying the price.
Those who will live in the aftermath of Conservative Judaism’s demise will live in an American Judaism diminished and robbed of an important voice. This is not the moment for gloating or for self-congratulation—even within Orthodoxy. This is the moment to begin to ask the question that the Pew study puts squarely in front of us: If Orthodoxy is intellectually untenable for many, and liberal Judaism is utterly incapable of transmitting content and substance, is there no option for Jewish continuity other than Israel? There must be. Those who care about the future of the Jewish people had better embark now on the search for what it might be.
Editor's Note: From The Jewish Week to Ha’aretz, from many pulpits and all over the blogosphere, people have been talking about Daniel Gordis’ “requiem” for Conservative Judaism. We continue this lively, instructive conversation with seven responses from some of the movement’s most thoughtful teachers and rabbis, along with a response from Jonathan D. Sarna, one of the leading historians of American Jewry.

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Comments
It lasted for a small number of people of his generation; but in the next generation there was no longer a feeling for tradition, so the absence of belief just merged his movement with the general tide of soft-core lip-service.
Within 50 years of his passing, Kaplan's movement had become nothing but another set of organizations and institutions without any identity of its own other than the names on the plaques
Mr Gordis feels that Orthodox or Halakhic Judaism is to unpopular or too tough a "sell" to the modern American.
The health of Orthodoxy (per the Pew report 29% of Orthodox Jews did not grow up that way and retention rates are growing amongst younger adults) suggests that being faithful to a set of values speaks to Gen Y and Millenials in a way that being malleable in your beliefs and practices to make yourself palatable does not.
The Reform and Conservative movements hate the idea that the Movements are along a spectrum of observance. They'd like to think they each have a distinct philosophy which guides membership. But they are fooling themselves. Most people choose their movement by their level of ritual observance. The Conservative Movement provides a middle and balanced home for those of us who will never be as ritually observant as those in the Orthodox Movement but don't want to give up ritual and custom to the extent that most Reform Jews have.
Yes.. we pick and choose. That may seem horrible on an academic/philosophical level.. but it is reality.... and Conservative Jews pick and choose more ritual/observance than Reform Jews, and less than Orthodox.
Those who are as halachic as the Movement wants us to be are basically egalitarian Modern Orthodox. Rather than recognizing the character of the vast majority of its membership and understanding its "market share," the leadership of the Conservative Movement plays silly games like the driving tshuvah. If we aren't halachic, then we'll just twist things to unnatural angles and call it halachic. We need a movement that meets us where we are.
Like the Reconstructionists say, halacha has a vote, not a veto. I think most Conservative Jews are fine with that. The silly tshuvot just destroy the credibility of the leadership... and clue the rest of us in that they just don't understand the majority of their constituents.... and thus, they are losing us. It is too bad the Reconstructionist Movement never gained the respect it needed to attract significant followers. I believe that most Conservative Jews are basically Reconstructionist (and this isn't new - I've been hearing it for the past 35 years). The Conservative Movement leadership needs to stop promoting a vision of egalitarian Modern Orthodoxy. If the Movement doesn't recognize its market segment and adjust it will fail.. and let down the large numbers of those of us who are comfortable in the middle ground, avoiding the extremes and finding meaning in our Jewish experience.
This sort of institutional religion was predicated on what might be called today a traditional bourgeoise lifestyle: early marriage, men and women who had professions, and the family as the organizing structure of society. It was under such structure that Conservative and Reform Judaism thrived, irregardless of the official ideological pronouncements of each movement which really were entirely irrelevant to most of its supposed adherents.
The assumption was that those who grew up in synagogues affiliated with these movements would return to them and join was predicated on other assumptions: that people would marry and give birth to children in their twenties, that the principal goal of Jews with secular educations in the secular world would be to be successful in their professions, and that the reordering of society and thought caused by the 1960's had not happened. Since none of these above stated assumptions are givens in the social and sociological arrangements of American life, the underlying sociological structures which supported these movements no longer exist.
No effort was made to nuture the affiliation of young single adults to the Conservative movement. No effort was made by the Conservatives to nuture a connection to this movement in what became the increasing longer period-of-time between graduating from High School and "settling down."
The collapse of Bourgeoise Religion as an integral structure in the social arrangements of American life is not confined merely to the Conservative "denomination," it is a Christian phenomena as well. More and more, Americans will be divided between the "true belivers" and everyone else.
I disagree with Gourdis' characterization of Aliya to Israel as a true option which ends the ambiguities of secular Jewish identity through transformation into an Israeli. Since that is what he had done, and he lives in Israel, he should know very well that even among many Israelis themselves, there is a dissatisfaction with living in Israel and the potentials for Jewish and humanistic identity available there. The ambitious prefer to leave Israel and realize themselves in the other nations of the West.
Growing up, my family belonged to many different synagogues. This was a result of my own learning disabilities, and the both Reform and Conservative Judaisms' "country club" atmosphere that turned away many people. On mother's side of the family, we were long time members of Temple Mishkan Tefilah in Newton (previously of Roxbury). My grandparents were amendment on my younger brother and I being Bar Mitzvah'd there, because of their longstanding history with the synagogue. However, being a child with learning disabilities in the 1980's and working with the professional staff (Rabbi and Cantor) who were more about image, it made it a very unwelcoming and uninspiring experience. While I did end up being Bar Mitzvah'd, I did not get the opportunity to read from the Torah (only from the Haftorah). Shortly there after I dropped out of any sort of Jewish education program, nor did I even step foot back into a shul until my brother was Bar Mitzvah'd by Chabad years later. In my subsequent years, I always felt drawn to Judaism, whether it was through Hillel at college, Chabad or Aish Hatorah.
As a result, Conservative Judaism, along with Reform Judaism, appears to be more concerned with its image rather than actually reaching out and making those personal connections to their congregations. It isn't so much about the person you are, but a mere statistic in their budgets, annual drives, and high holiday tickets. Specifically, not focusing on true Jewish education and building communities will doom both movements. Since leaving the movement and running far far away from the egotistical leadership, I have found a warm and comforting home within Chabad. While I am by no stretch of the imagination Orthodox, let alone a Chabadnick; I do find the authenticity of the movement a breath of fresh air, even with their own issues. As a result, in my home, we have Shabbat Dinners, light candles on Friday night and create a Jewish home filled with light.
Perhaps if the movement was serious about stemming the tide of sliding into irrelevance, it would focus on families and Jewish life. Creating a Jewish community based on Shabbatots, education beyond the worthless Hebrew Schools, and creating a warm and welcoming environment may help. Through the help of both Reform and Conservative Judaism, instead of being the people of the Book, we've turned into the people of the look.
Not surprising that Rabbi Daniel Gordis would leave these out, given his own life-path. Interesting to note how different has been the life-path of Rabbi David Gordis, who helped bring into being a new transdenominational rabbinical seminary (Boston) that while drawing deeply on Torah, Talmud, Kabbalah, and Hassidus, as well as feminism and Eco-Judaism and meditative Jewish mysticism and affirming the full equality and presence of women and gay/ lesbian/transgender Jews -- therefore and for other reasons utterly beyond Orthodox theology and practice -- has attracted an exciting number of exciting young women and men learning with passion and compassion. And carrying Torah into a world that is shaking in multidimensional earthquake.
And Boston Hebrew College is not the only place. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College has freed itself from the previously useful but now unhelpful strictures of Recon "civilizational" history. Or the amazing flowering of feminist Judaism -- Judith Plaskow, Rachel Adler, Sue Levi Elwell, Phyllis Berman, Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, and many many more --. Or the participation of thousands of Jews in at least twenty North American cities in Limmud, bringing Torah learning from and to the range of "newcomers" to "deeply learned." Or the seed-sowing and fruitful work of Rabbis Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Michael Lerner, Art Green, and me (Im eyn ani li, mi li?). Or the emergence of a dozen Jewish organic farms.
Many of these creative rebirthers of Judaism came from the Conservative "movement." Many of them went way beyond it because it was not in fact "moving." But Rabbi Daniel Gordis' diagnosis of the disease has somehow failed to point him toward the healings that already exist.
Shalom, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center
And, although I agree with Daniel Gordis that Conservative Judaism has, for the most part, failed to offer a substantive and meaningful vision for practicing Judaism is 21st century America, I don't agree that its decision to authorize driving to the synagogue on Shabbat was a key blow to its authenticity. It doesn't seem to be much more of a rationalization than the Orthodox broad construction of what constitutes an eruv, or having timers turn on electrical devices that are forbidden to the human hand.
Sadly,what Conservative Judaism has generally offered has been indifferent Jewish education to its children, rabbis who are often neither deeply learned nor even deeply devoted to Jewish life and ideas, large buildings and staffs that make congregational membership expensive but not engaging, and institutional indifference to finding paths to depart from these limitations. It has learned neither from the chavurah movement nor from Chabad that there are Jews eager for serious and intense religious undertakings in settings that are more intimate and accessible than the formal and formidable structures than Conservative Judaism offers.
Maybe nothing would work to rescue any form of American Judaism from the romance of secular Judaism. Or none at all. But surely it's important for what remains of Jewish life to be vital and morally engaged. Any denomination that declines to take a hard look itself and dedicate itself to reforming itself so that it concentrates on the essentials of promoting and encouraging serious Jewish life deserves the decline it's experiencing
Reading all the comments after Gordis' article, I think Arthur Waskow expressed it best. Gordis makes no mention, overlooks?, the offshoots of Conservative Judaism that have come into their own in the last few decades; Reconstrctionism, Renewal, independent Minyanim, and post-denominational training academies for rabbis and cantors, e,g Boston's Hebrew College and AJR, and now even JSLI. Thinking, caring, compassionate Jews who have abandoned the strictures of the Conservative movement have taken the
best parts of Conservative Judaism with them: the rigorous exposure to Hebrew, Jewish history, literature, liturgy and music in an historical context, and are applying it to other traditions of meaning, breaking down artificial boundaries and barriers and incorporating spiritual 'best practices' from a variety of denominational sources, while inventing new ones. I like to think of myself as one of these. Conservative Judaism may no longer be around in a decade or two, but its legacy will have been to provide the platform, the springboard, for new Judaic practice imagining more relevant to the 21stcentury American Jew. As the Spiritual Leader of a synagogue once part of the Conservative Movement but now 'in the Conservative tradition', we are redefining what's possible in a Judaism without walls and boundaries of denominationally-defined and bounded practice.
Reading all the comments after Gordis' article, I think Arthur Waskow expressed it best. Gordis makes no mention, overlooks?, the offshoots of Conservative Judaism that have come into their own in the last few decades; rReconstructionism, Renewal, independent Minyanim, and post-denominational training academies for rabbis and cantors, e,g Boston's Hebrew College and AJR, and now even JSLI. Thinking, caring, compassionate Jews who have abandoned the strictures of the Conservative movement have taken the
best parts of Conservative Judaism with them: the rigorous exposure to Hebrew, Jewish history, literature, liturgy and music in an historical context, and are applying it to other traditions of meaning, breaking down artificial boundaries and barriers and incorporating spiritual 'best practices' from a variety of denominational sources, while inventing new ones. I like to think of myself as one of these. Conservative Judaism may no longer be around in a decade or two, but it's legacy will have been to provide the platform, the springboard, for new Judaic practice imagining more relevant to the 21stcentury American Jew. As the Spiritual Leader of a synagogue once part of the Conservative Movement but now 'in the Conservative tradition', we are redefining what's possible in a Judaism without walls and boundaries of denominationally-defined practice.
You don't measure the internet by the number of websites - but rather by the amount of traffic; and many of the organizations referred to haven't seen any new blood in 30 years
While the "conversation" within Conservative Judaism may indeed have long been about issues that are irrelevant (or undermined by other aspects of Conservative thought), the conversation now is about "what went wrong." This is exactly the same self-referential tendency that got the movement here to begin with.
Instead, why not ask the following question: how can Conservative rabbis and lay leaders influence their flock to embrace the meaningful aspects of Conservative thought?
Conservative synagogues still have high membership, even if the members are often indistinguishable in their observance from members of Reform temples. The rabbis of these synagogues still have a platform to offer a compelling message. Orthodox rabbis would kill for such an audience.
If I had to identify why Conservative Judaism is in decline, it's because people who ostensibly believe in it focus more on the movement--its meaning, its decline, its struggle for identity--would rather watch it die while offering a complex intellectual autopsy than use its remaining assets to grow it.
Cantor Deborah Katchko-Gray
Temple Shearith Israel
Ridgefield,CT
www.cantordebbie.com
It pains me to think that Orthodoxy is the only hope to Jewish survival. But while the luminaries and rabbis of the Conservative movement remain preaching about God, Halachah, and stating how inadequate the congregants are for not living a life such as these so called leaders, there is no future in view.
We need rabbis that can inspire Jews to be Jewish without the guilt of not leaving up to the standards that they chose for themselves. The Mara D’atra model is dead among liberal Jews. We need a rabbi that can speak well not a rabbi who can decide Halachik matters, because 98% of conservative Jews do not have Halachik needs or issues. Enough of trying to fool ourselves. Maybe there are a few of these rabbis out there, but surely there are not enough of them.
We do not need rabbis who are openly proud of their children for having joined a Modern Orthodox synagogue. We need rabbis that create an atmosphere in their own synagogues where their children and the children of all congregants want to remain involved in after their Bar/t Mitzvah and beyond. There is beauty in Judaism, even in a non Halachik Judaism.
The Conservative movement can survive but only when we accept the reality around us. The solution is not on Shabbat initiatives, Jewish Observance and Teshuvot. But rather by understanding the majority of the Jews, and they are not necessarily the Jews we see today in the pews. We still have an opportunity to reach out to them before they walk away for good; they come 3 times a year. But they will not come back again for a year if the message they hear is of chastisement by rabbis who make them feel small and inadequate.
The congregants cannot be blamed when the message does not speak to them.
The congregants cannot be blamed when the messenger is oblivious to their needs.
The Torah is a living document not a monolithic stone! As a living documents one should NOT be afraid to make it reflect our world today.
The challenges present in today's Jewish community stem from hundreds of years of the kind of practice of Orthodoxy that did not provide the kind of religious experience necessary to sustain after more than a couple generations, and we're still seeing the fallout in progress.
For generations, the most potent force connecting Jews with Judaism was tradition, including strict adherence to halacha. It wasn't religious passion, or belief in God, or anything of the sort. That adherence and closeness to tradition probably did a decent job of keeping people connected in small monolithic communities, but out in the broader world, it only takes a few generations for traditions to fade away.
It's not surprising that there were lots of Conservative Jews several decades ago. The 20th century saw waves of Jewish immigration to North America, including many who didn't really feel religious but did feel compelled to be "traditional". They were immigrants who didn't daven everyday, but they kept strictly kosher -- at least inside their home. Basically, they didn't feel the need to stay religious, but the Reform movement didn't appeal to them because it, at the time at least, specifically rejected the practices that they held dear out of tradition. In other words, this is a group that was Conservative because they weren't comfortable being Reform, and because they did not find the Orthodoxy they grew up with to be relevant or meaningful in the outside world.
This doesn't let modern Conservative Judaism off the hook by any means. But I'm not sure the focus of this piece is in the right place.
The careful Pew study reader needs to understand how research of this kind has limitations. When I did my graduate school thesis study of how public school eighth grade student behaviors and actions changed based on social skills training that I designed, it was easy for me to manipulate my findings based on my interpretation of test results and youth interactions with each other. This can very easily be done with the analysis of synagogue affiliations and choices of contemporary North American Jews.
The Conservative Movement and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism succeeded in presenting an honest appraisal of its success and future challenges at their Centennial Convention Celebration held in Baltimore October 11-15 that I attended. It shall be interesting if the Union of Reform Judaism can do the same for Reform Judaism at their post 2013 Pew study Biennial to be held soon in San Diego this December as it did at its last Biennial held near Washington, DC in 2011. Add to these movement reflections, one has to also appreciate the roles both the Conservative and Reform movements with its synagogues/kehillot played in supporting my own and my extended family member Jewish journeys. Rabbi Gordis’ views and the Pew study findings don’t necessarily take into account these influences on their future predictions.
The Conservative and Reform movements continue to serve many diverse voices that celebrate various traditional and new approaches to Jewish expression in North American Jewish life. Both movements work very hard to offer their own brand of pluralistic positions supported by leadership that provide guidelines for religious practice with commitment to preserving Jewish life in the modern world. Their challenge is to serve diverse memberships that reflect various backgrounds and experiences. At some point in the future, there may be significant collaborations between the movements that may serve the liberal Jewish community in ways the Pew study can’t predict and we can only imagine.
I applaud the efforts of the Conservative movement to “conserve” the essence of Judaism in our modern age. This challenge demands a lot of soul searching for new models of governance, service delivery, outreach, inreach and exploring a new definition of synagogue as kehillah, a deep and sustaining relationship with community. There are conversations taking place to build a collective vision, a Conservative movement committed to reflect upon the many issues and questions that Rabbi Gordis and the Pew study raise.
The Conservative movement operates like a conservatory of Jewish life where traditions are “conserved” and the Jewish heritage shared attractively. Any conservatory of value needs commitment, tending and guarding to survive. The music conservatory is devoted to the preservation, education, creativity and presentation of the musical art. The botanical conservatory is dedicated to the study, cultivation and public display of plants to beautify and benefit our planet. Similarly, the Conservative movement is entrusted to care for a conservatory full of Jewish treasures that includes its own narrative of an impressive 100 year voyage and dreams of its future.
Alan Rubinstein; Cantor Emeritus
Bolton Street Synagogue (Independent); Baltimore, MD
Coby Rudolph seriously understates that value of faith in past generations. It may have been a simpler and less ideological faith than the one promoted by Orthodoxy today, but faith in God and the Torah was very real to many people. The veneration of "tradition" as such (Fiddler on the Roof style) is an anachronistic, superficial, and ultimately incorrect view of what Judaism in Europe was about.
Conservative Judaism is trying to tell its adherents to believe in something past generations never believed in: the "preservation of tradition" without genuine faith that the tradition has present value and not just the admirable quality of having survived a long time.
Consider that the Conservative movement functions like a “conservatory” similar to a holding tank or temporary destination point like the Metropolitan Museum. Our Jewish traditions and heritage are expressed through community practice as if we are taking a tour through the museum guided by educated specialists, enthusiastic docents and our learning from practicing artists who are exploring, imitating and teaching the styles of the great masters. Jewish life is experienced by our exposure to the full repertoire brought forth by our own communal history, ritual practice and wisdom.
Using this suggested model as my example, Rabbi Gordis and you seem to put yourselves in only one exhibit hall, or seem to prefer only one guide to organize your tour. The Conservative movement is much more than that to me. From my vantage point, the movement at its one hundred year voyage stage continues to provide me opportunities to grow and participate meaningfully in Jewish life. I also credit the Conservative movement in addition to my Reform upbringing and earlier Reform movement professional involvement to form the gateway that allows me to feel comfortable in all Jewish faith communities regardless of orientation or rationales.
Our North American Jewish community is very special at this time because of the choice of communities it offers us, spanning from humanistic to ultra orthodox. Conservative Judaism effectively bridges our traditions with modernity. It offers an attractive Torah guide book with leaders that help its members wrestle with and seek solutions and peace of mind to the challenges of our day. It asks its members to value the struggle to gain insight and appreciation of Judaism which remain endearing. In turn, it rewards the seeker a good platform in which to continue one’s journey regardless of destination or temporary resting place. This to me is genuine, sincere and satisfying. Shabbat Shalom!
Alan Rubinstein; Cantor Emeritus
Bolton Street Synagogue (Independent; Baltimore, MD
Member Beth Shalom Congregation (Conservative); Columbia, MD
I appreciate your thoughtful response. I think the underlying issue is that I (and Rabbi Gordis) view the question through the prism of a "marketplace of ideas." But the "marketplace" analogy tends to imply that you only have so much capital (financial, spiritual, or emotional) and you have to buy one thing or the other; whereas you are suggesting less of a zero-sum game in which one can enjoy many approaches without having to exclude others (as in a museum, library, or, nowadays, a Barnes and Noble).
But even going to a library requires a certain level of interest in reading. And nowadays, building even a minimal level of interest is challenging because there are so many other options. The rationale has to be pretty compelling just to get people in the door. I compare Conservative Judaism with Orthodoxy and Reform only because the latter two have been successful, in their own ways, at building a level of interest.
A clear and idealistic (and sometimes simplistic) vision offers something that will get people to come in the door. A less clear and more complex vision will have fewer takers. I am someone who has come around to appreciate the Conservative approach to embracing contradictions that Orthodoxy could not resolve for me. But then, I've been browsing the library for many years; getting people in the door is something else.
At Chabad they are discovering a loyalty to tradition, coupled with acceptance all despite level of observance. With over 900 centers in the US and Canada, its only a matter of time before Chabad will eclipse the Conservative movement. Chabad becoming a new synagogue movement filled with Jews who feel connected to tradition. The only difference is the direction. Now they are nudged towards tradition, in the past in the Conservative Temples they were being prompted away with the infatuation with egalitarianism and similar causes.
It is very easy to get distracted by an intellectual approach when analyzing the failure of what is, in the end, a business. But I suggest we take a look at some of the business reasons for the decline.
Many Jewish temples and agencies are donor driven. This means that their policies, services, presentation, and staff are chosen and designed to please their donors, rather those who attend or use the services. Donors are typically wealthy, older, white, and male. But is that what a future congregation looks like? Of course not. A future congregation is young, mixed gender, and maybe is mixed race.
The problem with growing membership is clear right there- how can an institution designed to please its donors attract members? It can't.
Any young person who tries to attend most Conservative temples find what Bloomenthal describes above as a "country club" atmosphere that turned away many people."
I would suggest to Gordis and the world, in an augmentation of his views, that the decline is mostly related to business reasons. The product offered isn't catering to the market and is only catering to the investors.
Anyone who has walked into a Conservative temple for the first time knows that no one smiles, no one says hi, the Rabbi is very busy talking to the donors, people frown at your clothing and shoes, etc... The wealthy donors who had great sophistication in business "check their business hat at the door" when governing a non profit and forget all of the elements that make a business successful. What they should do is build an institution that caters to its members. As a donor to an agency, I insist that its management spend time with the attendees, not me. I (the donor) is already sold on the product and don't need the attention. But I'm not typical. Most people are involved in philanthropy for selfish reasons- to reduce their guilt or satisfy their own ego rather than truly give to the community.
This does not mean that the role of religion in the success of a temple is any less important, what it means is that the great things offered by the Conservative movement never reach the people- because the environment is so unfriendly to the young families that would be its future.
Is there a solution to this? No. Businesses come and go, in religion it will be no different.
The future of Conservative Judaism will also not be determined by Rabbi Gordis. Hailing from a family formerly of the Conservative movement, Rabbi Gordis has no more expertise about American Judaism than any other knowledgable Israeli who used to live in the USA. Going on speaking tours is not the same as living in America. Rabbi Gordis must believe he has a special insight on Israel because he lives there. By the same logic, he should be more modest and less presumptuous about analyzing the religious data from America, a place he no longer resides. That Theodore Herzl's family did not remain Zionists did not spell doom for Zionism; that Robert Gordis' family did not remain Conservative Jews does not spell doom for Conservative Judaism.
Thank you
Is principled gender egalitarianism Judaism?
Cantor Alan Rubinstein
I am frum now. I was not always. Becoming frum was a process. A beautiful, rich, engaging process. And it was neither easy nor inexpensive. But somehow the Ribbono shel Olam found ways to help our little family afford it. And somehow hard things became easier, and ultimately wonderful.
Try telling that to the USA Orthodox Jews that you say is the only Jewish group in America that is NOT heading for extinction.
When the Conservative movement issued it's o.k. for driving to synagogue on Shabbat, the major unanticipated consequence was the disappearance in the movement of any need to preserve community. No longer would it be necessary to build a shul within its congregants' neighborhood.
A major factor in the strength and continuity of Orthodoxy of all strains is that all or most members walk to shul, watch out for each other's children, coordinate scheduling their kids activities to minimize conflicts with Jewish education and Shabbat, hang out at Kiddush after Shabbat services to socialize, and live other Jewish values with their neighbors like honoring their children and grandparents, visiting the sick, offering hospitality, giving to the poor, honoring mourners and brides, maintaining daily prayer groups and regular learning classes, and keeping a kitchen that is consistent with the community's standards of kashruth. Active Judaism cannot help but be meaningful when it is practiced with one's neighbors - there is strength in the idea that charity (and good deeds) begins at home.
David Gourdis marks the "o.k. to drive on Shabbat" as being the beginning of the end because it dismissed the relevance of Halacha That may be so. But history suggests otherwise regarding the impact of Rabbis creating leniencies for their flocks. How do you suppose the Jews of Italy responded when their rabbis announced a new loop hole that enabled chumatz-free homes on Passover so long as the home owner locked up their chumatz in a closet in the home and had the rabbi "sell" their chumatz to a non-Jew? Or the older loop hole that Hillel created to encourage Jews to lend to Jews and collect income on the loan even though collecting interest was forbidden. Halacha could have been seen as being trivialized. But Jews stayed true to it.
So I suggest that permitting driving to shul by amending the Hallachic-ways, had less to do with the dissolution of the Conservative movement, than the ensuing dissolution of Jewish-folk-ways and neighborhoods where everyone knows your name.
Steve Bashein
Potomac, MD
To this question, I answer with another question: "Can a nation truly engage the lessons of modernity and the lessons of Jewish history with a literal (read Orthodox) notion of revelation at its core?"
Modern Orthodoxy is a paradox no more and no less than Conservative Judaism. Sure, they don't drive on Shabbat. They keep much better kashrut. They know their sources. And they are nice people.
Because they are nice people and because in America, they need tolerance, they don't talk very loudly about the intolerance of our faith.
In America, the Orthodox don't talk (in English) about the halachot that say that we can cheat non-Jews and not return their lost objects, the halachot that say that we should tear down the idols of the Catholic Church if only that were allowed. They are quiet on the Zohar's many misogynist statements and instead of actively promoting the gender segregation mandated by most Rishonim, they apply leniences because nu, we live here in Galut. Not everything is possible.
But in Israel, these issues are real and Orthodoxy will be forced to deal with the inconsistencies between modernity and halacha in an entirely different way. We have already seen halachic rulings that it is permissible to refuse to rent to non-Jews and even permissible to kill them and their children. It is praiseworthy to avoid seeing women and to even to attack women who insist on being seen. It is praiseworthy to attack minim and to prevent them from spreading their lies.
This is a perversion of our tradition and our culture but the corrective medicine that we need does not come from within. It comes from outside. Only through a conversation with our history of oppression and a conversation with modernity can we apply the most important and the most critical tikkunim that are needed in our day.
The real test of a people is what they do when they have the power to oppress others. Our theology was fairly harmless when we had no power to implement it. We are failing this test. If you are serious about Orthodoxy, you need to stop relying on secular governments to save you from yourselves. This, so far, the Orthodox refuse to do.
Of course, there is a danger in removing a belief in revelation. It's the danger of relevancy -- everyone makes it up for themselves.
But there is also a danger in upholding that belief. It's the danger of fundamentalism -- everyone rushes to parody our worst oppressors.
My task -- to create a community committed to the rigors of traditional life outside of Orthodoxy -- is challenging. But I believe you have the greater challenge.
There is no way out of danger. The only question is which danger you prefer. Choose carefully.
That bias is twofold:
a) that the synagogue is the primary locus of Jewish participation
b) that the synagogue/school/rabbi are responsibility for the laity's Judaism.
While these two biases are prevalent in the Conservative and Reform models, they are absent in all forms of Orthodoxy. When you compare them from this perspective, they appear to be so different that they might be rightly called different religions.
But there is a greater issue here, which this discussion is ignoring, but which looms like a growing black elephant in the room.
Given the rejection by Orthodoxy of Conservative and Reform conversions, in addition to rejecting Reform's patrilineal descent, by the time that Gordis predicts the demise of Conservative Judaism we will see a complete and irreversible schism between Orthodox and Liberal Judaisms. Already a large number of Reform Jews are considered Gentiles by Orthodox Judaisms. The permanent schism will be the day when a Jew born into a liberal Jewish family is required to convert in order to marry an Orthodox Jew.
As sharply as the Houses of Hillel and Shammai debated, their children still married each other. When that ceases, we cease to be one people.
Fine, there has to be authority and conformity in society. So, I grant there is considerable room for rectification in Orthodox academia, society and practice, but you must not overlook the voices that contradict or moderate your philipic.
My rav, for one, is adamantly and emphatically against such cheating of non-Jews, and he arduously opposes cheating a non-Jewish government. He is simply very careful about business ethics, as was Rav Kook. The many others who were lenient in such matters, or who even allowed such behavior were motivated to a significant degree by the pervasive and bitter financial exploitation of Jews in Europe, of the wealthy and the peasants alike. In Asian and African nations, where Jews over centuries were not so badly abused, there did not develop such criminal relaxations in halacha.
I support your statement completely, "Only through a conversation with our history of oppression and a conversation with modernity can we apply the most important and the most critical tikkunim that are needed in our day." Indeed, these influences do come from outside the mainstream, for it is the mainstream of Orthodoxy that needs this rectification. The outliers, the outsiders, need their own rectification, which will surely come from outside them, perhaps from the Orthodox mainstream.
Do you mean to suggest that the outside influence must take the form of or consist in rejection of revelation?! I don't think you hold that, though you clearly have considered it, nor do you imply that you advocate it. You tar the term Orthodoxy unnecessarily. Torah u' madah sought to do just as you advocate, manage the rigors of life 'outside' Orthodoxy, in the sense of bringing Orthodox life into the material world but not in the sense of making a life in the material world bereft of Orthodox practice.
It is in this that Rabbi Gordis contends the Conservative stream has failed and is doomed. He argues that relevance can be restored by speaking to the existential quandaries facing people. Orthodox thought and practice, however dogmatic it may be in today's and in recent embodiment, has admitted and I insist still admits of such a revolution. So don't say, 'outside Orthodoxy', say, 'in a revivified Orthodoxy'.
When the separations between men and women in synagogue life occur—only a rabbinic proscription, dating to the early CE, for heaven's sake!—then perhaps I may return as an 'occasional' Orthodox learner.
In the meantime, I continue to live and learn (in mind) among university Judaic scholars in Israel, America, and Canada, who are considerably more tolerant to differing views, particularly those of learned women.
I continue to light the Shabbat candles each week, giving thanks that there is a community of many other Silent Ones doing the same thing at every Friday sunset, numbering perhaps in the tens of thousands, whom the rabbinical and synagogical communities will never know. We have long ago left their irrelevant rhetoric behind us. God knows who we are.
Much of what I've found may very well be available to extremely knowledgeable and well educated Jews after years of study and practice. But while reading about our spiritual masters from bygone days is inspiring, most of us poorly educated Jews need an enlightened spiritual teacher in the present. One who has reached union with G-d and can show the way. One who rises above Halakah and duality to Oneness. I asked Conservative Rabbi Alan Lew of blessed memory when Judaism would have realized spiritual teachers and he said, "Give us a hundred years."
Many Jewish spiritual seekers are looking to Eastern traditions, often with a heavy heart. Many Buddhist teachers are Jewish, like Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Norman Fisher and, before going to Rabbinical School, Alan Lew just to name a few. Jews aren't waiting 100 years. What to do about that?
Or maybe Judaism is just supposed to be a normative religion unlike the Eastern religions that are attracting so many. I'd love to hear what you think. There may be a bigger problem here than which movements are up or down right now. Thanks
Since according to current population projections, the Orthodox Jews who are keeping Shabbat are doubling in number every generation and the non-Orthodox Jews who mostly-all not keeping Shabbat are seeing their numbers cut in half every generation, it behooves the Conservative and Reform movements to make a national effort to promote the observance of at least Friday night Shabbat dinners in their communities.
Obviously there is more than just Shabbat dinners that separate the Orthodox from the other movements in terms of the Orthodox's success demographically, but promoting Shabbat dinners may prove to be the single most effective way for the non-Orthodox movements to begin to strengthen themselves.
The Plan: One way to do that is to ask those families in their synagogues who already have traditional Friday night dinners at their homes to please invite over other families in their communities who don’t have Friday night dinners to experience such Shabbat dinners.
By doing so they will be making their communities much stronger.
As the founder of Culture Zionism Ahad Haam was known to say: “More than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews.” It is time for the Conservative and Reform movement to start encouraging it’s members to embrace Shabbat to a greater extent if they want to see non-Orthodox Jewry to survive.
One point non-Orthodox leaders can make, in their bid to promote Shabbat dinners is that there is an abundance of sociological evidence which shows that having dinner together as a family is in general very important to the physical and emotional health of our children of all ages, especially of adolescents as pointed out in many studies, here is just one article on the subject- http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/24/family-dinner-adolescent-benefits/2010731/
Shabbat observance should not be considered something that only a fringe group of Jews observe. Shabbat’s centrality to Judaism is clear as being the only ritual mentioned in the Ten Commandments, being the Fourth Commandment.
Considering the catastrophic rate of assimilation today, it would be scandalous if the leaders of the Conservative and Reform movements did not make a national effort to promote at least Friday night Shabbat dinner observance.
If anyone reading this is in any position to either help promote Friday Shabbat dinners in your own synagogue, please do so as the future of American Jewry depends on it.