She Fa Journal 5766

Journal 5766/2006
The mission of the Shefa Network is two-fold:

To bring together dreamers from within the
Conservative Movement, and to give their
Dreams an audible voice.
Foreword
The veiled brilliance of the Conservative Movement

has managed to inspire the souls of so many, hinting at a would-
be movement-wide rush of spirit.
The Conservative All too often, the ambiguity of our imaginative
approach is equated with purposelessness. Emet V’Emunah, our
Movement 1988 Statement of Principles, was a valuable starting point for a
Dreaming From conversation that has only gone so far. While we must value its
Within editorial committee’s intent to not offend, we must take a next
step – shifting from calculated vagueness to brave clarity.
Journal Editors: This journal, the Shefa Conference that occasioned its
Sara Shapiro-Plevan production, and the many passionate Conservative Jews whose
& Rabbi Bill Plevan shared thirst comprises the Shefa Network, are humble attempts
Layout: to address our movement’s urgent need to communicate its
Alex Weinberg truths.
The modern-day prophet Rabbi Abraham Joshua
Heschel z”l, taught us that “To understand the meaning of the
problem and to appreciate its urgency, we must keep alive in our
reflection the situation of stress and strain in which it came to
pass, genesis and birth pangs, motivation, the face of perplexity,
the varieties of experiencing it, and the necessity of confronting
and being preoccupied with it.”
We must leave fear behind as we – professional and
lay members in a conversation of parity – open the doors and
windows of our movement’s sometimes-entrenched institutional
mindset.
As we help each other create healthy and dynamic
vehicles towards God and each other, may we continue to be
blessed with both humility and pride.
Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Adar 5766 / March 2006
Sharon, MA
Page 1
shefanetwork.org
Page 3 Introduction
Sara Shapiro-Plevan and Rabbi William Plevan
Page 11 The Challenge Facing the Conservative Movement
Rabbi Judith Hauptman
Page 13 Between the Holy and the Sacred: Conservative
Judaism’s Halachah Controversy
The Conservative
Rabbi Ira F. Stone
Movement Page 18 Fostering Holiness and Spirituality in a
Dreaming From Solomon Schechter Day School
Within Jane Taubenfeld Cohen
Page 22 Finding Spiritual Jewish Prayer
Table Page 25

Traditional and Egalitarian
Emily Fishman
of Page 29

Revitalizing the Conservative Synagogue
Fran Immerman
Contents
Page 34 A Manifesto for the Future: Drop ‘Conservative’
Label to Tap True Meaning and Reach the Faithful
Rabbi David Wolpe
Page 40 To My Rabbis and Teachers
Jonathan Lopatin
Page 44 On Being a Conservative Jew
Rose Shoshana Wolok
Page 46 Halachah and the Conservative Movement
Aaron Weininger
Page 49 Conservative Judaism
Rabbi Elie Spitz
Page 51 Conservative Judaism
Rabbi Daniel Greyber
Page 53 Ethically Driven Halachah: The Future of the
Conservative Movement
Page 56 The Courage to be Conservative
Rabbi Aaron Brusso
Page 58 My Vision for the Conservative Movement
Rabbi Martin S. Cohen
Page 60 The Struggle for Self-Definition in
Conservative Judaism
Rabbi Robert Gordis
Page 2 Page 73 Maintaining the Balance: Achieving the Dream
Nicole Guzik
shefanetwork.org
Introduction
Sara Shapiro-Plevan and Rabbi William Plevan
The Shefa Network was started as an internet

discussion group over a year ago to create a virtual community
The Conservative of professional and lay activists in the Conservative movement
and a place to discuss the movement’s direction and ways of
Movement
strengthening Conservative Judaism for the future. That such
Dreaming From a group was seen as needed by those who started it and those
Within who quickly joined its discussion attests to the prevailing sense
Sara Shapiro-Plevan is within the movement and throughout the Jewish community
the Education Director of that the Conservative movement is in a state of crisis. In the
Congregation Habonim and Jewish press and among the professional elites of the organized
a doctoral student in the
Jewish community, one hears the conventional wisdom that the
Davidson School of Education
at the Jewish Theological Conservative movement lacks direction and leadership and is in
Seminary. She is a graduate deep trouble.
of the Senior Educators The sense of crisis stems largely from two factors.
Program of the Melton Centre The first is the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS)
at Hebrew University, and findings, which indicate that the percentage of American Jews
has recently completed terms affiliating with Conservative congregations is significantly down
on the board of the Jewish
Educators’ Assembly and
from its post-war highs and that the Reform movement has
as chair of the Metropolitan eclipsed the Conservative movement as the largest movement,
Educators Council of New a trend that had been developing for at least a generation. The
York. Sara’s primary area second factor is the widely held perception that the movement
of interest and research is is either ideologically muddled or ideologically divided into
congregational education right and left factions that cannot overcome their differences. Of
and the role of the synagogue
course, it is easy to draw the conclusion that these two factors are
educator.
related, and the Shefa listserv has hosted a number of versions
Rabbi William Plevan of the argument that the movement’s declining numbers and
is a graduate of the institutional ineptitude are due to lack of ideological clarity.
Rabbinical School of the The movement’s failure to maintain high affiliation is due in
Jewish Theological Seminary. part to its failure to strongly articulate a clear ideology. Whether
He is currently pursuing
there is in fact a cause and effect relationship between these two
a doctorate in modern
Jewish thought at Princeton factors is beyond the scope of this introduction, but it is worth
University, where he is remembering that the right-left split in the movement was
writing a dissertation on the diagnosed in great detail by Mordecai Kaplan in Judaism as a
philosophical anthropology of Civilization more than 70 years ago and that the movement
Martin Buber. met with great success in the years after World War II, without
articulating a coherent ideology or resolving differences between
Page 3 ideological factions in the movement.
shefanetwork.org This Shefa Network conference was organized to bring
the Shefa conversation into a face-to-face forum that will allow for deeper engagement of the
issues, and the creation of a genuine community of activists concerned about the future of
Conservative Judaism. This journal includes texts of several of the conference’s presentations,
and also includes several articles, mostly very recent, that provide a broader context to some
of the issues discussed at the conference and on the Shefa listserv. Among these are some
short statements that were a part of an internet forum on the future of Conservative Judaism
organized by Sh’ma magazine, some of which we will note as to their relevance to the other
articles. Here, we will briefly discuss these articles and their significance for Shefa and the
Conservative movement as a whole.
The notion that Conservative Judaism lacks a coherent ideology has of course
plagued the movement since its inception. To give some historical perspective to this
accusation, we have included an article by the late Dr. Robert Gordis, a rabbi and professor
at the Jewish Theological Seminary who, among other important contributions, chaired the
movement’s Commission on a Philosophy of Conservative Judaism, which produced Emet
V’Emunah, a statement of principles for Conservative Judaism. Gordis reminds us that
when Solomon Schechter arrived in America to take the reigns at the Seminary, ideological
ambiguity was an advantage that allowed the Seminary and the movement it spawned to
include the different voices it wanted to include: essentially anyone who did not want radical
reform or rigid orthodoxy.
Recently, two prominent theologians of Conservative Judaism have taken on
the issue of ideological clarity, and have stimulated much conversation and stirred some
controversy. We have included articles in which they elaborate on their views. Professor
Neil Gillman of the Jewish Theological Seminary, one of the most influential theologians of
Conservative Judaism for the past three decades, was a member of Gordis’ commission and
has always been a strong defender of the booklet it produced, particularly for its theological
statements. The editors recall sitting in a class at JTS more than ten years ago and hearing
Professor Gillman emphatically explain why Emet V’Emunah was not a “parve” document
because it articulated clear theological options that departed from classical rabbinic thought.
Gillman’s recent speech at the United Synagogue Biennial in Boston, which received a great
deal of attention from the press, represents a strong statement for the centrality of theology
in the way that Conservative Judaism understands itself. Gillman’s article which is available
on the Shefa Website, (www.shefanetwork.org) is based on that presentation, and is due to
appear in the forthcoming issue of the journal Conservative Judaism as a response to an
article by Rabbi Ira Stone, one of the Shefa conference presenters. What caught the attention
of the Jewish press and many Shefa participants was Gillman’s assertion that the Conservative
movement should stop calling itself a “halachic movement.” The article itself does not take a
clear stance on what future role halachah should take in the Conservative Movement. What is
clear is that Gillman’s claim is that the movement should no longer use the phrase “we are a
halachic movement” as a slogan to assert the movement’s authenticity or its differences from
Page 4 shefanetwork.org
other movements. One of the articles from the Sh’ma forum by Aaron Weininger, also a Shefa
participant, makes a nearly identical assertion for many of the same reasons.
Gillman’s suggestion is that instead of defining Conservative Judaism by its halachic
commitments, we should instead define the movement by its theological commitments.
Gillman asserts that it is the movement’s theology, in particular the departure from the classical
rabbinic theology that Orthodoxy maintains, that truly captures how Conservative Jews think
about Jewish practice. Gillman does not suggest dropping the use of “we are halachic” in
order to change the way the movement has dealt with changes in Jewish practice. On the
contrary, he thinks that the movement’s commitment to a liberal approach to revelation best
explains the ways the Conservative movement has made changes in Jewish practice. The belief
that divine revelation is always mediated by the historical Jewish community justifies shifts
in Jewish practice as deviations not from clear divine commandments but from prior human
understanding of God’s will.
In the past, Gillman has argued that because all streams of Judaism follow some set
of norms to which they feel obliged, one might say that all these streams have something that
could be called its “halachah.” Now Gillman seems to be saying that because Conservative
movement leaders tend to use the phrase “we are halachic” to assert the movement’s
authenticity, the movement misleads people, and itself, into thinking that it is more committed
to the strictures of the rabbinic tradition than it really it is. Thus, when the movement really
does depart from these strictures, like the decision to ordain women as rabbis, many are
shocked and disappointed. To call the movement “halachic” obscures the ways in which
its approach to Jewish practice differs significantly from the rabbinic, and now Orthodox,
approach. Thus, calling the movement “halachic” is not only misleading but self-defeating
as well.
Gillman concedes that dropping the “halachic movement” slogan may leave
Conservative Judaism with no clear way to distinguish itself from Reform and Reconstructionist
Judaism. Indeed, the theological principles he suggests the movement embrace are those
shared by the other liberal movements. Gillman suggests that the movement’s commitment to
more traditional ritual practice and its own institutions is sufficient to distinguish ourselves.
However, the discussions on Shefa over the last year suggest that the many participants are
interested in going in a different direction, That is, many seem committed to some version of
Conservative Judaism in which halachah plays a central role and in which commitment to
legal precedents in the legal tradition are treated as legal precedents, even if not in the same
way as in Orthodox Judaism. In other words, Shefa participants seem interested in preserving
Conservative Judaism not just as a set of distinct institutions or liturgical and ritual practices
but as an approach to Judaism that can be articulated in clear principles distinct from other
liberal movements and orthodoxy.
If Gillman is suggesting that the Conservative movement abandon one of its well-
worn slogans, then Rabbi David Wolpe is suggesting that it go so far to change its name. In a
talk on the future of Conservative Judaism at the Jewish Theological Seminary in November
2005, that like Professor Gillman’s talk received a great deal of attention in the Jewish press,
Rabbi Wolpe braved the cold New York weather to exhort a packed house that the Conservative
movement should change its name to “Covenantal Judaism.” Rabbi Wolpe, rabbi of a large
Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles, is serious about this name change, so much so that he
sent a CD with the speech to all of his colleagues in the Rabbinical Assembly. The article that
appears here was based on that talk, appeared in Jewish newspapers throughout the country,
and was part of the Sh’ma forum.
Calling for a change in name for a religious movement is not in and of itself a
proclamation of crisis. The Reform movement recently changed its name from the outmoded
Union of American Hebrew Congregations to the Union of Reform Judaism. In this instance,
however, the Reform movement was updating its name to match a well-defined image. Wolpe’s
call for a name change is more of a challenge, like Gillman’s, to redefine the movement and
the way it thinks of itself. Also like Gillman, Wolpe begins this search for a new self-definition
with theology, in this case the centrality of covenant. He succinctly outlines the three central
covenants in Jewish tradition: the Sinaitic, the Abrahamic and the Noahide, each representing
the Jewish people’s relationships with God, each other and non-Jewish humanity.
As theology, Wolpe’s article is certainly compelling. But does it work as a name?
One of the advantages of the names “Reform” and “Orthodox” is that they encapsulate
the aspect of the movement that they most want people to know about: the commitment to
innovation in Jewish practice on the one hand, and the commitment to classical rabbinic
theological principles on the other. “Conservative,” one could argue, works this way as well,
as it names the movement that wishes to conserve the basic structure of the Jewish tradition,
even if allowing for innovations in practice and theology. “Covenantal,” however, names a
theological concept that is embraced by Reform, Orthodox and every religious movement
in between, so it is at first glance unclear how it would distinguish the movement currently
known as Conservative. But Wolpe’s use of the term “covenantal” could be understood less as
a theological statement, in which case it would not be controversial, and instead a statement
of Conservative Judaism’s understanding of how the Jewish tradition actually works. Jewish
tradition is covenantal in that it is an expression of the dynamic relationship of the Jewish
people with God, each other and the non-Jewish world. Jewish tradition is not a process of
reform, nor does it require orthodoxy in belief, but rather, as Wolpe says, it “is a tradition not
rigid but responsive and alive, not repetitious but committed to dialogue with the past, each
other and God.”
Unlike Gillman, Wolpe clearly retains a place for Jewish law in his understanding
of Covenantal Judaism, reminding us that Jewish law, like all facets of our tradition, is meant
to be a vehicle for our relationship with God. It is not clear to what extent Wolpe intends for
this understanding of Jewish law to depart from the classical rabbinic approach, but like
Gillman, he defends the way the movement has modified Jewish practice. In all likelihood,
Wolpe means to leave it open how Conservative Jews might understand the role of Jewish
law in the covenant with God in order to encompass different philosophical views within the
movement on how Jewish law should work. In ideological statements, the less said about
thorny theological issues the better, but that does not mean that the movement can do without
articulating clearer views on such issues. And as we noted above, many Shefa participants
want to develop new ways of understanding what it means to be committed to halachah in
a way that relies on the rabbinic tradition, departs from current Orthodox approaches and
makes sense of at least some of the changes in Jewish practice that Conservative Judaism has
instituted, such as egalitarian prayer.
Two of the presenters at the Shefa conference have done precisely that. Rabbi Ira
Stone’s central assertion is almost identical to Wolpe’s claim about Jewish law, namely that
halachah is spiritually instrumental. Failure to recognize this aspect of Jewish law, Stone
claims, will continue the theological and ideological vapidity of the movement. To develop
this idea, Stone focuses his attention on the concept of holiness, in Hebrew kedushah, which
he distinguishes from the concept of the “sacred.” To achieve holiness means to achieve a
distance from God that allows one to be responsible for the human realm as God is responsible
for the divine realm. The aim of “sanctity,” Stone asserts, is to actually merge with the divine,
which involves a loss of the self’s freedom to be responsible for the human realm. The goal
of halachah as a path to holiness is to “enforce separation” between the two realms in order
to create responsible selves who are capable of doing God’s will in the world. This vision of
halachah, Stone believes, can reinvigorate Conservative Judaism by focusing its attention the
spiritual aim of observance and not just observance for its own sake.
Professor Judith Hauptman, another presenter at the Shefa conference and a
professor of Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in an article originally published
in New York’s Jewish Week, argues that the movement’s ideological self-identity problems
go back to its 1983 decision to ordain women, a view that many who opposed that decision
probably share, although not for her reasons. Her assessment is similar to that of her colleague
Neil Gillman, in that both think the movement has had a difficult time explaining how it
reconciles its commitment to rabbinic halachah and certain halachic changes the movement
has made. But instead of given up the label “halachic” for the movement, Hauptman calls for
the movement to consistently adopt an “ethically driven halachah.” An ethical approach to
the halachic process can give Conservative Judaism a framework for explaining its decisions
to include women in religious life, and can attract members in the future by emphasizing
what people find most attractive in Jewish life: ethical integrity. In her article from the Sh’ma
forum, Hauptman applies this insight to the inclusion of unaffiliated Jews and non-Jews, and
the education of rabbis.
Emily Fishman testifies to the fact that Hauptman is likely correct about the
relationship between the movement’s ideological confusion and the inclusion of women.
Fishman, a student at Brandeis University, relates her experiences in the Solomon Schechter
schools of our movement, praying in an egalitarian setting but never learning an approach
to halachah and the Jewish tradition that would truly justify that commitment in the idiom of
halachah. In struggling to find a way out of her conundrum, Fishman has touched on what
has always been the hallmark of Conservative Judaism: its awareness of historical context.
While most Orthodox rabbis would not deny, especially in private, that halachah does respond
to historically new circumstances, Conservative rabbis have turned this aspect of the halachic
process into a guiding principle. For Fishman, the way one can be traditional and egalitarian
is to acknowledge one’s historical distance from the rabbis while still believing one has a great
deal to learn from them. This might be a helpful way of understanding Conservative Judaism,
as situated between Reform, which emphasizes historical distance from the rabbis, and
Orthodoxy, which does not allow that the rabbis could have been wrong about any significant
matter, like the status of women or the origins of the Torah’s text.
Fishman’s piece raises two important questions for the halachic visions presented
by Hauptman and Stone. The first question is to what extent these visions are self-conscious
departures from the classical rabbinic tradition. The slogan “we are a halachic movement”
was always meant to suggest, at least to those who cared, that the movement would not
adopt practices that could not be justified within the legal system developed by the early
legal commentators of the Talmud. The idea that halachah is not an end in itself but rather
aims at some lofty religious goal, whether holiness or ethical rightness, is not a modern idea.
Maimonides thought the law aimed at the intellectual perfection of man (not woman), and
followers of kabbalah believed that every mitzvah performed moved the world closer to unity
with God. Stone notes that Conservative Judaism has understood its own historical sensibility
as an implicit, if not explicit, principle of rabbinic Judaism that it has enhanced because
of modern historical circumstances. In other words, Conservative Judaism is in part based
on the idea that radical change in response to changed historical circumstances is itself a
principle of the tradition. This reading of the tradition might be tenuous, but perhaps it is
no different from, for example, the Mishnah’s elaboration of 39 categories of prohibited work
on the Sabbath that are not clearly found in the text of the Torah. If Conservative Judaism
will maintain its integrity for its future leaders like Emily Fishman, thinkers like Hauptman
and Stone need to clarify in greater detail how we should view the demands of the present
historical circumstances and in what ways rabbinic principles serve us or even fail us.
The second question raised by Fishman’s piece is how the Conservative movement
can educate Jews, both children and adults, to think about Judaism in a way that is unique
to the movement. Her own testimony suggests that students who go through movement
day schools can actually come away with a distinctively Conservative understanding of the
Jewish tradition, but that they may not always be taught that explicitly. Whatever success
the movement’s schools, camps and informal programs might have in educating Jews to
think like Conservative Jews, there is little doubt that education will play a crucial role in any
progress the movement intends to make. The Conservative movement’s commitment to high
educational standards remains one of the most distinctive aspects of its institutions. Several of
the presentations at the Shefa conference testify to the fact that the strength of the movement’s
institutions will depend on education.
Jane Taubenfeld Cohen, in her presentation for the Shefa conference, has given us
an eloquent account of how kedushah as a religious value becomes a lived experience in the
context of a Solomon Schechter Day School. Given that the education of children is usually a
major reason people affiliate with our movement (or any movement), Cohen’s article raises
some important issues for both the professionals and lay leaders who are responsible for the
educational institutions of our movement. There is no doubt, for example, that the day school
has an advantage over the synagogue school in creating a sense of kedushah by virtue of the
amount of time that they have with the students, and the ability to create community within a
school. At the same time, while synagogues schools usually see their students four to six hours
a week, synagogues as an institution have opportunities to interact with entire families in a
variety of ways and at different points in the life cycle. Could synagogue schools expand their
sense of their educational setting to include what Cohen calls “the kitchen table” by thinking
beyond the hours children are in the classroom? Synagogue educators have already begun
to move in this direction, bringing together the formal learning of the classroom with the
informal experiences that can take place with parents and peers in alternative settings. These
educators must now convince families of the importance of learning experiences that extend
learning beyond the classroom and into the lives of their students. Likewise, if synagogues
see themselves as educating adults, what ways do adults and children learn to experience
kedushah differently?
Fran Immerman and Rabbi Menachem Creditor, organizers of the Shefa conference,
both reflect on the possibility of creating a holy community with the context of American
Conservative synagogues, which are often criticized for boring services that lack spirit and
energy. It is worth noting that both found spiritual inspiration in Israel, suggesting that the
notion of Israel as a “spiritual center” has implications that even Ahad Ha’am did not even
contemplate. What is it about the land of Israel that makes it such a powerful spiritual resource
for so many American Jews? Do Jews have an innate connection to the land that enhances
their spiritual senses when in its borders, as mystical Zionists have long argued? Or is it the
fact that Israel has a very high concentration of knowledgeable and well-educated Jews who
share an Anglo-American spiritual sensibility, whether in Jerusalem’s German Colony, Tzfat or
a Carlebach moshav? In other words, as no doubt these authors would agree, there is nothing
stopping Americans from creating such spiritual communities in America. Indeed, Adam
Wall, one of the founders of Kehilat Hadar in New York, is scheduled to speak at the Shefa
conference about the creation of an energetic and spiritual egalitarian prayer community on
Manhattan’s Upper West Side, consisting mostly of young Jews who are comfortable praying in
Hebrew, care about halachah and many of whom can do the things Immerman wants more
congregants to do: lead prayer, read Torah and give divrei Torah.
Thus, one may conclude that the “spirituality gap,” to coin a phrase, in American
Conservative Synagogues is in many ways an education gap. Making Immerman and
Creditor’s suggestions into a reality, creating spiritual communities, will require higher levels
of education in Hebrew language, in liturgical music and even in Jewish theology, all of
which would provide rubrics for understanding what prayer is supposed to be about. Most
veterans of the movement will not be surprised by this conclusion. Many Shefa participants
have already suggested that the key to the movement’s success is to raise its standards, because
people will be drawn to a movement that stands for something. The movement already sets
high educational standards for its institutions, although perhaps it is time to evaluate whether
these educational standards, even when successful, help feed the spiritual hunger of the typical
American Jew, or help to raise up young people to be the kinds of Conservative Jews who will
lead our movement into the next generation.
Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of the Shefa enterprise, and this conference
in particular, is the way it has avoided strict boundaries between the intellectual and the
practical. The conference has provided a very fruitful engagement between intellectuals and
practitioners, many of whom should be described as falling in both categories. This is as it
should be, because a religious movement needs both a coherent vision with philosophical
rigor and historical perspective, and the practical wisdom to enact this vision. Usually,
these two tasks are not done well by the same people, but that too is a bias that leads us to
divide the world into “theorists” and “practitioners,” as if the two are from different planets.
If the Conservative movement is going to succeed in creating spiritual communities in its
schools, synagogues and camps, it will have to bring together the theological visions of the
movement’s intellectual lights with the practical wisdom of professionals and lay people. The
most important accomplishment of this conference may be that it has begun a conversation
that includes all of these essential voices.
The Challenge Facing the Conservative Movement
Where is the Conservative movement headed today? The
two other major denominations have a clear sense of mission. A
passion for social action characterizes Reform Judaism. A passion
The Conservative for the observance of mitzvot characterizes Orthodox Judaism.
The Conservative movement describes itself as committed
Movement to tradition and change, but it is not evident what this expression
Dreaming From means. Change in response to what?
Within In the early and middle 1900s, the Conservative
movement proved very attractive to the children of immigrants,
Rabbi Judith Hauptman my professional parents among them. Services were conducted in
is the E. Billi Ivry Hebrew, food served at the synagogue kiddush was kosher, and the
Professor of Talmud liturgy, with minor ideological changes, was the traditional one that
and Rabbinic Culture many grew up with. But the “feel” was American. Men and women
at the Jewish Theological could sit together in the pews. Decorum at services was painstakingly
Seminary. She is also the maintained. A broadly educated rabbi preached in English. Thus,
founder of Ohel Ayalah, “tradition and change” turned out to mean change for the sake of
a free walk-in High Holy making traditional Jewish practice palatable in a new setting.
Days service The Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law
(www.ohelayalah.org). and Standards broadcast a similar message of accommodation
to life in America. Among other things, it permitted riding to the
Originally printed in the synagogue and back home on the Sabbath (1950) and treating the
Jewish Week, July 8, 2005 second day of festivals as optional (1969).
In the early 1970s, a small group of Jewish women
called into question this understanding of Conservative Judaism.
They handed the movement a golden opportunity to define itself
with respect to its own ideology. Probably for the first time in its
short history, a sweeping change in practice and law was suggested
for an ethically compelling reason — to give women the same
opportunities for leadership roles as men. Jewish feminists suggested
that women serve as Torah readers, prayer leaders, rabbis and
cantors.
It is true that the feminist movement originated in
secular society, but its central message resonated well with biblical
and Talmudic Judaism. It preached fairness to all and equality
of opportunity, not just in the marketplace and courts but in the
synagogues (and churches), too. Judaism had always stood for
social justice.
Page 11 The Conservative movement’s leadership, urged on by the
shefanetwork.org women, instituted a series of halachic changes for reasons that had
nothing to do with assimilating to an American lifestyle. In response, the synagogues had to
change only a little. The words and rituals remained the same. But after the change, twice as
many people could vie for the honor of leading the community in prayer and teaching the
sacred texts of the past.
It was at this point that the Conservative movement lost its moorings. In the wake
of its egalitarian transformation, the leaders needed to actively advocate the point of view that
this change fulfilled the mandate of the founders, that it was the highest order of good. They
needed to tell people that Conservative Judaism was about holding on to the practices of the
past — Shabbat, kashrut, daily prayer, study of Jewish texts and so on — but that it was also
about responding to evolving ethical sensitivities of the present.
They needed to say that this accommodation would ratchet up Judaism to a new
level, one predicted by the prophets of old and not realized until the 20th century. But they
failed to do so. Instead of aggressively promoting equality for women as a grand and welcome
new ethical truth, the leaders gave a choice to Conservative synagogues: to integrate or not to
integrate women into leadership roles. Both options remained equally valid.
If the Conservative movement wants to stop losing members, it needs to clarify
its moral vision. It must withdraw permission to be anything other than fair to women.
Talmudists like me know with precision that feminist changes, and others on the agenda like
the ordination of gays as rabbis, are all doable within the framework of halachah. Persuasive
books have been written on the subject.
The movement cannot now hide behind biblical proscriptions because it has not
done so in the past. Torah-mandated second-class status for women in marriage, divorce and
inheritance did not stop Conservative rabbis from giving women full equality in those areas
and others. The same processes can be applied to the gay issue. As Orthodox feminist Blu
Greenberg has pointedly asserted, “If there is a rabbinic will, there is a halachic way.”
Until the Conservative movement articulates its message of an ethically driven
halachah, which is, at bottom, what makes Judaism so appealing to so many, it will continue
to have difficulty attracting adherents. I pray the new leadership will rise to the challenge. If
it does, it will shore up the movement, thereby preserving an excellent choice for American
Jews.
Between the Holy and the Sacred: Conservative Judaism’s
Halachah Controversy
Rabbi Ira F. Stone
I will state my position as succinctly as possible: Until we
acknowledge that halachah is instrumental, and until we enter into
The Conservative a conversation regarding the end toward which its instrumentality
aims, and until we assent to that goal as a community and recognize
Movement that it can not be reached without the instrumentality of halachah,
Dreaming From and, finally, until we advocate for this goal along with its necessary
Within instrumentality, we really have nothing to say.
The end toward which halachah points is holiness
Ira Stone is rabbi of (kedushah). Thus, the conversation which must precede any
Temple Beth Zion-Beth conversation regarding halachah must be about the nature
Israel in Philadelphia of holiness. That is: what does it mean “to be” holy, or to live a
and the chair of the RA holy life, or to contribute toward a holy world? These, I suggest,
Publications Committee. are philosophic questions, not merely questions of vocabulary. For
His book on Mussar example, we might expand our questions and begin our conversation
practice, A Responsible by asking further: What is the relationship between holiness and
Life: The Spiritual Path of justice? Or: is there a difference between the holy and the sacred? If
Mussar, is forthcoming so, what is that difference and what are its general implications and
from Aviv Press in what are its implications specifically for halachah? I would like to
Spring, 2006 say a few words about this question because I think it is particularly
germane, but before I do I want to finish the first thought offered
above. That is that since the discussion of the place of halachah
within Conservative Judaism has emerged as the fulcrum around
which all of the relevant questions by which we as a community
seem to be choosing to address the perception of what our problems
as a movement are, we should be aware of the fact that such a
decision requires presuppositions which, at the very least, should
be made explicit. Once these explicit presuppositions are identified
they should be examined to determine how they comport with each
of our personal commitments to Conservative Judaism as well as
with what Conservative Judaism has historically said about itself.
Thus, there are certain pre-suppositions that have been
accepted by general consent over the course of the Movement’s
history. They have been taught as both Torah she’bichtav in the
writing’s of our Movement’s luminaries and as Torah she’ba’al
peh by our teachers. First among those presuppositions is that the
holy texts of our tradition have a history. Texts that are viewed as
Page 13 historical cannot be viewed as infallible. On the contrary, while the
shefanetwork.org same teachers maintained the possibility of an infallible source
responsible for engendering those texts, the texts themselves are fraught with historical
circumstances to which they respond and changes in historical circumstances, at least,
provide an opening for changes in practice.
A second pre-supposition that derives from the first is that the process of interpreting
these texts also has a history and this process therefore is also open to modification based on
major shifts in historic circumstances.
A third pre-supposition is that absent compelling historical reasons for taking
advantage of these openings for change – the texts and the tradition are embraced as the
surest path to instituting in the life of the individual and the community the will of the Source
behind those texts and tradition – God’s will.
Finally, among the Movement’s classical pre-suppositions is the fact that the unique
structure of Jewish holy texts and tradition is also a reflection of the will of God. That is, the
“dual centrality” of halachah and aggadah, of law and the narrative that informs the law, are
not arbitrary nor ancillary to accomplishing the Divine Will. Rather, they represent together
the particular tension necessary to appropriately carry the otherwise wholly transcendent and
therefore inaccessible Divine Will.
Needless to say, both the Movement’s Torah she’bichtav and Torah she’ba’al peh
presented these pre-suppositions as principles implicit in Judaism, not merely Conservative
Judaism. While they sometimes admitted that the application of these pre-suppositions was
more likely to have been unconscious in the pre-modern world, they never the less believed
that both the impact of historical science and the severe realities of the modern historical
moment for Jews argued for a more conscious application of these pre-suppositions, which
were in no way discontinuous with the Judaism of pre-modernity. On a polemical level, in fact,
they argued that both radical reform and ‘frozen’ orthodoxy were more discontinuous with
the pre-modern past.
It is not my intention here to go further into a historical review of Conservative
Judaism, however I thought it would be helpful to bask for a moment in the faith of our
teachers that they were indeed the remnant of authentic Judaism beset on all sides by heretics:
On the left were those who would throw out the baby with the bath water, and on the right
were those who would refuse to change the water regardless of how cold or polluted it became.
Imagine what it must have felt like for Conservative Jews to feel righteous!
Why the “heresies” of the right and left seem to have succeeded while our authentic
Judaism seems to have failed is too complicated to go into here. It is largely a matter of
sociological factors more so than intellectual factors. Rather, our task is to precisely reflect
on how philosophy can be brought to bear on sociology such that the legitimate needs of
individuals and communities for meaning may be better served by an intellectual approach
that in the end is more authentic. If our Movement can be faulted for anything over the past
100 years, it is for the scant attention it has paid to the importance of the philosophic side of
what makes people act, on the one hand, and, a more serious mistake on the other: failing to
itself sufficiently notice major shifts in the contours of contemporary society. In other words,
the historical school got stuck in one historical moment itself instead of continuing to be
sensitive to the rapid sea changes in the spiritual temper of the times.
I return, then, to the nature of the Holy by way of returning to the central point: our
approach to halachah, after which I will offer some concluding thoughts. The Torah plainly
commands: “You shall be holy for I, Adonai your God, am holy.” This statement in Leviticus
represents the clearly articulated goal not only of the so-called Levitical Holiness code, but
of the whole of Torah. Never the less, the Holiness code itself is an exemplary mixture of law
including cultic, interpersonal, and civil. In fact, it is precisely this mixture that prevents
the nature of holiness from being understood in terms of the sacred. The goal of the law
is to enforce separation (hekdash) between the realm of God (the sacred) and the realm
of humans and to burden humans with the responsibility for their domain, as God takes
responsibility for God’s domain. It is the separation, the marking off of distinct realms that
chiefly characterizes both the Biblical and generally speaking rabbinic religious impulse. It is
in the “space” left to human responsibility by a God willing to withdraw to God’s own domain,
an idea more generally associated with the Lurianic kabbalah’s idea of tzimzum, but I would
argue, already present in the creation story in Genesis, that the idea of a halachah makes
sense. For the alternative model of spirituality, if you will, to a holiness model is what I would
call a sacred model. Despite the fact that we often use the words interchangeably, they have
fundamentally different meanings. If we reserve the Hebrew word kedushah for holiness, then
it might also be allied to the word taharah – the state in which one should be in order to be
involved with the holy – a state wherein one is separated from that which is tamei. Tumah
is here to be understood not merely as impure or polluted, but rather as “absorbed by the
sacred.”
In this usage, the sacred is understood as the mysterious realm of the Divine, the
realm of death more than life, the realm in which human freedom and responsibility are
overwhelmed by their proximity to these Divine forces. In fact, the very tendency to recognize
in this realm the action of Divine forces consigns to the world of tumah everything associated
with the sin of sins in biblical and rabbinic tradition: idolatry. The biblical laws governing
taharah and tumah enforce and act to found the halachic platform on the basis of separation
from the nearly demonic sacred in favor of the responsible holy. The temptation of the sacred
is that the human can merge with and/or become the Divine, another basic characteristic
of idolatry. The glory of the holy is found in the freedom it provides us with to choose
responsibility, whether we do or not.
So what does this have to do with the place of halachah in Conservative Judaism
or with the problems and future of the Conservative Movement? I would like to suggest that
the present historic moment is awash in the spirit of the sacred and the search for the sacred.
Ironically, for some this has meant the rejection of halachah because it is too much focused
on this worldly, mundane and inter-personal actions, while for other this has meant the
sanctification of the halachah per se as though through it one could cross over into the realm
of the Divine. This renders unnecessary the weighing of actions for their efficacy in meeting
our responsibility for the world left to our best efforts by a God who has gracefully withdrawn.
In this, we reject the gift of our freedom. To put it another way, halachah becomes a form of
magical incantation and is accepted by those who believe in magic and rejected by those who
don’t.
Conservative Judaism continues to fill the space between these two extremes borne of
the fascination with the sacred by affirming the holy through our halachah. In our role as Jews
conscious of history, we can recognize the contemporary moment in which halachah is either
accepted or rejected on the basis of its magical efficacy as being dangerous and antithetical to
authentic Judaism and we can vigorously argue for a halachah of the holy. That would be a
halachah that recognizes that its appropriate domain is the world that God has left for us to
manage and that the criteria for judging how we manage it is dependent on that central tenet
of the holiness code that I referred to earlier: “Love your neighbor as yourself; I am Adonai.”
All halachic discourse must be aimed at directly animating this principle or at keeping us
awake to the weight of this principle or at helping us to keep our distance from the magical/
demonic realm of tumah. I have described elsewhere the fact that precisely this imperative
was the motivating force behind the rise of the Mussar Movement in the 19th century in
Lithuania – perhaps the first indigenously Jewish response to modernity – responding both
to the radical nature of the reformers, the mechanistic nature of the orthodoxy, and under
the pressure of the growing presence in Lithuania of Hasidism whose pre-occupation with the
sacred rather than what I’ve called the holy had become a source of great attraction to young
Jews of the time. It is interesting to note, in conclusion, the influence the Mussar Movement
had on the early giants of Conservative Judaism. Both Solomon Schechter and Louis Ginsburg
devoted major essays to Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of the Mussar Movement. Schechter
asked Mordechai Kaplan to produce the first English translation of Messillat Yesharim, The
Paths of Uprightness by Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, one of the central texts of the Mussar
Movement. Kaplan himself came to this country because his father was sent by the Mussar
master Rabbi Jacob Joseph to bring halachic integrity and leadership to the burgeoning New
York Jewish community and Kaplan’s identification with the power of goodness with God is
well known. Finally, Professor Shaul Lieberman was a product of the Yeshiva at Slobadka,
one of the three major Mussar yeshivot of the time. While it would be an exaggeration to say
that the architects of Conservative Judaism modeled it on what they learned and loved about
the Mussar Movement, it is certainly more than suggestive and allows us to read into their
approach to Judaism some of these influence. It is, therefore, not simply about halachah. It is
about constructing the appropriate philosophic framework for halachah and then going into
the trenches to sell not simply observance for observance’s sake, but observance for the sake of
holiness, properly understood.
Recommendations for Action:
1) “Rather, our task is to precisely reflect on how philosophy can be brought to bear on
sociology such that the legitimate needs of individuals and communities for meaning may be
better served by an intellectual approach that in the end is more authentic.”
2) “In our role as Jews conscious of history, we can recognize the contemporary
moment in which halachah is either accepted or rejected on the basis of its magical efficacy
as being dangerous and antithetical to authentic Judaism and we can vigorously argue for a
halachah of the holy.”
3) “It is, therefore, not simply about halachah. It is about constructing the
appropriate philosophic framework for halachah and then going into the trenches to sell
not simply observance for observance’s sake, but observance for the sake of holiness, properly
understood.”
Fostering Holiness and Spirituality in a
Solomon Schechter Day School
Jane Taubenfeld Cohen
The two most frequent messages that I give teachers are
that every child is created in God’s image and that our work is holy
The Conservative work. Both may sound rhetorical, but I hope they are not. I expect
every teacher to walk into school knowing that much of what they
Movement
do is Chol but through them, it becomes Kodesh. I often tell and
Dreaming From write to my teachers that what is deepest inside of each of us is God.
Within If this is so, then what is deepest inside of each child, parent, and
teacher is God and therefore, every person is as holy as the child
sitting or playing next to him or her.
Jane Taubenfeld Cohen What does it mean that what is deepest inside each person
is the Head of School of is God? That there is a core of each human being and that holiest
the South Area Solomon part of us is that which leads us to emulate God - or is God. If
Schechter Day School in you truly believe that, your level of obligation to teach and nurture,
Stoughton, MA, and is the academically, spiritually, emotionally, socially, is raised to a level
immediate past president beyond the scope most of us have ever even considered. However, I,
of the Solomon Schechter in my job as Head of a Solomon Schechter day school, must think
Principals Association. about that when I wake up in the morning and when I go to sleep
at night. Perhaps the things that our school has a reputation for
- differentiated instruction, diverse student population, a culture of
professional growth with incredible teacher retention, and school
culture - all stem from those two messages, that deepest inside every
child, teacher, parent, we can find God, and that our work is holy.
There is a cycle of Kedushah. When we see God in each
person before us, we reach a level of holiness in our teaching as
we recognize before Whom we stand, creating a culture of holiness.
It is critical that we implement these messages within a Solomon
Schechter school - that Kedushah is a part of everything we do. We
cannot be afraid to say that this is Conservative Judaism.
One day, not too long ago, a simple thing happened. I
had just returned from a week in Israel and I was longing to be
back there, sitting at my desk at the end of a school day thinking, “I
cannot do this anymore.” Outside my office, I heard a conversation
between two sixth graders from predominantly secular families.
Rachel said, “I made the math team!” and Jeremy answered, “I
know, mazal tov!”
That was it. Simple. And while at face value there is
Page 18 nothing holy about this conversation, think about these things:
shefanetwork.org Rachel and Jeremy are in 6th grade. She made the math team and
he did not. Mazal tov was the instinctive way he congratulated her (no resentment and a clear
recognition of the worth of “the other”). That one exchange brought me right back to the
incredible holiness of what we do.
As I was writing this piece, I took a break, went into a first-grade classroom, and
experienced a moment that underscores the achievability of these ideas. A father in the class,
a pediatrician from Children’s Hospital, was visiting as part of the unit on the human body.
He began by asking the class if they had said Birchot Hashachar that morning and prompted
a discussion of the human body with a deeply spiritual grounding for their science study. As I
came back into my office to continue writing, the second grade was rehearsing havdalah. The
environmental background for this very piece is the sound of second-grade voices learning
havdalah.
I want to be sure that you know that our school is just like every other school. There
are things that feel right and there are things we are improving and learning to do better. One
example: Birkat Hamazon with the students in kindergarten through fifth grade is a much
more spiritual experience than Birkat Hamazon with the middle school. So, we, like everyone
else, are constantly searching and reflecting to find the ways to raise our level of holiness. But
there are certain things I know to be true - that even in that searching, even when it is not yet
right, there is something spiritual latent in that moment. Sometimes we simply have to work
harder to find it and within the broad world of Conservative Judaism, we need to work harder
to encourage it.
I recently lost my youngest brother and, for the last two days of shiva, I returned to
my home. I needed to have a chance to mourn with my own community and I needed to see
my students. The middle-schoolers came to make up the morning minyan in my home both
days. On each of those days, I felt surrounded by a spiritual and emotional strength hard to
describe with words. This was not only about my relationship with my students. It was about
their relationships with God. It was about owning all they had learned and all they felt and
bringing it to that moment - the very moment I needed.
Our school celebrates “Rosh Chodesh Live”, an opportunity to celebrate the new
month together in song and in dance through the words of Hallel, with Rabbi David Paskin
and Rabbi Menachem Creditor. One student said at her graduation last year, “I think that if
someone asked me to pick the one thing that describes Schechter the best, I would say Rosh
Chodesh Live. Though this only started recently, it instantly connected with the Schechter way
of living - It brings us together in a way that nothing else can.”
Creating these connections and memories for our students constructs a culture of
holiness. It brings the spiritual core of our people to the next generation. That sense of
Kedushah finds a place in the hearts and the brains of the students. Committed Conservative
Jews must find places of Kedushah for their hearts and brains as they grow.
I have been asked if this could be done at the supplementary school level and I have
to say, of course, but not to the same extent. I read on the Shefa listserv that Rabbi Gordon
Tucker says that our movement is making a mistake by putting too many resources into day
school. I disagree. I believe that we need to have the best supplementary schools we can,
since we still have the majority of our children in supplementary schools. We need those
schools to create environments of Kedushah. I know that there are great examples of this
throughout our country. However, even within those great institutions, the amount of Jewish
learning, the time of the day, the commitment of the other families, the quality of teaching,
cannot consistently be at the same level as a good day school. I often tell the parents in our
school that what used to happen at the kitchen table now needs to be taught in school. What
that means is that, beyond the formal instruction we provide, we teach the children how to
respect each other, how to talk to adults, and how to make socially responsible decisions. That
cannot be done in anything that is supplemental. It has to be done day in and day out, with
an expectation of Kedushah in every ben adam l’chavero encounter.
A day school environment allows us to create a sense of Kedushah all the time.
Its power rests in beginning from a place of holiness with all else emanating from that
holiness, while at the same time leading every impulse right back into the core. The general
constituency of our movement does not live its Judaism day in and day out. A child in a
Solomon Schechter Day School (and a child at Camp Ramah) is given that opportunity
because they are surrounded by it. We must ignite the sparks that will burn forever.
The founders of our school worked hard to recreate Camp Ramah within a year-
round educational setting. Our schools have wonderful role models, but the balance are
in neither their teens nor their twenties. We do not have counselors sitting with the kids at
lunch, creating the kind of ruach that can be created in camp. And, alas, every night, many
students go home to an atmosphere inconsistent with the one we work towards in school.
Here is how we can still strive for long lasting spirituality. Begin with the
kindergartners, whose souls and minds and hearts are one. Over the course of the elementary
years, nurture those souls, minds and hearts with spirit and love. The middle school years
have different challenges that can convince us we have failed. I don’t think so. I think that
those souls and minds and hearts will one day be reclaimed. They are waiting to be tapped
again by a passionate (hopefully) Conservative Jewish growing adult community. They will
search to become one again.
Perhaps it is our job to nurture the children when they are young through holy
acts of nurturing, teaching, caring, and connecting, so that they will be prepared to one day
discover authentic ways to express Kedushah.
Recommendations for Action:
1) “When we see God in each person before us, we reach a level of holiness in our
teaching as we recognize before Whom we stand, creating a culture of holiness. It is critical
that we implement these messages within a Solomon Schechter school - that Kedushah is a
part of everything we do. We cannot be afraid to say that this is Conservative Judaism.”
2) “A day school environment allows us to create a sense of Kedushah all the time…
A child in a Solomon Schechter Day School (and a child at Camp Ramah) is given that
opportunity because they are surrounded by it. We must ignite the sparks that will burn
forever.”
3) “Perhaps it is our job to nurture the children when they are young through holy
acts of nurturing, teaching, caring, and connecting, so that they will be prepared to one day
discover authentic ways to express Kedushah.”
Finding Spiritual Jewish Prayer
On the first day of Sukkot 5765 I davened at Yakar, a
spiritual haven in Jerusalem for niggun-singing daveners, and found
myself contemplating why my shul isn’t as good at catapulting my
The Conservative soul to the Heavens. It’s not that my home shul isn’t a spiritual
place that cares about its own Judaism. I’m blessed to be a part of
Movement a particularly elevating and elevated Jewish community. But there’s
Dreaming From a certain magic ingredient missing from my regular davening
Within experience.
That magic ingredient is something peculiar that
Rabbi Menachem transcends the halachic order of prayer, but can’t exist without
Creditor is an educator, its guiding structure. It transcends the specific melodies for
musician, and activist. certain prayers, but can’t exist without their interconnectedness.
He is a founder of Shefa: It transcends the immediate location, but can’t exist without
The Conservative Jewish intentional sacred-space-making. It transcends the person who
Activists’ Network, co- happens to be davening, but can’t exist without an old, incomplete
founder of KeshetRabbis, soul’s voice. And it transcends the individual’s kavannah, but can’t
and author of The Tisch, exist without many people’s individual spiritual clingings.
an email commentary Certain times in my life I’ve felt the emotional high and
of Torah and Jewish honest connection that accompanies tapping into God’s Power
Spirituality. As one through prayer.
half of Shirav, a Jewish The first time came upon me when a group of fellow
folk-music group, he Yeshiva High School graduates and I sat in a dark, candle-lit room
spreads passion, comfort, on Tisha B’Av at Camp Ramah Nyack. We sang old and new soft
and joy to audiences Jewish songs and desperately tried to evoke the sadness of ancient
around the country. Jewish loss with modern Jewish vitality. I only knew a few of the
Rabbi Creditor earned songs, but found myself carried higher – even by those I didn’t
a master’s degree in know.
Jewish Education from The second time occurred when I first visited the
The Davidson School Carlebach Moshav in Israel, founded by those who followed Rabbi
of Jewish Education Shlomo Carlebach from the House of Love and Prayer in San
and ordination from Francisco to establish a spiritual community in Israel, the Jewish
The Jewish Theological soul’s home. Friday night davening was the first time I ever had a
Seminary of America. real, “mamish,” Kabbalat Shabbat. A native son of the Moshav and
I began tapping and banging the tables in front of us during Lecha
Dodi, more and more rhythmically, until he broke into a drum solo
while the room full of men and women sang and danced with eyes
closed and hearts open. I only had to learn one niggun that night,
Page 22 because that one niggun lasted a full hour. And it hasn’t stopped for
shefanetwork.org me to this day.
The third time I experienced prayerful ecstasy was in the home of my teacher,
Dr. Devora Steinmetz, in Jerusalem during my year at Machon Schechter, JTS’s Jerusalem
campus. My wife and I had heard about a monthly minyan at Devora’s home, and our first
time participating gave us hope that vibrant non-Orthodox spiritual communities existed,
even if only in pockets around the world. About one hundred people showed up on the first
Shabbat of every Hebrew month, bringing with them their own siddurim, their own spiritual
needs – and their own love of davening. Devora never led, and rarely did anyone lead twice.
Devora simply provided the space and her passionate presence. And the roof would just lift off
of the apartment with the harmonies of learning, growing, Jews - young and old.
My most recent joyful moment occurred while sitting in Yakar, holding my father’s
hand. I already knew most of the tunes, having fallen in love long before with the precious
community Rabbi Mickey Rosen has helped create. But I had never davened with my father in
Israel. We’ve shared many powerful, emotional, transcendent, and loving experiences in our
relationship, but I didn’t realize how much his presence would touch my personal prayer life.
My heart aches with the memory of that ephemeral but exquisite visit to Heaven on Earth.
I believe that the following four ingredients, each learned from a personal experience
shared above, might successfully build a spiritually intense davening community:
1) Be willing to join an intense and new experience, with the acceptance of the
personal vulnerability that comes with encountering newness.
2) Use your whole self to pray – when your body remembers the experience,
you’ve crossed the line from prayer to davening. Hold tight to a general trajectory
without concretizing any one moment in its course as the final destination.
3) Find a community with a dependable center that seeks to empower. Safe space
for sacred experiencing need not be hierarchical.
4) Love your fellow davener. Reach to individuals comprising your chevreh,

acknowledging them as worthy of contributing without requiring sameness as a
criterion.
I need to actualize these ideals in my home community for my own soul’s sake.
When you’re raised as a “committed” Conservative Jew you struggle many times
from a personal confrontation with a largely marginally-committed Jewish membership,
when, usually down the block, there is a considerably smaller and more cohesive Orthodox
shul – where a larger percentage of members have known the power of prayer. But, in order to
join the Orthodox community, a non-Orthodox Jew has to be willing to sacrifice considerable
chunks of “self” – egalitarianism, post-modern spiritualism, committed pluralism, etc…
For a while, I was willing to give up those parts of me in order to find a community
of somewhat kindred souls searching for God. But this changed for me over a period of
years as I began to recognize that parts of my soul were being nourished by an Orthodox
community while other deeply important parts of my soul were still unsatisfied. It’s perhaps
similar to a child wanting to be just like their older sibling until they realize that resemblance
isn’t the same as identity. And so I returned to my spiritual roots and came out as a bona fide
Conservative Jew, lumps and all.
But again, parts of my soul are nourished by my Conservative community while
other deeply important parts of my soul remain hungry.
In many Conservative shuls there exists a group of members who know what it
is to daven with eyes closed, who struggle against the grain of legitimate and healthy ritual
committees, large numbers of B’nai Mitzvah and other desirable smachot, trained and expert
and fixed liturgical settings, and an overwhelming majority of their dues-paying community,
for a soul-satisfying davening experience.
It simply needs to happen.
I need it to happen.
Institutional Judaism is necessary for the successful engagement of most of the
Jewish world, but needs to adapt to the needs of this spiritually-knowledgeable and already-
engaged, albeit smaller, population.
Alternative minyanim aren’t a threat to larger shul populations – they testify to the
breadth of spiritual experiences one healthy institution can empower. Home-based community
chavurot don’t replace the shul as center – they are self-selecting groups that might overlap
separate shul communities and give hope to the elusive concept of purposeful Jewish unity.
At the end of the day the question must be: Have we helped as many Jewish souls as
possible find a connection to God?
The answer can only be “yes” if we’ve been thoughtful in focusing our efforts
towards providing searching Jewish souls a home.
Traditional and Egalitarian
Emily Fishman
I went to a Schechter school where we all—boys and
girls—learned how to put on tallit and tefillin in sixth grade. At
the time, I viewed it as a field trip: here’s what the boys do, similar
The Conservative to visiting a fire station and trying on the firefighter’s hat and
boots. Our sixth grade teacher was a woman, and probably not
Movement
coincidentally, she was the only female teacher at the school who
Dreaming From wrapped tefillin in the mornings. I don’t remember the notion of
Within chiyuv (obligation) ever being discussed with relation to men or
women at school. There were just expectations, plain and simple.
“This is what the boys do.” The only people leading in my synagogue
A wind instrument were men, and they wore tallitot because they were men. None of
enthusiast, beit the women ever led and I never saw any of them with a tallit on.
midrash haunter, Few girls wore tallitot at their B’not Mitzvah and I had few models
linguistics junkie, and to show me why I should.
overthinker of most A friend once told me, “All Israelis are Orthodox.” By
things ponderable, Emily that he meant that while Israelis may not all be observing the laws;
Fishman is a freshman they perceive Orthodoxy as the legitimate way to practice Judaism.
at Brandeis. In my limited scope of experience, what I see as the major threat to
Conservative Jews today is that many of us are “Orthodox” in the
way that Israelis are. We feel the need to be apologetic for reforming
the halachah as people to the (perceived) right of us practice it. We
write responsa proving that women can wear tzitzit, that we may
read Torah in a triennial cycle, or any number of things. But we
don’t engage the system with the same drive when we conclude
that our practice should conform to traditional practice. Rarely do
I hear an argument about why the movement should continue to
observe kashrut or yom tov sheni. And then there are all the things
too taboo to address (the legitimacy of “shabbos goy” is one that
comes to mind). I learned many things at Schechter, and it appears
that one of them was a rather “Orthodox” perspective on the Jewish
tradition.
When I got to high school there was a great traditional
egalitarian minyan, and a majority of the girls who frequented it
wore both tallit and tefillin (one or two even wore a tallit katan).
Now this was radical. It was obvious to me that a woman was
allowed to do these things, and yet I saw these tefillin-ed women
as imposters, women trying to be men. I’m not a man, I don’t wish
Page 25 I were, why should I pretend to be? The hardest hurdle was getting
shefanetwork.org past the pictures in my head (of men wearing tallitot and men
wrapping tefillin and men learning Talmud).
As a regular at the minyan, and later as a gabbai, I observed a pattern: Every few
months the same argument would break out: a new issue would come up and one person
would say that we can’t be both traditional and egalitarian. People would then choose sides
over whether we should lean more egalitarian or more traditional, and some others would cry
out, “Not only can we be both, we have to!” Then someone would say that we should just leave
things as they are, and that’s usually what would happen.
My personal idea of how to be both traditional and egalitarian is that we shouldn’t
make anyone put on a tallit to lead or have an aliyah at all. If you consider yourself obligated
to positive, time-bound mitzvot, you signal that by wearing tallit and tefillin at Shacharit.
Regardless of gender, if you signify that commitment in the way that Jews have done for
thousands of years, you can partake in the community in the most active ways (count for
the minyan, read Torah, lead Shacharit and Mincha, etc.). Choosing not to, while you are
clearly entitled to equal respect, conveys that you don’t count yourself in the inner circle and
I can’t either. I don’t believe that “traditional egalitarian” is an oxymoron. I think it requires
creativity, and that scares us.
I’ve been asked if I consider egalitarianism to be halachic. But who is defining the
word halachah? If halachah is the outcome of a process of weighing values in tension, then is
it ever truly possible to come up with one view and say, “Aha! That is the halachah!”? On the
other hand, if we can never hope to achieve unity of opinion, we exchange moral certainty for
an extreme version of pluralism that may go a bit too far.
I do not think the rabbis of antiquity were trying to rationalize the unreasonable or
that they would expect us to do the same. They did not reject available knowledge or ideologies
around them that they saw as reflecting the divine world in which they lived. Do I think rabbis
today are more traditional than Rashi and Ibn Ezra? No, I think that tradition was always
defined by tension and struggle, and that only in the last century or so has it been redefined to
mean, “Reject anything to which your grandfather did not have access.”
But how exactly is it that Conservative Jews rationalize change? Is it “loophole-
style” or is it, “let’s-get-rid-of-that-style?” Even if they end up with the same outcome, I feel
a lot more comfortable denouncing the whole institution of gender inequality than simply
finding loopholes and halachic allowances for each specific instance. (Though perhaps Rabbi
Yishmael would say that if we can find a loophole for each instance then we could build a
general principle from that.) There are men on this planet. There are women. (There are
also individuals who identify as neither man nor woman.) This implies that when facing
each - a valid, true facet of God - subjugating one to another is simply not right. And our
understanding of halachah should reflect that.
I believe that the Rabbis and I are engaged in the same process. When I say that
I’m committed to Judaism, what I am really saying is that I am committed to that form of
Judaism that implies both deliberate living and engagement and struggle with the tradition.
In fact, it demands them of me. One man did not decide the tradition, and it did not start out
as codes of law. Those came later.
What happens, though, when the system developed by these earlier God-strugglers
comes into conflict with my understanding of what it means to live with yirat shamayim
(reverence for God) and kavod habriyot (respect for human beings)? How much say does
Emily (or even a whole group of Emilys) have against The Tradition?
Perhaps like many young Americans, I am very hesitant to hand over the control of
my life to any other human being, especially a bunch of ancient rabbis. On the other hand,
I believe that the Rabbis knew things I do not. Not only were they older and possessed the life
experience that comes with age, but also any human being knows things I don’t because
of their different life and how they view the world. If they felt comfortable separating their
daughters’ lots in life from their sons’, why do I think I can overrule that? Who am I to say,
“Actually, the rules you subscribe to are blasphemous, not a true interpretation of the divine”?
Yet, on the other hand, I am very hesitant to hand over the control of my life to any other
human being.
Sometimes when I daven with the Conservative minyan at Brandeis or visit a friend
in a large Conservative community, I feel that many of the engaged voices simply don’t have
the experience to back up their positions. There is a lot of resentment of triennial Torah
reading – almost always from people who live in communities where they have never had to
prepare the full Kriah themselves. I’d much rather hear the whole Torah every year, but at
least I know what that entails in communities on the outskirts of learning. I listen to men
who fume about mechitzas – but in the end, most of them, given a choice between davening
in a minyan with a mechitza or praying alone, will join the minyan. And can I blame them?
I do it too, and I am one of those on the other side of the wall.
There is a daily Orthodox minyan at Brandeis. I daven with them on days that
the Conservative minyan doesn’t meet (and then go back to my room to lay tefillin and say
Shema again, much to the chagrin of people —both egalitarian and not— who tell me, “If
you are comfortable davening there you should be comfortable showing your true colors.”
Well, I’m not.). One day one of the men in my basic position (prefers to daven egalitarian but
will pray with a mechitza if that is the available minyan), was asked to lead Shacharit, and he
did. I was really hurt, not because he accepted, but because it occurred to me that no matter
how knowledgeable and committed I was, no matter how nice my voice was or how on time I
arrived, I was relegated to a different domain in this community. I suddenly understood how
men might not be misogynists while still thanking God she’lo asani isha (who did not make
me a woman) every morning. I wanted to be in his place.
Before that day, I had been davening three times a day with a minyan. These
days it is more frequently just me and God. And the truth is that, without a three-times-
daily community to keep me in that routine, davening sometimes falls to the bottom of my
to-do list, with all the other items that would be nice to do if only the day were a little bit
longer….
Recently at Brandeis, the community experimented with a Friday evening davening
with two mechitzas set up to form three sections (men, mixed, and women), a man leading
Mincha and Ma’ariv, and a woman leading Kabbalat Shabbat. The tunes used ranged from
Shlomo Carlebach to NFTY. It was beautiful davening, accompanied by a spectacular sunset
over a newly fallen foot and a half of snow. The setup made me kind of uneasy though, because
I thought that people might see this as an acceptable, compromise-form of egalitarianism. It
even occurred to me that I might rather daven with an Orthodox-style mechitza, because at
least there they aren’t pretending to be egalitarian. At the same time, it was a really creative
way to make everyone feel like those planning the davening had heard them and had provided
the first space where a majority of the community could welcome Shabbat together.
And I continue to ask: Where are the voices decrying the staleness of the system?
“Engage with it!” seems to have been our battle cry from the dawn of the religion until the last
century or so. I have been taught that the name “Yisrael” brands us forever as God-strugglers.
So how do serious Jews think they can get away with allowing the process to atrophy? It seems
to me that would require a heter before women leading davening.
Revitalizing the Conservative Synagogue
Fran Immerman
I am not a rabbi. I do not have a Ph.D. I am not a
Jewish educator. I have never written an article for a journal. What
qualifies me to share my thoughts and theories on the future of
The Conservative Conservative Judaism? I am a 47 year old married woman with
three children who cares passionately about Jewish life. I am a
Movement
former Regional President of USY who had a brief encounter with
Dreaming From the Divine thirty years ago. I am a graduate of the Wexner Heritage
Within Foundation who was given the gift of adult Jewish literacy. I am a
daughter who is escorting her father through his last stage of life:
Fran Immerman, a as he struggles to draw breath, I struggle to find strength, comfort
retired lawyer, enjoys and meaning in our awesome wisdom tradition as interpreted and
an active career as a mediated by the Conservative Movement.
professional volunteer in My passion for Jewish life began in Akron, Ohio in the
the Jewish community. 1960’s. Despite a failed Hebrew school education that was standard
She served as chairperson for the times, I had the immense good fortune to sing, for one
of the Cleveland-Beit year, in a junior choir under the direction of Cantor Jerry Kopmar.
Shean Partnership Although I was only in fifth grade, my soul was engaged through
2000 committee, song. In the years that followed, it was the singing that would
and now serves on engage my soul, whether during USY ruach or years later, in the
the Committee of the minyanim that populate southern Jerusalem. I was touched early
Board of Governors in life by the power of a passionate Jewish experience. While many
of the Jewish Agency. years would pass before I would be in a position to look again
Fran’s interest in Jewish for those types of Jewish experiences, the memory of those sacred
education is reflected encounters kept the passion alive.
in her involvement with As a USYer in the 1970’s, I found myself immersed
the Siegal College of in Conservative Judaism without a formal Conservative Jewish
Judaic Studies, JESNA, education (I stopped studying after my Bat Mitzvah and never
the American Pardes attended Camp Ramah). While I knew I was leading without
Foundation, and many a strong foundation to stand on, there was a force greater than
other worthy programs myself propelling me forward. I don’t remember ever speaking
and organizations. about God during those days, but I do remember embracing
Fran and her family live rituals and norms that define Jewish behavior, without really
in Moreland Hills, Ohio. understanding why. I developed a sense of Jewish peoplehood
and a relationship to Israel. One of my strongest memories from
those days is sitting on the floor of the hotel lobby at the 1975 USY
International Convention, close enough to the center of the circle
to be engulfed by the energy of hundreds of teenagers praising
Page 29 God through boisterous song. I clearly remember a feeling of
shefanetwork.org transcendence. Something happened to me that evening. Upon
reflection, 30 years later, I know I had an encounter with the Divine.
For the next 15 years, active engagement with Jewish life took a backseat to college,
law school and a mediocre legal career. While the childhood passion and the teenage
transcendence impacted my spirit, without the internal support of a foundational education
or the external support of a vibrant community, there was no place to grow my soul. Yet
something stayed alive within me. In the early 1990’s, finding myself happily embracing
married life and motherhood, I embarked upon my second career as a professional volunteer
in the Cleveland Jewish community. Early on, I sensed that being a Jewish leader meant
leading a Jewish life. While my husband grew up in a classical Reform congregation, there
was no question that our family would be raised within the Conservative framework. We joined
a large Conservative congregation in town and began to attend Shabbat morning services on a
regular basis. It wasn’t long before I was asked to serve on the Board of Trustees. During that
time, painfully aware of my Jewish illiteracy, I enrolled in the Melton Mini-School, which was
offered by what is now known as the Siegal College of Judaic Studies. While Melton was a good
beginning, the transformative educational experience was our participation in the Wexner
Heritage Foundation program. From 1993 through 1997, my husband and I received a Jewish
education that has changed the course of our lives. From some of the greatest Jewish scholars
of our time, drawn from across the denominational spectrum, I received the Jewish education
that I never had. I became literate in the conceptual and textual language of Judaism. Jewish
life became the lens through which we began to view the world. This experience, coupled with
active involvement in the Young Leadership Cabinet of the United Jewish Appeal (now the
United Jewish Communities), put me squarely in Jewish time and Jewish space and allowed
me to develop relationships with people fully engaged in Jewish living. I began to spend
small blocks of time in Israel on Jewish Community Federation related projects and found
myself drawn to Jerusalem for Shabbat. I davened in participatory kehillot that facilitated
encounters with the Divine through transcendent sacred song. I spent many hours around
various Shabbat tables, conversing, singing and of course sharing meals with people who
shared my passion for full engagement in Jewish life. Then, in the spring of 1999, I purchased
a second home in southern Jerusalem so that we could immerse ourselves and our children in
that fully engaged normal Jewish life that can only be lived in Israel.
The first summer we spent in our apartment was the glorious and hopeful summer
of 2000. When the intifada erupted at the end of September of that year, my dream of the ideal
second home in Jerusalem became somewhat of a challenging nightmare. The only time our
family changed our plans was during Pesach and the summer of 2002. But the quality of our
time in Israel changed. As the chair of the Cleveland-Beit Shean Partnership 2000 program,
many of my trips during those years involved paying shiva calls, attending funerals, delivering
checks to families from the Jewish Agency’s fund for Victims of Terror. As a foreign resident of
the German Colony, walking down Emek Refaim became an exercise in defiance; drinking a
cup of coffee at Cafe Hillel became an act of remembrance. Yet the wonder and awe of living
completely in Jewish time and Jewish space never disappeared; if anything, the joy of living a
fully engaged Jewish life was intensified by the pain of it all.
In light of the changes in my Israel life, I now had to figure out a way to live a fully
engaged normal Jewish life in Cleveland. Our family migrated from the large congregation to
a smaller, more participatory congregation. Taking advantage of my new kehillah’s structure
and my adult Jewish education, I began to read Torah and Haftarah, to lead services and to
deliver divrei Torah. Our family has found ways to mark Jewish time and Jewish space more
concretely in our Cleveland home as well as in our Jerusalem home (although it is much
easier in Jerusalem!). We have found within our congregation a group of people who value
the Conservative pattern of Jewish life (and some variants thereof) as much as we do.
While my response to the trauma of those years created much positive change in my
outer life, the encounter with the violence and terror of those times battered my soul. On the
morning of Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah (they are celebrated on the same day in Israel)
5764, I woke up in my Jerusalem home shaking. Our family had traveled to Jerusalem for
Sukkot that year; for the first time in all my sojourns in Jerusalem, I was off. I was depressed.
I was engaged in an internal dialogue over whether to follow through with my plans to divide
our family and spend 5 months with two of my children in Jerusalem while my husband and
our oldest daughter remained in Cleveland. That sacred morning, a force greater than myself
was speaking to me in a booming silent voice that was overwhelming. Guidance was coming
to me in a way that I had never known before. I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to return
to Cleveland and repair my battered soul. My dream of an extended stay in Jerusalem would
have to wait for another time in my life. My inner reality was compelling me to look deeply
within and to begin to do the difficult work of healing.
During the dark months that followed, I withdraw from communal Jewish life,
declaring a sabbatical. I needed time to start exploring this force that shook me on that
morning in Jerusalem. Under the compassionate guidance of a healing professional, I began
to read about the wisdom of the body, which led me to works on intuitive healing, which lead
me to works on spiritual anatomy, which led me to works on sacred contracts, which led me
to works on archetypes, which led me to works on myths, which led me back to my Sacred
Myth. In secular spiritual literature, I was once again encountering the Divine. As I learned
about the seven chakras and the energetic realm of existence, I began to develop my personal
understanding of what it means to encounter and engage in a relationship with the Divine.
The more I read, the more I came to understand that Judaism is an incredibly rich wisdom
tradition that contains the simple universal truths that so many of us with battered souls
are seeking. The more I read, the more I came to understand that the Conservative Judaism
that I grew up in and that I am a part of today is severely handicapped by an overreliance on
rationality and intellectualism. As I began to heal, the more I came to see that Conservative
Judaism, its norms and parameters, has enormous potential to engage not only our minds,
but our hearts and most fundamentally our souls.
Nothing I am saying here is new. I am sure that countless rabbis, scholars, educators,
therapists, spiritual leaders and New Age facilitators have written about the similarities, the
synergies and the synchronicities of various wisdom traditions. Perhaps what is new is
the request, made by a mainstream 47 year old mother of three who wants to stay firmly
grounded in Conservative Judaism, to make room for something new, something passionate,
something more intuitive. Something that will touch the masses of families that affiliate with
Conservative synagogues but have never had a passionate Jewish experience in their lives.
Something that will allow our rabbis and our members to speak freely about encounters with
the Divine, about a relationship with God. Something that will allow Conservative Jews to
learn and become a part of our Master Story, of our Sacred Myth and then to pattern their lives
in a way that follow our normative patterns of Jewish living, thus creating a holy community
of shared values. Something that will allow the silent voice of one’s intuition to be infused
with the sacred song of the soul.
The institutions of our movement are well aware of the need for something new.
In March of 2005, the USCJ’s Commission to Inspire Commitment to Halachah released the
findings of four focus groups conducted by Yonatan Gordis. The study, entitled “Conservative
Jews and Halachah” was designed to give the USCJ some insight into the dangerous gap between
the practice of active Conservative Jews and one of the fundamental principles of Conservative
Judaism. In sum, the participants, representing married and single people between the ages
of 25 and 45 from four distinctly different geographic regions across North America, reveal
a very deep commitment to their personal autonomy. While engaged in different levels of
observance within the tradition, overwhelmingly, this representative group is not prepared to
sacrifice their sense of autonomy to a set of religiously dictated limits. While some are willing
to follow certain patterns of observance in order to have a relationship with halachah, it is
with a great degree of negotiation within a family structure. The most striking finding was
the radical disconnect between observance and the presence of God in their lives. As the report
states: “However, the vast majority of participants, even the most halachic among them, do
not believe in or experience a link between halachah and God. God is an important spiritual
element in their lives, and halachah is a series of Jewish practices.” Clearly, if this is how
the active members of our synagogues are living their lives, our movement needs something
new.
Why have I not only stayed within Conservative Judaism, but have come out of my
sabbatical to become a voice of the Everywoman? Why have I found meaning in our troubled
spiritual framework when so many others have found it meaningless? Why do I care about
the future of Conservative Judaism? And what do I suggest?
I have stayed here because of my primal transformative experiences and because
I have found a congregation that is small, participatory and filled with members who share
my passion for Jewish life. I have found meaning because charismatic teachers gave me the
tools for my search. Without my adult Jewish education, my own psychological/spiritual
study could have led me far from my natural spiritual home. I care about the future of
Conservative Judaism because I firmly believe it offers a way to navigate life that gives it
meaning, structure, beauty, joy and hopefully strength to endure sorrow and grief. As I face
the reality of my human father’s mortality, I turn to my wisdom tradition to give me the
assurance of my Cosmic Archetypal Father’s eternity. While those words are not used in my
Conservative synagogue, that is the language that resonates for me. This leads me to my three
action steps toward a revitalized Conservative Judaism:
1) Mainstream Conservative Judaism needs to put God back into Judaism in a

front and center position in a natural and comfortable way. Spiritual leaders and
followers need to find a way to speak about God without feeling like evangelicals.
While there are many metaphors woven into our standard liturgy, many of them feel
dated, hollow and stilted. Language is the only tool we have to capture that which
truly cannot be captured. We should be discriminating and wise in our choice of
words. We should also embrace silence and the intuitive voice that comes from
within. However, we should be wary of communally forced quiet time. To make
room for God, we need to lessen our dependence on rationality and intellectualism.
Yet we need to show how our Sacred Myth, with God at the center, is told everyday
through a relationship with halachah.
2) Congregations, no matter how big or small, need to make room for and encourage
their members to lead tefillot, read Torah and Haftarah and deliver divrei Torah. The
more we move from cantors who perform to cantors who engage, from rabbis who
conduct to rabbis who facilitate, the healthier our movement will be.
3) We need to sing. We need to take time to teach our congregations new melodies
that can be sung together in ways that give our souls a chance to soar. We need to
take communal risks that we hope will bring passion and joy into our communal
settings. We need to know that while our minds find the words and our hearts
beat the rhythm, the melody of the song emanates from our souls. And our soul is
strengthened by the act of singing, together or alone, aloud or in silence. May our
movement find a way to continue to compose these songs for our souls. And may
another fifth grader be transformed by singing those songs in the days to come.

A Manifesto for the Future: Drop ‘Conservative’ Label
to Tap True Meaning and Reach the Faithful
Rabbi David Wolpe
In early November, I spoke at the Jewish Theological
Seminary in New York. The topic was “The Future of Conservative
The Conservative Judaism.” I prepared for the talk by asking colleagues, friends and
congregants to define Conservative Judaism in one sentence. It was
Movement
a dispiriting experience.
Dreaming From Some had no answer at all. Others found themselves
Within entangled in paragraphs, subclauses and a forest of semicolons.
Sensible people began to sound like textbooks.
Rabbi David Wolpe is the Many of us have learned that Conservative Judaism is
Rabbi of Sinai Temple in either a complex ideology (at least we never get a straightforward
Los Angeles, California. explanation) or simply a movement that stands in the center
Previously he taught at the between Reform and Orthodoxy. An early classic of Conservative
Jewish Theological Semi- Judaism was titled, “Tradition and Change,” but tradition and
nary of America in New
change is a paradox, not a banner of belief.
York, where he also served
Conservative Judaism is crying out for renewal and
as assistant to the Chancel-
lor. He has taught at the revitalization. Some of the most spiritually charged, socially
University of Judaism in sensitive prayer groups and institutions in the country choose to
Los Angeles, and at Hunter not affiliate themselves with the Conservative movement. Yet they
College in New York. Rabbi are led by rabbis ordained by the Conservative movement and
Wolpe is the author of six attended by congregants who grew up in that movement.
books, lectures widely at In synagogues that do define themselves as Conservative,
universities, synagogues the congregants often expect halachic observance from their
and institutes throughout rabbis, yet they are not moved to emulate them. Conservative
the country, and was
Jews are increasingly confused and uncertain about their spiritual
named “one of the fifty
direction.
most influential Jews in
America” by the Forward As I posed these problems and questions, some turned
an in 2004 delivered the the question back to me.
keynote for the General As- “Who are you, and what do you believe?”
sembly of Jewish Leaders When I reflect upon the beliefs with which I was
raised and how I have grown in my faith, I realize that the word
“Conservative” does not best fit who I am and what I believe.
I am a Covenantal Jew.
Covenantal Judaism is the Judaism of relationship.
Three covenants guide my way — our way: The covenant at Sinai
brings us to our relationship to God, the covenant with Abraham
to our relationship with other Jews and the covenant with Noah to
Page 34 our relationship with all humanity.
shefanetwork.org
First Covenant: Relationship to God
The Jewish relationship to God may be seen as a friendship, a partnership, though
of obviously unequal partners. In the Midrash, God swears friendship to Abraham, is called the
“friend of the world” (Hag. 16a) and even creates friendships between people (Pirke D’Rabbi
Eliezer). Friendship is one aspect of the Divine-human connection.
The Torah speaks of God as a parent, a lover, a teacher and an intimate sharer of
our hearts. When we speak of friendship or partnership, all of these relationships and more
must be understood.
The terms of all friendships are fixed by history — we define our partnerships by
our memories. One friend can speak a single word, “Colorado,” and the other knows that the
word refers to a trip taken together 15 years before. However, vital friendships do not dwell
solely in the past. They are always creating new memories, entering new phases and enriching
what has gone before.
Some Jews believe that everything important in the friendship between God and
Israel has already been said. The Torah, the Talmud, the classical commentators and codes
have said all the vital, foundational words. Our task now is simply to fill in a few blanks, but
otherwise the work is done. We are the accountants of a treasure already laid up in the past.
This is not a covenantal understanding. It is a Judaism frozen in time, as though
all the clocks stopped in the 18th century.
Conversely, there are those who think the past weightless, because times have so
radically changed. This is a friendship that tries to recreate itself each day, dictated by the
demands of the moment. While the past is acknowledged, it is seen largely as something to be
overcome, not to be cherished and integrated into the present. This creates a relationship with
predictably thin and wan results.
Covenantal Judaism believes in the continuous partnership between God and Israel.
When we light Shabbat candles, God “knows” what we mean — we have been doing it for
thousands of years. It is part of the grammar of relationship. Our past is the platform from
which we ascend. The covenant at Sinai is the first, reverberating word.
Yet there is so much more to say. There is no reason why someone as wise and
important as the Rambam (who lived in the 12th century) could not be born tomorrow. This
person could both incorporate Rambam’s teachings and move beyond them. There is no
reason why something as epochal as the Exodus could not happen next year — witness the
creation of the modern State of Israel.
Each day, we tremble with the anticipation of something new and powerful on
the horizon. Each night, we pray with the awareness that the yearning of the generations
sanctifies our words. We create new rituals because today must not only stand upon yesterday
but must reach toward tomorrow.
The classical Jewish view teaches “the decline of the generations” — since Sinai we
have grown further from revelation and stand, as a result, on a lower level of holiness. This is
not a true covenantal understanding. The covenant does not fade or weaken with time. Our
future is as promising as our past is powerful.
For the Covenantal Jew, dialogue between the Jewish people and God began in the
Bible and continues today. The Bible is, as Rabbi A.J. Heschel put it, the record of the search of
human beings for God and of God for human beings.
Second Covenant: Relationship Between Jews

All Jews are involved in the Abrahamic covenant — not only those Jews whom we
like or those of whom we approve but all Jews.
Jews have always fought within our own community, and undoubtedly, we always
will. Devotion to Torah does not free us from the constraints of human nature.
Still, a Covenantal Jew seeks active dialogue with Orthodox, Reform and
Reconstructionist, as well as secular Jews. The covenant does not depend upon movements or
ideologies; it is a covenant of shared history and shared destiny.
The emphasis on the responsibility of Jews to other Jews is uncomfortable for some.
It seems parochial and ungenerous.
However, we are built to care in concentric circles: first one’s own family, then one’s
community and then larger groups — rippling out to the world, always modified by the
degree of need. Aniyei ircha kodmim teaches the Talmud: Care first for the poor of one’s own
city.
Pallid universalism is not an ideal but a disaster. Too many Jews remind me of
Charles Dickens’ Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House, who is always charging off to do good works,
while neglecting her own wretched children at home.
I remember when I was teaching at Hunter College in New York, a student
approached me and asked: “Today there is an anti-apartheid rally and a rally for Soviet Jewry.
I’m planning to attend the anti-apartheid rally. Can you give me a good reason to go to the
Soviet Jewry rally?”
“Yes,” I answered. “If you attend the anti-apartheid rally, who will go to the Soviet
Jewry rally?”
There are Jews who simply shun large parts of the Jewish world that do not meet
their expectations. On both the right and the left, many simply ignore or discount the other
side of the religious or political spectrum. But Republican or Democrat, Satmar or secular,
affiliations invalidate neither God’s covenant nor our ties to one another.
This sense of Jewish responsibility explains why Solomon Schechter, the first major
figure of American Conservative Judaism, was an outspoken Zionist. Ahavat Yisrael, love of
Israel, is not an emotional impulse but a covenantal responsibility. That is why Covenantal
Judaism is passionate about the land of Israel and the people Israel.
Covenantal Jews give priority in caring to our own, but we do not care exclusively
for our own.
Third Covenant: Relationship With the Non-Jewish World

The first covenant was not made with the Jewish people. God sent a rainbow in the
time of Noah as a sign to the world, to all of humanity. Noah lived 10 generations before the
first Jew.
The meaning is clear: We have a responsibility toward others of whatever faith; we
have a covenantal relationship to the non-Jewish world.
The very first question in the Bible is a question God asks of Adam — Ayeka —
Where are you? This is not a literal question but a spiritual one, a question God asks us at each
moment in our lives.
The second question in the Bible is in a way an answer to the first. The second
question is one that human beings ask of God. Cain turns to God and asks, “Am I my brother’s
keeper?”
If you answer that question, you will know where you are. Do you care for those who
are in need, those who are anguished and alone?
Jewish World Watch has organized our response to the calamity of Darfur. Jewish
leaders have shouted to the world, bringing attention to genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda,
and championed the recognition of the Armenian genocide. These and countless similar
causes and efforts are not strategic or to reflect credit on ourselves. They are sacred Jewish
obligations. Jews who care for the Jewish community alone are neglecting the first, most
comprehensive covenant.
Sadly, many traditional Jewish communities seem to have little concern for the
non-Jewish world.
The rabbis of the Talmud insist that compassion is a characteristic of the people of
Israel. The first statement about human beings is that each is made in God’s image. Invidious
comparisons between the worth of Jews and others are not only malignant but fundamentally
at odds with the Covenantal tradition.
Jews receive as well as give to those outside the Jewish community. Covenantal
Judaism is eager to learn wisdom — not only practical but spiritual — from the non-Jewish
world.
Judaism has many precedents for religious learning from non-Jews, beginning
in the Bible. The world begins with Adam, not with Abraham. Noah, the first man called
righteous, is not a Jew.
The chapter of Torah containing the Ten Commandments is named Yitro (Jethro)
— this central chapter containing the revelation from Sinai is named after a non-Jew. The
traditional response when someone asks after our welfare, “baruch Hashem” (praise God)
is mentioned three times in the Bible. All three times it is said by a non-Jew: Noah (Genesis
9:26), Eliezer (Genesis 24:27) and Jethro (Exodus 18:10). Thus, even when we praise God, we
do it in words that were first spoken by those in our community who were not raised as Jews.
The list could be easily multiplied throughout Jewish history: Maimonides learned
from the Islamic scholar Averroes, Kabbalah learned from Sufi mysticism, Heschel learned
from Reinhold Niebuhr. Covenantal Jews glory in this interchange, which is not threatened by
the insights of others but enriched by them.
The Covenant and Jewish Law

The overriding commandment of Covenantal Judaism is to be in relationship with
each other and with God. The more halachah (Jewish law) we “speak,” the more full and rich
the relationship. Our faith is neither a checklist nor a simple formula. It is a proclamation
and a path.
Changes in Jewish law to include women, from bat mitzvah celebrations to
rituals for miscarriage, as well as changes that enable people to drive to synagogue or use
instruments in the service as our ancestors did, are elements in a covenantal understanding
of the tradition. This is a tradition not rigid but responsive and alive, not repetitious but
committed to dialogue with the past, each other and God.
Dialogue with God is not an act of chutzpah, not a conviction of equality. Rather
God ennobles us by choosing us as partners for dialogue.
Abraham argues with God; Moses opposes God’s decree, and throughout Jewish
history, in medieval poetry and modern literature, Jews insist that God wants not puppets nor
robots but human beings who bring their passion, confusion and love to the task of Israel,
which in Hebrew means wrestling with God.
Jewish authenticity is not measured by the number of specific actions one performs
but the quality of the relationships expressed through those actions. Recall what the Torah
says of Moses: In praising our greatest leader, The Torah does not recount that he performed
the most mitzvot of anyone who ever lived, or even that his ethics exceeded all others. We are
told that Moses saw God panim el panim face to face. The merit of Moses is in the unparalleled
relationship he had with Israel and with God.
The Covenant and the Future

When the covenant is first presented to Noah, God promises not to destroy the world.
In that promise is a chilling omission: God does not promise that we will not destroy the
world.
As Rabbi Joshua of Kutna points out, the rainbow is a half circle. That is God’s
promise to us. God’s half must be completed by our own intertwining colors.
The relationships we build through sanctity, compassion and love are our reciprocal
rainbow. Involving all colors, embracing our community and beyond, it teaches us that in
covenant is the secret of salvation.
Covenant is the spine of Judaism. No idea is more important to the development of
the tradition. Conservative Judaism, as it has grown, has taken the covenantal idea seriously,
sometimes without even realizing it. The time has come to claim it, to develop it in powerful
and new ways and to fashion a movement of Judaism that can change Jewish life in America
and beyond.
Conservative Judaism remains a large and important international Jewish
organization of synagogues, schools, camps, youth groups, adult organizations and centers
of training for scholars and clergy. By placing covenant at the center of this worldwide Jewish
initiative, we will be reframing the enterprise of creating a Judaism that closes the door neither
to the past nor to the future. Such openness and conviction are vital for the future of the Jewish
people, a covenanted nation born of passion for improving this world under the sovereignty of
God.
This is the time for Covenantal Judaism.
To My Rabbis and Teachers
Jonathan Lopatin
For the past five years, since retiring from a career on
Wall Street, I have been privileged to study in the Graduate School
of the Jewish Theological Seminary. I have seen first-hand the best
The Conservative of what the Conservative movement has to offer. I have studied with
superb teachers, learned beside gifted students — people inspired
Movement
by a love and passion for Jewish tradition, text and community. I
Dreaming From have served with generous and concerned lay people on the Board
Within of Overseers of List College, which has given me the opportunity to
work closely with undergraduates, many of whom are the products
Jonathan Lopatin of USY, Ramah Camps, and Schechter schools. I benefit, week
is a former partner in and week out, from the warmth, kindness, and wisdom of the
at Goldman, Sachs clergy and lay leaders at my own synagogue. I am proud that my
and Company and is children’s identities have been forged at the Solomon Schechter
currently a graduate School of Westchester and in USY. Each week in the Jewish media, I
student at the Jewish read about the many challenges facing the Conservative movement
Theological Seminary. and the larger American Jewish community. Currently the board of
He is Secretary of the trustees of the JTS is in the process of selecting a new chancellor,
Board of the New Israel who will guide the movement for the next generation. In the
Fund and President of broader community, with each generation, the ties that bind Jews to
the Board of the Nesiya one another — and to Jewish tradition — are increasingly frayed.
Institute. He also serves Declining Jewish literacy and commitment is a major source of
on the Board of Overseers concern to the rabbinate and to our community at large.
of List College of the Jewish There is much debate about how to respond to these
Theological Seminary challenges: Should we focus our resources on those already actively
and has served as an engaged in Jewish life, or should we use those resources to reach
advisor to Netivot, an out, even in small ways, to those on the periphery of organized
Israel education program Jewish life? Should we accept intermarriage as a prevailing social
run jointly by the Hillels reality and engage these families in Jewish life? By doing so will
of Harvard and Yale. we legitimize intermarriage, something that traditional Jewish
institutions have generally viewed as a threat, rather than an
reprinted with opportunity? How should our institutions guide the changing
relationship between American Jews and Israel?
permission from
There is no shortage of material here for sermons,
Shma.com
educational programs, and, indeed, for sleepness nights for both
you, our teachers, and for us, who depend on your wisdom and
guidance. It seems to me that at the heart of many of these issues
there are some common themes that have characterized Jewish
Page 40 life for a very long time: the conflict between the universal and
shefanetwork.org the particular, between what we learn from within our evolving
tradition and what develops as that tradition interacts with the world around us. The struggle
to maintain Jewish authenticity is a struggle to achieve a suitable balance between the
claims of our tradition and of our personal and collective experiences in the broader culture.
For many of us, these problems are challenging precisely because we see that the broader
culture of modern Western society is more good than bad, and because our tradition, which is
constantly evolving, cannot be entirely good. Otherwise, what need would there be for it ever
to evolve? As Jews, we are called upon to see the world through the prism of tradition, but also
to open our minds and souls to truths learned from what we experience in the world around
us. As rabbis, we expect you to guide us in this process.
The Conservative rabbinate, through the Committee on Law and Standards of the
Rabbinical Assembly, is currently reconsidering a fateful issue that pits a conservative (small
“c”) reading of our tradition against the changing mores of the broader society: currently, the
Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and the University of Judaism in Los Angeles — the
two institutions which ordain Conservative clergy — do not train openly gay rabbinical or
cantorial students. The institutions of the movement have chosen to hold this debate largely
in private, within the rabbinate. But rabbis need to understand that this policy is a source of
anguish and shame for many Conservative Jews — homosexuals and heterosexuals. Many
of us have committed ourselves to do everything possible to undo the discrimination to which
gays have for centuries been subjected. How, then, can we continue to be a part of a religious
movement whose institutions enforce policies that we consider to be so profoundly unjust?
Undoubtedly, this is a volatile subject — and I am not inviting compromise.
Indeed, I am writing to you now because I believe that to compromise on an issue like this is
to evade the reality of very real and important differences among us. For Conservative rabbis
this is doubly difficult because the question of homosexuality may be at the tip of the iceberg
of larger unresolved theological issues that lie at the heart of the movement.
The “consensus statement” passed by the Law Committee in 1992 frames the current
policies of the movement toward homosexuality. In addition to forbidding gay ordination, the
statement prohibits Conservative rabbis from performing commitment ceremonies (although,
thankfully, some of you disregard this policy). It also permits rabbis and schools to deny
employment of gays as teachers or youth leaders. In addition, the statement affords rabbis
the right to deny Torah honors and leadership positions to members because of their sexual
orientation. I don’t know how often these restrictions are actually adopted, but the policy is
itself hurtful and damaging to gays and to those who love them. The statement ends with
the astounding assertion (in view of what precedes it) that “gays and lesbians are welcome
in our congregations, youth groups, camps, and schools.” The net impact of the policy is
anything but welcoming. The fact that gays and their families still actively participate in the
Conservative movement is testament to their fealty to Judaism and to the warmth of individual
congregations, rabbis, and teachers, despite this openly discriminatory and demeaning
policy.
I understand that the intent of this policy is not malicious, despite the damage that
it does. Moreover, it clearly has deeps roots in Jewish tradition. This 1992 “consensus” was
the outcome of careful study and consideration by highly trained, serious, and well-meaning
people, experts on biblical and rabbinic sources. Few laypeople (and indeed few rabbis) are
technically equipped to engage in the complex halachic debate upon which it is based.
We can, however, see that the traditional Jewish disapproval of homosexuality centers on
two brief and perplexing passages (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13) that prohibit some type of
sexual behavior between men. The rabbis of the ancient world never assumed the authority
— as they did with other restrictive biblical passages — to soften or limit the effects of
these passages. In fact, they elaborated on them and extended them to a general ban on
all homosexual behavior (including sexual relations between women, to which the biblical
passages do not refer at all). In the modern era, despite the rapidly growing social acceptance
of homosexuality in Western society, traditionalists today remain unwilling to interpret these
passages in a way that would soften or eliminate their practical impact. They believe that to
do so is beyond their authority as interpreters of a legal tradition that draws its authority from
its connection to the Divine revelation to Moses at Sinai. Simply put, they hold that they can
no sooner make homosexual acts acceptable than they can make pork kosher.
This stance, while coherent and theologically lucid, cannot be reconciled with the
beliefs of many lay people (and many rabbis) in the Conservative movement. We simply do
not believe that the loving same sex relationships to which we, or our beloved friends and
family, are committed, are abominable in the eyes of God. We take some comfort from the fact
that not all Conservative authorities agree with this “consensus.” Many rabbis assure us that,
in the long run, “where there is a rabbinic will, there is a halachic way” and that, eventually,
these policies will change. Some rabbis teach that the biblical prohibitions should be applied
narrowly, that they prohibit only certain sexual acts between men, but not necessarily all
homosexual acts, and that they do not concern women at all. Others interpret the passages
to refer only to certain types of coercive or exploitative relationships, but not to all same sex
relationships. Still others tell us that as Conservative Jews we are free the hold these passages in
abeyance, relying on other sources in Jewish tradition that show us that the suffering caused
by the rejection of gay people in our community is itself a violation of our responsibility to
treat each other with love, dignity and understanding. We understand that the gulf separating
those who read the sources narrowly and those who read them more leniently is, at this point,
very wide indeed.
The “consensus statement” is, quite simply, two-faced and psychologically callous.
It alienates gays and their families from the Conservative movement and, in some cases, from
Judaism itself. How can you say in one breath that rabbis can deny Torah honors and leadership
positions to gays, while in the next say that they are fully welcome in our communities? How
can gays and their families feel welcome if they know that gays are excluded from ordination,
lay leadership, or even from Torah honors?
Friends in the rabbinate tell us to be patient, to give rabbis time to consider these
issues in the context of our legal traditions, to carefully weigh various new analyses of the
relevant sources. We are reminded how much is at stake: The Conservative movement, unlike
Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism (which already embrace equality regardless of sexual
orientation) is committed to the authority of Judaism as a legally binding system. We are
told that acting hastily would endanger this basic principle. Still, the slow — and closed
— process through which the Committee on Law and Standards is reconsidering this policy
tests the patience of all of us who have a stake in its outcome. Please remember, this is not
an abstract issue; these lay people are the flesh and blood of our communities. At the risk of
being blunt, you must not prolong our suffering in order to spare yourselves the difficulty of
acknowledging that some of your colleagues will never accept a more open policy on this
issue. There are some things that are worse than divisiveness.
The corrosive impact of these policies is felt every day. Students who feel strongly
about this issue choose to be rabbis in other movements; several have chosen to drop out of the
movements’ rabbinical schools rather than to continue to hide their sexual orientation. Gay
people and their families are choosing other synagogues to avoid the uncomfortable position
of asking their rabbis for support that may not be forthcoming. Some families confide in
sympathetic congregational rabbis, who are forced to distance themselves from policies
with which they don’t fully agree, and which make it difficult for them to minister to their
congregants.
For now, many of those who deeply object to the movements’ stance remain
committed to our communities and to the Conservative movement. We have chosen to
stay “on the inside” in the hope that change is on the way. But this situation cannot last
forever. We fear that this issue will be shunted aside for another generation for the sake of a
“consensus” that is more apparent than real. Eventually you will have to choose, individually
and collectively, between serving those of us — gay and straight — who care deeply about
this issue and maintaining a thin veneer of unity. No one takes any pleasure in this situation,
but it is necessary for you to confront these difficult realities. Rabbis and teachers are not
appointed from on high. Your authority derives not only from your wisdom and your training,
but also from the trust that we place in you by forming communities under your guidance. As
lay people, we may not be able to show you exactly how to effect the necessary changes, but we
can show you how much is at stake. We pray that you will not let us down.
On Being a Conservative Jew
Rose Shoshana Wolok
I came to the Conservative movement as a teenager
from a modern Orthodox home. The first thing that impressed me
was the integrated seating in the sanctuary. The next thing was
The Conservative the Junior Congregation, where high school students learned to
conduct services; the girls gave summaries of the Sedra. Next was
Movement
the opportunity of hearing sermons by two outstanding rabbis on
Dreaming From the great ideas of Judaism. This gave me an intellectual foundation
Within for my emotional allegiance to our Jewish heritage. Celebrating my
advent to bat mitzvah responsibilities in a Consecration service was
Rose Shoshana Wolok a great inspiration to me.
holds a bachelor’s degree I married a man who was also from a modern Orthodox
in English and Semitics, home. We decided to establish a Conservative Jewish home of joyful
and a master’s degree in ritual observance. We were blessed with three children. Our goal in
Educational Psychology, their home upbringing was that, when they grew up, they would
specializing in reading decide to perpetuate our Jewish heritage. Over the years of our
disabilities from Wayne marriage, we have affiliated with two outstanding Conservative
State University. She is a congregations, both within walking distance when we joined. We
retired reading specialist. made attendance at Shabbat services a weekly family event. We
She was the editor of invested in the excellent educational opportunities for our three
the now defunct Zionist children: Synagogue nursery school, Synagogue school from
Viewpoint (Michigan Grades 1 to 12 for our older children, day school for our youngest
region of the American (when it became available), United Synagogue Youth with its
Zionist Movement), and Israel Pilgrimage, Camp Ramah, and the Jewish Theological
has held synagogue Seminary. The “harvest” is that our children and their spouses
and Zionist leadership (and grandchildren now) have Shabbat in their homes, maintain
positions. kosher kitchens and eat only kosher food elsewhere, are loyal Jews,
and fervent Zionists. Indeed, our daughter and her family have
lived in Israel since 1968. With the foundation of an observant
reprinted with
Jewish home, the Conservative movement can produce generations
permission from
of authentic and loyal Jews.
Shma.com It has been personally gratifying for me to see the
advancement of women in participation in the synagogue,
culminating in the ordination of women. I myself, starting as a child
in a Hassidic shtiebel in Poland, where the women and children
were in an adjoining room and could only hear the service, became
bat mitzvah the same year as my granddaughter, and have lead
services and done Torah and Haftarah readings. Quite a journey for
Page 44 a woman in one lifetime.
shefanetwork.org In what direction would I like to see the Conservative
movement go? Let us remember that, since Jews were granted citizenship in the nations of
the Diaspora, a huge majority have not remained Orthodox. Thus, for Conservative laypeople
to accept halachah as their guide and to conduct their lives accordingly, it must be a
Conservative halachah. It must be based on the Conservative concepts of “The Bible contains
the word of God” and “Change within continuity.” Conservative halachah must be dynamic,
pro-active, and connected to the realities of Diaspora life for our laypeople. And the hearts of
our laypeople must be won to this halachah with education and persuasion. Then they will
understand what it means to be “a kingdom of priests,” to lead lives of holiness in the midst
of the community.
Halachah and the Conservative Movement
Aaron Weininger
The Conservative Movement is not a halachic movement
and accomplishes nothing in claiming to be halachic. There is an
important distinction for us to make; there is a difference between a
The Conservative purely halachic movement and one that embraces and responds to
the challenges of an evolving and progressive halachah.
Movement
Is a halachic movement one that ordains women as rabbis
Dreaming From and welcomes them to serve as witnesses in religious ceremonies? Is
Within a halachic movement one that uproots the Biblical prohibition of
marriage between a priest to a divorcee or Jew-by-choice and declares
Aaron Weininger is inoperative the Biblical concept of mamzerut? And is a halachic
a junior, studying movement one that made all of these important innovations and
Anthropology and Jewish more and then slammed the door on the gay and lesbian community
Near Eastern Studies, at in the name of halachic loyalty? No matter how morality and
Washington University sociology have molded its responses to other issues, some in the
in St. Louis. Aaron is a Conservative Movement have transformed into guardians of a cruel
member of the St. Louis and cold halachah rendered immutable. Mainstream Conservative
Hillel Conservative theology of a continuous revelation articulated by Rabbi Harold
Minyan and serves as Kushner, that the Torah is God’s first word but not God’s last, has
its cantor for the High been pushed aside. Some of the most ardent champions of gender
Holy Days. He will be egalitarianism have devolved into the most ferocious opponents
spending the upcoming of gay and lesbian inclusion. Questioned on the policy barring
spring semester abroad openly gay men and lesbians from the rabbinate, Chancellor Ismar
at Hebrew University in Schorsch, who opened the gates for women to study for the cantorate
Jerusalem. at the Jewish Theological Seminary, responded: “The Conservative
movement should reaffirm the correctness and power of its base
with Jewish law … the Conservative movement should not try and
reprinted with be a rainbow.” In supporting this wall of exclusion, according to
permission from Chancellor Schorsch, we somehow remain a halachic movement.
Shma.com Welcome to the Conservative Movement in 2006. Such
a conception of and confused relationship with halachah is
inconsistent at best and destructive at worst.
What purpose does it serve for the Conservative Movement
to call itself halachic? I could just as easily argue that Reform and
Reconstructionist Jews are also halachic Jews who, like us, embrace
the basic tenets of Rabbinic Judaism to shape meaningful Jewish
lives in a modern world. They, like us, celebrate Shabbat even as
observance takes shape differently from synagogue to synagogue
Page 46 and home to home. In the Conservative Movement itself there are
shefanetwork.org those who, based on responsa from its central law making body, the
Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), use musical instruments and electricity or
drive to shul on Shabbat and others who deem such activities an affront to halachah. Many
proudly add the names of the matriarchs to the first blessing of the Amidah, while some
shudder at the mere suggestion as an assault on the liturgy. The point is that once we are
willing to depart from the letter-of-the-law to innovate, even with the best of intentions, we
cannot honestly cling to a term like “halachic movement.” It may sound comforting, but it is
meaningless. We cannot call ourselves halachic and still capture the approach and diversity
with which we incorporate Jewish law and the weight of tradition into our lives.
Nevertheless, for Conservative Jews, halachah is indispensable. It is the first tool
we use to uncover and honor our understanding of God’s will. Observance of halachah is
necessary for us to sustain our spiritual and ritual lives. Loyalty to halachah, however, cannot
lead us to manipulate and distort its ethical core or justify human suffering, discrimination,
and oppression. We are commanded, for example, to establish a daily relationship with prayer,
engage in Torah study, and observe kashrut. Such ritual practices enhance a covenant to
which we are bound. They are part of a centuries-old formula, a weight of tradition that serves
to strengthen our connection with God and link us to generations past. How can we feel any
less commanded to ensure that halachah, as a path of life, is not left to stagnate as evolving
historical realities emerge and challenge us with new definitions of compassion and justice,
science, and scholarship? Of course we do not change on whim, for change’s sake. In Rabbi
Elie Kaplan Spitz’s paper on mamzerut, which was adopted as the majority opinion of the
Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, he posits:
“We cannot conceive of God sanctioning undeserved suffering… When a law of
Torah conflicts with morality, when the law is ‘unpleasant,’ we are committed to find a way
to address the problem… We are willing to do explicitly what was largely implicit in the past,
namely, to make changes when needed on moral grounds. It is our desire to strengthen Torah
that forces us to recognize, explicitly the overriding importance of morality, a morality which
we learn from the larger, unfolding narrative of our tradition…”
There was a moral imperative that compelled fifteen out of twenty rabbis on
the CJLS to declare mamzerut inoperative. And when it came to the inclusion of women
in Conservative synagogues and institutions, many in our movement believed that a strict
application of Jewish law was hurtful to every fiber of their moral conscience. As members of
a larger society indelibly changed by feminism, the leaders of our movement in the 1970s and
1980s demanded that, despite the harsh restrictions of rabbinic tradition, women be granted
opportunities for full access to public ritual participation. We cannot be selective about our
application of moral imperative. It is time that we honestly acknowledge that to sustain an
intellectually and morally grounded movement, we must be willing to look into the eyes of
those we exclude as deeply and lovingly as we look into the halachah that is in our hands to
interpret. At the end of the day, what will carry us forward is our ability to cleave to traditional
ritual observance within a framework that is secured by the pursuit of prophetic justice,
inclusion, and compassion.
We cannot cloak ourselves under the guise of halachic loyalty when it is a
convenient front for our fears. It is time for us to define ourselves. We must start finding ways
that embolden our progressive halachic approach in clear, spiritually enriching terms. Let us
start now, together, and leave no one behind.
Rabbi Elie Spitz
Ask Conservative Jews what defines the Movement and
you will get a variety of answers. Let me add my perspective, written
as a spontaneous reflection:
The Conservative Conservative Jews live out our people’s covenant with
God. Such a heart-felt relationship elicits goose bumps during
Movement
a bar mitzvah on Shabbat morning, a glow from within while
Dreaming From basking before the chanukiyah, and an affirmation of continuity
Within and redemption that infuses our chaotic and gastronomic, family
seders. While we honor Jewish law, such as the dictates of Shabbat
Rabbi Elie Spitz has observance and kashrut, we do so with an emphasis on the quest
served as the rabbi of of holiness rather than in response to fear. Honesty denies us the
Congregation B’nai certainty that each word of the Torah was dictated by God. As
Israel in Tustin, Covenantal Jews, native born and naturalized, we affirm that the
California for more words of Torah were filtered through the souls of our most inspired
than a decade and ancestors.
is a member of the Our people’s genesis and genius is the striving for
Rabbinical Assembly righteousness and partnering with God to create a more harmonious
Committee of Law and world. While we honor the wisdom of the past and harvest its insight,
Standards. A graduate we also know that we live in different times. Although women for
of The Jewish Theological most of human history were defined as inferior to men and slaves
Seminary and Boston were bought and sold, we live during a time of more widespread,
University School of Law, human dignity. Yet, there is more to do. The Divine voice that
Rabbi Spitz is the author resonates in the Torah calls our people to honor a life-style that is
of many articles dealing still counter-cultural. We are not to define self-worth by net-worth,
with spirituality and fame or pedigree. We are to value modesty in dress and deed. We
Jewish law, and teaches are to care for the despondent and abandoned and those wracked
the philosophy of Jewish by physical pain. We are to know that to write a tzedakah check,
law at the University of serve on a synagogue board, offer a poor person a blanket, or teach
Judaism. a child to read is an act of religious piety.
We acknowledge that we do not have an exclusive
reprinted with relationship with God, who cares for the well-being of all of
permission from humanity. We welcome learning from other faith traditions and
incorporate their insights into our lives. We work collectively to
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protect our blue, brown and green planet. At the same time, we
celebrate our distinctiveness as a religious people: recognizing that
if we do not care for each other, no other people will; choosing to
fashion families that honor continuity; performing value-laden,
Page 49 ritual acts; and supporting the State of Israel.
shefanetwork.org We know that spiritual progress entails self-discipline,
knowledge, constancy of practice, and the awareness that there is more to reality than meets
the eye. Although “prayer may not save us,” as Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote, “prayer makes
us worth saving.” We pray in community, knowing that we are elevated when our lives stand
on the shoulders of our ancestors, are embraced by the care of a living community, and
contribute toward a better life for future generations. We honor God’s voice that quietly flows
through us calling on us as a people to serve as a light unto the nations.
Rabbi Daniel Greyber
Harsh and bitter are the problems which religion
comes to solve: ignorance, evil, malice, power, agony, despair.
These problems cannot be solved through generalities, through
philosophical symbols. Our problem is: Do we believe what we
The Conservative confess? Do we mean what we say? We do not suffer symbolically.
We suffer literally, truly, deeply. Symbolic remedies are quackery.
Movement
The will of God is either real or a delusion.
Dreaming From -Abraham Joshua Heschel
Within
Rabbi Daniel Greyber, Executive
When working with the future children of Conservative
Director of Camp Ramah in
California, was ordained at Judaism, we dare not deal in mere symbols. The questions facing
the Ziegler School of Rabbinic the kids of the Conservative movement are serious, sometimes
Studies at the University of life and death issues. In my work as Director of Camp Ramah
Judaism in May 2002. He
helped found Lishma, an
in California, I come across children who suffer from abuse at
innovative learning program home, feel pressured to play “the choking game,” who wrestle
where young adult Jews with self-mutilation and suicide. Our children are surrounded by a
spend the summer exploring culture of promiscuity and pornography; they feel overstressed by
traditional Jewish texts, prayer
and practice in the beautiful
a society that values cheating and achievement over honesty. They
setting of Camp Ramah in constantly feel pressured to be “popular.”
California. A gold medallist As a movement, our greatest strength and our greatest
and Captain of the U.S. challenge is that Conservative Judaism is uniquely positioned
Swimming Team at the 1993
World Maccabiah Games, on the very narrow bridge between Torah and a world of Jewish
Greyber published “.08 of a kids confronting terrifying problems. Our kids are searching for a
Second,” in Dancing on the beacon of light in an often dark and confusing world. Do we mean
Edge of the World (Lowell what we say?
House Press, 2000), an essay
about his journey from being “Remember Shabbat,” says the Torah. If Shabbat
a competitive swimmer to is really a commandment from God, then children may not do
becoming a rabbi. While in homework on Shabbat, neither may parents push their kids to
rabbinical school, he also
do so. Homework on Shabbat simply is not an option. Shabbat
founded The Neshama Minyan
at Temple Beth Am and Minyan can offer a powerful critique against a culture where parents and
Nifla at Sinai Temple in Los teachers value their intellectual achievements over their religious
Angeles, soulful Friday night ones. Do we believe what we confess? If God really owns the whole
services using the melodies of the
late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.
world, including our bodies, then the Torah can offer a powerful
critique of a culture of sexual carelessness or the temptation to
reprinted with
mutilate one’s body. If the first question we are asked in the world-
permission from
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to-come is whether one conducted business honestly, then cheating is wrong and our tradition
can provide parents and children a moral compass that says it is better to get a “C” honestly
than to cheat for an “A.” If we believe the psalmist who wrote, “do not trust in princes, nor
in mortals who cannot offer salvation,” then yirat shamayim – fear of Heaven – is not a dry,
academic idea; it is salvation for good kids in a devastating culture of mean girls and bullying
boys. We do not suffer symbolically. We suffer literally, truly, deeply.
Dr. Ernest Becker wrote, “The crisis of modern society is precisely that the youth no
longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up.” The new Chancellor of
the Seminary must live and inspire Conservative Judaism as a source of cosmic heroism, of
timelessness and supreme meaning. S/he must not deal in symbols; s/he must demand that
our Ramah camps, our USY events, our Schechter schools and religious schools be places
where the service of God is palpable.
I want to conclude with a hope for the deepening of our movement’s engagement
with halachah in the near future. My sense of the youth of the Conservative movement is that
they yearn for authenticity and a continuing commitment to the Jewish legal tradition is
central to Conservative Judaism’s claim of authenticity. In the next few years, our movement
will continue its long and distinguished legal history of tackling the most controversial issues
facing the Jewish people. Unfortunately, the responsa of our Committee on Jewish Law and
Standards remains our movement’s best-kept secret. It is a secret to our peril. Too many of
its most important decisions remain unaccompanied press releases rather than occasions for
study and education. Our most devoted and committed youth need us to teach passionately
and thoroughly how our halachic rulings represent the most authentic expression of God’s
will. “The problem,” writes Heschel, “is authentic or forged, genuine or artificial observance.
The problem is not how much but how to observe. The problem is whether we obey or whether
we merely play with the word of God.” Our best youth must know we do not play with the word
of God. They yearn to know of the depth and commitment to our textual tradition that lives
in the great minds of our movement. They thirst not out of academic curiosity but out a deep
desire to discover that the place they have grown up can remain their home for a lifetime.
Ethically Driven Halachah: The Future of the
Conservative Movement
The next chancellor of JTS will succeed in reversing the
downward trend of the Conservative movement only if he or she
The Conservative alters the status quo. As compelling as the message of Conservative
Judaism was 50 years ago, that same message fails to attract
Movement
adherents today.
Dreaming From People are drawn to places of action. At the moment, the
Within “hot” places are to the right and left of the Conservative movement.
If we want to continue to offer people a Conservative option, then
Rabbi Judith Hauptman we need to develop zeal among Conservative Jews for the Judaism
is the E. Billi Ivry they practice. We need passion alongside Conservative piety. What
Professor of Talmud can we do?
and Rabbinic Culture
at the Jewish Theological 1. Re-articulate the Main Message
Seminary. She is also the We must characterize the Conservative movement as
founder of Ohel Ayalah, one of halachah as well as aggadah. By aggadah, I mean the
a free walk-in High Holy values and ethical musings that underlie the halachah. Rightwing
Days service (www. Judaism is focused on halachah and leftwing on aggadah. What
ohelayalah.org). makes Conservative Judaism unique is that it views both halachah
and aggadah as binding. As we see in the Talmud, it is the aggadah
that drives the halachah. Aggadah pushes us to think about
reprinted with
halachah in an ethically enlightened manner. Sometimes law
permission from
falls out of sync with ethics. The aggadic notion of tikkun haolam,
Shma.com which means to repair the system so that the law can accomplish
its goals without abusing any party, is one of the great, built-in
talmudic mechanisms for change. Change for the sake of restoring
the system to ethical balance, I am suggesting, is mandatory. Too
many Jews think of halachah as an immutable, static system
and, as a result, fail to grasp the essence of the Talmud and of
Conservative Judaism.
2. Educate Conservative Rabbis

To help Jews understand the Conservative movement,
rabbis need to fully grasp it themselves. They are the facilitators
who bring the message to the people. The JTS Rabbinical School
curriculum needs to reflect the movement’s self-understanding in
a much more profound and coherent way than it does currently.
Page 53 From the outset, future rabbis should be educated about halachah
shefanetwork.org and aggadah. During freshman orientation, an all-day seminar
should be held in which faculty explain to new students how Conservative halachah and
aggadah operate in theory, and how the theory was applied recently, in exemplary fashion, to
the question of women’s equality of ritual opportunity. Such a presentation would establish
the framework for all discussions of halachah and aggadah that follow in the student’s five
or six years in rabbinical school. Talmudic material would be analyzed in light of these
principles, in addition to all the other ways in which it must be examined. We need to produce
Conservative rabbis, not just talmudically knowledgable rabbis. One might say that we want
to teach Talmud from the Conservative perspective. But the opposite is true: it is the Talmud’s
penchant for ethically-driven halachic change that gave rise to Conservative Judaism. We
must show this to our students “in the words.”
Another needed curricular change: since, in Talmud classes, emphasis is placed
on developing the skills to study text and commentaries on one’s own, there is no set body of
texts that students must master in their years in rabbinical school. We must pay attention to
content alongside skills. Topics like marriage and divorce, conversion to Judaism, mourning,
kashrut, prayer, Shabbat, and festivals, among others, need to studied by every future rabbi.
He or she must know the talmudic principles that generate today’s practice.
3. Offer Free High Holy Days Services to the Disenfranchised

Some people say that the Conservative movement is shrinking because Jewish
families are not producing enough children. That may be true. But before we push people to
have bigger families, let us pay attention to the fact that our retention rate of the children we
are currently bearing leaves a lot to be desired. We must find a way of holding on to alienated
young people. At the High Holy Days, many of these young Jews — in their twenties and
thirties — feel inchoate religious stirrings. They want to experience a prayer service but do
not want to go home to their parents’ synagogue. Since going to another synagogue costs
hundreds of dollars, they are not able, or not willing, to pay to pray. In 2004, in response to
this problem, I started a totally free, walk-in service in lower Manhattan. This year and last,
hundreds of young people showed up on Rosh Hashanah and on Kol Nidre night. These
numbers suggest, without a doubt, that there are many Jews with whom we could connect if
we would only reach out to them. Therefore every city with a sizable Jewish population ought
to provide at least one free High Holy Day service. That way, without reducing the income of
existing synagogues, which these Jews would not anyway attend, we can halt their outward
drift.
4. Take Cognizance of the Non-Jews Among Us

Another group we tend to overlook are the non-Jews among us. On campuses across
the country there are more and more students who have one Jewish and one non-Jewish
parent. If their mother is not Jewish, even though their father is, these kids are not Jewish. But
we still have a chance of bringing them to Judaism. Many of them are interested in exploring
their Jewish half. In addition to offering them free High Holy Days services, we need to pay
them attention. There are also many Jews on campus who are aware of “the availability of
the attractive Other.” Inter-dating and intermarriage are common. What are we doing to keep
these couples Jewish? What are we doing to support intermarried couples who want to raise
Jewish children? How do we deal with the non-Jewish spouse? Conservative Judaism has to find
answers to these questions.
Leaving things as they are is not an alternative if we want to keep Conservative
Judaism alive. The more Jewish options we offer people, the more likely it is that they will
find one that catches their fancy. If someone wants a movement focused on halachah, he
or she can choose Orthodoxy. If someone wants a movement focused on aggadah, he or she
can affiliate Reform. But if someone wants a movement that holds on to the practices of the
past and at the same time incorporates the ethical thinking of the present, we should make it
possible for that person to choose Conservative Judaism.
The Courage to be Conservative
Rabbi Aaron Brusso
Conservative Judaism has the courage to articulate
competing truths without blushing before those who question
our consistency. And that is why I really could not be anything
The Conservative other than a Conservative Jew. I have a deep appreciation for
serious Reform and Orthodox Jews. And though I would count
Movement myself as one of them when it comes to larger questions of
Dreaming From my place amongst humanity, through a narrower lens I will
Within always see myself as Conservative.
We have the audacity to unapologetically study the
Aaron Brusso is Rabbi human origins of our texts and still expect that God’s voice
at Adath Jeshurun commands us through them. We appreciate how brilliantly
Congregation in our midrashic tradition infused Judaism with creative change
Minnetonka, Minnesota. so that we would not come to worship a previous generation’s
He was ordained by truth. And we have the courage to realize that to hand this
JTS in 2000 with a aggadic Judaism over to the next generation the same way we
master’s degree in Jewish found it is almost as bad as not handing it over at all. Change
philosophy. is not only about sociological compromise; it is also about
moral imperative.
reprinted with I choose to study and worship and act with Conservative
Jews, not because they look just like me, but because they
permission from
understand, both through education and intuition, that it
Shma.com
is more important to be principled than to look religious.
People should act like Jews, not look like them. I choose to be
with Conservative Jews because what is important to them is
important to me: intellectual honesty, a halachah that is driven
by ethics, and a religious system that demands no abdication
of the mind…and no worship of it either.
The leaders who understand this are those who
have an unapologetic and confident view of themselves as
Conservative Jews. They are less interested in what other
denominations think of us because they are so animated by
the powerful idea of religious tension and the soul-liberating
honesty of acknowledging competing truths. They are the
Gordon Tuckers, Judith Hauptmans, Brad Artsons, and Elliot
Dorffs. They who have cast their lot with a religiously bold
movement steeped in intellectual thoughtfulness and flexible
change. For too long Conservative leadership has been trained
Page 56 that the primary message of Conservative Judaism is “be more
shefanetwork.org observant.” Whether we are “climbing a ladder” or “growing
spiritually” there is a clear barometer to judge one’s progress and a “right way” to ultimately
be Jewish. Not only does this communicate that we are a feeder school for Orthodoxy, it
privileges religious behavior over everything else. The message of observance is but one piece
of a larger puzzle.
We have so much more to contribute that is uniquely Conservative. We actually
believe, for example, that there are other ways to practice Judaism and religion. We forgo the
magnetic lure of certainty for the self-aware humility of pluralism. And yet, for ourselves, we
cannot envision a relationship with God that does not have mitzvah as medium. We already
communicate mitzvah. We must also begin to articulate the religiously powerful idea of
pluralism as Abraham Joshua Heschel did so well when he said “heavenly wisdom is more
profound than what the Torah contains in its present form.”
The chancellorship belongs by rights to a Conservative Jew — someone who in
his or her kishkes could not be anything else. Not only someone who studies the movement,
but someone who understands and contributes to its intellectual and spiritual currency. In
its choice, JTS should think well beyond its walls and begin the important process of leading
movement arms past their own institutional self-interest.
We have spent far too long trying to get Conservative Jews to look a certain way.
Who would want to affiliate with this message of insecurity? It is time to confidently and
unapologetically communicate our values. In a time of rampant religious fundamentalism
and radical secularism we need a religion that understands its role as mediating God’s will and
not being the final version of it. A religion that inspires commitment not out of self-justification
or mythical thinking but by an honest appreciation that heaven is not apprehended through
the clear lens of a single truth but by acknowledging the occlusion of competing truths.
My Vision for the Conservative Movement
Rabbi Martin S. Cohen
My personal dream would be to see a return to the twin
core values that characterized the movement at its inception: an
unwavering commitment to spiritual and intellectual integrity,
The Conservative and an equally firm commitment to the kind of halachic growth
that is as organic as it is wholly faithful to the principles of
Movement halachic development (i.e., and not merely a pretext for doing
Dreaming From whatever seems expedient or politically useful at any given
Within moment.) Like sailors so paralyzed by the fear both of Scylla
and Charybdis that they forget that their journey actually has a
Martin S. Cohen is destination (and that the point of undertaking the journey in the
Rabbi of the Shelter first place was not simply to avoid meeting with disaster along
Rock Jewish Center the way), we have allowed our detractors on both the left and
and chairman of the the right to occupy our attention (and, thus, to set our course for
editorial board of the us). More often than not, we seem somehow to have forgotten
quarterly journal, that our journey too has an actual destination, and the point
Conservative Judaism. of undertaking this journey is not (and was never supposed to
His translation and be) merely to avoid the opprobrium of others with their own
commentary on the agendas, their own philosophical stances and theological
Book of Psalms, called outlooks, and their own rational or irrational beliefs about the
Our Haven and Our “true” nature of halachah. We need to become who we are and
Strength: The Book of then to move on to becoming who we can and should be, not
Psalms, was published simply allow ourselves to be content with being who others are
by Aviv Press in 2003. not.
This is far easier said than done. The adherents of
our movement — especially its rabbis and lay leaders — are
reprinted with
Olympic-class admirers of the grass on other people’s lawns, yet
permission from “mine own vineyard have I not kept.” And that’s the truth! If I
Shma.com could give the new chancellor his (or her!) marching orders,
I know just what I’d say. The JTS faculty needs to feel charged
with the sacred task of creating an endless series of intelligent,
creative books that will argue the rationality and nobility of our
theology. We need not one or two, but a dozen “classic” works
that will take Heschel’s legacy into the next century. We need our
halachic authorities not simply to write teshuvot for each other’s
edification, but actually to bring the fruits of their introspective,
innovative, and endlessly interesting research to the world
by writing inspiring works of legal philosophy and moral
Page 58 guidance. And we need to create not merely “a” Chumash, but
shefanetwork.org an endless series of commentaries on the books of the Bible and
the tractates of the Mishnah (and, even, the Gemara) that will draw our specific theology out
from the wellsprings of tradition.
In a nutshell, the new chancellor will need to accept the mandate not merely to
facilitate innovation but to inspire allegiance. And also, of course, to create by the sheer force
of his or her intellect and spiritual charisma the profound — and profoundly stirring —
sense that we are not “sheep which have no shepherd,” but rather men and women being led
forward to embrace a Judaism that neither requires nor requests that its adherents prove their
commitment or their loyalty to it by espousing beliefs they do not really have, or by embracing
values they do not actually hold or want to hold.
For me, personally, the idea of spiritual integrity will always be key: not maintaining
some sort of fetishistic allegiance to creedal concepts that we know not actually to be true, but
accepting the basic premise that religion undertaken in the context of self-delusion can, by
definition, never rise above the level of superstition. To adopt a policy of scrupulous intellectual
and spiritual integrity — and not to allow our dedication to careful and scrupulous halachic
observance to become weakened by embracing that kind of ruthless honesty about the history
of our texts, our faith and our people — is the goal, I believe, of Conservative Judaism and
the single greatest aspect of its mandate. To do so, and in doing so to inspire observance and
to instill faith — that is the great challenge facing us all and, especially, facing the new
chancellor.
The Struggle for Self-Definition in Conservative
Judaism
Rabbi Robert Gordis
In 1984, after long and careful deliberation, Dr.
Gerson D. Cohen. Chancellor of the Jewish Theological
The Conservative Seminary and Rabbi Alexander M. Shapiro, President of the
Rabbinical Assembly, agreed to establish a Commission on the
Movement Philosophy of Conservative Judaism to consist of representatives
Dreaming From of the Seminary faculty and of the Rabbinical Assembly. I was
Within asked to accept the chairmanship of the Commission. It was
clear from the outset that the position was no sinecure or
Reprinted with passport to glory. Before evaluating the measure of progress
permission from the achieved by the Commission, it is essential to understand in
Rabbinical Assembly from all their complexity, the goals of the Commission and the
Conservative Judaism, major difficulties confronting its work. Above all, it is essential
Volume XXXIX, Number 3 to understand why the task of self-definition had never been
(Spring 1987) undertaken by the official agencies of the movement during
the one hundred and forty years since the birth of Conservative
Judaism, though individual scholars and thinkers had grappled
with these issues and produced a valuable body of literature on
the philosophy of the movement.
If Thales is right and “know thyself” is the highest
wisdom, self-definition, discovering what one is and is not, is
also the rarest of the arts. Of all the movements in modern
Judaism, it is Conservative Judaism that has found its self-
definition, the articulation of a coherent philosophy, the most
difficult. Basic to Reform Judaism is a ready responsiveness to
the conditions and desires of the present age. Individual rabbis
in different periods may adopt more or less of traditional lore
and practice as they see fit, hut the basic tenet of the movement
is the denial of the authority of the halachah. In recent years,
this doctrine has been formulated positively as the unlimited
autonomy of the individual conscience. On major issues like
intermarriage and patrilineal descent, there will be substantial
minorities in the Reform movement that may strongly -oppose
the innovations favored by the majority. But the differences
between the two groups are essentially relative, since both
accept the principle of freedom to act without the constraints
of halachah.
Page 60 Orthodoxy also has no problem of self-definition,
shefanetwork.org at least in theory. Its foundation is the Talmudic and post-
Talmudic dogma that both the written Torah and the Oral Law in its entirety were revealed
to Moses by God on Mount Sinai in a seamless unity, and that the subsequent history of the
halachah for three millennia is only the step-by-step disclosure of the original revelation.
The doctrine is maintained with special fervor by various right-wing Orthodox groups today.
They have spared themselves any discomfort by hermetically sealing themselves off from the
results of modern critical and historical scholarship and by forbidding their devotees any
contact or discussion with those outside their particular group. Those who are described as
“modern Orthodox” Jews—lay and rabbinic—represent a wide spectrum of their own. What
characterizes them is that they have not been able to escape contact with the modern world.
They, too, seek to maintain the dogma of a monolithic Torah through the ages, while closing
their eyes to obvious changes in the pattern of halachic practice and ignoring the equally
evident challenges posed by modern science and philosophy. Whatever problems life may
interpose, the theory of Orthodoxy is simple and self-contained. Therein lies its powerful
attraction for those seeking to flee the problems and perplexities of the contemporary-world.
It explains the affinity of most baalei teshuvah for right wing Orthodoxy, rather than for more
open-minded approaches to Jewish tradition.
It is Conservative Judaism which is confronted by profound intellectual and spiritual

problems in articulating its ideology. This became clear at the inception of the movement in
Germany in 1845. That year, a second Rabbinical Conference of modern-trained German-
speaking rabbis was held in Frankfurt. Zacharias Frankel, who was persuaded to attend, sat
without enthusiasm through several sessions that dealt with such major issues as Sabbath
observance, and family law. When the relatively minor question of the use of Hebrew in prayer
was discussed and the motion adopted that it be retained in deference to the older generation,
though not “objectively necessary,” Frankel walked out of the conference. He then wrote a
letter in which he set forth, for the first time, the concept of positive historical Judaism. In one
or two sentences he explained his view that Judaism was the result of an historical process,
but that the product was positive in its content and therefore binding upon its adherents. In
a public response, the leaders of the Conference criticized his departure, and pointed out that
he was not alone in his opposition to the resolution on reducing the use of Hebrew in prayer.
Actually, it was adopted by 15 votes with 3 abstentions and 13 voting against it.
Clearly this resolution was the catalytic agent rather than the primary cause for
Frankel’s departure 1 When, in 1854, the Breslau Seminary was opened, Frankel was named
its Rector, a position he retained until his death in 1875. He was able to make it the dominant
religious and cultural institution of German Jewry, primarily because he avoided the
extremes of Orthodoxy and Reform and concentrated upon the training of scholars and the
encouragement of creative scholarship. Virtually all Judaic scholars in the German-speaking
culture-sphere were graduates of the Breslau Seminary.
Throughout his career, Frankel was challenged by Abraham Geiger on the left and
Samson Raphael Hirsch on the right to spell out his religious position. Whether because of a
lack of taste or talent for theological discussion, or for pragmatic reasons, Frankel steadfastly
declined to do so.
I may add that many years later I found him guilty of plagiarism by anticipation.
The greybeards among us may possibly recall that years ago in making presentations on
Conservative Judaism, I cited the Midrash about an army walking of a highway between two
roads, one of fire, the other of snow. To avoid being burned by the fire, frozen by the snow, the
army decided to walk in the center and avoid both perils. Years later I discovered that Frankel
had utilized the Midrash in precisely the same way to mark off the approach of positive-
historical Judaism from Orthodoxy on the right and from Reform on the left.
In America the movement which Solomon Schechter named Conservative Judaism,

was influenced basically by the same three motivations for avoiding the path of self-definition.
The first and probably the most influential cause was the fact that Conservative Judaism
was at its inception a reactive movement. The Seminary was founded in 1886 as a reaction
against the famous trefah banquet tendered by the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati at
its ordination exercises. The magisterial influence of Solomon Schechter emphasized this
role of the Seminary. Though he served as president of the institution for only thirteen years
(1902-1915), the institution for many decades thereafter, and at times even in the present,
has been referred to as “Schechter’s Seminary.” When he came to these shores, both he and
the group of philanthropists who invited him conceived of their task as being the creation
of a countervailing force to Reform Judaism. The Seminary-was to be the institution of
all traditionally oriented Jews, whatever their geographic origin or cultural level, with the
secondary function of Americanizing the East European immigrants. In a charming and
brilliant address at the Hebrew Union College, Schechter fell back upon British practice
and suggested that traditional Judaism and Reform might be described as “His Majesty’s
Government” and “His Majesty’s Opposition.”2 Tactfully, he left to each group the right
to decide that it was doing God’s work in His way while the others were doing it in theirs!
Essentially the Jewish religious world was divided into Reform and non-Reform, and this
would suffice for self-definition. The term “Conservative Judaism,” which Schechter borrowed
from native English Orthodoxy, was not intended to signify a departure from it.
One of the most striking aspects of Schechter’s greatness was his ability and desire
to bring great scholars to the Seminary faculty, without fearing for his own prestige. Our
masters, Louis Ginzberg, Alexander Marx and Israel Davidson, represented the highest level
of achievement in their respective fields. Nor did he hesitate to invite Americans to join
the faculty. Mordecai M. Kaplan and Louis Finkelstein, yibbadel lehayyim, had received
their entire training on these shores and their scholarship was of the highest quality. Their
ranks were augmented by gifted and creative colleagues, who were also our teachers, Israel
Friedlander, Jacob Hoseh-ander, Morris D. Levine, Boaz Cohen, Shalom Spiegel, Hillel Bavli,
zichron kullam livrachah ul-tehillah.
Schechter, deeply rooted in Jewish tradition, rejected the widespread notion that was
at least as old as Mendelssohn, that Judaism lacked principles of belief. In his Some Aspects
of Rabbinic Theology, Schechter demonstrated that fundamental beliefs existed in Judaism,
though they were not formulated with the kind of scholastic precision beloved of Christian
thinkers. He may have been reinforced in the decision not to set down a theological statement
by the fact that Reform had done just that in the famous Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 and in
the far less influential monograph by Max L. Margolis “The Theological Aspects of Reform
Judaism”3.
Schechter made one major move in the direction of self-definition and it too was
essentially reactive in its origin. In the face of the wholesale abandonment of Jewish law,
advocated and practiced by Reform, he set forth his concept of Klal Yisrael or “Catholic Israel.”
He declared that the vital elements in Judaism could be discovered by observing the practice
of the masses of the Jewish people, a generalization from the Talmudic rule Puk Chazi [“go
observe popular practice”] (Berachot 45a and elsewhere). Since the vast majority of Jews
living in Eastern Europe, and even in America, observed the major elements of the halachah:
daily prayer, kashrut, the Sabbath, the festivals and family law, or at least acknowledged them
as authoritative, the traditional halachah was solid and binding on the Jewish people of his
day. Thus Schechter made Klal Yisrael the ultimate arbiter of Jewish law. It is doubtful whether
Schechter explored all the implications of his doctrine, though his position is light-years away
from the attitude of his latter-day protectors against non-existent antagonists.
It is doubtful whether Schechter’s evaluation of the status of Jewish observance
in his day was statistically sound, or whether it was essentially a life-affirming myth which
became fundamental to Conservative Judaism. In any event, in the three-quarters of a
century since Schechter’s day, the measuring rod he proposed has all but disappeared. The
unspeakable horror of the Holocaust wiped out Central and East European Jewry; and the
progress of assimilation and secularization in Western Europe, the Americas and even Israel,
has eliminated the effective majority for Jewish tradition on which Schechter relied.
In all the decades following Schechter’s career, the rapid progress of Conservative Judaism was
due in no slight measure to the fact that it bad attracted the majority of American Jews who
wished to be neither Orthodox nor Reform. Its ideology was essentially reactive.
A second factor militating against self definition for Conservative Judaism has
been a genuine concern for Jewish unity. Schechter had organized the United Synagogue,
which he hoped would bring under one root all elements in American Judaism that were not
Reform. The Seminary faculty, consisting largely of his appointees, conceived of its function
as the preservation of his legacy on the one hand, by the enrichment of the content of Jewish
scholarship: and on the other, the training of rabbis with a minimum concern for ideology.
This avoidance of self-definition became ever stronger, as various innovations like mixed pews
became all but universal in Conservative congregations.
The dedication to the ideal of Jewish unity is not only understandable, but is worthy
of the highest praise. It stemmed from a desire to avoid introducing new divisiveness into the
Jewish community the wish to “keep peace” in the family. It drew also upon a nostalgia for
the “old-time religion,” the practices hallowed by the past. Against the appeal of “the good old
days,” Koheleth had warned but in vain: Do not say: ‘How was it that earlier days were better
than these?’ for not out of wisdom have you asked the question.’” (Ecclesiastes 7:10).
On the other hand, this approach lo Jewish tradition suffered from several basic drawbacks.
It created a type of intellectual schizophrenia between the rational, critical methodology
employed in historical scholarship and the refusal— or the inability—to apply the results of
research to life. In the past the greatest Jewish scholars, from the period to the Mishnah through
the Middle Ages, Ezra, Hillel, Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi Akiba, Rabbi Judah HaNasi.
Rabbenu Gershom, the Rambam and their colleagues knew how to unite Torah Lishmah with
Torat Hayyim.4 Now modern historical-critical scholarship, totally rejected in other quarters,
was accepted in the Seminary with the unspoken condition that its implications be applied
sparingly, if at all, to the problems of contemporary life. That the twentieth century had seen
more far-reaching changes than the preceding five hundred years, served only to strengthen
the resolve to contain, or at least ignore, the winds of change.
Finally, a third factor entered into the picture—the sheer intellectual and spiritual
difficulties involved in applying the insights and attitudes derived (from historical scholarship
to the dizzying phenomena of modern life. The task, if it is to he undertaken at all, obviously
calls for deep love and knowledge of the tradition, as well as for creative powers and balanced
judgment of the highest order. Moreover, it requires an understanding of the contemporary
world and a sympathy for the needs, aspirations and fears of modern men and women living
in a perilous and chaotic world. This is a formidable array of attributes, but nothing less will
suffice if we seek to determine which aspects of modern life and thought are In he accepted,
which are to be modified, and which are (to be opposed or rejected, in Rabbi Meir’s words, “I
found a pomegranate, its rind cast off, its essence I ate.”
As the result of these factors there emerged the basic philosophy that dominated
the Seminary during the greater portion of its history—a discomfort with all efforts at self-
definition for Conservative Judaism. By and large, the earliest graduates of the Seminary
reflected this outlook. One of its most distinguished alumni, who had served as president of
the Rabbinical Assembly, said to me many years ago: “We are Orthodox rabbis who speak
English without an accent.” This position proved untenable as (he character of Jewish life
in America underwent a radical transformation. However well-intentioned the claim might
be, the Seminary could not presume to speak for Orthodox Judaism, which developed its own
institutions and was ministered by two or more separate, generally antagonistic groups of
rabbis of their own. Both were at one, however, in rejecting the authority of the Seminary and
opposing the new movement created by its graduates.
Increasingly, Conservative rabbis and the laymen in their congregations felt the
need of a clear ideological position, broadly defined to make room for variations in detail,
but sufficiently specific to offer a platform for nil Jews in the Conservative movement. In
the absence of such self-definition, Conservative Judaism was widely conceived of as a timid
Reform or a vapid Orthodoxy. A distinguished sociologist described it as a second-generation
phenomenon, part of the process of acculturation for American Jews traveling from Orthodoxy
through Conservatism on the way to Reform and to total assimilation.5
Dr. Cyrus Adler, who succeeded Solomon Schechter as President of the Seminary
upheld the same tradition. Dr. Adler was undoubtedly the most remarkable civil servant of
the American Jewish community. He was President of the Seminary, President of Dropsie
College, President of the American Jewish Committee, member of the Board of the University
of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Philadelphia Public Library and leader of many other
institutions. Himself an observant Jew, his social and cultural roots lay with the German-
Jewish community in America, which was predominantly Reform. The Seminary Board of
Trustees reflected these relationships. A few old-line Sephardic families were represented on
the Board; the bulk were German Jews, personally Reform in orientation; there were few
Conservative Jews of East European extraction on the Hoard, for many years Louis Marshall,
a distinguished lawyer, President of Temple Emanu-El, served as President of the Board
of Directors of the Seminary: he thus epitomized the philanthropic approach of the early
supporters of the institution.
When Dr. Adler was succeeded to the presidency of (he Seminary by Dr. Louis
Finkelstein. Schechter’s heritage remained potent, in his great address, “Tradition in the
Making,” Dr. Finkelstein pointed the general direction for Conservative Judaism as a distinct
movement in American Jewish life. Nonetheless, when specific steps were proposed or taken to
demarcate the character of Conservative Judaism, most of the senior members of the faculty
were opposed to such steps.
There is more than historical interest in recalling the past: it should serve to remind
younger colleagues that the struggle has been long and difficult, and that the defeats as well
as the victories of the past have laid the foundation for the next stage. Undoubtedly there were
other incident, but I shall report only those which I know at first hand.
Dr. Finklestein is not only one of the greatest scholars of the age, but has been
distinguished by a genius for original, innovative project?. He devoted some of his talents
to the cause of the understanding of Judaism, by both Jews and non-Jews. To this end, and
with no little opposition to face, he created the “Eternal Light” radio programs. To stimulate
creative research and thought, he organized the Conference on Science, Philosophy and
Religion, and the Institute of Religious Studies as a meeting-ground, whose Jewish and non-
Jewish leaders and scholars could present the insights of their respective traditions and develop
a new respect for those of their neighbors. The Institute was accused of furthering missionary
goals. I was impelled to write a Hebrew paper, which appeared in Hadoar arid was reprinted
by the Seminary, entitled Lo dubbim velo ya’ar to explain its true goals.
When the Ramah camps were organized through the initiative of laymen and a
few rabbis, among whom Rabbi David A. Goldstein was preeminent, the project was greeted
with less than total enthusiasm at the Seminary: it was to prove one of the most fruitful
undertakings in the history of Judaism in America.
Students at the Seminary have long complained of the lack of any orientation on
Conservative Judaism. In the mid-nineteen thirties. Dr. Finkelstein invited four Seminary
graduates to deliver six lectures, each on his respective philosophy of Judaism: Milton
Steinberg. Henry M. Rosenthal. Ben Zion Bokser and me. The series evoked an intense and
enthusiastic response from the student body. Milton Steinberg at the time was a committed
Reconstructionist, as was Henry M. Rosenthal. Following in Kaplan’s footsteps and arguing for
Reconstructionism, Steinberg stressed the absence of a philosophy in Conservative Judaism.
It was in response to this challenge that I formulated a reinterpretation of Solomon
Schechter’s classical theory of Catholic Israel, being convinced of its essential soundness. I
suggested an analogy from the American experience. In theory, every citizen has a voice in the
governing of his country: in practice, however, only those who vole and thus express an active
interest, exert any influence on the course of events. Theoretically, every Jew is a member of
Catholic Israel and has a right to affect the character and content of Jewish law. Practically,
however, Jews who have surrendered the authority of Jewish law and broken completely with
the pattern of Jewish observance cannot fairly ask to he consulted in determining its content
and objectives. Only those who in some substantial degree adhere to Judaism and accept the
authority of the Halachah need to he taken into account. The “Catholic Israel” of Schechter,
I suggested, is therefore “the consensus of the concerned.” Yet, however positive the doctrine,
it obviously cannot serve as a total philosophy of Conservative Judaism.
The four-pronged lecture series had a very marked effect on the student body,
who called for its continuation the year following. The budget was infinitesimal, but we
were informed that no funds were available. Though we offered to give the course without
remuneration, the project was not repeated.
In 1935 one of the most learned alumni of the Seminary, the late Rabbi Louis M.
Epstein, who had devoted years of intensive study to the problem of the agunah within the
framework of the traditional halachah, presented his plan for relieving her tragic condition.
In brief, his plan adopted a procedure of minnui shelichut, the husband’s appointing specific
individuals as his agents to issue a divorce should he be unavailable or unwilling to do so.
At the 1935 convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, the plan was adopted. At the
convention a year later, Rabbi Julius H. Greenstone reported that Rabbi Epstein’s remedy
was approved by the Committee on Jewish Law as well. He also referred to a meeting of the
Committee at Professor Ginzberg’s home, but there is no record of the conclusions of that
discussion.
At the 1936 convention, Dr. Boaz Cohen informed the convention that while Dr.
Ginzberg was unfamiliar with the details of the Epstein Plan, he was certain that a remedy
for the agunah was available within traditional halachah, and he undertook to present such
a plan at a special conference to be held in January 1937. Having the august authority of
Professor Louis Ginzberg for a proposal that would alleviate the plight of the agunah was
a tremendous asset, and so the Rabbinical Assembly postponed the implementation of the
Epstein Plan. However, in January 1937 the Assembly was informed that Professor Ginzberg’s
health had made it impossible for him to work on the details of his presentation.6
Subsequently, the Epstein plan was adopted and was put in use during the war in
the case of American soldiers going into battle. The Agudat Harabbanim declared a cherem
[excommunication decree] on the Rabbinical Assembly for adopting a plan which they had
not even taken the trouble to read. Nevertheless, the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America
put virtually the same procedure into operation for the war period.
In the ensuing decades, because the Epstein Plan was technically complicated and
psychologically difficult to put into effect, the Rabbinical Assembly undertook other steps to
alleviate the plight of the agunah. I he best known is the addition of the Lieberman clause
to the ketubbah. In spite of its laudable objective and the august authority of its creator. I
believe that it suffers from major practical and theoretic drawbacks. Far less well-known is the
institution of the Beth Din of the Rabbinical Assembly. As a last resort, when all other means
to secure a get from the husband have failed, the Beit Din is able to annul a marriage on the
basis of the Talmudic principle “Whoever enters into marriage does so by authority of the
Rabbis” (B. Ketubbot 3a).7
While the search for self-definition in the area of Halachah thus continued to
manifest itself, the deep desire within the movement for unity in the Jewish community did
not die. Professor Lieberman’s preeminent position as a universally recognized Gaon nurtured
the hope that it would be possible to set up a national Beth Din to coordinate the standards
for Conservative and Orthodox conversions and to issue gittin on the basis of the Lieberman
formula. Such an effort was undertaken in 1953 in which Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and
Professor Lieberman were actively involved. Ultimately the negotiations broke down as did
the community Beit Din in Denver, Colorado in 1981, a major casualty of the rising tide of
polarization and group antagonism in American Jewry.
One of the few successful efforts at self-definition was undertaken in 1914. After
long negotiations, the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue agreed to publish a
Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book, using the available manuscript prepared by Rabbi Morris
Silverman as a basis. I was invited to serve as Chairman of the Join Prayer Book Commission,
which contained ten distinguished rabbis, nominated by the two agencies The Prayer Book
Commission decided to introduce a few significant changes into the text of the prayer book by
modifying the Preliminary Blessings, by omitting the reference to Ishei Yisrael [fire sacrifices
of Israel], by adding the words, “in all the lands of the Dispersion” to the Yekum Purkan,
and by changing the tenses in the reference to sacrifices in the Musaf service to make them
historical rather than petitional.
In essence, the changes in the Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book meant that the
Conservative movement was dedicated to achieve the equality of women in Judaism and that
it did not look forward to the restoration of the sacrificial system in the Temple in Jerusalem
— and was prepared to say so.
The senior members of the faculty were very unhappy with the changes and sought
to postpone the publication of the prayer hook. But the Joint Prayer Book Commission stood
fast, and the work duly appeared in 1946. While it will undoubtedly be superseded by the
new Siddur Sim Shalom, the Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book probably did more than any
other single undertaking to give coherence and self-definition to the growing movement of
Conservative Judaism.
In 1946 my colleagues honored me with the Presidency of the Rabbinical Assembly.
I felt it essential to have a journal of opinion for which I proposed the name Conservative
Judaism, a clear indication that we represent a movement with a distinctive philosophy.
This designation was strongly opposed by several faculty members on the ground that I was
introducing divisiveness into the Jewish life. “I am a Jew without labels,” one senior colleague
said lo me, but the journal and the name are today alive and well.
The lack of identifiable standards in the movement continued to trouble thoughtful

men and women.8 One of the leading laymen of the past generation, Julian Freeman of
Indianapolis, wrote to Rabbi Israel M. Goldman, then president of the Rabbinical Assembly,
on the subject. He urged the creation of a committee to survey the varying practices in
Conservative Judaism in order to create a Shulchan Aruch setting forth the acceptable
standards of observance in the movement. Rabbi Goldman, who was very sympathetic to the
problem, promised to proceed with it. Whether such a committee was set up is unclear, but no
tangible results emerged.
With the passing years, the need for a Conservative guide to Jewish observance
became increasingly felt. Rabbi Max Arzt, whom I regard as one of the most creative minds
in our movement, and I, had been meeting for a long time and discussing the character and
direction of our movement. We both felt such a guide was not likely to emerge in the near
future with the official imprimatur of the movement, for self-evident reasons. We therefore,
decided to invite a dozen of our most learned and concerned colleague who shared the same
centrist position to cooperate with us in producing a Guide to Jewish Religious Practice.
Each contributor would take one section of Jewish ritual law such as the Sabbath,
festival observance, prayer, Kashrut, marriage, death and mourning; as well as Jewish ethical
law, like business, sexual conduct, family relationships, Jews and Geirtiles, etc. Each writer
would prepare an introductory essay giving the rationale for the observances in that area. This
would be followed by a section spelling out the laws and practices. Inter alia, this presentation
of Conservative Halachah would propose the optimum level of observance and indicate the
maximum as well as the minimum levels permissible. In their presentations the contributors
would utilize such time-honored categories in Jewish law as lechat’chillah, “in advance; and
bedi’abhad “after the act”: yesh machmirim “some authorities are stricter; yesh mekilin
‘some authorities are more lenient; behefsed merubbeh, “in the case of a major economic
loss (where greater leniency may be allowed).” Each section would then be read and revised
by the group as a whole.
The Guide, as we envisioned it would serve all Conservative Jews by indicating what
the movement expects of its adherents. The prescription of Conservative Jewish halachah
would be explicit and we would hope, persuasive in helping to win Jews (or positive Jewish
living. Especially since a rationale would precede the specific provisions, it would set an ideal
for a Conservative Jew to which to aspire, at the very least, he would know what standard was
expected to him. He would be disabused of the vulgar notion that Shabbat and kashrut are the
private preserve of the Orthodox, from which a Conservative Jew is exempt.
The work, like all its great predecessors in the history of Jewish law, would command
only as much authority as the scholarship, skill and insight within its pages.
Many years later, in 1979. Rabbi Isaac Klein, who incidentally was a member of our
group of collaborators, made a major contribution in his Guide to Jewish Religious Practice
which has proved very useful. I believe, however, that a collective work along the lines we
envisioned is still a major desideratum.
The response from the colleagues whom we invited to join us was immediate
and enthusiastic, virtually all agreeing to participate in the project. But when the news of
this undertaking became known, there were strong objections from influential faculty
members. Max Arzt, who was on the Seminary staff, was pressured to withdraw from the
project. My own heavy teaching load at three institutions, the Seminary, Columbia University
and Union Theological Seminary, in addition to my major responsibilities in my large and
active congregation, made it impossible for me to have the burden alone. The project died
aborning.
The cutting edge of the struggle for self-definition in the past three decades has been
the status of women. The Bat Mitzvah rite, aliyot for women, counting them for a minyan—
each of them has been controversial to many colleagues who refused to accept them; and, of
course, the authority of each mara d’atra must be safeguarded.
The step which has evolved the most passionate objection among some rabbis and
laymen is, of course, women’s ordination. Since I have presented the halachic, ethical and
pragmatic aspects of the subject in detail elsewhere,9 I shall not argue here the merits of
women’s ordination which some may still regard as unfortunate. What is undeniable is that
it represents a major step toward the self-definition of our movement.
Clearly the struggle for the emergence of self-definition in Conservative Judaism is

not a record of triumphant progress. On the contrary, its failures may perhaps be more evident
than its successes. Moreover, virtually all these episodes deal with specific details. Though
these are highly important, the need for more theoretic and basic principles remains essential
for the movement, if it is to direct and justify progress in the practical realm.
This difficult task, to which individual scholars and thinkers have contributed in
the past, but which has never been undertaken officially by the organs of our movement,
is the mandate of the Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism. Success is
far from assured. It will not be easy to formulate a philosophy of Conservative Judaism,
which, allowing for legitimate differences within our ranks, will, nevertheless, highlight the
fundamental principles that unite us as a movement.
Shortly after the Commission was constituted it began its meetings. Since its
inception, the Commission has sustained the loss of two distinguished and beloved colleagues:
Rabbis Jacob H. Agus and Ludwig Nadelmann, zichronam livrachah.
The Commission now consists of the following appointees: from the Rabbinical
Assembly: Rabbis Howard A. Addison, David Novak, Stanley S. Rabinowitz, Gilbert S. Rosenthal,
Seymour Siegel and Alan J. Yuter.
From the Seminary: Rabbis Elliot N. Dorff, Neil G. Gillman, Simon Greenberg,
David L. Lieber, Gordon Tucker and Dr. Ann Lapidus Lerner.
From the United Synagogue: Judge Norman Krivosha. Mr. Francis Mintz, Dr. Miriam
Klein Shapiro and Mr. Jacob Stein.
Hazzan Samuel Rosenbaum, Dr. Barry Holtz, Mr. Max M. Goldberg and Ms. Evelyn
Henkind are, respectively, the appointees of the Cantors Assembly, Educators Assembly,
Federation of Men’s Clubs, and the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism.
Ex-officio members are Rabbi Kassel Abelson, Mr. Franklin D. Kreutzer, Chancellor Ismar
Schorsch and Rabbi Alexander M. Shapiro. Rabbi Akiba Lubow serves as administrator.
Since there were no precedents for its work, I proposed that each member of the
Commission prepare a brief statement of his or her philosophy of Judaism to be circulated
in writing, and then discussed orally at our meetings. Each paper would deal openly and
courageously with our concepts of God and revelation, the authority of Jewish law, the process
of change and development, the role of prayer, the centrality of ethics, the relationship between
the state of Israel and the Diaspora and our vision for the Jewish people and mankind.
A significant body of material has already been produced which may be worthy of
publication as a volume. In any event, the high quality of the deliberations and the progress
achieved has encouraged the members of the Commission to aim for the formulation of a
brief Statement of Principles for discussion and adoption by the Rabbinical Assembly, at its
1987 convention. To this end, each member of our Commission, in addition to the original
presentation, has undertaken to prepare summaries of what he or she regards as the authentic
Conservative outlook on four basic theological issues. It may be possible, out of these various
statements to formulate a concise formulation of our Conservative philosophy.
By setting our work in perspective, I have sought to indicate both the difficulty and
the indispensability of the role assigned to the Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative
Judaism. That such a Statement of Principles will emerge from our work I cannot say, but
with God’s help we shall try.
Notes:
1. See W. Gunther Plaut, The Origins of Reform Judaism, pp. 85-89.
2. See his Seminary Addresses.
3. See CCAR Year Book
4. For the need to reunite these two goals, see my Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture, “Jewish Learning and Jewish
Existence” reprinted in my book, Judaism in a Christian World (New York, 1966) pp. 14-37
5. Marshall Sklare. Conservative Judaism: An American Religious Movement (1965)
6. Rabbi Jules Harlow has been kind enough to examine the archives of the Rabbinical Assembly for this period.
While the records have brought to light additional details, they validate the accuracy of my recollection of these
events. The two following excerpts from the RA records, for which I am grateful to Rabbi Harlow, capture the
atmosphere of those days:
In view of the opposition within the Committee on Jewish Law to Dr. Epstein’s proposed solution to the Agunah
problem and of Professor Ginzberg’s refusal to express a different opinion on the proposition, the Committee
decided not to proceed for the present with the work of implementing the resolution adopted at a former Convention
approving it.
At the 1939 Convention Rabbi Epstein reported: ‘My proposal has found opposition among the few of the members
of the Committee itself. Some of us now wish to turn to “conditional marriage” as the solution. Professor Ginzberg
resents the lack of legal discipline on our part in trying to solve such an important problem in Jewish Law without
the approval of the leading authorities among the European rabbis. He also opposes my proposal and is not
hopeful of finding another.
7. On the history of efforts to deal with this problem, see the chapter on “The Agunah” in my forthcoming book,
The Dynamics of Judaism: A Study of Jewish Law.
8. I am indebted to Rabbi Dennis C. Sasso for this information, which came to light when he was doing research for
his (unpublished) dissertation, “A Case-Study in Congregational Pluralism and Vitality” (submitted to Christian
Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, Ind. 1985).
9. See my paper, “The Ordination of Women “ (Midstream, Sept. 1984 pp. 25-32)
Maintaining the Balance: Achieving the Dream
Nicole Guzik
I am typically known at the Jewish Theological Semi-
nary as the rabbinical school student who loves her school, but
is going back home to California after ordination. While New
The Conservative York City has provided me with every possible Jewish opportu-
nity, friends that I spend Shabbat and quality time with, and the
Movement best kosher food in the United States, I know that my heart lies
Dreaming From where my family resides. But just this past January my mantra
Within changed.
Women’s League sent me as a representative of JTS
Nicole Guzik is in her third to Birmingham, Alabama. This particular Sisterhood wanted
year at the Jewish Theological to bring a female rabbinical school student to meet the grand-
Seminary Rabbinical School. mothers, mothers, aunts, and sisters who spend their free time
After graduating from the
UCLA with a BA in Jewish
fundraising in order to provide students like myself with a syna-
Studies, she participated in gogue and community with which to learn and grow. I have
the Jewish Campus Service lived in the vibrant, bustling Jewish communities of New York
Corps Fellowship at Indiana City and Los Angeles, and I have to tell you—it took a flight
University Hillel, a program
down to Birmingham, Alabama to remind me that indeed, it
that develops Jewish identity
on the college campus. At JTS, is the Conservative movement that is keeping Judaism alive,
she is active in the Rabbinical breathing, honest, and pure.
School Student Organization I often forget the impact of ritual. The president of
and is one of the Rabbinical the Birmingham Sisterhood grasped my hand tightly at the be-
School Admissions Interns. She
has served as rabbinic intern
ginning of Havdalah, whispering to me that she always loved
at The George Washington this part of Shabbat—the reminder that there is always time
Hillel, student rabbi at the to start anew, to mark certain points in our lives as sacred and
Atria Senior Living Center, move forward, realizing that there is possibility for new cre-
student rabbi for the Temple
ation. Her eyes scanned the room at the other Southern women
Israel Center Teen Minyan,
and rabbinic intern at Sinai holding each other’s hands as tightly as she held mine. “We
Temple under Rabbi David may be small, but I know that we are making a difference.” My
Wolpe and Rabbi Sherre Z. eyes started to water over, because at that moment, I realized
Hirsch. In the future Nicole that this woman was not merely holding my hand. She was
plans to pursue a pulpit in the
Southern California area.
connecting communities, connecting mothers and daughters,
connecting one generation to the next.
This woman reminded me of the unique nature of
the Conservative movement: we silently grasp one another’s
hands as we keep the messages of our tradition alive and, as we
look into each other’s eyes, we search for relevance, innovation,
spirit, and love. We are a movement who is consistent in our
Page 73 perseverance — always trying to find the reason and meaning
shefanetwork.org behind our coming together as a community. The Conservative
Jewish women in Birmingham know that there is positive purpose in continuing to remain
part of this movement. They choose to belong to their synagogue and remain committed to
this branch so that Jewish life will continue to thrive in the Southern region of the United
States. It is these women who make Judaism relevant. These women uphold a covenant with
God. These women look at their world and say, yes we want to continue working on our own
creation — and we want to do this through the frame of a Conservative Jew.
It is easy to eliminate the stories and live in a world of statistics. I am not naïve that
the numbers of people who belong to Conservative institutions are dwindling. I know how
difficult it is to get a Conservative rabbi to move from the urban, observant Jewish communi-
ties to the sparse, rural communities within the South and Midwest. However, I look at our
Conservative shuls, camps, day schools, and seminaries, and ask myself—why isn’t anyone
recognizing the positive impact we are having on today’s youth? Why do we choose to list
our failures and defeats, when there are stories to be shared and successes to speak about? It
is easier speaking about the Movement’s faults. It is easier critiquing what the Conservative
movement isn’t and what our Seminaries are lacking. It is harder to list why this movement is
a home for you. It is harder remembering why you should be a Conservative Jew. It is harder
defining yourself through a positive experience than a negative one. However, I am willing to
take the risk.
My past three years as a rabbinical school student at The Jewish Theological Semi-
nary have been filled with positive Conservative Jewish experiences. My mekhinah year I spent
every month with college students as the rabbinic intern at The George Washington University
in Washington D.C. I watched Conservative Jewish college students coming together in order
to create a space in which there was a freedom to learn, teach, and most of all--question
Torah. These students were and are committed to their minyan because they know that this
“space” is replicated all over the United States by thousands of other college students: Con-
servative Jews that want to maintain tradition, who are compelled to ask questions, and often
leave their minyanim confused and intrigued. I found that although Conservative Jews are
frustrated with the idea of living within tension, we are not willing to eliminate our struggle.
I continue to see these Conservative communities who crave these spaces of learn-
ing. We want to maintain the ability to scream at our texts, as well as cradle the words of Torah
with a loving and tender arm. Interning at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, CA, I was introduced
to hundreds of various congregants that come back to shul week after week, engaging in the
ultimate Conservative Jewish experience: asking themselves, how is it possible to create a rela-
tionship with God and Torah when I live my life as a busy, intellectual, modern Jew? How can
I share the stories of my people, gain a sense of spirituality, and still make it to work on time?
How do I achieve the balance?
The women in Birmingham, Alabama are achieving the balance, as are the col-
lege students at the Hillel in Washington D.C., and the congregants at Sinai Temple, in Los
Angeles, California. The hope for the Conservative movement does not lie within the listing of
numbers; rather, our success as a movement lies within our continued efforts to make Torah
relevant, real, heartfelt, and constant. I know that we will continue to grow when we choose
to speak about ways to create the spaces that we so desperately wish to live in. Our movement
will develop and mature when we raise our eyes during Havdalah and realize how connected
our souls are to the tradition that we choose to uphold and to the people that maintain that
tradition. It is time to look around at the smiles that appear when mothers light the Shabbat
candles in front of their children. It is time to mark those occasions in which our Conservative
institutions made a difference—creating spaces for children, adolescents, and adults to share
our lives through moments of import. We are a movement of people who are engrained in a
sacred tradition, who seek significance, and who want connection.
It is time to share our stories.

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Journal 5766/2006

The mission of the Shefa Network is two-fold:

The veiled brilliance of the Conservative Movement

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

The Shefa Network was started as an internet

Recommendations for Action:

Recommendations for Action:

4) Love your fellow davener. Reach to individuals comprising your chevreh,

1) Mainstream Conservative Judaism needs to put God back into Judaism in a

Second Covenant: Relationship Between Jews

Third Covenant: Relationship With the Non-Jewish World

The Covenant and Jewish Law

The Covenant and the Future

2. Educate Conservative Rabbis

3. Offer Free High Holy Days Services to the Disenfranchised

4. Take Cognizance of the Non-Jews Among Us

It is Conservative Judaism which is confronted by profound intellectual and spiritual

In America the movement which Solomon Schechter named Conservative Judaism,

The lack of identifiable standards in the movement continued to trouble thoughtful

Clearly the struggle for the emergence of self-definition in Conservative Judaism is

It is time to share our stories.

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