The Conservative Condition

...Yet no one is satisfied that the kind of integrated Jewish life-style implied by the term "committed Jewish laity" really exists...

...A movement—this movement—has to know, and say, in what way it is different, special, persuasive, what, in short, it stands for...

...A number of Conservative leaders believe that the division of American Judaism into three denominations may be an anachronism...

...Its critics note that the Law Committee has not been particularly creative or daring in extending and developing the halakha to new areas of concern...

...Halakhic changes such as this should be announced "proudly and forthrightly," he asserts...

...II...

...here and there, other programs that engage the interest of the laity...

...Faculty Senate in the first place...

...Still, with the signature and support of Chancellor Cohen, the majority report seemed to have excellent prospects for endorsement by the R.A...

...and has served as the Program Director of a large Conservative synagogue in Minneapolis—calls for the application of "Lubavitch tactics in a Conservative context...

...Take the area of kashrut: Of the approximately 4,900 Conservative Jews they surveyed, less than one-third (29 percent) keep kosher inside their homes, while a far smaller percentage (5.7 percent) observe kashrut outside their homes as well...

...After 16 J.T.S...

...3) the nature of the vote as a rebuke by some of the more traditionalist J.T.S...

...Which areas of halakha should be emphasized and developed...

...Nor has Conservative Judaism—or the other two major denominations for that matter— really probed the possible uses of television and other forms of mass media in transmitting its particular point of view...

...Hundreds of Reform and Orthodox rabbis have joined the Rabbinical Assembly (R.A., the organization of Conservative rabbis) during the past two decades...

...I'ye been reading the anthropologist Clifford Geertz and I am becoming increasingly convinced that religious trends are influenced by what Geertz calls 'an intangible climate of opinion and usage.' " Translated, this may be taken to mean that the women's ordination question took on symbolic overtones that far transcended the immediate issue...

...the underlying premise is to leave women free to care for their children...

...He recalls that several years ago, the Committee ruled that a Kohen (descendent of the priestly tribe) may marry a convert or divorced woman—provided it were done in a quiet way, so as not to attract attention...

...The motion itself reflected their concern: "The question [of women's ordination] has provoked unprecedented divisions at every level of the [Conservative] movement...

...Noting that the rabbis of the Talmudic period took into account not only the texts, but also a wide variety of factors influencing human behavior, he would add philosophers, theologians, psychologists, ethicists and sociologists to the Law Committee...

...They feared that the R.A...

...Once solely a North American movement, Conservative Judaism now has an international dimension, with an influential J.T.S.-trained rabbi (Marshall Meyer) in Buenos Aires, four other rabbis in Latin America, three congregations in England, and over thirty rabbis, a campus (Neve Schechter) and a growing lay following in Israel...

...By way of illustration, he suggests that present day halakhic controversies tend to center on such questions as whether or not one should say the Mourner's Kaddish for a suicide, rather than on how to respond sensitively to the family of someone who has committed suicide...

...On the other side of the spectrum, Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Encino, California, perhaps the most influential West Coast Conservative rabbi and a Contributing Editor to both moment and Sh'ma...

...In the absence of an explicit Conservative ideology, the movement's halakhists frequently seem to be looking "over their shoulders" to gauge the reactions of their Orthodox colleagues...

...This evidence seems to confirm the late Rabbi Morris Adler's observation that Conservative Judaism consists of Orthodox professors at J.T.S., Conservative pulpit rabbis and Reform laymen...

...Nine of the faculty members who voted for the tabling motion favored women's ordination in principle, but feared splitting the normally tight-knit J.T.S...

...The anti-ordination rabbis who organized the Conference on Halakhic Process this past December are convinced that controversies on matters of Jewish law should be decided only by Halakhists, scholars in the Torah and Talmud, the main commentaries, and such codes as Maimonides' Mishneh Torah...

...In the opinion of some Conservative rabbis, the Jewish Law Committee, which represents a cross-section of R.A...

...faculty members...

...That is ironic because, as Marshall Sklare notes in Conservative Judaism, such basic innovations as the late Friday evening service were initiated by lay people...

...Law Committee was growing closer to Reform, and that became a shibboleth, a red herring...

...But it was not to be...

...In the past two decades, the lines separating Orthodoxy, Conservatism and Reform have blurred...

...Conservative thinkers have not yet arrived at a consensus on the question of "To what extent is the Torah divinely revealed...

...Thus, at a time when the Reform and Reconstructionist movements have trained women rabbis for almost a decade, and all segments of Orthodoxy are united in their opposition to such a move, the Conservative movement is at an impasse, having decided only to postpone a decision...

...In response to the urging of a number of well-qualified women who had been involved in Conservative youth movements and in J.T.S...

...Several days before such a debate was finally to begin, in December 1979, they convened a Conference on Halakhic Process to publicize both substantive and procedural objections to women's ordination...

...Why should a major halakhic question be decided by the J.T.S...

...rabbinical program...

...and adoption by the J.T.S...

...Consider: • Approximately 40 percent of synagogue-affiliated Jews belong to Conservative shuls, making "Conservatism" the largest of the three major Jewish denominations in America...

...Faur (in Sh'ma, February 8, 1980), the Senate is "a non-Halakhic body...

...Some of its members are not ordained rabbis...

...Of late, however, a number of Conservative leaders have called on the movement to cease being "apologetic" in the face of Orthodoxy...

...The new halakhist of the '80s has to be concerned with argumentation as much as with continuity, with making halakha compelling in terms of the psyches and value systems of today's Jews...

...The problem, of course, is that very few Conservative lay people are engaged in the regular study of texts—"critically" or otherwise—in the first place...

...They successfully appealed to Chancellor Cohen to postpone a scheduled Faculty Senate debate on the report...

...Out of Ramah, especially, has come much of the younger leadership of American Jewry—and the Jewish Catalog, and the havurah movement, and a considerable number of people who have gone on to teach in the expanding network of the movement's Solomon Schechter Day Schools...

...Indeed, argues Rabbi Wilfred Shuchat of Montreal, the Conservative movement in general lacks "scholars in the halakha whose opinions are acknowledged and binding, nor does the piety and learning of the Conservative group as a whole create an image that inspires universal acceptance...

...I asked the Chancellor how he would use a large foundation grant to revitalize Conservative Judaism...

...It is surprising that the movement has not developed an adult camp or retreat center such as the Brandeis-Bardin Institute near Los Angeles...

...On the one hand, there is the very impressive model of youth education which the Conservative movement has developed, a model which includes the Melton Research Center for Jewish Youth as well as the Ramah Camps...

...In late March, Chancellor Cohen announced the establishment of the new J.T.S...

...What then, is to be done...

...Seymour Siegel noted that there were at least three other factors involved: (1) the "power structure, the fact that women present a problem to men and to male power...

...If that is the case among the lay leadership, it is likely that many members of the Conservative "rank and file" do not know that the R.A...

...in May 1977 called upon J.T.S...

...Beside the Chancellor, the 14-person Commission for the Study of the Ordination of Women as Rabbis included a number of prominent David Szonyi is the Assistant Director ofZachor, a project of the National Jewish Resource Center...

...After all, we're not giving away lollipops to new members...

...Rabbi Alan Yuter, who teaches Humanities at the Albany campus of the State University of New York, insists that Conservative Judaism's historical, developmental approach to Jewish law is the real continuation of the Pharisaic tradition which shaped Judaism in the post-biblical period and beyond...

...His response was that he would train more Jewish teachers, raise their salaries, and that he would commission pamphlets and books on issues affecting adults, including bio-ethics, birth control and other aspects of sexuality, aging and business practices...

...Conservative Judaism never sought to represent itself as a compromise between two excesses (nor do as many people these days seem to believe that the alternatives to Conservatism are, in fact, excessive...

...There are notable exceptions: Rabbi Schulweis's Temple Valley Beth Shalom, where hundreds of congregants participate in over 50 (rabbi-less) havurot, and where a new "para-rabbinic" program encourages individuals to take a more active part in critiquing and developing synagogue liturgy and ritual and in such "rabbinic" functions as pastoral counseling...

...Today, notes Strassfeld, many men are also involved in caring for children (Strassfeld and his wife Sharon are the parents of two young children...

...The minority also expressed its concern "that at a time when American Jewish youth seem to be turning more toward traditional values, and to an authentic life style, this [women's ordination] would seriously compromise the traditional image of the Conservative Movement, and the Jewish Theological Seminary...

...Cohen added that the coalition which defeated women's ordination was comprised of Conservative faculty members who are "right-wing Orthodox" intellectually, but "also wish to be with other people," as well as "middle-of-the-road laity who identify with the right-wing...

...as an authentic halakhic institution...

...Yet, as important as that debate may be in its own terms, it is likely merely a symptom of a more profound uncertainty that characterizes the Conservative movement today...

...Halakhic Questions If Conservative rabbinical and lay leaders agree on anything, it is the centrality of halakha in Jewish life and its importance in insuring Jewish survival...

...As mentioned above, Jewish law exempts women from most positive, time-bound mitzvot...

...convention, Houston lay leader Melvin Dow reported that in a poll of 33 trustees of his congregation, Adath Yeshurun, 56 percent of the trustees revealed that they had read not a single one of the Law Committee's opinions during the previous five years...

...For with its day schools and such charismatic leaders as J.D...

...Law School, were among its members...

...Professor Zlotnick is quick to add that he takes a holistic approach to Jewish law, viewing matters ben adam I'chavero ("between man and his neighbor") as equally important to matters of ritual...

...Moreover, argues Liebman in a recent Sh'ma article (February 8, 1980): "I see no evidence that the leadership of the Rabbinical Assembly makes efforts to encourage the observance of Jewish law among Conservative laymen, nor does it exercise any sanctions against its own membership who publicly violate such basic provisions of Jewish law as, for example, kashrut observance...

...In the words of Conservative educator Jay Stern, the movement manifests "a willingness to live with the tensions created by an acceptance of a not thoroughly defined concept of divine revelation along with a critical historical-literary view of Scripture...

...In terms of learning, it is "with a little bit of chagrin and bitterness" that J.T.S...

...And socio-economically, they tended to be upwardly-mobile second and third generation American Jews whose parents came from an East European Orthodox background...

...undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as of a number of Jewish feminists, the R.A...

...A generation ago, the movement's distinctiveness was clear...

...Rabbi Benjamin Z. Kreit-man, Director of the United Synagogue of America, the umbrella organization serving Conservative congregations, believes that these "tensions" may not be all that viable after all: "I submit [they] have made us thoroughly neurotic and religiously timid" he told the 1978 convention of the Rabbinical Assembly...

...Rabbi Schulweis further believes that there has been too little emphasis on what he calls "persuasive halakha...

...It is true that some of its members are not specialists in Jewish law...

...In its final report, filed in December 1978, the Commission recommended by an 11-3 vote that women be admitted into the J.T.S...

...Before the vote, Chancellor Cohen observed, "I had thought these things were determined by Jewish law...

...THE CONSERVATIVE CONDITION DAVID SZONYI Few issues in American Jewish religious life have attracted as much attention as the recent debate within the Conservative movement regarding the ordination of women as rabbis...

...After all, Reform has been moving to the right—there are now Reform kosher kitchens and bar mitzvahs...

...But today, the pendulum has swung back to the rabbi so that Conservatism has become, in Seymour Siegel's words, "a theology of the laity which is not put into practice...

...Talmud professor Haim Z. Dimitrovsky and theology professor Seymour Siegel, other academics such as University of Chicago Assyriologist Rivkah Harris, and prominent laypeople such as author Francine Klagsbrun and Norman Redlich, Dean of the N.Y.U...

...Speaking at the 1978 R.A...

...Women's League President Goldie Kweller speaks proudly of the organization's extensive, and often sophisticated, educational resources, as well as of such efforts as the establishment of a kosher food cooperative in Palo Alto, California, and "meals-on-wheels" programs in Canada...

...J.T.S...

...Issues of Image & Ideology The protracted debate over women's ordination reflects a deeper malaise regarding the Conservative movement's image and ideology—or lack thereof...

...In those areas where political, ideological, or ethical concerns demand changes in practice, halakhic justifications must be offered...

...The thing that we had thought was our strength—that the movement is an umbrella [which covers many shades of belief and practice]—may be a weakness...

...No doubt, one of the underlying reasons for the movement's failure to interest laypeople in halakhic process can be found in the first half of Rabbi Kelman's quip that Conservative Jews see themselves as "non-Orthodox or non-Reform...

...However, graduates of the program will be qualified to serve only as the equivalent of assistant rabbis, for they will lack smicha (rabbinical ordination) and thus will be ineligible to perform such rabbinic functions as marriages and funerals...

...At that point, the anti-ordination forces seized the initiative...

...periodical Beneinu ("Between Us"), Rabbi Yuter argues that "When Orthodox usage differs from classical Halakhah, Conservative Judaism should aggressively adopt the classical position and inform its laity that Conservatism is faithful to the tradition and Orthodoxy is not...

...Writing in the April, 1980 issue of the R.A...

...If the Conservative movement joined Reform about ordaining women rabbis, what would be distinctive about it...

...But even for those who are...

...Similarly, Rabbi Wilfred Shuchat, taking his cue from the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisroel, advocates the establishment of "Conservative yeshivas" in both North America and Israel...

...What does the movement stand fori Most Conservative spokespersons agree that one identifiable characteristic is a "critical approach" to sacred and classical Jewish texts, involving insights from historical scholarship, linguistics and literary criticism among other disciplines...

...Solomon Schechter, Mordecai Kaplan and Abraham Joshua Heschel are likely the three most influential American Jewish thinkers (and doers) of this century...

...It is in the area of staking out a compelling and convincing way of life for masses of Jews...

...In the words of Talmud professor Jos...

...In general...

...Almost all Conservative leaders agree that the movement has largely failed to interest its laypeople in halakhic questions, whether they involve Rabbi Schulweis's "persuasive" or Professor Zlotnick's more traditional approach...

...members, is too broad-based...

...faculty members to the more liberal R.A...

...As a result, many Orthodox leaders have managed to convince Conservative Jews that they represent "normative Judaism" and that Orthodox halakha alone incorporates "The Tradition...

...all three were deeply tied to the Conservative movement...

...When the R.A...

...Law Committee exists, much less what its rulings are...

...Too often we neglect the motivation behind, the moral purpose and the reflective significance of the law," he argues...

...How should the halakhic rulings promulgated by the Law Committee be communicated to Conservative lay people...

...As Professor Dov Zlotnick, one of the five senior professors of Talmud at J.T.S., told me, halakhic questions cannot and should not be decided by majority vote...

...With the exception of a number of congregations, most Conservative lay people are not particularly involved in synagogue life beyond fundraising...

...Even now, notes Wolfe Kelman whimsically, Conservative Jews "see themselves in one of two ways: as non-Orthodox or non-Reform...

...If the movement is to experience a second century of contribution and success, it will have to state, more clearly than it has recently been able to, what it stands for, and why...

...Anti-ordination forces also objected on procedural grounds...

...faculty without recommendation...

...faculty members signed a letter threatening to boycott any Senate meeting at which women's ordination was considered, the Senate on December 20, 1979 voted 25-19 to table a motion to admit women to the J.T.S...

...While the Conservative movement has begun to develop effective education and leadership development programs for youth, very few comparable programs exist for adults...

...The exercise of a decisive rhetoric coupled with a rigorous treatment of halakhic precedent can create a serious Conservative Judaism for a committed Conservative laity...

...The organizational success of Conservative Judaism is impressive...

...The Mishneh had commented that the interpretation of the "minority of one" should be adhered to, provided it were in accordance with halakha...

...Faculty Senate...

...If, of course, it knows, and can decide...

...Rabbi Schulweis, for example, decries the Law Committee's "mumbling" of decisions involving changes in traditional interpretations of halakha...

...Approval of ordination seemed a logical follow up to two earlier decisions by the R.A.'s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (the "Law Committee") granting women the honor of aliyot (being called up and reciting blessings over the Torah) in 1955, and counting women in determining a minyan (prayer quorum of 10 Jewish adults) in 1973...

...He recalled a passage in the Mishneh according to which 99 scholars had decided in favor of one interpretation, and one had decided in favor of another...

...Chancellor Gerson D. Cohen to appoint a commission to study the question...

...Not all those holding Rabbinic degrees have the competency to make Halakhic decisions, just like all M.D.s are not necessarily qualified to perform a neurosurgical operation...

...Ministerial Program, which will be open to women and whose curriculum is strikingly similar to that of the rabbinical program...

...Soloveitchik ("the Rav") and Rabbi Shlomo Riskin— and with the growing unease of many Jews across the religious spectrum with modernist culture— Orthodoxy is clearly a resurgent force in Jewish life...

...The Conservative Laity It is developing a "committed laity" in terms of observance, learning and synagogue involvement that most concerns the Conservative leaders with whom I spoke...

...The majority report noted no halakhic barriers to, and a number of ethical and other arguments for, women's ordination...

...that is certainly not what Conservatism's leaders have felt and have taught...

...According to a 1979 study by sociologist Charles Leibman and IBM senior planner Saul Shapiro ("A Study in the Conservative Movement and Some of Its Religious Attitudes," published by the United Synagogue of America and henceforth referred to as "the Lieb-man/Shapiro Study"), Conservative Jews tend to be better educated and have higher incomes than does a cross section of American Jews in general...

...Thus, he suggests, the halakha might be reinterpreted to exempt both parents from certain mitzvot during the first year or so of a child's life...

...rabbinical school...

...But it is not in the area of organization that Conservative Judaism has historically held out the greatest promise...

...Perhaps, they add, American Jews should simply be classified as "traditionalist" (Orthodox and "right-wing" Conservative) or "non-traditionalist" ("left-wing" Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and secular...

...In terms of observance, Conservative Judaism represented a "middle way" between Orthodoxy and Reform...

...Now I know better...

...They wanted a more "American" Judaism than was prevalent in the Orthodox community, but were also unwilling to reject halakha outright, as seemed to be the case among so many third, fourth and fifth generation Reform Jews...

...V. The Future Whether innovative and energetic programs can re-inspire a movement that seems, at this point in its history, rather listless, remains an open question...

...Yet when one looks below this veneer of data, one finds a movement which is in many ways surprisingly troubled, uncertain about its image and ideology, unclear about what constitutes Conservative halakha (Jewish ritual and ethical law), and largely unsuccessful in developing a committed cadre of lay leaders...

...only one trustee had read more than 10 opinions...

...III...

...Norman Kribosha, the Chief Justice of Nebraska and head of the United Synagogue Central States Region, notes that many Conservative congregants "want to be told what it is to be a Conservative Jew...

...Judaism's rival interpretations are not merely questions of more observance or of less...

...Carol Glass, one of a new generation of intelligent and articulate Conservative women with excellent backgrounds and leadership ability—Ms...

...Glass has pursued graduate studies in Talmud at J.T.S...

...But they disagree with each other on a host of more immediate questions concerning Jewish law, including: • By what process should halakhic questions be decided...

...In contrast, most Orthodox rabbis and scholars acknowledge the divine authority behind all of the Torah, and tend to be uncomfortable with the critical approach to classical Jewish texts in general...

...The substantive objection focused largely on whether a woman, being halakhically exempt from positive, time-bound mitzvot (commandments), can serve as a shlichat zib-bur (leader of the congregation), as well as on the traditional prohibition against edul ("witnessing" as for a ketubah, or Jewish marriage contract...

...But perhaps the only educational (and service) programs in which large numbers of adult Conservative Jews are involved regularly are those organized by the Women's League for Conservative Judaism...

...Yet, as Wolfe Kelman, the R.A.'s Executive Vice President, proudly notes, "I can't tell you of five Conservative rabbis who have joined the other two movements...

...believes the Law Committee is too narrow in its composition...

...2) the fact that the impetus for women's ordination is seen as coming from the contemporary feminist movement, which in turn is viewed as "the quintessential manifestation of modernism—and many people don't want to live in the modern world...

...A one-page minority report objected to women's ordination primarily on halakhic grounds, though somewhat vaguely and weakly: "You cannot, within the present climate of the Conservative movement, ordain women and expect that they will not at some point infringe on . . . halakhic restrictions in the performance of their rabbinical duties" (emphasis added...

...Strassfeld suggests that one area in which halakha might be extended is child-rearing...

...While Conservative Judaism is distinguished from Reform by the priority it gives observance, the evidence contained in the Liebman/ Shapiro report is not encouraging...

...Already, the Chancellor has come under attack from both the anti-ordination "right" and the pro-ordination "left" for what both sides see as an unsatisfactory compromise and "holding action...

...Conservative Judaism has developed important "spin-offs" in the last half-century, including the Jewish center movement and Reconstructionism (both founded by Kaplan) and the havurah movement...

...Its adherents were committed to halakha, but also believed that Jewish law should be periodically reinterpreted according to the needs and practices of what Solomon Schechter called klal Yisroel ("catholic Israel," the gamut of the religiously-involved Jewish community...

...met for its annual convention in Los Angeles in January 1979, it passed on the Commission's report to the J.T.S...

...Chancellor Cohen speaks of Jewish leaders who are "bereft of any Jewish vocabulary," who do not speak a Jewish language and who "are largely ignorant of or choose to ignore Jewish history...

...the Hebrew Literacy Campaign pioneered by a Conservative synagogue in Arlington, Virginia in the mid-1960s, which involved teaching Hebrew reading skills to 200 adults through a very well-publicized and intensive program...

...I. The Women's Issue This sense of inner uncertainty was reflected most acutely in the movement's sharp yet inconclusive debate over the question of ordaining women rabbis...

...That tells you something...

...Conservative Judaism defined itself as more lay-centered, as opposed to the importance of rabbinic authority in Orthodoxy...

...For Professor (and Rabbi) Zlot-nick, the nature of Conservative halakha should be conservative—in the sense of strengthening the Jewish family and home by encouraging such basic Jewish institutions as the Shabbat, Taharas ha-Mish-pachah (laws of "family purity") and kashrut...

...The bitter divergence of opinion threatens to inflict irreparable damage on the academic excellence of the Seminary and the pluralistic unity of the Rabbinical Assembly...

...The Jewish Theological Seminary was founded in 1886, almost a hundred years ago, and the movement to which it eventually gave rise is surely one of American Jewry's great success stories...

...In the words of one prominent observer of American Jewish life, there has been of late an "Americanization of Orthodoxy and a traditionalization of Reform...

...community over the question...

...One of those critics is Michael Strassfeld, a co-editor of the best-selling Jewish Catalog, and editor of a new Haggadah commissioned and published by the R.A...