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Conservative Judaism

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Conservative Judaism, also known as Masorti Judaism, is a modern denomination of Judaism that arose in United States in the early 1900s. Conservative Judaism is characterized by:

Conservative Judaism has its roots in the school of thought known as Positive-Historical Judaism, developed in 1850s Germany as a reaction to the more liberal religious positions taken by Reform Judaism. The term conservative was meant to signify that Jews should attempt to conserve Jewish tradition, rather than reform or abandon it, and does not imply the movement's adherents are politically conservative. Because of this potential for confusion, a number of Conservative rabbis have proposed renaming the movement, and outside of the United States of America it is known as Masorti Judaism.

History

Like Reform Judaism, the Conservative movement developed in Europe and the United States in the 1800s, as Jews reacted to the changes brought about by the Enlightenment and Jewish emancipation. In Europe the movement was known as Positive-Historical Judaism, and it is still known as "the historical school."

Positive-Historical Judaism, the intellectual forerunner to Conservative Judaism, was developed as a school of thought in 1850s Germany by a number of thinkers, including Rabbi Zecharias Frankel. Frankel rejected the positions taken by Reform Judaism as a deviation from traditional Judaism. Frankel became the head of the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, Germany. The seminary taught that Jewish law was not static, but rather has always developed in response to changing conditions. He called his approach towards Judaism "Positive-Historical," which meant that one should have a positive attitude towards accepting Jewish law and tradition as normative, yet one should be open to developing the law in the same fashion that it has always historically developed.

Frankel did not attempt to establish a separate movement; he was interested in promoting a school of thought. At the time, he was seen by more religiously liberal Jews as not very different from the neo-Orthodox (later: "Modern Orthodox") Jews, but to many in Orthodoxy, Frankel's openness to modern methods of historical scholarship put him beyond the pale of Orthodoxy, and he was thus associated with the more radical Reform movement.

In 1902, Solomon Schechter reorganized the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City and made it into the flagship institution of Conservative Judaism. In the USA the movement became known as Conservative Judaism; later it became known as Masorti (traditional) Judaism outside of the USA.

Beliefs

For much of the movement's history, Conservative Judaism avoided publishing systematic explications of the Jewish principles of faith. This was a conscious attempt to hold together a wide coalition. This concern largely became a non-issue after the left-wing of the movement seceded in 1968 to form the Reconstructionist movement, and after the right-wing seceded in 1985 to form the Union for Traditional Judaism.

In 1988, the leadership council of Conservative Judaism finally issued an official statement of belief, Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism. In accord with classical rabbinic Judaism, it agrees that Jews must hold certain beliefs. However, it notes that the Jewish community never developed any one binding catechism. Thus, it is difficult if not impossible to pick out only one person's formal creed and hold it as binding. Instead, Emet Ve-Emunah allows for a range of Jewish beliefs that Conservative rabbis believe are authentically Jewish and justifiable.

Thus, Emet Ve-Emunah affirms belief in God and in God's revelation of Torah to the Jews; however it also affirms the legitimacy of multiple interpretations of these issues. Atheism, Trinitarian views of God, and polytheism are all ruled out. Conservative Judaism explicitly rejects relativism, yet also rejects literalism and fundamentalism.

God

Conservative Judaism affirms monotheism. Its members have varied beliefs about the nature of God, and no one understanding of God is mandated. Among the beliefs affirmed are: Maimonidean rationalism; Kabbalistic mysticism; Hasidic panentheism (neo-Hasidism, Jewish Renewal); limited theism (as in Harold Kushner's "When Bad Things Happen to Good People"); organic thinking in the fashion of Whitehead and Hartshorne, a.k.a. process theology (such as Rabbis Max Kaddushin and William E. Kaufman).

Mordecai Kaplan's religious naturalism (Reconstructionist Judaism) used to have an influential place in the movement, but since Reconstructionism developed as an independent movement, this influence has waned. Papers from a recent Rabbinical Assembly conference on theology were recently printed in a special issue of the journal Conservative Judaism (Winter 1999); the editors note that Kaplan's naturalism seems to have dropped from the movement's radar screen.

Revelation

In agreement with traditional Judaism, Conservative Judaism holds that God inspired prophets to write the Torah (five books of Moses) and the Hebrew Bible. However, for theological reasons most Conservative Jews reject the traditional Jewish idea that God dictated the words of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai in a verbal revelation. Divine revelation, however, while held to be real, is generally believed to be non-verbal -- that is, the revelation did not include the particular words of the divine texts. Conservative Judaism allows its adherents to hold to a wide array of views on the subject of revelation.

Conservative Jews are comfortable with the findings of higher criticism, including the documentary hypothesis, the idea that the current text of the Torah was redacted together from several earlier sources. They go further, and the movement's rabbinic authorities and official Torah commentary (Etz Hayim: A Torah Commentary) affirm that Jews should make use of modern critical literary and historical analysis to understand how the Bible developed. These views are rejected as heretical by most of Orthodox Judaism, but are accepted as valid by all non-Orthodox Jewish movements.

Conservative Jews reconcile these beliefs by holding that God, in some way, did reveal his will to Moses and later prophets. However, records of revelation may have been passed down through the centuries in many ways, including written documents, folklores, epic poems, etc. These records were eventually redacted together to form the Torah, and later on, the other books of the Tanakh [Hebrew Bible].

Jewish law

Conservative Jews view the laws and customs from the various law codes as the basis for Jewish law. However it holds that "however great the literary value of a code may be, it does not invest it with infallibility, nor does it exempt it from the student or the Rabbi who makes use of it from the duty of examining each paragraph on its own merits, and subjecting it to the same rules of interpretation that were always applied to Tradition". (Solomon Schechter.)

Conservative Judaism holds that halakha (Jewish law) is normative, i.e. that halakha is something that Jewish people must strive to actually live by in their daily lives. This would include the laws of Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath); the laws of kashrut (keeping kosher); the practice of thrice daily prayer; observance of the Jewish holidays and life-cycle events.

At the same time, Conservative Jews find it repugnant to coerce anyone into following religious practices. Thus, Conservative Judaism holds that Jewish law is normative, but not enforced. That is, Jewish law encompasses actions that Jews actually ought to be following in their daily lives, even though there is no enforcement of these rules. (See also, the various positions within contemporary Judaism as regards Halakha and the Talmud.)

A number of studies have shown that there is a large gap between what the Conservative movement teaches and what most of its laypeople have incorporated into their daily lives. In practice, the majority of people who have come to join Conservative synagogues only follow all these laws rarely. Most do follow most of the laws some of the time, but only a minority follow most or all of the laws all of time. There is a substantial committed core, consisting of the lay leadership, rabbis, cantors, educators, and those who have graduated from the movement's religious day schools and summer camps, that do take Jewish law very seriously. Recent studies have shown an increase in the observance of members of the movement.

Conservative Jews believe that movements to its left, such as Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism, have erred by rejecting the traditional authority of Jewish law and tradition. They believe that the Orthodox Jewish movements, on the theological right, have erred by slowing down, or stopping, the historical development of Jewish law: "Conservative Judaism believes that scholarly study of Jewish texts indicates that Judaism has constantly been evolving to meet the needs of the Jewish people in varying circumstances, and that a central halakhic authority can continue the halakhic evolution today." (Soc.Culture.Jewish Usenet Newsgroup FAQ)

There is a separate article which has details on Conservative responsa, the legal opinions and rulings of Conservative and Masorti Judaism. Conservative responsa are written by the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards.

Views of other Jewish denominations

Conservative Judaism holds that Orthodox Judaism is a valid and legitimate form of rabbinic Judaism and respects the validity of its rabbis. Conservative Judaism holds that both Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism have made major breaks with the historic definition of Judaism, both by their rejection of Jewish law as normative, and by their unilateral acts in creating a separate definition of Jewishness (i.e. the Reform movement's ruling in 1982, accepting patrilineal descent as an additional way of defining Jewishness). Despite the Conservative movement's disagreement with the more liberal movements, it does respect the right of Reform and Reconstructionist Jews to interpret Judaism in their own way. Thus the Conservative movement recognizes the right of Jews to form such denominations, and recognizes their clergy as rabbis, but often does not accept their specific decisions as valid.

The Conservative position is that Orthodoxy had deviated from historical Judaism through an excessive concern with recent codifications of Jewish law. The Conservative movement consciously rejects the Orthodox understanding of Jewish history, which entails near-total deference to seemingly infallible rabbis, and instead holds that a more fluid model is both necessary, and theologically and historically justifiable. The Conservative movement makes a conscious effort to use historical sources to determine what kind of changes to Jewish tradition have occurred, how and why they occurred, and in what historical context. With this information they believe that can better understand the proper way for rabbis to interpret and apply Jewish law to our conditions today. See also under Modern Orthodox Judaism.

Mordecai Waxman, a leading figure in the Rabbinical Assembly, writes that "Reform has asserted the right of interpretation but it rejected the authority of legal tradition. Orthodoxy has clung fast to the principle of authority, but has in our own and recent generations rejected the right to any but minor interpretations. The Conservative view is that both are necessary for a living Judaism. Accordingly, Conservative Judaism holds itself bound by the Jewish legal tradition, but asserts the right of its rabbinical body, acting as a whole, to interpret and to apply Jewish law." (Mordecai Waxman Tradition and Change: The Development of Conservative Judaism)

Movement organization

In the more limited sense of the term, Conservative Judaism is a unified movement; the international body of Conservative rabbis is the Rabbinical Assembly (RA), the organization of synagogues is the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ), and the primary seminaries are the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in New York City and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles. Conservative Judaism outside the USA is often called Masorti Judaism; Masorti rabbis belong to the Rabbinical Assembly.

Other seminaries include the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, California; the Marshall Meyer Seminario Rabbinico Latinoamericano in Argentina; and Machon Schechter (in Jerusalem.)

Many Jews both inside and outside of this formal Conservative movement identify Conservative Judaism as a worldview which is significantly larger than tha USCJ and RA. Sociologically and religiously, there is social and religious overlap between the USCJ, the Union for Traditional Judaism, much of the Havurah movement, and the growing number of synagogues which are not affiliated, but which identify themselves as Traditional-Egalitarian. Rabbis trained at JTS and the Ziegler School often serve these synagogues and chavurot, and members of these synagogues and chavurot often pray at, or are members of, USCJ synagogues.

Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of JTS, claims that the Conservative movement, which he is a primary voice of, is the primary source for the religious energy of post-denominationalism. He points to Hadar as an example.

Examples of Traditional-Egalitarian chavurot that are identified as Conservative include Kehilat Hadar, in Manhattan, whose membership is largely Conservative. Ismar Schorsch, Chancellor of JTS, has said that "The Hadar movement could not be mistaken for anything but a Conservative synagogue: It's fully egalitarian and seriously Jewish. The ritual is neither Reform nor Orthodox; it's quintessentially Conservative." (Beyond Dogma)

Jewish identity

Conservative Judaism maintains the Rabbinic understanding of Jewish identity: A Jew is someone who was born to a Jewish mother, or who converts to Judaism in accordance with Jewish law and tradition. Conservatism thus rejects patrilineal descent, which is accepted by the Reform movement. Conservative Rabbis are not allowed to perform intermarriages (marriages between Jews and non-Jews). However, the Leadership Council of Conservative Judaism has a more nuanced understanding of this issue than does Orthodoxy. In a press release it has stated:

"In the past, intermarriage...was viewed as an act of rebellion, a rejection of Judaism. Jews who intermarried were essentially excommunicated. But now, intermarriage is often the result of living in an open society....If our children end up marrying non-Jews, we should not reject them. We should continue to give our love and by that retain a measure of influence in their lives, Jewishly and otherwise. Life consists of constant growth and our adult children may yet reach a stage when Judaism has new meaning for them. However, the marriage between a Jew and non-Jew is not a celebration for the Jewish community. We therefore reach out to the couple with the hope that the non-Jewish partner will move closer to Judaism and ultimately choose to convert. Since we know that over 70 percent of children of intermarried couples are not being raised as Jews...we want to encourage the Jewish partner to maintain his/her Jewish identity, and raise their children as Jews."

Important figures

References

  • Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors To Our Descendants (Revised Edition), Elliot N. Dorff, United Synagogue New York, 1996
  • The Conservative Movement in Judaism: Dilemmas and Opportunities, Daniel J. Elazar, Rela Mintz Geffen, SUNY Press, 2000
  • Conservative Judaism: The New Century, Neil Gillman, Behrman House 1993
  • Halakha For Our Time: A Conservative Approach To Jewish Law, David Golinkin, United Synagogue, 1991
  • A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice Isaac Klein, JTS Press, New York, 1992
  • Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook Pamela S. Nadell, Greenwood Press, NY 1988
  • Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism, Ed. Robert Gordis, JTS, New York, 1988
  • Etz Hayim: A Torah Commentary, Ed. David Lieber, Chaim Potok and Harold Kushner, The Jewish Publication Society, NY, 2001

Traditional-Egalitarian Judaism

Observance of Conservative Jews

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