“In the United States, ‘Conservative Judaism’ is a synonym for failure.” So writes the Israeli journalist Yair Ettinger after interviewing a spectrum of American Jewish religious leaders. If, as it seems, this judgment has become the new conventional wisdom, we reject it as both inaccurate and destructive.
The rationale for such a gross generalization lies in the decline in numbers of Jews who identify with the Conservative label. In the decades after World War II, and as recently as 1990, the plurality of American Jews self-identified as Conservative. More recently, the Pew Research Center found that by 2013, the Conservative proportion had fallen to 18 percent. That quantitative loss has resulted in a shrinking population of synagogue members, fewer students enrolled in Solomon Schechter day schools — though not in Ramah summer camps — and more limited financial resources for the Conservative movement.
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