A Future for Conservative Judaism
Many see a sharp decline in American Conservative Judaism, which had grown to be the largest Jewish denomination after World War Two. With origins at the Jewish Theological Seminaries in Breslau and in New York, its attraction was its commitment to “conserving” traditional cherished practices and beliefs, and its openness to changes legitimated by historical precedents, as charted by critical scholarship. The result was a “centrist” (between Reform and Orthodoxy) and a pluralist approach (even within individual congregations), a religious coalition that embraced both staunch traditionalism and more flexible interpretations within the perimeters of Jewish Law.
Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1881-1983) was the most radical thinker among the founders of American Conservative Judaism. Appointed by visionary scholar Rabbi Solomon Schechter (1847-1915), the president of New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary (1902-1915), Kaplan taught generations of Conservative rabbis even after founding Reconstructionist Judaism. Schechter, the de facto leader of Conservative Judaism, famously wanted to foster rigorous debate and diversity of practice.
In his remarkable diaries (1913 to 1972), Kaplan describes a 1963 visit to a leading East Coast Conservative synagogue. He relates that he was there to lecture about “The Purpose and Meaning of Adult Jewish Education.” He shares that his talk “led up to the innovation which I am trying to introduce into the synagogue — to convert it into a House of Study where Jews could come together regularly and often to educate their consciences, and where worship and prayer would be brief and meaningful.”
Kaplan reported that he had “a good attendance — at least 350 — and wrapped attention.” He added that whether he “made a dent in their thinking” or they will act on his suggestion will depend on the rabbi, assistant rabbi and educator, who were all his students. But something jolted him. He noted that the congregation’s distinguished and beloved rabbi had been there “at least 29 years minus the four war years when he was a chaplain in the army.” Kaplan observed that when the rabbi “began his ministry there the congregation had only 60 members. Now it numbers well over 800 families….[I]t seems that educationally on the elementary and high school level it has succeeded to a greater degree than most Conservative congregations. The L.T.F. [Leaders Training Fellowship group] which is the outgrowth of a suggestion I made at one of the R.A. [Rabbinical Assembly] conventions some years ago is also well represented and so is the Ramah Camp group. The congregation produced a few youngsters who went on to the rabbinate and some eight girls who later married rabbis.”
Then Kaplan exclaimed, “One would imagine that…[the rabbi] would be happy with what the congregation has achieved. Instead, he spoke in a way that indicated that he felt frustrated….What does it all mean? I suspect that he sees the handwriting on the wall of Jewish life. If that is the way he feels I venture to say that I am in the same boat with him.”
What did these rabbis see or foresee that led them to lose hope for the future of Judaism, especially Conservative Judaism, in America? The Jewish Theological Seminary, the Rabbinical Assembly, and the United Synagogue of America (now, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism) and their constituent women’s, men’s, cantors’ and educators’ organizations had managed to meet the tremendous growth of Conservative synagogues with educational programs for all ages, youth groups, summer camps, and thoughtful publications, books as well as journals.
Did Kaplan and the local rabbi regard the swelling of membership and programs as a bubble that was bound to burst without some support in the general culture or in Jewish communal values? Or did they foresee Conservative Judaism falling into an inertia described by an unintentionally self-deprecating dry cleaner’s ad: “We’ve been working on the same spot for fifteen years.”
A lot of Conservative congregations that were larger than 800 families in 1963 are less than half that size today. But they tend to be stronger in the commitment and involvement of their members. For more than forty years, most conservative congregations have been strengthened by egalitarianism — that is, by women participating equally in ritual and leadership, including as rabbis and cantors.
Indeed, some milestones of the past decade or so on the American Jewish scene offer hope that the teachings, methodology, legacy and even some of the organizational structure of Conservative Judaism will continue to be appreciated and workable.
One important milestone was the phenomenal success of a book, Sacred Trash (2011), written by a husband and wife team, Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole. It tells part of Schechter’s fascinating story. It recounts remarkable events and colorful characters that led him to suddenly take leave from a comfortable position at Cambridge University and to hasten to the synagogue at Cairo, Egypt, where he discovered the geniza or sealed room in which hundreds of manuscripts, sacred and secular, had remained untouched, a marvelous repository of early medieval Jewish life. The book describes the passion of Schechter and of the founders of Conservative Judaism for Jewish history and for scholarship, their sense that the wonders of Jewish history are the best way in the modern world to inspire and to guide, even to transform, Jewish life and Jewish observance.
Secondly, I would mention the founding of Uri L’Tzedek in 2007. This is an Orthodox Jewish social justice organization that is trying to respond, with justice and religious authenticity, to issues such as workers' rights and wages, and standards of humane slaughter and equitable wages for workers in kosher slaughterhouses and restaurants, among other issues. This type of organization in Orthodox circles arose in response to a Conservative organization, Magen Zedek, which opposed the alleged exploitation of workers and inhumane slaughter practices at a kosher meat plant.
The creation of Uri L’tzedek demonstrated that Conservative Judaism can still influence Orthodox Judaism, even as Mordecai Kaplan invented bat mitzvah for girls and developed the concept of “Judaism as a civilization”— coinages later embraced by Orthodox Jews. Symbiotically, Orthodox scholarship might provide unique perspective on how to approach social issues which are divisive in American society.
On the matter of kosher supervision, the Conservative Movement has not operated from a position of strength. In the 1980s the Conservative Movement commissioned a report that yielded, among other conclusions, that children raised in kosher homes were most likely to affiliate with Conservative synagogues. In any event, it is clear that those who purchase kosher meat will have the bigger say regarding the practices of the kosher meat plants.
Before my bar mitzvah, I dutifully attended Hebrew school, but I must confess that I would sometimes “reward” myself for after-school schooling with an occasional hamburger followed by a banana split at the fabled Friendly’s Restaurants. My parents kept a kosher home, and my mother acquired a small book written by our then rabbi, Samuel H. Dresner, on The Jewish Dietary Laws: Their Meaning for Our Time, published by the United Synagogue, a book that brought many people around the country to observe kashrut (the kosher laws). Since he was our rabbi and I enjoyed listening to him on Friday nights, I read it and was “converted” before my bar mitzvah. The book made a strong case for the Jewish concept of holiness and of reverence for life as embodied in the dietary laws. It was a success story for Conservative Judaism.
Last but not least, I would mention recently established charter Hebrew-centric public schools as an unprecedented, sea-changing phenomenon. I still regard day schools as the best hope for Jewish education, but, at best, only a hearty minority of American Jewish children will ever attend day schools or even public charter schools.
I have long believed that the Jewish community needs to partner with public and private schools for Hebrew language instruction. I personally benefitted from Hebrew language courses at my high school in Springfield, Massachusetts. I have learned over the years, from older congregants who came from Germany and Hungary and from parts of Russia and Poland, that they learned Hebrew language and prayers because religious instruction was required during their school day. While such religious coercion violates American freedoms, non-theological study of Hebrew, Arabic, Greek and Latin should be offered to religious and non-religious students, and across religious and ethnic lines.
What is also needed is a Hebrew immersion program for very young children, which Jewish educators now understand to be the best foundation for any kind of Jewish education. This has started successfully in Chicago and in other cities.
Conservative synagogues can survive only when there is Hebrew literacy. The more ways to promote widespread Hebrew literacy, and from the earliest possible age, the more Hebrew prayers will have a prayer of being understood by most Jews who say them, and the more access to the classics of Judaism and to the amazing methods developed by the scholars of Conservative Judaism to better appreciate those classics.
The challenges facing Conservative Judaism are daunting. But perhaps the three trends reviewed here would have heartened that East Coast rabbi and his venerable teacher and guest speaker, Mordecai Kaplan. People will have to be reached one by one, but maybe social media can help in some way, especially the legacy media on the large and small screens. Would there be an awakening of mass interest in Jewish scholarship, and in the founding of Conservative Judaism, if the book Sacred Trash were made into a film, starring a subdued Zach Galifianakis, who looks a little like Solomon Schechter?
