A movement in modern Judaism occupying the middle position between the ritual and theological liberalism of Reform and the traditionalism of Orthodoxy. Conservative Judaism’s centrism emerges from the movement’s distinctive ideology. It differs from Reform, but is similar to Orthodoxy, in insisting on the continuing authority of Jewish law (halakhah). At the same time, contrary to Orthodox views, Conservative Judaism stresses the extent to which halakhah has always been subject to historical development and so appropriately continues to change today. According to the Conservative movement, Jewish law thus is obligatory—a traditionalistic perspective—while the form it takes is subject to the needs and understandings of each age—a liberal approach.
The Conservative movement has its foundations in the “positive-historical school” that developed in Germany in the nineteenth century under the leadership of Zechariah Frankel. Positive-historical ideology held that critical evaluation is necessary and appropriate in order to derive an accurate picture of the true theology and precepts of Judaism. At the same time, this approach maintained that the central practices of Judaism, codified by their acceptance by the Jewish people over time, continue to demand strict observance, no matter what their actual historical origins. In this, we see again the uniting of the Reform perspective, with its interest in critical evaluation, with the Orthodox view of the authority of tradition.
The positive-historical school’s centrist attitude toward Jewish belief and practice evolved into a powerful religious movement only in the United States. There, beginning in the 1880s, the masses of newly arriving Jewish immigrants formed a natural constituency for a “conservative” approach to Jewish practice. While most of these Eastern European immigrants were no longer under the spell of Orthodoxy, they found Reform, a product of the German Jews who had arrived before them, to be distant from the Judaism they recognized as authentic. They found in the Conservative movement an environment that felt Jewishly legitimate but that, allowing for the introduction of many changes, was comfortable to increasingly assimilated Americans, for whom Judaism would not control every aspect of life. This melding of traditionalism and change allowed Conservative Judaism to become, until the last years of the twentieth century, the largest branch of American Judaism.
The nascent Conservative movement in the United States was particularly shaped by Solomon Schechter, an acclaimed rabbi and scholar brought to America in 1901 to lead the movement’s foundering Jewish Theological Seminary, which had been created in 1887. Schechter introduced the concept of “Catholic (in the sense of ‘universal’) Israel,” which asserted that, alongside tradition, the legitimate content of Jewish thought and practice is determined by what the Jewish people as a whole believe and do. This idea appropriately defined Conservative Judaism in the early parts of the twentieth century, when support for Jewish dietary laws, observance of the Sabbath, and the desire to maintain the traditional structure of Jewish prayer was common among those who identified themselves as Conservative. Thus, Conservative Judaism retained truly traditional sensibilities as regards these Judaic practices even as its congregations adopted mixed seating and the use of English readings during worship, refined the dietary laws to make observance of Kashrut more compatible with a modern lifestyle, and altered Sabbath law so as to allow the use of electricity and, notably, to permit driving to synagogue worship on Sabbaths and festivals. Over time, the movement has also taken a wholly egalitarian stance, allowing full participation of women in all aspects of synagogue life and ritual and, since 1984, ordaining women as rabbis.
Still, as the twentieth century progressed, the idea that the actual practices of Jewish people can define what is authentically Judaic, or even that the practices of its members can be used to demarcate Conservatism as a distinctive approach, has became increasingly difficult to maintain. Along with this, the question of what traditions one must observe in order to be deemed a Conservative Jew has become vexing. In general, Conservative Jews continue to desire a more traditional synagogue experience than exists within Reform, and they expect that their rabbis and cantors will observe the laws of traditional Judaism. But recent studies show that only 24 percent of members of Conservative synagogues keep kosher homes (a much smaller number observes kashrut outside of the home) and that only 37 percent light Sabbath candles, the most basic indicator of even a modicum of Sabbath observance. The percentage that regularly attends synagogue worship is low, close to that found in the Reform movement. The result is that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, observers have adroitly defined the Conservative synagogue as a congregation of Reform Jews led by an Orthodox rabbi. This leaves open the most basic question of how, in the future, Conservative Judaism will maintain the sense of obligation to Jewish tradition on which it was founded, while at the same time retaining the commitment of Jews who decreasingly consider Jewish practice a necessary and meaningful aspect of religious life.
The Conservative movement today is represented by a range of institutions. Chief among them are the Jewish Theological Seminary and the newer Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, where rabbis of the movement are trained; the Rabbinical Assembly, which is the central organization of Conservative rabbis and the law committee of which defines the movement’s stance on specific issues of Jewish law and practice; the United Synagogue, which is the umbrella organization of affiliated congregations; United Synagogue Youth, the movement’s youth movement; Women’s League for Conservative Judaism; and the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs. The movement’s theology has most recently been set out in Robert Gordis, ed., Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism (New York, 1988).
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