Talk:Relationships between Jewish religious movements/Archive 3

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Archive 2

Archive 3

Reform and conservative

The article as it stands I think misrepresents the relationship between the US Reform and US Conservative movements. Reading this article one would have little idea of a) a common history up until the beginning of the 20th century b) significant informal and formal on-going cooperation between the movements c) shared rabbis - though rabbis more often move from conservative to reform association, movements in the other direction are not unheard of d) rabbinical students that seriously consider either school e) intellectual exchanges and shared faculty f) congregations that seriously debate which organization to belong to and often base decisions on pragmatic reasons

I could go on... Egfrank (talk) 05:25, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

• Hi Egfrank, please don't go on because you are just speaking from one POV and it's not factual. Reform came from Germany and it was the religion of secular German Jews going back to the early 1800s. The Conservative movement grew out of the new Russian and Polish immigrant Jews in America who came in huge numbers from the 1880s to the 1920s and were not willing to give up Kashrut, Shabbat, Yiddish, and prayer in Hebrew -- yet did not wish to have separate seating or separations between men and women (it was the key and only difference with Orthodoxy for a long time, making co-operation with the Orthodox possible on a social and communal level for most of them) and often-times they had no clue that it was Reform leaders in their new communities that foisted Conservatism on them seeing that they would not become Reform overnight, kind of like the Jews for Jesus tactics it seems) -- and they started out and remained closer to early American Orthodox Judaism for a very, very long time. Often the differences between Young Israel synagogues and Conservative shulls was not big. Conservatives officially abided by Halachah and made study of Talmud mandatory for its rabbinical students at JTS whereas Reform officially abandoned Halachah and its requirements for Humanism and instituted a pattern of worship in it's synagogues that mimicked Church service, with organs installed, moving the structural set up of synagogues around, men often told not to wear headcoverings, services in English, shortening and changing the siddur and prayers, dropping of the second day of Yom Tov observance, despising Zionism for the new "Jerusalems" of Berlin and America and opting for strict Liberalism, but the Conservative movement was always fervently Zionistic and Socialistic. Conservative congregations sought out and hired mostly Orthodox rabbis, because they knew how to teach and learn Talmud, and they had no respect for the Reform clergy who were viewed as galochim (like "Christian ministers"). Conservatives went through a schism after the death of its leading (Orthodox) scholar Rabbi Saul Lieberman (1898-1983) who opposed the ordination of women. When they started down that path, Rabbi David Weiss Halivni left them and created the Conservadox split-off Union for Traditional Judaism. It is only in the last 25 years, not more, that the Reform and Conservative movements have moved closer to each other. For a number or historical reasons. Neither emphasized Jewish education to its young seriously enough so that presently both its memberships are more influenced by the ethos of American public schooling and secular universities than by anything remotely traditionally Jewish. The Reform has lost it's left wing to assimiliation and intermarriage (yes, to be frank, they have married Christians and have become "goyim" often by adopting the faith of their Christian spouses, it's all been proven by the National Jewish Population Surveys of 1990 and 200), so what is left of its (young) right wing wants to strengthen itself with more tradition and a closeness to Israel. The Conservatives have lost many of their people to Reform by default (Orthodoxy have become much more Haredi and Hasidic in tone) so that is perhaps where your assumption may have some kernel of truth, and they now wish to merge their agendas and perhaps even their movement, but it's all very recent. The Conservatives have come to the point in recent years that they feel they must follow Reform to "survive" but it was not the way they started out or functioned for a long time. Basically The Conservtives were closer to Orthodoxy from their founding in the 1880s until the 1980s, that's 100 years (proof: the JTS and YU often had similar outlooks and systems, which is why much of Modern Orthodoxy feels very comfortable with right-wing Conservatives, see Conservadox.) Now, the old time Conservative membership is dead and gone, with its memories of Eastern Europe, respect for rabbis and rebbes, nostalgia for the shtetls, its love of Jewish tradition such as Chazanut, kosher pastrami and all Jewish foods, summers in the Catskill Borshtbelt, love of Yiddish theater (all the things that the Reform movement and its haughty members looked down on -- the well known "Uptown Jews vs. the Dowtown greenhorns" syndrome.) Presently everyone wants to hire gay lady rabbis and support Hillary Clinton, and they call that "tikkun olam" or some such nonsense. So please do not insert your revised views of history all over the place. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 09:07, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

By the way, it's sorta funny how in the case of Conservative vis-a-vis Reform you switch to talking about the "ideas" and "notions" that "unite" them BUT when dealing with the Reform vs the Progressive label you did not follow that tack and instead you decided that "geography was destiny" for them and that common ideas were off the table, since when it boils to basics, you know as well as anyone, that Reform and Progressivism is one and the same thing conceptully, yet for your own revisionistic reasons you have arbitrarily chosen to dump the historiacl label of "Reform" for the more trendy label of "Progressive" -- oh well. IZAK (talk) 09:26, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Back to your bigoted views again IZAK? I thought you'd put that behind you with all your conciliatory talk awhile back. It is a shame, A Sniper 02:51, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Sniper buddy: What's "bigoted" about facts? IZAK (talk) 10:44, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

You've sure changed your tune IZAK now that you're on the ideological & POV attack... A Sniper 09:02, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Sniper: As usual, you choose to personalize mattters, rather than debate the issues. Are you scared of something? IZAK (talk) 23:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

My POV does not count here and I am happy to provide numerous citations conforming to WP:V from academic and reliable sources - as I have in other cases. If editors have citations that support alternate claims, feel free to bring supporting citations from reliable sources. In that case we will have multiple notable and reliable points of view and the article should, of course, present them both.

IZAK, I sympathize with your feelings of loss vis a vis the passing of "old-time" Conservative. However, what is, is. It is not our job as Wikipedians to cast judgement good or bad on the choices of others. We merely report them in as unbiased a manner as possible.

I realize some editors may have strong feelings about this topic. However, let's all try to remember that unfounded accusations of impropriety (e.g. POV pushing, biased revisionism, etc) and personal attacks are also a form of incivility (see WP:ICA, WP:ATTACK). Best, Egfrank (talk) 14:44, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi IZAK! This rather opinionated commentator [1] takes a different view from the one you do, arguing that certain recent Conservative Judaism decisions reflect a long history rather than being anomalies (but from a highly critical rather than a supportive perspective). It notes that Solomon Schechter had indicated in 1913 that the United Synagogue would accept "all such congregations as have not accepted the Union (Reform) prayer-book nor perform their religious devotions with uncovered heads." The congregations accepted early on included some very close to Reform as well as some very close to Orthodoxy. Not using an organ wasn't a requirement. At JTS, there were many people who thought Orthodoxy needed to change a tad to survive, thought they were saving tradtional Judaism by what they were doing, and expected Orthodoxy's imminent death and were prepared to mourn it, but there were also lots of people like Mordechai Kaplan whose basic intent was to create something fundamentally new. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 16:29, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe that Shirahadasha's source is righ that leaders of the Conservative movement have long understood their movement as fundamentally centered on a tension between "Tradition and Change" - the name of a book edited by Mordecai Waxman that is an invaluable source for the Conservative movement's view of itself mid-century. Parzen's Architects of Conservative Judaism is also a valuable source. However, I think the most convenient source is Elliott Dorff's Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors to their Descendents published I think by United Synagogue Youth. I do however think that IZAK is offering an important correction to Egfrank's initial claim. While I respect Egfrank's contributions, I think he overstates the relationship between the Reform and Conservative movements. This is my understanding (I believe it is supported by all the sources I mention but I do not have time to check): the intellectual leadership of the Conservative movements has its roots in the right wing of the Reform movement in the US, and the left wing of Orthodoxy. The right wing of the Reform movement consisted of those rabbis who walked out on the notorious "Treif Banquet" I believe in Pittsburgh; the left wing of orthodoxy were those scholars committed to being shomrei mitzvot, but equally committed to wissenschaft der judentum (maybe I mis-spelled it), that is, applying critical historical methods to the study of Judaism and Jewish texts e.g. the Talmud, Zohar, and ultimately the Tanakh itself. It was this alliance of disaffected Reform and Orthodox rabbis who were recruited to, as IZAK correctly (as far as it goes) points out, offer Eastern European immigrants - who were not attracted to Reform - a form of Judaism that would ease their social assimilation into American life more effectively (it was then believed) than Orthodoxy. I am suggesting that Conservative Judaism has its origins in three sources which Egfrank, IZAK and Shirahadashah all partially refer to - Reform rabbis who wanted more tradition, Orthodox scholars who were committed to critical methods of scholarship, and Eastern European Jews looking for a leadership that offered them the right balance of tradition and change. By the way, I have no "factual" evidence, but I suspect IZAK's analysis of why Reform and Conservative movements are moving closer to one another most recently has a lot of sense to it. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:20, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Good points slrubenstien - I certainly didn't mean to imply that there aren't significant differences or points of conflict - only that the article doesn't mention any of the connections or common causes.

My own sense having spent two years studying at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem (sponsored by the United Synogogue) with a bunch of Ramahniks is that the conservative movement is currently torn in three: (a) a left wing that increasingly has common cause with the rightward moving US Reform movement (b) a right wing that is essentially orthodox in its halakhic practice and responsot and seems to have increasing common cause with the leftmost portions of modern orthodoxy especially those portions that are open to the historical-critical school (c) a traditional-egalitarian segment that is orthodox except where it comes to the role of women.

Both the left wing and the traditional-egalitarian parts tend to have more common cause with US Reform than does the right wing. I assume this is because these portions of the conservative movement have a common need to privilege ethics and values over tradition when they see the two in conflict - there is a certain sense in which they "groc" each other even if they don't see eye to eye about a lot of other things.

The right wing of the conservative movement seems to have about as little respect for the Conservative left wing as it does for US Reform - however the complaints about US Reform/left wing conservative are never expressed as "they are bad Jews who don't care about halakhah". They usually come in the form of "They use sloppy halakhic reasoning", "They don't stick to the texts", "They don't understand the importance of process". In other words they criticize the quality of their decision making rather than their motives. I think that is an essential difference between the orthodox critique and the conservative critique of Jews leftwards of themselves. Rather than critique the methods, the orthodox I know just are either judgemental of motives or totally puzzled (and non-judgemental) about how anyone could come up with a religious post-halakhic/other-than-halakhic Judaism.

These are just some on-the-ground observations. I don't have sources for these, at least not yet. Egfrank (talk) 22:05, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Slrubenstein is right about the roots of Conservative Judaism. It was born out of reaction to the excesses of Reform Judaism in discarding tradition and the ossification of Orthodox Judaism. As a movement it has always been committed to halakha, but its halakhic process is different than that of Orthodoxy. Here's an interesting discussion of the Conservative process.

I can't say much about recent developments in the movement, having left active engagement with it some 25 years ago, although I was pleasantly surprised to find an alternative Shmona Esrei in the latest Conservative siddur that refers to Elokeinu v'elokei avoteinu v'imeinu and names Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel in addition to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 22:44, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Questions. Is this thread a general discussion of the topic, or are there specific edits on the table? Or a section/text that needs reworking? Above, I see many useful information and competing views that could go into the article. I think it's less helpful to try to iron out sweeping generalizations about such complex and changing relationships. Perhaps it would help to put the relationships in a diachronic framework within each branch. Also, how about trying to use some consistent terminology within each section to cover different aspects of relationships? E.g., institutional/personal, halakhic-formal/informal, common/different ritual practice, social/cultural, etc. Then editors can call upon different types of quality secondary sources -- historical, sociological, biographical, halakhic/religious -- to describe different aspects of the relationships. Rather than push for generalizations, wouldn't folks like to offer thicker descriptions, maybe showing how various personalities (Saul Lieberman is an instructive example) or institutions (e.g., Synagogue Council) navigated these movement relationships? Thanks. HG | Talk 00:29, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

re: Generalizations. Rather than saying that Conservative Judaism "holds" or "respects" or "recognizes," wouldn't it be better to name (or at least footnote) the agents, i.e., which institution or document or leader represents the movement? In some cases, we'll find a diversity of opinion, and of ways of relating, that are hard to generalize. HG | Talk 00:59, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Excellent point. I think that would be much more constructive and definitely more in line with both WP:V and WP:NPOV. Egfrank (talk) 05:38, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I am glad some people find my comments useful. Alas, i am not in a good position to do any work on the article. But anyone can incorporate my points with a verifiable source if they get a hold of Dorff's short and accessible book. Someone who really wants to develop the article on Conservative Judaism ought to find the Waxman and Parzen books as I think they are essential. The only other point I would propose for inclusion in this or the CJ article - but i cannot provide a good source (maybe again Dorff) is a claim made by at laeast some CJ leaders that the movement was a reclamation of the spirit of the Amoraim, a commitment to halacha but through a dynamic, dialogical, and fluid living process. Perhaps one could suggest that just as the valorization of debate within rabbinic Judaism was perhaps an adaptation to the need to unify heterogeneous elements (former saducees and essenes for example) after the fall of the Temple, Conservative judaism hearkened back to this time as a way to accommodate its own heterogeneous, hybrid roots. I am about to share a vast oversimplification and anyone here can come up with several reasonable arguments against it but: when I was in school one simple way the differences bbetween the movements was explaine to me was, reform jews sought their authority from the (moral message of) the Prophets; Conservative Judaism from the (dialogic and fluid discourse of) the Talmud, and Orthodoxy from the (rigorous commitment to standardized legal observance according to) the Shulchan Aruch. This formula was presented not to disparage any movement, but to sum up how different movements related to Jewish history in different ways. Slrubenstein | Talk 02:38, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Slrubenstein, what a great nutshell summary of the different approaches to Jewish tradition among the three movements. by Malik before thread split

An aside -- the nutshell is about a comparison of the movements, not their relationships. So isn't it somewhat off topic? Thanks. HG | Talk 16:35, 25 November 2007 (UTC)