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Conservatives' Diversity
Causing Identity Crisis
ELENA NEUMAN
Special to The Jewish News
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11. Underlayment
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4. Rafter
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4A. Facia
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5. Roof
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48. Soffit
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12. Corner
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onservative Judaism
been called a move-
ment of both tradition
and change, a midpoint bet-
ween Orthodoxy and Reform
Judaism, and an example of
unity that allows for diver-
sity.
But as the Conservative
movement has striven to be
all these things simulta-
neously, it has left many
confused about what the
movement stands for and
where it is headed.,
In fact, the very identity
and future of Conservative
Judaism was at the core of
discussions during the re-
cent 90th meeting of the
Rabbinical Assembly, Con-
servative Judaism's 1,300-
member central body of
rabbis.
"On this 90th year of the
Rabbinical Assembly, we are
struggling with the forces of
dissension, doubt and
dismay. Critical observers
have opined that our move-
ment is in disarray," Rabbi
Irwin Groner of Detroit, the
newly elected president of
the assembly, said in an ad-
dress to more than 600
rabbis gathered at the Con-
cord Hotel here.
"We are challenged by an
assertive and triumphalist
Orthodoxy on our right and
by a vigorous, growing
Reform movement on our
left," he said. "We are
dissatisfied with the state of
our movement, we fall short
in our own eyes, we are pes-
simistic about our future."
Groner attributed this
perceived malaise to the
centrist position of the
movement. Stressing the
importance of halachah and
tradition, while also affirm-
ing the value of adaptations
to modernity, Conservative
Judaism has often defined
itself by what it is not.
As Rabbi David Nelson of
Temple Beth Shalom in Oak
Park, Mich., put it: "There is
a knowledge of who we are:
We're not Reform or Or-
thodox; we buffet somewhere
in between."
Conservative rabbis point
to the movement's member-
ship of over 1.5 million con-
gregational members —
making it possibly the
largest branch of Judaism in
the United States and
Canada — as testament to
the success of Conservative
Judaism's centrist position.
"Our strength is that we
C
can serve a whole range of
thought, which is where
people are at," said Nelson.
But many Conservative
rabbis today feel that such
diversity of thought and
halachic observance has
been a mixed blessing, leav-
ing congregants confused as
to where the movement
stands on ideological and
spiritual issues.
"If you don't adapt, you
ultimately dry up. But if you
fall for every fad, you stand
Rabbi David Nelson:
"Our strength is range."
for nothing," observed Rabbi
Arnold Goodman, a past
president of the Rabbinical
Assembly and religious
leader of Ahavath Achim
Congregation in Atlanta.
Rabbi Neil Gilman, asso-
ciate professor of philosophy
at the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America
criticized the movement in
general, and JTS in par-
ticular, for its emphasis on
thought and scholarship, at
the expense of spirituality
and theology.
JTS was founded by men
dedicated to "wissenschaft,"
or a scholarly approach to
Judaism, he said. Judaism,
the founders felt, could be
studied in the same way as
any other culture or body of
literature.
This, said Gilman, "was
nothing less than their
ticket of admission into the
Emancipation, into moder-
nity and into the intellectual
community of the West."
But the movement paid a
price for this achievement.
According to Gilman, JTS
has trained generations of
Conservative rabbis to be
academicians — scholars un-
trained to fulfil their role as
spiritual leaders and
therefore unable to transmit
that spirituality to their
congregants.
With this in mind, the
seminary has unveiled a