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7 * 41

2/8
2002

16

LOIS HARON • 248-851-6989

Allied Member • ASID

JULIE WIENER

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

hen the Conservative
movement convenes in
Washington next week, it
will mark a lot of dramat-
ic firsts. And it will embody for many a
new commitment to collaboration
among its numerous institutions.
But the five-day gathering, which
begins Sunday, also comes amid concern
that the 100-year-old movement is too
factionalized and may be losing clout.
Among the firsts:
• Five Conservative groups that previ-
ously met independently — the congre-
gational arm, rabbinic arm, and three
professional associations for synagogue
executive directors, educators and can-
tors — will share one conference.
• A woman, Judy Yudof, will head the
movement's congregational arm, the
United Synagogue of Conservative
Judaism. Neither Orthodox nor Reform
bodies have had women serve in a com-
parable role, but the smaller
Reconstructionist movement has.
• An Israeli rabbi will head the move-
ment's rabbinic arm, the Rabbinical
Assembly.. Rabbi Reuven Hammer, who
made aliyah from the United States in
1973, was one of the rabbis involved in
the Ne'eman Commission, an Israeli
group that sought in the late 1990s to
find a compromise among the religious
streams over contentious issues related to
conversion.
• An Ethiopian-born Conservative
rabbi, Yafet Alemu, who was ordained in
Jerusalem in November, will be inducted
into the Rabbinical Assembly.
More traditional than Reform, more
liberal than Orthodox, the Conservative
movement has always been challenging
to define. It sees Ha&chah, or Jewish
law, as binding but takes a more liberal
interpretation than Orthodoxy.
While most of its leaders observe
Shabbat and keep kosher, the majority
of its rank-and-file synagogue members
— unlike Orthodox synagogue mem-
bers — are not strictly observant.
While the Reform movement has
taken steps to reach out to intermarried
families and to gay and lesbian Jews, the
Conservative movement — while wel-
coming individual intermarried Jews —

does not allow non-Jewish spouses to
become synagogue members. It also
does not ordain openly gay rabbis.
Conservative leaders say they are fac-
ing numerous challenges, including try-
ing to unite the movement and inspire
members to take their Judaism more
seriously at a time when the movement
is not growing and in fact may be
shrinking.

Numbers Game

Both the Reform and Conservative
movements say approximately 320,000
households in North America are affili-
ated with their synagogues. However,
the Conservative movement used to be
larger than Reform.
In the 1990 National Jewish
Population Survey, 18 percent of
American Jews were affiliated with
Conservative synagogues and 16 percent
with Reform ones, said Steven Cohen, a
sociologist at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem who was involved with the
study. In previous studies, the
Conservative movement had been even
larger, Cohen said.
Some in the Conservative movement
say that Reform's recent growth can be
credited, in part, to the fact that it is
more unified. While Reform's many
institutions are united under one large
administrative rubric — the Union of
American Hebrew Congregations, the
Conservative movement is decentralized.
Its many institutions not only raise
funds separately, but have reputations
for not communicating well among
themselves.
"There are an awful lot of people who
view this as the Conservative coalition,
not a movement, and at best a confeder-
ation," said Rabbi Daniel Allen, presi-
dent of the Masorti Foundation for
Conservative Judaism in Israel.
"Nov, people are starting to wonder
out loud, 'Can we live with that? Is that
OK?"'
Next week's gathering — which brings
together five institutions for the first
time — is an effort to start to unite the
movement, say Conservative movement
leaders.
The Reform movement's more united
structure "would be something I'd like
to emulate," said Yudof, the United
Synagogue's incoming president. She

