Masorti Movement Woos Israelis, Urging:
"Play the Wedding Game"
In 3 Days, More Than 25,000 Respond
Bold Advertising Campaign in Internet, Broadcast and Print Outlets across Israel Challenges Orthodox Monopoly on Marriage Rites, Stirring Widespread Interest and Political Protest
New York, NY, June 19, 2008 - In a media blitz launched Sunday, June 15th that directly challenges the Orthodox monopoly on weddings in Israel, the Masorti movement, affiliated with the Conservative movement in the United States and worldwide, is making an appeal to Jewish Israeli couples increasingly disenchanted with the established system. An estimated 20 percent or more of Israelis who each year choose to live together as couples do so outside the framework of the Office of the Chief Rabbinate, either by not participating in any wedding ceremony or by limiting themselves to a civil ceremony in Cyprus or elsewhere.
The Masorti campaign communicates to Israeli couples that they can have a fully traditional wedding, but one that is also pluralistic. The wedding ceremony may incorporate special touches of personal interest to the couple, including an egalitarian approach.
The print ads and commercials on radio and Internet sites direct readers and listeners to a website set up for the campaign. They are already generating results. In just three days, the Masorti movement office in Jerusalem reported more than 25,000 unique hits to the website and dozens of phone calls from interested couples.
At the same time, the campaign has raised the ire of Shas. The Chairman of Shas in the Knesset, Yaakov Margi, petitioned the Israel Broadcasting Authority to ban the Masorti campaign from the airwaves. In a letter to Mordechai Sklar, IBA's general director, MK Yaakov Margi charged that the Masorti movement "knowingly misleads and perpetrates a campaign of fraud." He further claimed to be writing on behalf of "those who are spiritually lost and would not want to find themselves ending up in unseemly places."
MK Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor) responded in his own letter to the IBA that Masorti "faithfully combines tradition and progress" and suggested the Shas letter should be buried as "a foolish attempt at censorship."
Masorti's clever new online "Wedding Game" uses colorful, animated graphics and an interactive format to convey the personalized, contemporary approach to wedding ceremonies that Masorti offers prospective brides and grooms. Couples learn they can opt to have a traditional, fully halakhic ceremony that simultaneously accommodates pluralistic practice, performed by a rabbi who will meet with them more than once prior to the actual ceremony to create a personal bond.
"Our young people are being driven away from traditional marriage ceremonies by the difficulty of dealing with the Office of the Chief Rabbinate," observed Masorti Executive Director Yizhar Hess, outlining the goals of the campaign. "Under the guidelines of the 'Masorti chuppah,' couples may customize their ceremonies to meet their personal needs without sacrificing halakhic requirements and the connection to Jewish tradition. It is important to make all Israelis aware that this religious alternative exists."
Visitors to the Wedding Game website are led through a series of choices (venue, invitations to special guests, food, etc.) that concludes with an option to select a Masorti chuppah. The Jewish legal requirements are explained in detail before couples are urged to contact the Masorti movement for more information. (Couples are advised, for example, to have a civil ceremony performed outside of Israel to supplement the Masorti chuppah so that their marriages will be legally recognized by the State. They are informed that if they want to divorce, they will need a get. They are also encouraged to sign a pre-nuptial agreement which sets forth monthly financial penalties for any party refusing to free the other in the event of a divorce. This pre-nuptial agreement would be subject to the authority of the civil courts.)
Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum, director of Masorti's Wedding Initiative, is delighted with the campaign thus far. She described the movement's collaboration with the Israeli marketing agency Loop Interactive as "an innovative creative strategy, brilliantly executed, to reach today's young Israeli couples who are seeking to renew ties to their Jewish tradition and heritage in accordance with their personal values, which are open to the realities of modern life."
Reporters/Editors: For interview opportunities, in the United States, please call Jane Calem Rosen, director of communications at the Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism in Israel, at (212) 870-2216 or email jrosen@masorti.org. To reach the Masorti movement in Israel, please call Shmuel Dovrat, director of public relations, at 052-668-6508 (from the US 011-972-52-668-6508) or email pr@masorti.org.
Masorti Movement: Promoting Religious Pluralism and Building Community through Inclusive, Traditional, Egalitarian Judaism
Friday, June 20, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Wertheimer on Reform Judaism's future
What Does Reform Judaism Stand For?
Jack Wertheimer
June 2008
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It is by now a well-documented fact that liberal Protestant denominations in the United States have fallen on hard times. In the mainline churches that once dominated American religious life—and from which emerged the country’s political and cultural elites—the pews have been emptying since as long ago as the 1960’s.1 As the average age of churchgoers edges ever upward, the challenge of recruiting both members and qualified clergy looms larger still, adding to the general sense of demoralization and desuetude. In the meantime, membership in conservative Christian denominations, particularly the evangelical churches, has been swelling.
Against this backdrop, the seeming growth and high morale of Reform Judaism—the Jewish analogue to the liberal Protestant denominations—are nothing short of astonishing. Rather than losing “market share” to its more conservative counterparts, the Reform movement has become the label selected by the plurality of those who identify themselves with the Jewish religion. Nor is its success a matter only of numbers. The movement’s internal decisions—on everything from synagogue liturgy to the religious status of gays and lesbians to rabbinic officiation at intermarriages—are widely regarded as bellwethers of American Jewish life at large. The voice of Reform leaders is also heeded on issues of American public policy, and as its base has grown, the movement has come to expect its views on these issues to carry considerable weight in the councils of the American Jewish community, if not beyond.
Understandably enough, Reform seems to attract the greatest attention when it appears to be acting contrary to type. Late last year, for example, articles in the general and Jewish press marveled at the release of a new Reform prayer book incorporating a much more “traditionalist” attitude toward long-discarded practices and modes of Jewish worship. What could this signify? A healthy openness and self-confidence or, perhaps, a sudden loss of direction? In either case, the time is ripe for a look at the successes Reform has achieved in the last decades, and at the obstacles that may lie in wait for it.
_____________
As it happens, shifts in direction, even radical ones, are nothing new in the history of Reform Judaism. The movement proudly declares its name to be both a noun and a verb, and ever since its emergence in America 150 years ago, it has self-consciously striven to adjust to the rhythm of the times.
In its first period of growth, Reform appealed primarily to Americanized Jews of Central European origin whose families had arrived here in the early and middle decades of the 19th century. By the post-Civil War era, this population had achieved economic success and high social status, and in the process had sloughed off most traditional Jewish practices like observance of the dietary laws (kashrut) and home-based Sabbath rituals. Their synagogues, too, were undergoing what seemed to be an inexorable tide of reformation, introducing organ music, a formal “High Church” aesthetic, abbreviated services, a liturgy largely in English, and rabbinic sermons delivered with oratorical panache.
On the organizational side of Reform, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise of Cincinnati spearheaded an effort to weld individual congregations into a Union of American Hebrew Congregations. This body, in turn, founded the Hebrew Union College (HUC) to train rabbis. By the early 20th century, Reform Judaism had become the dominant religious expression of the native elite of the Jewish community (as opposed to the newly arrived immigrants from Eastern Europe and their families who, insofar as they affiliated themselves with religious observance, tended to join more traditionalist synagogues).
Historians have debated the reasons for the movement’s rapid spread. Much of the debate is academic, but one question has continued to reverberate: was American Reform built upon a structured ideology—on strongly held principles—or did it primarily reflect a series of pragmatic adjustments to the shifting scene? Perhaps the most sustained attempt to articulate a true ideology was the “Pittsburgh Platform” of 1885. According to that document, drafted at a conclave of Reform rabbis, the movement was committed to Judaism as a religion of ethical monotheism; to a highly rationalistic understanding of the deity, presented as a “God Idea”; to the pursuit of social justice for all; and to a definition of Jewishness as solely a matter of confession. On the negative side, much of the ritual structure of Judaism was dismissed as a throwback to an era now rendered anachronistic by the advances of science and human reason. In particular, the movement rejected “such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress.” By the same token, it also rejected any national component to Jewish identity or hope for the restoration of Jews to Zion.
We cannot know for certain how ardently these principles were held by ordinary Reform Jews, as distinct from their rabbis. In Reform congregations, however, men were forbidden to wear a head covering or prayer shawl; dietary laws were openly flouted; and the prayer services pointedly eschewed any reference to the national aspirations of the Jewish people.
This period of what is known as “classical” Reform lasted until nearly the outbreak of World War II, when the movement experienced an influx of new leaders with a different set of assumptions. As the children of East European immigrants became a force within both the membership base and eventually the rabbinate, and with the growth of the Nazi menace in Europe, Reform’s longstanding opposition to Zionism began to collapse. By 1937, the Reform rabbinate had accepted a neutral (as distinct from hostile) stance on the issue. During the war, this would give way in turn to a positive embrace of the Jewish national movement, compelling anti-Zionist Reform rabbis to break away and found the American Council for Judaism.
_____________
Throughout this period, Reform Jews continued to dominate the leadership of the American Jewish community at large—including the top positions within the Zionist camp, occupied by Rabbis Stephen S. Wise and Abba Hillel Silver. But Reform attitudes were increasingly out of synch with the sentiments of the large majority of Jews in the country, a majority now made up of second-generation Americans who held a generally more positive view of ritual observance and found Reform “temples,” with their socially exclusive policies and their emphasis on strict decorum, to be alien places.
As the new Jewish majority moved out of the inner cities and into the burgeoning suburbs, Reform began to adapt. Suddenly, temples were sponsoring such formerly unheard-of rites as bar-mitzvah and, later, bat-mitzvah ceremonies. The shofar replaced trumpet blasts on the Jewish New Year, and head coverings and prayer shawls made a slow comeback.
Some of this “increased ritualism,” as it was dubbed by its antagonists, represented a self-conscious effort to compete more effectively with Conservative Judaism, which during the 1950’s would overtake Reform as the preferred religious choice of the plurality of American Jews. But many within the movement saw it as a move in precisely the wrong direction, into the benighted past. The historian Jacob Rader Marcus, a revered professor at HUC, spoke for them:
There are today too many Reform Jews who have ceased to be [religious] liberals. Their Reform, crystallized into a new Orthodoxy, is no longer dynamic. . . . We cannot lead our people forward by standing backward.
Sounding a similar note, rabbis contributing to a 1960 symposium urged Reform to stick to its pristine agenda. As one respondent declared: “We should not fear to be different.”
For the next few decades, the movement zigged and zagged without a defined direction. Clearly, it had repented of large parts of its “classical” ideology. But what it stood for was harder to say. For the centenary of its founding in 1973, the movement had hoped to produce a timely statement of principles; the document finally appeared three years later.
_____________
At some point in the 1980’s, however, things appear to have changed again, and Reform emerged stronger, more unified, and more sure of itself. This is the Reform we know today. Several related initiatives undertaken by the movement help explain the turn in its fortunes. Their common watchwords are “inclusiveness” and “choice.”
For one thing, the movement incorporated sexual egalitarianism as a cardinal principle. Initially this meant that women would be treated as complete equals in all aspects of religious and synagogue life. In 1972, HUC had been the first American Jewish seminary to ordain a woman rabbi, a precedent it followed by becoming the first to graduate a woman as a cantor. Over the ensuing decades, women assumed key positions in the governance of congregations and in the movement’s national institutions. In time, Reform also embraced openly homosexual Jews, welcomed so-called gay synagogues into its congregational body, ordained open gays as rabbis and cantors, and sanctioned wedding and/or commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples.
Nor were these the only moves toward inclusiveness. Hoping to retain the allegiance of Jews who had married or who wished to marry non-Jews, significant numbers of Reform rabbis began to bless interfaith unions, thereby overturning a long history of opposition to the practice. Congregations, meanwhile, launched “outreach activities” to draw in intermarried Jews and their families. In 1983, the Reform rabbinate turned aside the accepted rabbinic definition of a person qualifying as a born Jew—the traditional criterion is a person whose mother was Jewish—so as to include anyone who had one Jewish parent of either sex and who took part in public acts of Jewish identification (for instance, by attending a synagogue).
In terms of demographics, this particular initiative produced dramatic results: by the turn of the 21st century, over 25 percent of the member families in Reform temples were intermarried.2 And no less open-armed was Reform’s new approach to diverse types of Jewish expression. In ritual matters, the movement now happily accommodated head coverings and prayer shawls for both men and women during services, while continuing to welcome those who eschewed such garb; synagogues and other institutions began to provide for members wishing to observe aspects of Jewish dietary laws, even as they respected the desires of those partial to prohibited foods. And so forth.
Here the guiding principle has been autonomy and choice. Each individual Jew has the inalienable right to define which aspects of the faith are personally meaningful to him; so long as these choices are “informed,” the movement not only tolerates but endorses them.
On two fronts, leaders have pressed hard for their own point of view; in each case, their instincts have appeared to be wholly in tune with the temper of the times. The first concerns synagogue services, which were deemed hopelessly deadening and in desperate need of revision. As Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of the congregational body, put it:
[F]ar too often, our services are tedious, predictable, and dull. Far too often, our members pray without fervor or concentration. Far too often, our music is dirge-like and our Torah readings lifeless, and we are unable to trigger true emotion and assent.
In response, congregations began to experiment with liturgies combining traditional prayers with newly composed prayers and poems; organ and choir music gave way to singing accompanied by flutes, stringed instruments, and drums; rabbis dropped their formal sermons in favor of open discussion. Most noticeably, Reform temples in which congregants were accustomed to sitting passively in pews now freed them to move around the sanctuary—carrying the Torah, dancing during prayers, greeting one another as fellow worshippers.
The final step in this process came last year with the release of the radically revised prayer book for Sabbath and holidays.3 As was immediately noticed, the new volume incorporates many more Hebrew prayers than its predecessors and restores much of the structure of the traditional worship service. At the same time, though, in the regnant spirit of inclusiveness and choice, it also provides ample room for each synagogue to tailor the liturgy however it sees fit.
The second front is the political. Until recently, it was possible to find Reform rabbis and lay leaders active in both the Republican and Democratic parties, and the movement’s pronouncements on matters of public policy retained at least a studied semblance of political neutrality. This is no longer the case. In recent years, Reform Judaism, at the prodding of its Washington arm, the Religious Action Center, has issued resolution after resolution in support of Left-liberal positions across an array of political and social issues. It has opposed the war in Iraq and the nomination of Justice Samuel Alito; sharply rebuked the Christian Right; and vigorously supported the left-wing Democratic stance on gay marriage, affirmative action, and school vouchers.
In all of these areas, the Reform movement has aligned itself perfectly with positions adopted by mainstream liberal Protestantism. But Protestant denominations have split badly over questions like liturgical innovation, abortion rights, and gay ordination. In contrast, on some of the most divisive issues of our time, Reform leaders have not only avoided schism but have evidently built a strong consensus.
Although the new prayer book was completed only after an agonizingly long period of testing and discussion, for example, the movement as a whole seems to have weathered its larger “synagogue revolution” (to use Rabbi Yoffie’s phrase) without serious resistance. In the course of that revolution, religious ideology has been replaced by a pragmatic tolerance of pluralism, religious services have become dizzyingly eclectic, drawing upon multiple sources and varying from congregation to congregation, and congregations themselves have absorbed a continuous and apparently frictionless flow of recruits from the ranks of other denominations, from the gay and lesbian community, and from intermarried households. This is to say nothing of Reform’s openly partisan stance on political matters.
In sum, whatever tempests have rocked the ship of liberal Christianity, Reform Judaism would seem not only to have navigated the storms but to be moving forward with the wind in its sails.
_____________
Needless to say, a vibrant Reform Judaism would be good news under any circumstances, and all the more so now that Reform has become the largest Jewish religious movement in the country. If Reform were to fail, large numbers of American Jews would likely be lost to organized Jewish life altogether. But is the movement thriving as heartily as its upbeat leaders and spokesmen insist? Is it, by its own standards, succeeding in not only retaining its members but inspiring them to intensive religious engagement?
The answer is a highly equivocal one, and it begins with some stark demographic facts. Aside from the minority who actually belong to synagogues, only 15 percent of self-identified Reform Jews report any involvement at all in Jewish organizational life. More than half, moreover, say they have not attended a synagogue within the past year, nearly half cannot read Hebrew, and 30 percent say they feel distant from Israel.
What we know about persons raised within the Reform movement itself is no less sobering. In 2000, fully 70 percent of Jews saying they were raised Reform were not members of any kind of synagogue, a figure that holds steady across the generational board: among older Jews, baby-boomers, and the so-called gen-x and gen-y populations. Seventeen percent of individuals raised Reform do not identify with the Jewish religion, period. Among intermarried Jews who were raised Reform, this figure rises to 28 percent.
Nor is there any evidence that Reform synagogue membership has grown over the past few decades. If temples are holding their own, it is mainly by attracting people from outside, chiefly from the Conservative movement, which has been commensurately shrinking, and from the ranks of Gentiles married to Jews. Whatever this says about Reform’s appeal to outsiders, it suggests a serious weakness when it comes to transmitting a strong sense of Jewish religious identification and commitment to those raised within Reform itself.4
What is the cause of this weakness? A new study of schooling under Reform auspices points to one culprit: the lack of a proper education. For the overwhelming majority of children in the movement, formal Jewish schooling ends at bar- or bat-mitzvah age. More than half drop out of supplementary classes after the seventh grade; of those who continue their studies, two-thirds are gone by grades nine or ten. Despite the declared aspirations of the movement to engage Jews in “lifelong Jewish learning,” its teens and adults have so far declined to heed the message.
The same goes for regular attendance at religious services. According to the 2000 NJPS, fewer than ten percent of Reform synagogue members attend once a week. Sabbath-morning services in most Reform temples attract only the family and friends of the bar or bat mitzvah for a ceremony in which, in the words of Rabbi Yoffie, “worship of God gives way to worship of the child.” The central weekly religious gathering remains a one-hour service on Friday evening. This has been the object of major reforms in liturgy and music, and rabbis do report a consequent increase in attendance; but even so, the number of regulars rarely climbs above 10-15 percent of membership.
When the overwhelming majority shun religious study, how are individual Reform Jews expected to make the “informed choices” on which the movement prides itself? When the overwhelming majority cannot be counted on to participate in religious services, what precisely is thriving in Reform temples?
_____________
The initiatives to include once-marginalized populations show equally ambiguous and no doubt unanticipated results. Reform institutions are open as never before to women, welcoming them into positions of authority and leadership. Yet even as women have moved from the periphery to the center, Reform men have been moving rapidly in the opposite direction. As numerous congregational rabbis have testified, the declining presence of men is palpable in the sanctuary, in committee meetings, in national study programs, even in the biennial conventions of congregational leaders. Matters have reached such a pass that at the most recent convention, an all-male religious service, something usually associated with Orthodox Judaism, was sanctioned as an experiment in “bonding.”
Boys, too, seem to have drifted away. Youth groups and summer camps are filled with female teens who, according to one West Coast rabbi, “wonder where their male counterparts are.” In one recent study, boys made up only 12 percent of participants in a leadership camp for ninth graders. On college campuses, similarly, Reform programs struggle to attract males. At HUC, men now constitute only one-quarter of students training to become rabbis, cantors, and educators.
“If you look carefully at the most hands-on people who are running Jewish institutional life today, you are seeing fewer and fewer men,” says Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, the former president of HUC—an observation manifestly not true of other denominations but very true of Reform. And an analogous situation seems to obtain on the home front. The sociologist Sylvia Barack Fishman has found that within Reform families, fathers participate much less than mothers in the Jewish upbringing of the children. This is particularly the case among intermarried Jewish men—to the point where Fishman concludes that “Reform Jewish men who marry non-Jewish women [are] the ‘weak link’ in American Jewish life today.”
In a movement so proudly identified with egalitarian ideals, the fact that men are fleeing institutional life is mystifying—unless we posit a vast gap between Reform’s professed values and the religious desires of its male adherents. In any event, the ironic fact remains that a movement that led the way toward sexual equality in Judaism is now the least balanced internally between the sexes. On this score, too, Reform today resembles liberal Protestantism, where men form a dwindling minority in the pews, in congregational leadership, and in the seminaries. Even within Reform, however, few count this fact as a sign of success.
_____________
Similarly fraught with complications is Reform outreach to the intermarried. The numbers themselves are undeniably impressive. Among intermarried families in the United States, 62 percent of those joining a synagogue opt for Reform. But this large population has posed a massive educational challenge. How are synagogues to teach non-Jews about Judaism while simultaneously working to increase the knowledge of their Jewish members? One Reform rabbi has waved away this dilemma by noting that in his congregation, Jews and non-Jews possess exactly the same (i.e., minimal) level of Jewish literacy. Others acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, but are at a loss to remedy it.
Congregational schools now draw half their enrollment from families in which one parent was not born Jewish and only a minority of such parents have converted to Judaism. One can only sympathize with teachers trying to cope with the mixed signals sent to children about the diverse religious practices on display in the homes of intermarried families. So far, there seems neither much willingness to recognize the sheer magnitude of the responsibility the movement has taken on nor any sign of appropriate resources being channeled to address it through schools, camps, youth movements, or college programs.
In fact, there is little critical talk at all about the consequences of having integrated so large a population of non-Jews and their families into Reform synagogues. Non-Jewish parents who devotedly bring their children to services and classes are now publicly honored as “heroes.” But the movement has been silent on the need to maintain an unambiguously Jewish orientation within the family so as to minimize confusion and foster a strong identification with Judaism. In 2005, Rabbi Yoffie floated the idea of tactfully conveying to Gentile spouses that they were welcome to convert to Judaism and would be eagerly embraced. The response from the movement’s rabbinic and lay leadership was swift and direct. His proposal was deemed to be offensive to the sensibilities of both non-Jews and their Jewish family members, and was soon a dead letter.
According to the head of a major Reform organization, intermarriage is now so taken for granted in the movement that most Reform Jews no longer see anything problematic about it. This has created a bind for the minority of Reform rabbis and rabbinical candidates who do not wish to officiate at so-called inter-weddings—and who know that they may be denied a pulpit for sticking to their principles. Rather anomalously, movement policy still formally discourages rabbinic officiation at such unions, while respecting the right of individual rabbis to follow the dictates of their conscience. But a commission has been formed to re-examine the matter, and expectations are that it will revoke the present policy in favor of a more “inclusive” one, thereby further undermining those wanting to hold the line.
_____________
Inclusiveness, in short, has brought a number of short-term gains to Reform while exacting a very high price in unintended consequences. So has the movement’s stress on the principle of individual choice.
For one thing, by emphasizing autonomy, Reform Judaism has inadvertently weakened the commitment of many of its adherents to the collective needs of the Jewish people. Though the leadership remains intensely attached to Israel and to the welfare of Jews around the world, and has invested in a Reform presence in many parts of the globe, a connection to the Jewish people does not rank high in the priorities of many self-professed Reform Jews. In a recent survey, 44 percent disagreed with the statement, “I have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people,” and only 21 percent claimed to feel “very emotionally attached to Israel.”
Undoubtedly, this connection is even more attenuated among intermarried families and their children. But the emphasis on personalism has clearly enfeebled the allegiances of many born Jews as well. Rabbi David Ellenson, the current president of HUC, declares that the future of American Judaism is “contingent, to a large extent, upon the success Reform rabbis will have in instilling communitarian religious values and commitments.” It is hard to fathom how rabbis will succeed at this task given the movement’s insistence on the priority of individual choice.
To make matters worse, while rabbis must respect the autonomous right of their congregants to choose which aspects of Judaism they value, congregants need not and do not necessarily respect the autonomous choices of their rabbis, let alone their rabbis’ authority to create a hierarchy of choices rooted in traditional Jewish texts and practices. In this connection, it is by no means clear that many of today’s Reform Jews have adopted the positive approach of a sizable number of younger rabbis toward those traditional practices.
It is not even clear that the movement’s leadership is in accord on this matter. In a remarkable statement issued last summer, Rabbi Yoffie distinguished the Judaism practiced by Reform from other forms of Judaism in these words: “If you take it all upon yourself as an obligation rather than as a choice, you’ve reached the point at which you’re no longer a Reform Jew.”
Here, at last, is a candidly non-inclusive position. What it suggests is that in today’s Reform, red lines continue to exist to the Right: for a rabbi or a congregant to flirt with the basic concept of religious obligation, or venture too close to traditional Jewish observances, is to rule oneself out.
What of red lines to the religious Left? Are there any limits there? True, the movement disapproves of such outlying phenomena as the Society for Humanistic Judaism with its denial of a personal God, or Jews for Jesus. But, as we have seen, it has accommodated all sorts of other innovation under the rubric of legitimate Jewish expression, and has been remarkably silent on what it would consider beyond the pale.
If Reform Judaism were a movement in its adolescence, this perpetual hankering after innovation, this hunger to be in tune with the latest cultural assumptions, this writing and revising of liturgy, this seemingly blithe indifference to the consequences of the choices one has made might be characterized, indulgently, as passing fecklessness. In a mature organization that is also the largest Jewish denomination in America, one would expect a measure of constancy over the long term and a far-reaching vision for deepening the engagement of its adherents. If Reform’s leaders have actually thought deeply about the present and future religious needs of the many Jews and non-Jews in their care, or resolved upon ways of raising their levels of Jewish literacy, teaching them the skills needed for a Jewish life, and defining for them Reform’s ideal criteria of Jewish observance, there has been precious little evidence of it.
_____________
What does all this augur for Reform itself? The movement has wagered its future on the gamble that a coherent and vibrant Judaism can be built on the idea of a big tent, on the informed choice of each Reform Jew, and on a highly elastic definition of both “Reform” and “Jew.” Both in what it cannot accept and in what it cannot but accommodate, the movement is very much at one with the individualistic and “pluralist” ethos of contemporary American culture. But for how long will significant numbers of people continue to be drawn to, or stick with, a religious movement that cannot or will not define standards for committed living, and that, except when it comes to political imperatives, has self-consciously shunned the very notion of imperatives? In this regard, the dramatic decline of liberal Protestant denominations may truly serve as a warning of what lies ahead.
No less urgent is the question of what Reform’s present position augurs for Judaism as a whole, or for the Jewish people. When one puts together the increasing reliance on large numbers of non-Jewish members, the emphasis on personal autonomy, the minimal level of literacy expected by leaders, the freedom of each congregation to shape its own liturgy and synagogue music, and the low identification with Israel expressed by the rank and file, the inescapable impression is of a movement whose policies, intentionally or not, systematically discount any notion of a collective Jewish enterprise or the solidarity needed to sustain it.
Liturgy, literacy, and religious norms serve in Judaism as binding forces of a common belief system and a common vocabulary; Israel serves as a focal point for common action. All of these are of low priority to a great many Reform Jews and will necessarily become of even lower priority as more non-Jews enter the movement’s synagogues, with no requirements imposed or expected. From the point of view of the future unity and distinctiveness of the Jewish people, one can only hope that it is not too late for this movement, which has reversed course so often in the past, to reform itself yet again.
_____________
Jack Wertheimer
June 2008
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The Iraq Argument
Rachel Corrie's Dreams
What Does Reform Judaism Stand For?
Let Us by All Means Have an Honest Conversation about Race
War and Decision by Douglas Feith
It is by now a well-documented fact that liberal Protestant denominations in the United States have fallen on hard times. In the mainline churches that once dominated American religious life—and from which emerged the country’s political and cultural elites—the pews have been emptying since as long ago as the 1960’s.1 As the average age of churchgoers edges ever upward, the challenge of recruiting both members and qualified clergy looms larger still, adding to the general sense of demoralization and desuetude. In the meantime, membership in conservative Christian denominations, particularly the evangelical churches, has been swelling.
Against this backdrop, the seeming growth and high morale of Reform Judaism—the Jewish analogue to the liberal Protestant denominations—are nothing short of astonishing. Rather than losing “market share” to its more conservative counterparts, the Reform movement has become the label selected by the plurality of those who identify themselves with the Jewish religion. Nor is its success a matter only of numbers. The movement’s internal decisions—on everything from synagogue liturgy to the religious status of gays and lesbians to rabbinic officiation at intermarriages—are widely regarded as bellwethers of American Jewish life at large. The voice of Reform leaders is also heeded on issues of American public policy, and as its base has grown, the movement has come to expect its views on these issues to carry considerable weight in the councils of the American Jewish community, if not beyond.
Understandably enough, Reform seems to attract the greatest attention when it appears to be acting contrary to type. Late last year, for example, articles in the general and Jewish press marveled at the release of a new Reform prayer book incorporating a much more “traditionalist” attitude toward long-discarded practices and modes of Jewish worship. What could this signify? A healthy openness and self-confidence or, perhaps, a sudden loss of direction? In either case, the time is ripe for a look at the successes Reform has achieved in the last decades, and at the obstacles that may lie in wait for it.
_____________
As it happens, shifts in direction, even radical ones, are nothing new in the history of Reform Judaism. The movement proudly declares its name to be both a noun and a verb, and ever since its emergence in America 150 years ago, it has self-consciously striven to adjust to the rhythm of the times.
In its first period of growth, Reform appealed primarily to Americanized Jews of Central European origin whose families had arrived here in the early and middle decades of the 19th century. By the post-Civil War era, this population had achieved economic success and high social status, and in the process had sloughed off most traditional Jewish practices like observance of the dietary laws (kashrut) and home-based Sabbath rituals. Their synagogues, too, were undergoing what seemed to be an inexorable tide of reformation, introducing organ music, a formal “High Church” aesthetic, abbreviated services, a liturgy largely in English, and rabbinic sermons delivered with oratorical panache.
On the organizational side of Reform, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise of Cincinnati spearheaded an effort to weld individual congregations into a Union of American Hebrew Congregations. This body, in turn, founded the Hebrew Union College (HUC) to train rabbis. By the early 20th century, Reform Judaism had become the dominant religious expression of the native elite of the Jewish community (as opposed to the newly arrived immigrants from Eastern Europe and their families who, insofar as they affiliated themselves with religious observance, tended to join more traditionalist synagogues).
Historians have debated the reasons for the movement’s rapid spread. Much of the debate is academic, but one question has continued to reverberate: was American Reform built upon a structured ideology—on strongly held principles—or did it primarily reflect a series of pragmatic adjustments to the shifting scene? Perhaps the most sustained attempt to articulate a true ideology was the “Pittsburgh Platform” of 1885. According to that document, drafted at a conclave of Reform rabbis, the movement was committed to Judaism as a religion of ethical monotheism; to a highly rationalistic understanding of the deity, presented as a “God Idea”; to the pursuit of social justice for all; and to a definition of Jewishness as solely a matter of confession. On the negative side, much of the ritual structure of Judaism was dismissed as a throwback to an era now rendered anachronistic by the advances of science and human reason. In particular, the movement rejected “such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress.” By the same token, it also rejected any national component to Jewish identity or hope for the restoration of Jews to Zion.
We cannot know for certain how ardently these principles were held by ordinary Reform Jews, as distinct from their rabbis. In Reform congregations, however, men were forbidden to wear a head covering or prayer shawl; dietary laws were openly flouted; and the prayer services pointedly eschewed any reference to the national aspirations of the Jewish people.
This period of what is known as “classical” Reform lasted until nearly the outbreak of World War II, when the movement experienced an influx of new leaders with a different set of assumptions. As the children of East European immigrants became a force within both the membership base and eventually the rabbinate, and with the growth of the Nazi menace in Europe, Reform’s longstanding opposition to Zionism began to collapse. By 1937, the Reform rabbinate had accepted a neutral (as distinct from hostile) stance on the issue. During the war, this would give way in turn to a positive embrace of the Jewish national movement, compelling anti-Zionist Reform rabbis to break away and found the American Council for Judaism.
_____________
Throughout this period, Reform Jews continued to dominate the leadership of the American Jewish community at large—including the top positions within the Zionist camp, occupied by Rabbis Stephen S. Wise and Abba Hillel Silver. But Reform attitudes were increasingly out of synch with the sentiments of the large majority of Jews in the country, a majority now made up of second-generation Americans who held a generally more positive view of ritual observance and found Reform “temples,” with their socially exclusive policies and their emphasis on strict decorum, to be alien places.
As the new Jewish majority moved out of the inner cities and into the burgeoning suburbs, Reform began to adapt. Suddenly, temples were sponsoring such formerly unheard-of rites as bar-mitzvah and, later, bat-mitzvah ceremonies. The shofar replaced trumpet blasts on the Jewish New Year, and head coverings and prayer shawls made a slow comeback.
Some of this “increased ritualism,” as it was dubbed by its antagonists, represented a self-conscious effort to compete more effectively with Conservative Judaism, which during the 1950’s would overtake Reform as the preferred religious choice of the plurality of American Jews. But many within the movement saw it as a move in precisely the wrong direction, into the benighted past. The historian Jacob Rader Marcus, a revered professor at HUC, spoke for them:
There are today too many Reform Jews who have ceased to be [religious] liberals. Their Reform, crystallized into a new Orthodoxy, is no longer dynamic. . . . We cannot lead our people forward by standing backward.
Sounding a similar note, rabbis contributing to a 1960 symposium urged Reform to stick to its pristine agenda. As one respondent declared: “We should not fear to be different.”
For the next few decades, the movement zigged and zagged without a defined direction. Clearly, it had repented of large parts of its “classical” ideology. But what it stood for was harder to say. For the centenary of its founding in 1973, the movement had hoped to produce a timely statement of principles; the document finally appeared three years later.
_____________
At some point in the 1980’s, however, things appear to have changed again, and Reform emerged stronger, more unified, and more sure of itself. This is the Reform we know today. Several related initiatives undertaken by the movement help explain the turn in its fortunes. Their common watchwords are “inclusiveness” and “choice.”
For one thing, the movement incorporated sexual egalitarianism as a cardinal principle. Initially this meant that women would be treated as complete equals in all aspects of religious and synagogue life. In 1972, HUC had been the first American Jewish seminary to ordain a woman rabbi, a precedent it followed by becoming the first to graduate a woman as a cantor. Over the ensuing decades, women assumed key positions in the governance of congregations and in the movement’s national institutions. In time, Reform also embraced openly homosexual Jews, welcomed so-called gay synagogues into its congregational body, ordained open gays as rabbis and cantors, and sanctioned wedding and/or commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples.
Nor were these the only moves toward inclusiveness. Hoping to retain the allegiance of Jews who had married or who wished to marry non-Jews, significant numbers of Reform rabbis began to bless interfaith unions, thereby overturning a long history of opposition to the practice. Congregations, meanwhile, launched “outreach activities” to draw in intermarried Jews and their families. In 1983, the Reform rabbinate turned aside the accepted rabbinic definition of a person qualifying as a born Jew—the traditional criterion is a person whose mother was Jewish—so as to include anyone who had one Jewish parent of either sex and who took part in public acts of Jewish identification (for instance, by attending a synagogue).
In terms of demographics, this particular initiative produced dramatic results: by the turn of the 21st century, over 25 percent of the member families in Reform temples were intermarried.2 And no less open-armed was Reform’s new approach to diverse types of Jewish expression. In ritual matters, the movement now happily accommodated head coverings and prayer shawls for both men and women during services, while continuing to welcome those who eschewed such garb; synagogues and other institutions began to provide for members wishing to observe aspects of Jewish dietary laws, even as they respected the desires of those partial to prohibited foods. And so forth.
Here the guiding principle has been autonomy and choice. Each individual Jew has the inalienable right to define which aspects of the faith are personally meaningful to him; so long as these choices are “informed,” the movement not only tolerates but endorses them.
On two fronts, leaders have pressed hard for their own point of view; in each case, their instincts have appeared to be wholly in tune with the temper of the times. The first concerns synagogue services, which were deemed hopelessly deadening and in desperate need of revision. As Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of the congregational body, put it:
[F]ar too often, our services are tedious, predictable, and dull. Far too often, our members pray without fervor or concentration. Far too often, our music is dirge-like and our Torah readings lifeless, and we are unable to trigger true emotion and assent.
In response, congregations began to experiment with liturgies combining traditional prayers with newly composed prayers and poems; organ and choir music gave way to singing accompanied by flutes, stringed instruments, and drums; rabbis dropped their formal sermons in favor of open discussion. Most noticeably, Reform temples in which congregants were accustomed to sitting passively in pews now freed them to move around the sanctuary—carrying the Torah, dancing during prayers, greeting one another as fellow worshippers.
The final step in this process came last year with the release of the radically revised prayer book for Sabbath and holidays.3 As was immediately noticed, the new volume incorporates many more Hebrew prayers than its predecessors and restores much of the structure of the traditional worship service. At the same time, though, in the regnant spirit of inclusiveness and choice, it also provides ample room for each synagogue to tailor the liturgy however it sees fit.
The second front is the political. Until recently, it was possible to find Reform rabbis and lay leaders active in both the Republican and Democratic parties, and the movement’s pronouncements on matters of public policy retained at least a studied semblance of political neutrality. This is no longer the case. In recent years, Reform Judaism, at the prodding of its Washington arm, the Religious Action Center, has issued resolution after resolution in support of Left-liberal positions across an array of political and social issues. It has opposed the war in Iraq and the nomination of Justice Samuel Alito; sharply rebuked the Christian Right; and vigorously supported the left-wing Democratic stance on gay marriage, affirmative action, and school vouchers.
In all of these areas, the Reform movement has aligned itself perfectly with positions adopted by mainstream liberal Protestantism. But Protestant denominations have split badly over questions like liturgical innovation, abortion rights, and gay ordination. In contrast, on some of the most divisive issues of our time, Reform leaders have not only avoided schism but have evidently built a strong consensus.
Although the new prayer book was completed only after an agonizingly long period of testing and discussion, for example, the movement as a whole seems to have weathered its larger “synagogue revolution” (to use Rabbi Yoffie’s phrase) without serious resistance. In the course of that revolution, religious ideology has been replaced by a pragmatic tolerance of pluralism, religious services have become dizzyingly eclectic, drawing upon multiple sources and varying from congregation to congregation, and congregations themselves have absorbed a continuous and apparently frictionless flow of recruits from the ranks of other denominations, from the gay and lesbian community, and from intermarried households. This is to say nothing of Reform’s openly partisan stance on political matters.
In sum, whatever tempests have rocked the ship of liberal Christianity, Reform Judaism would seem not only to have navigated the storms but to be moving forward with the wind in its sails.
_____________
Needless to say, a vibrant Reform Judaism would be good news under any circumstances, and all the more so now that Reform has become the largest Jewish religious movement in the country. If Reform were to fail, large numbers of American Jews would likely be lost to organized Jewish life altogether. But is the movement thriving as heartily as its upbeat leaders and spokesmen insist? Is it, by its own standards, succeeding in not only retaining its members but inspiring them to intensive religious engagement?
The answer is a highly equivocal one, and it begins with some stark demographic facts. Aside from the minority who actually belong to synagogues, only 15 percent of self-identified Reform Jews report any involvement at all in Jewish organizational life. More than half, moreover, say they have not attended a synagogue within the past year, nearly half cannot read Hebrew, and 30 percent say they feel distant from Israel.
What we know about persons raised within the Reform movement itself is no less sobering. In 2000, fully 70 percent of Jews saying they were raised Reform were not members of any kind of synagogue, a figure that holds steady across the generational board: among older Jews, baby-boomers, and the so-called gen-x and gen-y populations. Seventeen percent of individuals raised Reform do not identify with the Jewish religion, period. Among intermarried Jews who were raised Reform, this figure rises to 28 percent.
Nor is there any evidence that Reform synagogue membership has grown over the past few decades. If temples are holding their own, it is mainly by attracting people from outside, chiefly from the Conservative movement, which has been commensurately shrinking, and from the ranks of Gentiles married to Jews. Whatever this says about Reform’s appeal to outsiders, it suggests a serious weakness when it comes to transmitting a strong sense of Jewish religious identification and commitment to those raised within Reform itself.4
What is the cause of this weakness? A new study of schooling under Reform auspices points to one culprit: the lack of a proper education. For the overwhelming majority of children in the movement, formal Jewish schooling ends at bar- or bat-mitzvah age. More than half drop out of supplementary classes after the seventh grade; of those who continue their studies, two-thirds are gone by grades nine or ten. Despite the declared aspirations of the movement to engage Jews in “lifelong Jewish learning,” its teens and adults have so far declined to heed the message.
The same goes for regular attendance at religious services. According to the 2000 NJPS, fewer than ten percent of Reform synagogue members attend once a week. Sabbath-morning services in most Reform temples attract only the family and friends of the bar or bat mitzvah for a ceremony in which, in the words of Rabbi Yoffie, “worship of God gives way to worship of the child.” The central weekly religious gathering remains a one-hour service on Friday evening. This has been the object of major reforms in liturgy and music, and rabbis do report a consequent increase in attendance; but even so, the number of regulars rarely climbs above 10-15 percent of membership.
When the overwhelming majority shun religious study, how are individual Reform Jews expected to make the “informed choices” on which the movement prides itself? When the overwhelming majority cannot be counted on to participate in religious services, what precisely is thriving in Reform temples?
_____________
The initiatives to include once-marginalized populations show equally ambiguous and no doubt unanticipated results. Reform institutions are open as never before to women, welcoming them into positions of authority and leadership. Yet even as women have moved from the periphery to the center, Reform men have been moving rapidly in the opposite direction. As numerous congregational rabbis have testified, the declining presence of men is palpable in the sanctuary, in committee meetings, in national study programs, even in the biennial conventions of congregational leaders. Matters have reached such a pass that at the most recent convention, an all-male religious service, something usually associated with Orthodox Judaism, was sanctioned as an experiment in “bonding.”
Boys, too, seem to have drifted away. Youth groups and summer camps are filled with female teens who, according to one West Coast rabbi, “wonder where their male counterparts are.” In one recent study, boys made up only 12 percent of participants in a leadership camp for ninth graders. On college campuses, similarly, Reform programs struggle to attract males. At HUC, men now constitute only one-quarter of students training to become rabbis, cantors, and educators.
“If you look carefully at the most hands-on people who are running Jewish institutional life today, you are seeing fewer and fewer men,” says Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, the former president of HUC—an observation manifestly not true of other denominations but very true of Reform. And an analogous situation seems to obtain on the home front. The sociologist Sylvia Barack Fishman has found that within Reform families, fathers participate much less than mothers in the Jewish upbringing of the children. This is particularly the case among intermarried Jewish men—to the point where Fishman concludes that “Reform Jewish men who marry non-Jewish women [are] the ‘weak link’ in American Jewish life today.”
In a movement so proudly identified with egalitarian ideals, the fact that men are fleeing institutional life is mystifying—unless we posit a vast gap between Reform’s professed values and the religious desires of its male adherents. In any event, the ironic fact remains that a movement that led the way toward sexual equality in Judaism is now the least balanced internally between the sexes. On this score, too, Reform today resembles liberal Protestantism, where men form a dwindling minority in the pews, in congregational leadership, and in the seminaries. Even within Reform, however, few count this fact as a sign of success.
_____________
Similarly fraught with complications is Reform outreach to the intermarried. The numbers themselves are undeniably impressive. Among intermarried families in the United States, 62 percent of those joining a synagogue opt for Reform. But this large population has posed a massive educational challenge. How are synagogues to teach non-Jews about Judaism while simultaneously working to increase the knowledge of their Jewish members? One Reform rabbi has waved away this dilemma by noting that in his congregation, Jews and non-Jews possess exactly the same (i.e., minimal) level of Jewish literacy. Others acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, but are at a loss to remedy it.
Congregational schools now draw half their enrollment from families in which one parent was not born Jewish and only a minority of such parents have converted to Judaism. One can only sympathize with teachers trying to cope with the mixed signals sent to children about the diverse religious practices on display in the homes of intermarried families. So far, there seems neither much willingness to recognize the sheer magnitude of the responsibility the movement has taken on nor any sign of appropriate resources being channeled to address it through schools, camps, youth movements, or college programs.
In fact, there is little critical talk at all about the consequences of having integrated so large a population of non-Jews and their families into Reform synagogues. Non-Jewish parents who devotedly bring their children to services and classes are now publicly honored as “heroes.” But the movement has been silent on the need to maintain an unambiguously Jewish orientation within the family so as to minimize confusion and foster a strong identification with Judaism. In 2005, Rabbi Yoffie floated the idea of tactfully conveying to Gentile spouses that they were welcome to convert to Judaism and would be eagerly embraced. The response from the movement’s rabbinic and lay leadership was swift and direct. His proposal was deemed to be offensive to the sensibilities of both non-Jews and their Jewish family members, and was soon a dead letter.
According to the head of a major Reform organization, intermarriage is now so taken for granted in the movement that most Reform Jews no longer see anything problematic about it. This has created a bind for the minority of Reform rabbis and rabbinical candidates who do not wish to officiate at so-called inter-weddings—and who know that they may be denied a pulpit for sticking to their principles. Rather anomalously, movement policy still formally discourages rabbinic officiation at such unions, while respecting the right of individual rabbis to follow the dictates of their conscience. But a commission has been formed to re-examine the matter, and expectations are that it will revoke the present policy in favor of a more “inclusive” one, thereby further undermining those wanting to hold the line.
_____________
Inclusiveness, in short, has brought a number of short-term gains to Reform while exacting a very high price in unintended consequences. So has the movement’s stress on the principle of individual choice.
For one thing, by emphasizing autonomy, Reform Judaism has inadvertently weakened the commitment of many of its adherents to the collective needs of the Jewish people. Though the leadership remains intensely attached to Israel and to the welfare of Jews around the world, and has invested in a Reform presence in many parts of the globe, a connection to the Jewish people does not rank high in the priorities of many self-professed Reform Jews. In a recent survey, 44 percent disagreed with the statement, “I have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people,” and only 21 percent claimed to feel “very emotionally attached to Israel.”
Undoubtedly, this connection is even more attenuated among intermarried families and their children. But the emphasis on personalism has clearly enfeebled the allegiances of many born Jews as well. Rabbi David Ellenson, the current president of HUC, declares that the future of American Judaism is “contingent, to a large extent, upon the success Reform rabbis will have in instilling communitarian religious values and commitments.” It is hard to fathom how rabbis will succeed at this task given the movement’s insistence on the priority of individual choice.
To make matters worse, while rabbis must respect the autonomous right of their congregants to choose which aspects of Judaism they value, congregants need not and do not necessarily respect the autonomous choices of their rabbis, let alone their rabbis’ authority to create a hierarchy of choices rooted in traditional Jewish texts and practices. In this connection, it is by no means clear that many of today’s Reform Jews have adopted the positive approach of a sizable number of younger rabbis toward those traditional practices.
It is not even clear that the movement’s leadership is in accord on this matter. In a remarkable statement issued last summer, Rabbi Yoffie distinguished the Judaism practiced by Reform from other forms of Judaism in these words: “If you take it all upon yourself as an obligation rather than as a choice, you’ve reached the point at which you’re no longer a Reform Jew.”
Here, at last, is a candidly non-inclusive position. What it suggests is that in today’s Reform, red lines continue to exist to the Right: for a rabbi or a congregant to flirt with the basic concept of religious obligation, or venture too close to traditional Jewish observances, is to rule oneself out.
What of red lines to the religious Left? Are there any limits there? True, the movement disapproves of such outlying phenomena as the Society for Humanistic Judaism with its denial of a personal God, or Jews for Jesus. But, as we have seen, it has accommodated all sorts of other innovation under the rubric of legitimate Jewish expression, and has been remarkably silent on what it would consider beyond the pale.
If Reform Judaism were a movement in its adolescence, this perpetual hankering after innovation, this hunger to be in tune with the latest cultural assumptions, this writing and revising of liturgy, this seemingly blithe indifference to the consequences of the choices one has made might be characterized, indulgently, as passing fecklessness. In a mature organization that is also the largest Jewish denomination in America, one would expect a measure of constancy over the long term and a far-reaching vision for deepening the engagement of its adherents. If Reform’s leaders have actually thought deeply about the present and future religious needs of the many Jews and non-Jews in their care, or resolved upon ways of raising their levels of Jewish literacy, teaching them the skills needed for a Jewish life, and defining for them Reform’s ideal criteria of Jewish observance, there has been precious little evidence of it.
_____________
What does all this augur for Reform itself? The movement has wagered its future on the gamble that a coherent and vibrant Judaism can be built on the idea of a big tent, on the informed choice of each Reform Jew, and on a highly elastic definition of both “Reform” and “Jew.” Both in what it cannot accept and in what it cannot but accommodate, the movement is very much at one with the individualistic and “pluralist” ethos of contemporary American culture. But for how long will significant numbers of people continue to be drawn to, or stick with, a religious movement that cannot or will not define standards for committed living, and that, except when it comes to political imperatives, has self-consciously shunned the very notion of imperatives? In this regard, the dramatic decline of liberal Protestant denominations may truly serve as a warning of what lies ahead.
No less urgent is the question of what Reform’s present position augurs for Judaism as a whole, or for the Jewish people. When one puts together the increasing reliance on large numbers of non-Jewish members, the emphasis on personal autonomy, the minimal level of literacy expected by leaders, the freedom of each congregation to shape its own liturgy and synagogue music, and the low identification with Israel expressed by the rank and file, the inescapable impression is of a movement whose policies, intentionally or not, systematically discount any notion of a collective Jewish enterprise or the solidarity needed to sustain it.
Liturgy, literacy, and religious norms serve in Judaism as binding forces of a common belief system and a common vocabulary; Israel serves as a focal point for common action. All of these are of low priority to a great many Reform Jews and will necessarily become of even lower priority as more non-Jews enter the movement’s synagogues, with no requirements imposed or expected. From the point of view of the future unity and distinctiveness of the Jewish people, one can only hope that it is not too late for this movement, which has reversed course so often in the past, to reform itself yet again.
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Weddings in Israel
Conservative Movement launches new wedding campaign | Jerusalem Post
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Shas is asking the court to stop our radio campaign as they claim we
are being deceptive by calling ourselves "Masorti."
Andy
Conservative Movement launches new wedding campaign
ByMATTHEW WAGNER
The Conservative (Masorti) Movement launched a new campaign this week
to promote its style of a wedding ceremony to Israeli couples.
The campaign includes radio advertisements and a new Internet site
offering young couples a ceremony that combines tradition with
modernity and Jewish content with egalitarianism.
A Conservative rabbi will not marry a Jew and a gentile, and some
will not allow a Cohen to marry a divorced woman or a convert. But in
the Conservative ceremony he or she will permit the woman to break
the glass and some allow the bride to sanctify the husband with a ring.
"We will offer couples a more human touch that is sensitive to their
needs," said Rabbi Andy Sachs, Chairman of the Conservative
Movement's Rabbinical Assembly.
"We will also teach the couple about the laws of family purity if
they want to, but we will do it in a way that makes it significant
and meaningful."
However, since Orthodoxy has a monopoly over the registration of
marriages between Jews inside Israel, Conservative marriages
performed within the state are not recognized. The Conservative
Movement, therefore, recommends marrying abroad in a civil marriage,
which is recognized by the state, and then conducting a Conservative
wedding afterward.
However, modern Orthodox Rabbi Benny Lau said in response that the
Conservative Movement's initiative did not answer a real need.
"Most people who want a traditional wedding ceremony are interested
in connecting themselves to their Jewish past," said Lau. "They want
a ceremony that their parents, grandparents and previous generations
chose." Lau also said that the Orthodox ceremony was flexible enough
to allow for more feminine expression.
"The bride can give the groom a ring under the chuppah if she wants
to as long as she does not sanctify him. The woman can also make a
speech under the chuppah. If the right rabbi performs the ceremony
the needs of the couple can usually be fulfilled without compromising
on Halacha."
Shas is asking the court to stop our radio campaign as they claim we
are being decptive by calling ourselves "Masorti."
Andy
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Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
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http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1212659757222
Shas is asking the court to stop our radio campaign as they claim we
are being deceptive by calling ourselves "Masorti."
Andy
Conservative Movement launches new wedding campaign
By
The Conservative (Masorti) Movement launched a new campaign this week
to promote its style of a wedding ceremony to Israeli couples.
The campaign includes radio advertisements and a new Internet site
offering young couples a ceremony that combines tradition with
modernity and Jewish content with egalitarianism.
A Conservative rabbi will not marry a Jew and a gentile, and some
will not allow a Cohen to marry a divorced woman or a convert. But in
the Conservative ceremony he or she will permit the woman to break
the glass and some allow the bride to sanctify the husband with a ring.
"We will offer couples a more human touch that is sensitive to their
needs," said Rabbi Andy Sachs, Chairman of the Conservative
Movement's Rabbinical Assembly.
"We will also teach the couple about the laws of family purity if
they want to, but we will do it in a way that makes it significant
and meaningful."
However, since Orthodoxy has a monopoly over the registration of
marriages between Jews inside Israel, Conservative marriages
performed within the state are not recognized. The Conservative
Movement, therefore, recommends marrying abroad in a civil marriage,
which is recognized by the state, and then conducting a Conservative
wedding afterward.
However, modern Orthodox Rabbi Benny Lau said in response that the
Conservative Movement's initiative did not answer a real need.
"Most people who want a traditional wedding ceremony are interested
in connecting themselves to their Jewish past," said Lau. "They want
a ceremony that their parents, grandparents and previous generations
chose." Lau also said that the Orthodox ceremony was flexible enough
to allow for more feminine expression.
"The bride can give the groom a ring under the chuppah if she wants
to as long as she does not sanctify him. The woman can also make a
speech under the chuppah. If the right rabbi performs the ceremony
the needs of the couple can usually be fulfilled without compromising
on Halacha."
Shas is asking the court to stop our radio campaign as they claim we
are being decptive by calling ourselves "Masorti."
Andy
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
JTS Commencement
In Our Community header
The Jewish Theological Seminary recently held its commencement
exercises for the 2007-2008 academic year, awarding 110 degrees to 104
graduates from its five schools. JTS also awarded honorary doctorates
to four accomplished luminaries from the fields of law, politics,
science, and Jewish scholarship.
Highlights of the day included a speech by Chancellor Arnold Eisen;
the commencement address by Dean Harold Hongju Koh of Yale Law School,
who also received an Honorary Doctor of Laws; the ordination of
twenty-four new rabbis for the Conservative Movement; and a
performance by the chorus of the H. L. Miller Cantorial School of Kol
Haneshama, composed by two hazzanim invested by JTS in 2007 and 2008.
In his commencement address, which received a standing ovation from
the audience, Dean Koh, a former US assistant secretary of state,
spoke of the urgency of restoring America's reputation as the
world's preeminent defender of human rights:
Since World War II, we were regarded as the nation that valued human
rights and that spoke out against injustice and dictatorship and tried
to practice what we preach. We were never perfect, but were always
thought to be sincere. When I was a US diplomat, I was struck by how
seriously other countries listened to what Americans had to say. They
listened because we were powerful, sure, but they thought we were
powerful because they thought we were principled.
Chancellor Eisen spoke of the the world's need for the wisdom
that is found in Torah study and of the obligations that Judaism
imposes to work for the betterment of the world:
The tradition we call Torah demands we pay full attention to both
sides of the world's reality and do all we can to move the
balance toward the good, dedicating lives and skills to finding
solutions to the problems that can be solved by human beings or
mitigating the suffering caused by those we can't solve.
At this moment, more than ever, the world needs not only science and
all it represents, but wisdom; wisdom that is rendered serious, and so
keeps talk of God and faith serious, by informing itself with all the
tools it can command: science, history, and the experience of people
with different perspectives than ours.
On the JTS homepage, http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=RaJXMjbWnflOJgRZNufjyg.. , you can hear Dean
Koh's address, Chancellor Eisen's remarks (a transcript is
also available), and the choral performance.
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=doO8B2KRTy7hBOWU0IXhOQ..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=pYRBCZ1hxhkrsTN3TAnMwg..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=GvsDoIz15nC9NFzeiTjsPw..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=lOERdf9h6WXmARHS69L5xw..
Honorary doctoral degrees were awarded to Dr. Baruch S. Blumberg of
the Fox Chase Cancer Center and the University of Pennsylvania;
Professor Moshe Halbertal of the Hebrew University, the Shalom Hartman
Institute, and New York University Law School; Dean Harold Hongju Koh
of Yale Law School; and US Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey of New
York's eighteenth congressional district.
Dr. Blumberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976 for the discovery of
the hepatitis B virus. He is currently a distinguished scientist at
Fox Chase Cancer Center and professor of Medicine and Anthropology at
the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Halbertal's research, teaching, and writing have
helped elucidate major themes of Jewish intellectual history. He is
currently professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and
the Gruss Professor of Law at New York University Law School.
Dean Koh, a leading expert on international law and a prominent
advocate of human and civil rights, has argued before the United
States Supreme Court and testified before Congress more than twenty
times. From 1998 to 2001, he served as assisant secretary of state for
democracy, human rights, and labor. He began teaching at Yale in 1985
and is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of
International Law.
Since 1988, Representative Lowey has been a respected legislator,
steadfast advocate of education and health care, dedicated human
rights and national security activist, proactive environmentalist,
faithful friend of the arts, devoted ally of the global community, and
unwavering supporter of the State of Israel.
2008 JTS Commencement Statistics
Schools and Numbers of Degrees
The Graduate School: 26
William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education: 20
Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies: 32
H. L. Miller Cantorial School and College of Jewish Music: 8
The Rabbinical School: 24
Total Degrees: 110*
Total Graduates: 104**
*Those who were ordained as rabbis and also received a Rabbinical
School MA degree and those invested as hazzanim who also received an
H. L. Miller Cantorial School MSM degree are counted only once in the
total number of degrees.
**Six students each received two degrees from different JTS schools.
What's New at JTS
New Curriculum for The Rabbinical School: September's incoming
class of first-year rabbinical students will follow a new course of
study during their years at JTS. "Training outstanding rabbis
requires attention to the head, heart and hands," says Rabbi
Daniel Nevins, Pearl Resnick Dean of The Rabbinical School . . . [read
more]
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=enFsjCmVHGeU_i2lwOZ56w..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=qdSFJCweu69lWKsPVx8fXA..
Summer at JTS: Each summer, JTS opens its doors to students, distance
learners, educators, and professionals. Together with JTS's
world-renowned faculty, the students partake in Summer Session classes
and programs, and social and religious gatherings . . . [read more]
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=ymOL2Cucwh3adGqdFiIlzQ..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=PeUmqMqnmH50O3T5o5Maxw..
JTS Alumni Affairs Office Created Through Generosity of Long Island
Leaders: Diane and Howard Wohl have funded the creation and support of
the Diane and Howard Wohl Office of Alumni Affairs at JTS. Their
passion for educating the next generation of Jewish leaders is evident
in their long-standing involvement in and support of the Conservative
Movement and JTS . . . [read more]
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=ZQPUsFTXvwWAvG38CW-eMw..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=WrBywqX4a7VRcwcIGQrO2w..
Schusterman Rabbinical Fellowship Program a Milestone in
Collaboration: In a first-of-its-kind partnership, the Schusterman
Rabbinical Fellowship Program will bring together eight outstanding
rabbinical students from the Conservative and Reform Movements.
Designed to create a cadre of Reform and Conservative rabbis who share
a broad and dynamic vision of communal leadership of American Jewry .
. . [read more]
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=9R20YsuHKRH44M7Hxs5QEA..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=jvorDoX3qhKzNX7IK_67fA..
To make a donation in support of JTS, please visit our website
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=RshIFDMHd5RXyGZ6ofMjqA..
.
To unsubscribe, follow this link
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/CO?i=e6UsaTbrE33ku7jxWnVZ58JnNNTxCNee&cid=0
.
The Jewish Theological Seminary recently held its commencement
exercises for the 2007-2008 academic year, awarding 110 degrees to 104
graduates from its five schools. JTS also awarded honorary doctorates
to four accomplished luminaries from the fields of law, politics,
science, and Jewish scholarship.
Highlights of the day included a speech by Chancellor Arnold Eisen;
the commencement address by Dean Harold Hongju Koh of Yale Law School,
who also received an Honorary Doctor of Laws; the ordination of
twenty-four new rabbis for the Conservative Movement; and a
performance by the chorus of the H. L. Miller Cantorial School of Kol
Haneshama, composed by two hazzanim invested by JTS in 2007 and 2008.
In his commencement address, which received a standing ovation from
the audience, Dean Koh, a former US assistant secretary of state,
spoke of the urgency of restoring America's reputation as the
world's preeminent defender of human rights:
Since World War II, we were regarded as the nation that valued human
rights and that spoke out against injustice and dictatorship and tried
to practice what we preach. We were never perfect, but were always
thought to be sincere. When I was a US diplomat, I was struck by how
seriously other countries listened to what Americans had to say. They
listened because we were powerful, sure, but they thought we were
powerful because they thought we were principled.
Chancellor Eisen spoke of the the world's need for the wisdom
that is found in Torah study and of the obligations that Judaism
imposes to work for the betterment of the world:
The tradition we call Torah demands we pay full attention to both
sides of the world's reality and do all we can to move the
balance toward the good, dedicating lives and skills to finding
solutions to the problems that can be solved by human beings or
mitigating the suffering caused by those we can't solve.
At this moment, more than ever, the world needs not only science and
all it represents, but wisdom; wisdom that is rendered serious, and so
keeps talk of God and faith serious, by informing itself with all the
tools it can command: science, history, and the experience of people
with different perspectives than ours.
On the JTS homepage, http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=RaJXMjbWnflOJgRZNufjyg.. , you can hear Dean
Koh's address, Chancellor Eisen's remarks (a transcript is
also available), and the choral performance.
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=doO8B2KRTy7hBOWU0IXhOQ..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=pYRBCZ1hxhkrsTN3TAnMwg..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=GvsDoIz15nC9NFzeiTjsPw..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=lOERdf9h6WXmARHS69L5xw..
Honorary doctoral degrees were awarded to Dr. Baruch S. Blumberg of
the Fox Chase Cancer Center and the University of Pennsylvania;
Professor Moshe Halbertal of the Hebrew University, the Shalom Hartman
Institute, and New York University Law School; Dean Harold Hongju Koh
of Yale Law School; and US Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey of New
York's eighteenth congressional district.
Dr. Blumberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976 for the discovery of
the hepatitis B virus. He is currently a distinguished scientist at
Fox Chase Cancer Center and professor of Medicine and Anthropology at
the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Halbertal's research, teaching, and writing have
helped elucidate major themes of Jewish intellectual history. He is
currently professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and
the Gruss Professor of Law at New York University Law School.
Dean Koh, a leading expert on international law and a prominent
advocate of human and civil rights, has argued before the United
States Supreme Court and testified before Congress more than twenty
times. From 1998 to 2001, he served as assisant secretary of state for
democracy, human rights, and labor. He began teaching at Yale in 1985
and is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of
International Law.
Since 1988, Representative Lowey has been a respected legislator,
steadfast advocate of education and health care, dedicated human
rights and national security activist, proactive environmentalist,
faithful friend of the arts, devoted ally of the global community, and
unwavering supporter of the State of Israel.
2008 JTS Commencement Statistics
Schools and Numbers of Degrees
The Graduate School: 26
William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education: 20
Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies: 32
H. L. Miller Cantorial School and College of Jewish Music: 8
The Rabbinical School: 24
Total Degrees: 110*
Total Graduates: 104**
*Those who were ordained as rabbis and also received a Rabbinical
School MA degree and those invested as hazzanim who also received an
H. L. Miller Cantorial School MSM degree are counted only once in the
total number of degrees.
**Six students each received two degrees from different JTS schools.
What's New at JTS
New Curriculum for The Rabbinical School: September's incoming
class of first-year rabbinical students will follow a new course of
study during their years at JTS. "Training outstanding rabbis
requires attention to the head, heart and hands," says Rabbi
Daniel Nevins, Pearl Resnick Dean of The Rabbinical School . . . [read
more]
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=enFsjCmVHGeU_i2lwOZ56w..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=qdSFJCweu69lWKsPVx8fXA..
Summer at JTS: Each summer, JTS opens its doors to students, distance
learners, educators, and professionals. Together with JTS's
world-renowned faculty, the students partake in Summer Session classes
and programs, and social and religious gatherings . . . [read more]
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=ymOL2Cucwh3adGqdFiIlzQ..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=PeUmqMqnmH50O3T5o5Maxw..
JTS Alumni Affairs Office Created Through Generosity of Long Island
Leaders: Diane and Howard Wohl have funded the creation and support of
the Diane and Howard Wohl Office of Alumni Affairs at JTS. Their
passion for educating the next generation of Jewish leaders is evident
in their long-standing involvement in and support of the Conservative
Movement and JTS . . . [read more]
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=ZQPUsFTXvwWAvG38CW-eMw..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=WrBywqX4a7VRcwcIGQrO2w..
Schusterman Rabbinical Fellowship Program a Milestone in
Collaboration: In a first-of-its-kind partnership, the Schusterman
Rabbinical Fellowship Program will bring together eight outstanding
rabbinical students from the Conservative and Reform Movements.
Designed to create a cadre of Reform and Conservative rabbis who share
a broad and dynamic vision of communal leadership of American Jewry .
. . [read more]
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=9R20YsuHKRH44M7Hxs5QEA..
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=jvorDoX3qhKzNX7IK_67fA..
To make a donation in support of JTS, please visit our website
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/R?i=RshIFDMHd5RXyGZ6ofMjqA..
.
To unsubscribe, follow this link
http://support.jtsa.edu/site/CO?i=e6UsaTbrE33ku7jxWnVZ58JnNNTxCNee&cid=0
.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Solomon Schechters' in trouble from Charters?
Will Conservative Day Schools Survive?: As Charter Schools Take Off, Solomo=
n
Schechters Tremble
http://www.forward.com/articles/13533/
By Jennifer Siegel
Thu. Jun 05, 2008
If a newly proposed Hebrew-language charter school opens in Brooklyn, its
longest shadow may be cast on a nearby school that is, in some respects,
already the borough's Little Engine That Could.
Several years ago, the East Midwood Hebrew Day School =97 a kindergarten
through eighth grade academy that is Brooklyn's only Conservative day schoo=
l
=97 was hanging by a thread, with an enrollment that had dropped to just 99
students from a peak of more than 400. But buoyed by the arrival of a new
principal, the school has recently updated its curriculum and facilities an=
d
launched an aggressive new outreach program. Administrators now expect to
welcome more than 180 children in September, some of them drawn from south
Brooklyn's Israeli and Russian communities.
Now, with a Hebrew-centered public school being proposed for the same area =
=97
District 22 in south Brooklyn =97 some Jewish observers are worried about t=
he
impact of the new project. While Hebrew charter schools backers, including
mega-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, view them as a powerful new tool fo=
r
strengthening Jewish identity, others worry that they could pose a unique
competitive challenge for existing Conservative day schools, some of which
are already struggling to retain students.
"Whatever the justification for charter schools, Brooklyn isn't the place
for one," said Marvin Schick, a senior educational consultant for the
philanthropic organization Avi Chai Foundation, which promotes Jewish
education and identity. "If Michael Steinhardt or others want to establish
charter schools, they should go [to places] where the Conservative movement
has already downsized."
Seen in this light, the burgeoning charter school movement could turn out t=
o
be still another drag for the Conservative movement's schools, which in som=
e
areas are finding themselves outflanked by Orthodox schools on the right,
and pluralistic community day schools on the left. While the total number o=
f
students in Conservative day schools has dropped in recent years, other
segments of the day school population have grown.
Overall, 205,000 students ages 4 and up attended Jewish day schools during
the 2003-2004 school year, with a total enrollment increase of 11% over the
1998-1999 academic year, according to a study conducted by Avi Chai. At the
same time, enrollment at Conservative day schools has declined, with nearly
17,829 students during the 2006-2007 academic year, as compared with 20,386
in 2000-2001 =97 a drop of more than 12%. (Reform day schools, attended by
about 5,000 students across the country, have held their numbers steady in
recent years.)
According to Elaine Cohen, associate director of the Solomon Schechter Day
School Association, the umbrella organization for Conservative movement
schools, more than half of the recent enrollment dip can be attributed to
the fact that at least six academies =97 including those in Providence, R.I=
.;
Morris County, N.J., and Worcester, Mass.=97 have in recent years left the
Conservative movement and transformed themselves into Jewish community day
schools. Unlike Conservative day schools, community day schools have no
barriers to enrollment based on the faith of the parents or on religious
practices in the home.
To be sure, the future of Conservative day schools is bright in many areas.
Conservative day schools are flourishing in many parts of the country, with
more than a dozen undertaking building projects in recent years, and new
schools opening in Las Vegas and in Boca Raton, Fla. Still, out of the
roughly 60 schools that belong to the Conservative movement, as many as a
dozen may be struggling, according to Schick. The painfully sudden closure
of the Metropolitan Schechter High School in Teaneck, N.J., in August 2007,
has underscored the difficulties that continue to plague schools in the
country's biggest day school catchment area, the New York metro region,
where tuitions are especially high and competition for communal dollars is
often fierce.
Now, competition for students and dollars is likely to grow only more
intense, as Steinhardt and others attempt to expand the Hebrew charter
movement from the seed of one currently existing school, the one-year old
Ben Gamla Charter School in Hollywood, Fla., into an eventual nationwide
network.
Alese Gingold, a 30-year veteran of the New York City public school system
who took the reins of the East Midwood Hebrew Day two years ago, declined t=
o
comment on the possibility of a Hebrew-focused public school opening a
stone's throw away from her school.
But Gingold said the high cost of tuition is her biggest barrier to
enrolling more children, especially within a community more prone to view a
day school education as a positive choice than as a necessity.
"I would just like a major donor to adopt us," Gingold told the Forward.
"One of the biggest challenges today is the economy, and very often when
people are Conservative Jews, they think they can get by with a public
school."
n
Schechters Tremble
http://www.forward.com/articles/13533/
By Jennifer Siegel
Thu. Jun 05, 2008
If a newly proposed Hebrew-language charter school opens in Brooklyn, its
longest shadow may be cast on a nearby school that is, in some respects,
already the borough's Little Engine That Could.
Several years ago, the East Midwood Hebrew Day School =97 a kindergarten
through eighth grade academy that is Brooklyn's only Conservative day schoo=
l
=97 was hanging by a thread, with an enrollment that had dropped to just 99
students from a peak of more than 400. But buoyed by the arrival of a new
principal, the school has recently updated its curriculum and facilities an=
d
launched an aggressive new outreach program. Administrators now expect to
welcome more than 180 children in September, some of them drawn from south
Brooklyn's Israeli and Russian communities.
Now, with a Hebrew-centered public school being proposed for the same area =
=97
District 22 in south Brooklyn =97 some Jewish observers are worried about t=
he
impact of the new project. While Hebrew charter schools backers, including
mega-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, view them as a powerful new tool fo=
r
strengthening Jewish identity, others worry that they could pose a unique
competitive challenge for existing Conservative day schools, some of which
are already struggling to retain students.
"Whatever the justification for charter schools, Brooklyn isn't the place
for one," said Marvin Schick, a senior educational consultant for the
philanthropic organization Avi Chai Foundation, which promotes Jewish
education and identity. "If Michael Steinhardt or others want to establish
charter schools, they should go [to places] where the Conservative movement
has already downsized."
Seen in this light, the burgeoning charter school movement could turn out t=
o
be still another drag for the Conservative movement's schools, which in som=
e
areas are finding themselves outflanked by Orthodox schools on the right,
and pluralistic community day schools on the left. While the total number o=
f
students in Conservative day schools has dropped in recent years, other
segments of the day school population have grown.
Overall, 205,000 students ages 4 and up attended Jewish day schools during
the 2003-2004 school year, with a total enrollment increase of 11% over the
1998-1999 academic year, according to a study conducted by Avi Chai. At the
same time, enrollment at Conservative day schools has declined, with nearly
17,829 students during the 2006-2007 academic year, as compared with 20,386
in 2000-2001 =97 a drop of more than 12%. (Reform day schools, attended by
about 5,000 students across the country, have held their numbers steady in
recent years.)
According to Elaine Cohen, associate director of the Solomon Schechter Day
School Association, the umbrella organization for Conservative movement
schools, more than half of the recent enrollment dip can be attributed to
the fact that at least six academies =97 including those in Providence, R.I=
.;
Morris County, N.J., and Worcester, Mass.=97 have in recent years left the
Conservative movement and transformed themselves into Jewish community day
schools. Unlike Conservative day schools, community day schools have no
barriers to enrollment based on the faith of the parents or on religious
practices in the home.
To be sure, the future of Conservative day schools is bright in many areas.
Conservative day schools are flourishing in many parts of the country, with
more than a dozen undertaking building projects in recent years, and new
schools opening in Las Vegas and in Boca Raton, Fla. Still, out of the
roughly 60 schools that belong to the Conservative movement, as many as a
dozen may be struggling, according to Schick. The painfully sudden closure
of the Metropolitan Schechter High School in Teaneck, N.J., in August 2007,
has underscored the difficulties that continue to plague schools in the
country's biggest day school catchment area, the New York metro region,
where tuitions are especially high and competition for communal dollars is
often fierce.
Now, competition for students and dollars is likely to grow only more
intense, as Steinhardt and others attempt to expand the Hebrew charter
movement from the seed of one currently existing school, the one-year old
Ben Gamla Charter School in Hollywood, Fla., into an eventual nationwide
network.
Alese Gingold, a 30-year veteran of the New York City public school system
who took the reins of the East Midwood Hebrew Day two years ago, declined t=
o
comment on the possibility of a Hebrew-focused public school opening a
stone's throw away from her school.
But Gingold said the high cost of tuition is her biggest barrier to
enrolling more children, especially within a community more prone to view a
day school education as a positive choice than as a necessity.
"I would just like a major donor to adopt us," Gingold told the Forward.
"One of the biggest challenges today is the economy, and very often when
people are Conservative Jews, they think they can get by with a public
school."
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