Why Conservative Judaism is failing ... and what to do about it

As the Conservative movement enters its second century, the denomination finds itself at a crossroads, its survival depending on strengthening two long-neglected areas: the importance of religious observance in its members' day-to-day lives, and their understanding of what being "Jewish," and particularly "Conservative," entails.

So observes Neil Gillman, associate professor at the movement's Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan and the author of Conservative Judaism: the Next Century (Berhman House).

Surveying members of the Conservative rabbinate for his research, Gillman found only the most minimal of numbers -- an estimated 10-15% -- described their congregants as "committed." The term was defined as those Jews who keep a kosher home, attend synagogue just once a week, and participate in a "serious" adult education program.

The key to cutting the movement's intermarriage and abandonment rate -- estimated by surveys to be above 50% -- is reversing its lax observance, Gillman arguues.

But at the core of the Conservative movement's non-observance crisis, the JTS professor notes, is the movement's very raison d'etre.

Few are aware of it, but the movement was formed both by religiously conservative Jews (thus the term "Conservative") reacting against the Reform movement's radical break with tradition, and others who sought to provide an "Americanized" alternative to the Orthodoxy of European immigrants. The movement's founders purposely refrained from penning a platform or mandate.

While Reform Jews, in the Germany of the 1800s, had broken most of their links to Sinai, and the Orthodox adamantly refused to deviate even one millimeter from Halacha, the Conservatives, whose very existence was the result of being not here nor there, were stuck without their own Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law).

This move, asserts Gillman, was done with the intention of avoiding future divisions in the movement's own newly-formed ranks.

But the result has been detrimental to generations of sincere and spiritually-centered Conservative Jews seeking out a standard of not only aspiration, but also inspiration.

By 1988, when the movement ultimately decided to publish a pamphlet outlining the premises of its spirituality, almost a century had passed without enunciation of a coherent theology -- a period that, according to Gillman, has taken its toll.

While having indeed suceeded in preventing divisiveness among its members for many years (without a stated belief system there could be no objection to specific policies or teachings for factions to object to), the founders' strategy, Gillman asserts, had, nonetheless, been costly on other fronts.

Ask a Conservative Jew today to describe his beliefs, Gillman writes, and he will likely respond by defining them in terms of other denominations within Judaism: as being "not Orthodox and not Reform."

This lack of ideological and theological clarity, Gillman believes, also has created difficulties for the movement's executive in establishing a consensus in areas of social policy. Moreover, it has led to the alienation of a substantial portion of Conservative youth, including -- embarrassingly -- several of the sons and daughters of the movement's leaders who have been drawn to Orthodoxy's ba'al teshuva (Return) movement.

Ideologically, the Conservative theologian notes, "modern-Orthodoxy," to whose institutions Gillman sent his children, is in many ways gradually moving toward Conservative theology. (Witness, for instance, the recent Manhattan conference on Orthodoxy and feminism, where participants called for Orthodox women rabbis.)

Both movements, he writes, are essentially outgrowths of the European Enlightenment period and can trace their roots to the rise of the Reform movement. Another common denominator, Gillman adds, is that the two groups have made concessions and compromises from traditional Orthodoxy to allow their respective movements to survive.

Gillman, who describes himself as "cautiously optimistic" about the Conservative movement's future, believes that the denomination's survival will depend upon re-affirming the importance of Halachic observance. In that respect, a significant part of his ordination classes deal with teaching the movement's next generation of leaders how to "sell" religious observance to future congregants.

"In my days, our teachers simply ignored the problem of lax observance among our laity. We were taught not to push too hard and to be thankful that people showed up at the synagogue altogether." The consequences of that attitude, Gillman observes, are now obvious.

"Jewish leaders often speak of the challenge of 'Jewish continuity.' Before worrying about 'continuity,' it only makes sense that we first make sure there is an adequate expression of Jewishness from which any 'continuity' will inevitably ensue."  

Binyamin L. Jolkovsky,
Editor-in-Chief