Al & Larry explain Conservative Jewish practice

[From the comments to my Conflicts of principle, on a regular basis post.]

A non-ideological explanation for the adoption of egalitarian practice, that is, the inclusion of women in a minyan, and “permission" for women to receive aliyot and lead services, etc.

Larry Lennhoff said... [referring to Al’s response to yours truly]
Right, so we're back to reducing the obligations of men to increase them for women. We've seen the results of this,I think that historically, in the C movement, you have the causality reversed. In the C community I grew up in the late 60s and early 70s almost no one went to weekday minyan. So the wives in the community saw that their husbands got certain privileges without seeing them bear any extra obligations. Once the requirement of thrice daily prayer was thrown off by the men, they were de facto on the same level of obligation as the women. At that point the argument for gender equality with respect to prayer was effectively unaswerable.

In the O community I live in today, many women consciously accept that in exchange for not leading the services, layning the torah reading, etc. they don't have to get up at 6AM Monday morning to go to shul for minyan and then come back and help their spouses get the kids ready for school before leaving for work themselves. Differences in privileges are balanced by differences in obligation.

That isn't to say the O model is necessarily fair - as is common in O, your set of paired responsibilities and privileges are assigned to you rather than being something you can choose. But it certainly explains why the original C implementation of unequal privilege and equal effective obligation was doomed to change somehow.
Wed May 06, 09:27:00 AM 2009

This is a related thought not found in that comment thread:

I first began wearing a tallit around my 24th birthday because I was attending an egalitarian synagogue at the time and felt that, since I had equal rights, I should have equal obligations. The irony is that it would be roughly another decade before a Jewish-Theological-Seminary-ordained Conservative rabbi of mine told me that, while he had no objection to me wearing a tallit, he thought that I should wear it every day. The idea of an obligation to pray three times a day was so far down on the list of things that Conservative Jews are expected do that several previous JTS-ordained Conservative rabbis of mine hadn't even thought to mention it to me.

A possible explanation of why the Conservative synagogue became a social center, especially on Shabbat/Sabbath and Chagim/holidays

Al said...
. . .Larry wrote, "Once the requirement of thrice daily prayer was thrown off by the men, they were de facto on the same level of obligation as the women. At that point the argument for gender equality with respect to prayer was effectively unaswerable."

I'll go a step further, once the requirement of thrice daily prayer was thrown off, the synagogue became a place to go on Shabbat, when people weren't rushing to get to work. Once that happened, the service stretched in length, and became a social outlet, and halachic obligations of prayer became theoretical, not practical.
Wed May 06, 01:34:00 PM 2009

Larry Lennhoff said...
I'll go a step further, once the requirement of thrice daily prayer was thrown off, the synagogue became a place to go on Shabbat, when people weren't rushing to get to work. Once that happened, the service stretched in length, and became a social outlet, Different rant, but pretty much correct. In particular, in my experience the C shabbat service/kiddish is so long because once it is over so, generally, is Shabbat. So all the things that in O get spread out over the whole day (prayer, torah reading, torah study, singing, eating, and socializing) have to be compressed into the service and the kiddush.
Wed May 06, 02:24:00 PM 2009

. . .

Shira Salamone said...

. . .

Al and Larry, not only have you just described my experience as a lifelong Conservative Jew, you've also explained why some Conservative woman get so upset about feeling excluded--to put a feminine spin on an old joke, we're in synagogue not only to talk to G-d, but also to talk to Malka. (In the traditional version that I've heard, some men go to shul to talk to G-d, others go to talk to Moish.) When my son was very young, many folks asked why I didn't stay home, since I spent most of my time out in the lobby with the boychik anyway, and my answer was that I didn't want to miss the kiddush. Synagogue is often a major social scene for non-Orthodox Jews, because many of us don't seem to have maintained the tradition of hachnasat orim [orchim], inviting guests. My parents, both employed outside the home, rarely invited guests except on Rosh HaShanah, Chanukah, and Pesach. I've found the same to be true now of most of my friends (and myself). All of the socializing that the frummies do over Shabbat dinner and lunch, we do at a Friday night Oneg Shabbat after the 8 PM service, or at kiddush after Saturday moroning [ :) er, morning] services.
Thu May 07, 12:03:00 AM 2009