My denominational fence-sitting, explained on 1 ft.
Here's the Hillel (standing-on-one-foot) version, from my comment to this post on Ezzie's blog regarding the possible demise of Conservative Judaism:
Shira Salamone said...
"I think she'd say that it's liberal in its practice (especially as compared to Orthodoxy) but not necessarily in its beliefs."
Despite (?) being a life-long Conservative Jew, I'm liberal in my beliefs (especially as compared to Orthodoxy) but not necessarily in my practice. No wonder I'm a denominational misfit!
posted by Shira Salamone at 5:30 PM
24 Comments:
Conservative Judaism IS fence sitting - it is home to the hashkafically Reform Jew who wants to lay tefillin, and the Hashkafically Orthodox Jewess who ... wants to lay tefillin.
And the Hashkafically Orthodox Jew who wants to want to lay tefillin, but would rather catch a college football game than have Shabbat company.
Reform BT, nice description. :)
Now, now, Miami Al, behave yourself. Truth to tell, though, we've been back and forth on the no-TV-on-Shabbat rule (our currently practice is no TV), and as for Shabbat company, my husband's been working two jobs for so long that we've gotten used to just taking a Shabbos nap after shul, so I can't honestly say that you don't have a point. I really have no idea what percentage of our local synagogue's members don't watch TV on Shabbat.
I have a hard time seeing "Conservative Judaism" as having strongly traditional (i.e. Orthodox or Ortodoxish/Orthodoxical) beliefs, in the main. Perhaps I've absorbed too much poo-pooing from those on the ideological right, but I would classify Conservative practice as more to the right, and belief as more to the left.
Of course my reaction to self-identified Conservatives who do not appear to be traditionally observant in any way is to just say that they're "non-observant," but that if they decided to observe, it would resemble Orthodox observance more than (classical?) Reform observance.
Perhaps poster RBT said the same thing, only better.
Geoffrey, you know the old description "High Holiday Jews," referring to people who only go to synagogue on Rosh HaShanah (Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)? Well, I just made up a new one: Shabbos morning Jews. Shabbos morning Jews are Jews whose principle Jewish observance is to attend Shabbat services on Saturday morning. These are people who may or may not light candles and do kiddush and motzi on Erev Shabbat and/or Erev Yom Tov (Eve of Sabbath or a major holiday), and who may or may not keep kosher, who probably light Chanukah candles and attend a seder, but who don't feel any obligation to observe mitzvot in general, and seem to think of many traditional practices as something that their grandparents did, rather than something that *they* should be doing.
Geoffrey,
Only because Orthodox Jews turned over their ideology to Lithunanian fantasies in the past 70 years.
Conservative Ideology and Orthodox ideology (think Rabbi Hirsch) was historically very similar. The current "in the old country" fantasy theology is FAR FAR FAR apart from Conservative, but truth be told, the RW Ideology is much more based in the medieval Church's ideology than the "Judaism knows 613 Mitzvot but no Dogma" basis of Judaism from acceptance of Talmud until the establishment of the Yeshiva "movement" in the 18th Century.
Plenty of Conservative Jews think that you SHOULD keep Shabbat, Kosher, etc., they just don't do so. Those "traditional" Jews were a part of American Orthodoxy, but now are relatively unwelcome.
Al, I think you just explained much, if not all, intra-religious discord, in extremely well-said observation.
Sam Freedman's Jew vs Jew took a whole volume to say it, although its a very good read if you like good reportage.
While the Sephardim in America never splintered--the non-observant ones just drove to shul on Shabbat and parked a few blocks away. In my experience, they (we) are much more laid back (this is not to say less halachically observant). This whole "movement" thing is very Eastern Ashkenaz (though Ansche Chesed was the first German Orthodox congregation in the US...?).
Shavuah Tov
TOTJ Steve,
Pretty much. For a few generations, Orthodox Jews have desired Jewish education. After WW2, the schools got taken over by a distinctly non-American contingent of Rabbanim, and they have taken over the Semicha granting institutions. Net-Net, contemporary American Modern Orthodox Jews are living a modern American life, while sending their kids to schools that teach anything but. In the Yeshiva side, the secular side is denigrated, so the kids are becoming increasingly Yeshivish, on the modern side, the kids are fed a Yeshivish half day which they are told to ignore at home.
Rivkayael,
Correct, American Ashkenazi Judaism has never had a counterpart to Israeeli masorti (lowercase m, not Israeli Conservative Jews that coopted the term). The closest is contemporary Chabad, which is why that is likely the future of American Judaism.
The Sephardim have, as a result, maintained a much more authentic Judaism. The Conservative and Reform institutions are heavily funded by people that are not in agreement with the underlying ideology, seeing it as the "mostly Hebrew" and "less Hebrew" movements.
This has two effects, the non-Orthodox movements have drifted leftward, funded by less ideologically attuned members. The Orthodox movement has drifted rightward, with no need to hold on to the broader spectrum of Jews.
Despite higher birthrates and education rates, Orthodoxy has not really grown as a percentage of American Jews, despite a steady Jewish population. Instead of the expected growth, Orthodoxy has defined itself as a narrower and narrower path.
If the American Jewish youth are 20% Orthodox but adults are 5%-10%, then that is a LOT of Orthodox dropouts with no where to go as Conservative drifts left.
Orthodox Jews believe that they are poised to grow, but it is more likely, given historic patterns, that the left "half" of Orthodoxy will be defined out, instead of growing.
I'm less interested in demographics than in the dialectic that Conservative Judaism, de facto, represents. I say de facto, because Conservative Judaism believes that it is a halachic movement, but actual Conservative Jews tend to be the sort of people that Reform Judaism was invented for. . . people who regard themselves as the ultimate arbiters of their religious practice.
It is precisely because it holds itself to be a halachic movement that it can do this. Without an onstensibly halachic framework, people would leave off laying tefillin, or needing a minyan, or keeping Kashrut.
This is the dialectic - the tension between the halachic aspirations of the institution and the autonomy of praxis among the laity - that makes a truly diverse array of praxis possible.
Reform BT, I'll respond to your comment later, simply because I just spend 15 minutes checking 3 different blogs to try to find a comment that I remembered reading that I thought might further illustrate what both Miami Al and RivkaYael have been saying.
From Brooklyn Wolf's discussion of an Ashkenazi Rosh Yeshiva (a rabbi who's the "principal" of an institution of Jewish studies) walking out of a Sefardi wedding and ordering all his students to walk out with him because the groom, a Sefardi student of that yeshiva, insisted on following the Sefardi minhag/custon of having their yichud *at home* after the wedding, rather than at the post-wedding celebration:
"Garnel Ironheart said...
There is a drive in the Chareidi Ashkenazi world to create a uniform type of "Orthodox Judaism" that will be considered the only legitimate form of Torah observance. To that end, any variant of Orthodoxy that does not conform will be declared illegitimate or hounded into conformity.
Hence you have efforts by Roshei Yeshivah, even Sephardi ones, to change centuries old minhagim because the Ashkenazi counter-minhag has been declared to be the only legitimate one. That's why you see Sephardi Chareidim wearing black hats and suits. That's why this rabbi ruined his student's wedding. Why would he tolerate the student's obviously lack of frumkeit? Why would he participate in something that the Torah obviously forbids?
It's my guess that within 25 years kitniyos will be outlawed amongst Sephardim, they'll all start waiting 6 hours after meat and within 50 years claims will be made that those minhagim were only ever performed out of ignorance of the real way they should have behaved.
March 03, 2011 4:28 PM
"the tension between the halachic aspirations of the institution and the autonomy of praxis among the laity . . . makes a truly diverse array of praxis possible."
That's an interesting perspective, Reform BT. I hadn't really looked at the Conservative Movement in quite that light. So it's only our claim to be a halachic movement that keeps at least a good proportion of Conservative Jews from wolfing down cheeseburgers? You may have a point.
On the other hand, my own perspective is that, institutionally, just as an Orthodox synagogue differentiates itself from a Conservative one by insisting on having a mechitzah, a Conservative synagogue, in turn, differentiates itself from a Reform one by insisting on having a kosher kitchen (in accordance with the standard of kashrut held by whomever is rabbi at that time).
Does that "looking-over-one's-left-shoulder" attitute carry over into a Conservative Jew's personal practice? I just discussed the kashrut question with my husband, and we agreed that you're right about the "truly diverse array of praxis"--there's too broad a spectrum of observance within the Conservative laity for us to be able to conclude that we're just trying to prove that we're more traditional than the Reform. So perhaps, in terms of the observance of individual Conservative laypeople, you may be right about us trying to make our own decisions while keeping some semblance of halachic observance.
"Orthodox Jews believe that they are poised to grow, but it is more likely, given historic patterns, that the left "half" of Orthodoxy will be defined out, instead of growing."
Or, as Steg put it all the way back in the ancient era known as 2006, "How come no one ever told me that to some people "Modern Orthodoxy" is not a subset of "Orthodoxy" but a separate Heterodox category?"
Shira,
No, if each person is making their own determinations about Halachic observance, you aren't Halachic, your are celebrating personal autonomy. That's Classical Reform.
The Conservative Movement has some institutional core because they assert that they are a Halachic movement. When the movement decides to do something that violates Jewish tradition, they have a process by which they change the law. This process seems made up, but so did all the others until accepted (Vilna Goan changed several long standing practices, I find it unlikely that it didn't take a while for that to be normative).
While on the ground, each Conservative Jew is "Reform" in that they make their own decisions, there is a central concept of Conservative Halacha, which provides it a core.
"the non-Orthodox movements have drifted leftward, funded by less ideologically attuned members. The Orthodox movement has drifted rightward, with no need to hold on to the broader spectrum of Jews."
So nu, Miami Al, if I'm too observant for a good chunk of the egalitarian wing of the Conservative Movement, too egalitarian for the traditional wing of the Conservative Movement, too left-wing for the increasingly- "black-hat" Orthodox community, and thoroughly uncomfortable with Chabad's "meshichist" tendencies, where am I supposed to daven?
(When I read the above to my husband, his response, which he later described as "snide," was "Rabbi Weiss's synagogue." Which stands a good chance of being kicked out of the Orthodox Union. (For the obligatory third opinion :) see here.) Which is pretty much what you and Steg were saying.)
Not really sure why any of the ideology, screwy trends, or educational problems of contemporary Orthodoxy have any affect on you.
They mostly affect the Jewish Day School system, which you obviously aren't partaking in.
You need a place to Daven, both in an egalitarian way and a social way. You need Jews that also keep the mitzvot.
It's fun to discuss these things, but I don't see how they actually have any affect on you that would affect decision making.
"While on the ground, each Conservative Jew is "Reform" in that they make their own decisions, there is a central concept of Conservative Halacha, which provides it a core."
That sounds about right.
Miami Al point 1:
"You need a place to Daven, both in an egalitarian way and a social way."
True.
Miami Al point 2:
"You need Jews that also keep the mitzvot."
True.
Miami Al point 3:
"It's fun to discuss these things, but I don't see how they actually have any affect on you that would affect decision making."
See points 1 and 2. If anyone knows of any shul in New York City that meets both criteria, I'd appreicate it if you'd let me know.
Shira,
You forget point 3, and is within your affordability range.
For various reasons, you can't afford a neighborhood where snooty twenty-something observant egalitarians would congregate.
It is unlikely that you will find a Shul with Shomer Mitzvot people for you to form friendships with that is egalitarian.
So, you need a neighborhood with Shomer Mitzvot people to form friendships with that is open minded enough that doesn't have a problem that you dual affiliate with a Conservative synagogue and are egalitarian.
That shouldn't be that hard.
Like I said, something like Century Village in Florida (but not IN Florida) is something to look at. They are demographically changing and the Conservative Shul is disappearing, but a community of active seniors with multiple synagogues might be best for you.
It doesn't need to be in New York City, it needs to be in the greater New York area where you don't need a car. New York City helps with this, but isn't the only option.
Well, let's see what we can find that meets our needs.
Have you tried Kehillat Hadar? Or any of the places where JTS students/faculty daven? (I can't remember if they have a minyan that meets on Shabbat or not).
Kehilat Hadar sounds like a wonderful group, but since we can't afford to live within walking distance anyway, it hardly seems worthwhile for us to get involved with that minyan at this point. Thanks for the suggestion.
Sorry if my comment is a little late in the game:
From my experience, there are very few Conservative shul outside of greater NY, LA and South Florida that have any significant membership who actually believe in C theology. An overwhelming majority of self-declared C Jews only call themselves C becuase the shul they go to is. If you question them about belief and theology they are textbook Reform. They simply prefer C services. They find Reform temples "too church like" and are put off by the hippyism and guitars etc. I know of one rural-ish Conservative shul that has 150 families yet no one except the rabbi builds a sukkah! There is an extreme disconnect between what the movement says and what people do.
That reminds me of a joke that was making the rounds of the dual-affiliated Conservative/Reconstructionist synagogue to which we belonged some years ago: "Reconstructionism is Reform Judaism for Jews who can't stand the sight of Temple Emanuel." In theory, that wasn't true at all, but in practice, well . . . Some might argue, as you do (and I'm not sure you're wrong), that the same can be said for Conservative Judaism. To be fair to the Reform, though, that joke is at least 30 years old, and, for all I know, Temple Emanuel may no longer be the "Jewish Cathedral" that it was at the time.
Speaking of Manhattan's Temple Emanuel as it was, 30 years ago, it occurs to me that I may be showing my age in more ways than, well, remembering what Temple Emanuel was like 30 years ago. :) Anon Tue Mar 15, 01:27:00 PM 2011, you said, "They find Reform temples "too church like" and are put off by the hippyism and guitars etc." To some people my age, that statement is self-contradictory: "too church-like" means "all decorum, no spirituality," but, apparently, among some folks of younger generations means "hippyism and guitars." Times certainly have changed.
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