Criticism of Conservative Judaism - Criticism From Conservative Traditionalists

Criticism From Conservative Traditionalists

At the 2006 convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, the Conservative movement's official rabbinical organization, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch said that the Conservative movement had "lost faith in itself" and "become Reform."

In an interview, Rabbi Schorsch, who was about to retire as Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, criticized rabbis and activists who were lobbying to change the Conservative movement's opposition to same-sex unions and the ordination of gay clergy. He described their methods as using scholarship to overturn halakha rather than to foster appreciation of it.

If the Conservative movement chooses to do something at the expense of the halachic system, then it's going to pay the price down the road... The erosion of our fidelity to Halacha is what brings us close to Reform Judaism.

Rabbi Schorsch made similar criticism two months later in his final commencement address at Jewish Theological Seminary, in which he spoke of the "malaise of Conservative Judaism", its "impoverishment", and its "grievous failure of nerve". He also criticized the Seminary, one of the chief academic and intellectual institutions of Conservative Judaism:

In the wake of Mordecai Kaplan's wholesale reduction of halakhah to folkways, the function of history shifted to vindicating change. Ever more identified by the inane mantra of "tradition and change," Conservative Judaism lost access to critical scholarship as a source for religious meaning, with nothing substantially spiritual to replace it. ...

Our impoverishment is sadly exemplified by the ambivalence toward critical scholarship in Etz Hayim, the movement's new humash. As commentary, the abridgement of the Jewish Publication Society Torah Commentary is so eviscerated as to betray not the slightest trace of the plenitude of the original to generate spiritual meaning through empathetic scholarship. As exposition, the end notes, with a few striking exceptions, are spiritually inert. Their rabbinic authors go through the paces without passion, making no effort to extract religious significance from the scholarship being mediated. While Conservative rabbis often chide the research oriented faculty of JTS for allegedly doing just that in their classes, as transmitters of scholarship, the rabbis replicated what they condemn. Ironically, the rare spiritual voice to be heard in the end notes usually emanates from one or another of the academics in the roster. ...

With history no more than an argument for supersession, the halakhic yoke has lost its lightness. Great scholarship has ceased to energize it as it had in the past. Once, the polarity of truth and faith at the Seminary had made it home for the acme of twentieth–century Jewish scholarship, a venue of ferment and fertility. Faith once moved us to study our heritage deeply, while truth asked of us that we do it critically, in light of all that we know. Willful ignorance was never an acceptable recourse. The interaction set us apart as the vital center of modern Judaism.

With frequency, fundamental changes come more easily. Our forebearers embraced history to enlarge and enrich Jewish observance; we wield it, if at all, to shrink it. How quickly have we forgotten the bracing spiritual power of Gershon Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Yehezkel Kaufmann's Religion of Israel, Saul Lieberman's Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, Nahum Sarna's Understanding Genesis, or Jacob Milgrom's commentaries to Leviticus and Numbers. Our addiction to instant gratification has stripped us of the patience to appreciate any discourse whose rhetoric is dense and demanding. Mindlessly, we grasp for the quick spiritual fix.

A grievous failure of nerve affects Conservative Judaism. We have lost confidence in the viability of the distinctive polarity that once resonated within. It is not a slick new motto that we need, but a vigorous reaffirmation of the old which gloriously captures our essence. When Schechter left England in 1902 to head the Seminary, he inveighed against Anglo–Jewry for its shallow quest for a decorous spiritual Judaism. What the confounding epoch of emancipation actually called for, he claimed, was more spiritual Jews. To educate and inspire Jews of such sturdy timbre remains the unaltered mission of a vastly expanded Seminary in an age of pampered and promiscuous individualists contemptuous of all norms. A Seminary true to itself still holds out the brightest beacon for the future of Conservative Judaism.

Rabbi David Golinkin, the chair of the Masorti movement's Va'ad Halakha (Israel's counterpart to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards), criticized the Conservative movement's proposal to liberalize its position on homosexual conduct. He wrote that such a change would "split the Conservative movement in two ... drive away the most halakhically observant laypeople in our synagogues, and ... have a devastating effect on the Conservative movement throughout the world.” According to Rabbi Golinkin, if the Conservative movement adopted such a change, most Israelis would see little difference between the Masorti movement (Israeli Conservative Judaism in Israel) and Reform Judaism.

Rabbi Joseph Prousser, a member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, also lobbied against the proposal, arguing that its adoption would result in "a fractured Conservative movement" that is "rendered less viable". He wrote that adopting such a change would represent a "failure of moral and religious leadership" and that such a significant change would diminish the Conservative rabbinate's ability to provide meaningful religious guidance to its congregants:

Such sweeping change in Jewish law will make the Law Committee and the Conservative rabbinate poor role models for our religious charges. If we essentially declare so fundamental a halachic obligation inoperative, based on a minority’s subjective reading of contemporary reality, how can we deny individual Jews unbridled autonomy in determining which demands of Jewish law remain binding and personally meaningful? Jewish law would be rendered unrecognizable—as law—to our laity, and to all but the most erudite and progressive legal theorists. ...

Lending credence to the notion that a person’s core identity is defined by physical drives and sexual desire represents a failure of moral and religious leadership. Rabbinic discourse that even unintentionally vests moral authority in the inclination of the individual, rather than in the will of a commanding God, seems a far graver transgression than prohibited, albeit loving, expressions of intimacy between homosexuals.

After the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards adopted the responsum liberalizing its position on homosexual conduct, Rabbi Prouser and three other members of the Committee—Rabbis Joel Roth, Mayer Rabinowitz, and Leonard Levy—resigned in protest.