FOCUS ON ISSUES Conservative Jews different, despite an alliance with Reform

KIAMESHA LAKE, N.Y., Nov. 11 (JTA) – When it comes to religious pluralism in Israel, the Reform movement has gotten most of the press. The Conservative movement has been largely ignored by Orthodox religious and political leaders and spared the rhetorical barbs aimed at the Reform, a group thought by many Israelis to include everyone who is not Orthodox and which is publicly derided by some influential Orthodox leaders as “close to Christianity.” But now the Masorti movement, the Israeli arm of the Conservative movement, is beginning to be understood as something quite different from Reform, its leaders say. Indeed, Reform and Conservative Judaism do differ in significant ways. As a result, there are different opinions within the Conservative movement as to how far the alliance with the Reform should go. Stephen Wolnek, the newly elected international president of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism, said that although the Masorti and Reform movements are allied in their fight for official recognition in the Jewish state, “We would not allow the Reform movement to veto a solution within the Ne’eman Committee that we find acceptable.” Wolnek of Port Washington, N.Y., was referring to the committee empowered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to find a way to reconcile the Reform and Conservative movements’ demands for the legal recognition of their marriages, conversions and divorces with the Orthodox rabbinate’s demand that the status quo – in which they have sole control over all matters of personal religious identity – be maintained. Wolnek made his comments in an interview at the biennial convention of his organization, held at the Concord Hotel in the Catskill Mountains this week. The conference brought together more than 750 Conservative Jews from the movement’s some 800 synagogues around the country for an exploration of Jewish religious and public policy issues. But others disagreed with Wolnek. “We are not about to go our own way and abandon Reform on this issue,” said Rabbi Reuven Hammer, head of Masorti’s religious court, or Beit Din, which oversees conversions. “We disagree with them heartily, may even tell them we prefer that they do things differently, but we want them to have the same privileges in Israel that we want,” said Hammer, the Conservative representative on the Ne’eman Committee. The committee has seven members: five Orthodox, and one each from the Reform and Conservative movements, along with several observers. Though generally lumped together in the minds of many Israelis, and similar in size in North America, Reform and Conservative Judaism are, in fact, quite different. Those differences both in style and content were apparent at the convention of the Reform movement’s congregational arm in Dallas earlier this month and at this week’s meeting of the Conservative movement’s congregational body. Reform movement leaders spoke on pluralism with rhetoric emphatic and sharp. They spoke of their impatience with the process, of overcoming their enemies and winning the war for religious rights. The Conservative movement’s leaders here have spoken in more modulated tone, one which champions unity before victory. “We must find a way to hold constructive dialogue and not be destructive, a way to avoid rupture,” Hammer said during a plenary session devoted to pluralism. Conservative Judaism is centered on halachah, or Jewish law, which the movement interprets in a liberal way relative to Orthodox rabbis. The Reform movement rejects Jewish law as a basis for policy or practice. While both liberal movements ordain women as rabbis and cantors, the Reform movement ordains openly gay and lesbian clergy, and the Conservative movement does not. Perhaps most significant are their different approaches to intermarriage. The Reform movement encourages the participation of interfaith families, and there are more interfaith couples in most Reform congregations than in most Conservative ones. In a 1983 policy known as patrilineal descent, the Reform movement changed the millennia-old way Jewishness was defined. It deemed as Jewish anyone born of a Jewish parent, of either gender, as long as the child is raised as a Jew. The Conservative movement continues to adhere to the matrilineal definition of Jewishness, defining as Jewish anyone born to a Jewish mother, or converted according to the standards of Jewish law. Its requirements surrounding conversion also differ. The Reform movement in North America does not require converts to immerse in a mikvah, or men to be circumcised. Conservative rabbis – like the Orthodox – officially require both practices. In Israel, though, the Reform movement is much more traditionally oriented than it is elsewhere, and generally requires both of those elements as part of its conversion process. The fundamental differences between Conservative and Reform Judaism have begun to be recognized by leading Orthodox rabbis in Israel, say Masorti representatives. On a radio program two weeks ago, Israel’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Yisrael Meir Lau, described the Conservative movement as one that “believes in halachah (Jewish law) with progress,” said Rabbi Ehud Bandel, president of the Masorti movement. “Lau sounded like a spokesman for Masorti. It’s a total revolution” in the way Conservative Judaism is understood by the Orthodox, Bandel said. Conservative Jews in Israel feel torn between the movements, he said, but also in a position to mediate between them. “We feel in one camp with the Orthodox, who observe halachah, but in another with Reform, against religious coercion. “We are indeed the mercaz (center) that should try to bridge between the extremes and bring everyone to the center,” he said. The Conservative movement’s strategy on pluralism, as outlined by the movement’s leaders here, is to expand its efforts to reach Israelis. The movement currently has 48 congregations in Israel, with some 20,000 members, but it has not reached enough Israelis, said some. “We want to reach the 80 percent of Israelis who are not Orthodox and show them that there is a Judaism that is modern and meaningful and moderate and that can speak to them,” said Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of United Synagogue. To do so, officials said, the Conservative/Masorti movement is expanding its downtown Jerusalem campus by 50 percent by adding a new, $18 million building. It also plans, in mid-1998, to begin youth and adult education programs that will bring together Israeli and North American Jews. The Center for Religious Understanding, as it will be called, will host “Jewish growth encounters, dialogues on the role of Judaism in one’s life” and shared holiday experiences, said Epstein. The endless hatred of fellow Jews, sinat chinam in Hebrew, “cannot be changed by legislation,” Epstein said. “We must build `binat chinam’ – endless understanding.”