Category: Conservative Judaism

Top Rabbis & Ketuba Witnesses

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date April 16, 2008

Newsweek’s second annual ranking of the top rabbis in the country has been posted to the Newsweek website. This year, the list is called “Top fifty influential rabbis in America” and the creators (media execs Michael Lynton, Gary Ginsberg, and Jay Sanderson) explain their point system (20 points for being “known,” 10 points for communal leadership, and so on). They also have created a second listing of the top pulpit (congregational) rabbis in the country.

I was thrilled to see my extremely talented classmate, Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum, make that list. She is the founder and rabbi of Kavana in Seattle. It is also wonderful to see that my colleague, Rabbi Sharon Brous, made both lists. She is the founding rabbi of Ikar in Los Angeles.

Of course, Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in LA was ranked the #1 pulpit rabbi in the country and deservingly so. Rabbi Jack Moline, a Conservative rabbi in Alexandria, Virginia, was listed at #3. I’ve always admired Jack and am happy that he was recognized by being ranked so high on the list. I first met Jack in 1999 when I spoke at his congregation, Agudas Achim, for a Seminary Shabbat.

I recall a funny story Jack Moline told me about his first experience meeting President Bill Clinton. Jack visited the White House weekly to study Torah with his friend and congregant Rahm Emanuel (left), the Illinois Congressman. Emanuel, then senior advisor to President Clinton, had an office in the West Wing. Jack always went to the White House with Kosher corned beef sandwiches for Emanuel and him to enjoy. He was also always prepared to stand at a moment’s notice and greet the President with the traditional Jewish blessing one says upon meeting a head of state. One day during a Moline-Emanuel chavruta session, the President walked into Rahm Emanuel’s office to chat about a basketball game when Jack jumped up with a mouth full of corned beef trying to utter the blessing.

That story came to mind the other day when I read an article about Rep. Rahm Emanuel in Newsweek magazine. The article theorized that Emanuel (“Rahmbo”) might be the most likely Democratic Party leader to be the one to encourage Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race should Barack Obama continue to be the front runner. Why Emanuel? Because, the article explains, he is close to the Clintons from his years campaining for them and serving in the Clinton White House. And he is close to the Obama campaign as well based on his long standing friendship with Obama’s campaign strategist, David Axelrod.

How close is Emanuel with Axelrod? “So close,” Newsweek states, “that Axelrod signed the ketuba, a Jewish marriage contract, at Emanuel’s wedding, an honor that usually goes to a best friend.”

So there you have it: Newsweek magazine… ranking rabbis and outing politicos as ketuba witnesses!

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Rabbinical Assembly Speakers

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date February 11, 2008

Last month I blogged about Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress, when he announced his retirement as a result of his being diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. Tom Lantos passed away this morning in Bethesda naval hospital. He was 80-years-old. I feel fortunate to have had the chance to meet Rep. Lantos this past March at the AIPAC Policy Conference in D.C.

Tom Lantos was a real mentsch and an important voice for human rights in Congress, even if he would never have been allowed to speak at a Rabbinical Assembly convention. Since Tom Lantos was married to a non-Jewish woman (in photo), he would have been forbidden from addressing the Rabbinical Assembly during its annual convention. As a dues-paying member of the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, I was surprised this week to learn of this policy.

A JTA article explains the little known RA policy prohibiting intermarried Jews from being speakers at the RA Convention. Therefore, the article states, it was difficult for the RA to maintain a balance between speakers on the right and left of the political aisle at this week’s convention in D.C. So, while Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is speaking at the Convention, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (married to a non-Jew) will not be allowed to. The policy even applies to non-Jews who have married Jews making Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ineligible. Each of these men are married to Jewish women (to be fair, Reid’s wife converted from Judaism to Mormonism so I’m not sure why he’s still blacklisted).

I can understand the RA choosing not to invite intermarried speakers to address the Convention if they are only going to promote intermarriage as a virtuous decision, but I don’t believe that choice has to be crafted into a written policy. I wonder if the RA asks all speakers at the Convention to disclose the religion of their spouse when they are invited to speak.

This policy would preclude a lot of politicians, business leaders, authors, and entertainers from speaking at RA conventions. For instance, Christina Aguilera would not be able to perform at an RA Convention (I’d pay to see that!) or speak about what it is like raising her son in the Jewish tradition (married to the Jewish Jordan Bratman, the couple’s son recently had his bris). This policy would also prohibit Jon Stewart from speaking at the RA Convention since he married Tracey McShane, a non-Jewish woman.

As the Conservative Movement tries to reach out to interfaith families through edud (insiration and encouragement), it would be helpful for Conservative rabbis to hear from couples who are living in interfaith relationships. However, under this policy it would be impossible for speakers like Jim Keen, an outspoken gentile father committed to raising Jewish children, to be allowed to speak at an RA convention.

Rabbi Bradley Artson, dean of the Ziegler rabbinical school in Los Angeles, said “It’s the right priority, but the policy isn’t the right policy for the goal.”

My sense is that this policy will soon be reversed. It is possible for the Rabbinical Assembly and Conservative Judaism to stand firmly against intermarriage without barring speakers who happen to be married to members of another religion.

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Mitzvah Children

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date February 1, 2008

There was a time when the Conservative Movement’s law committee (the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards) did not publish its teshuvot (Jewish legal responsa). Twenty-five Conservative rabbis would sit in a room debating and eventually voting on matters of modern Jewish law, and the only people who would be able to read their decisions were other Conservative rabbis.

Today, the teshuvot of the law committee are available for public consumption on the Rabbinical Assembly’s website. So when the CJLS passes what could be considered a controversial paper, one would think there would be much discussion about it. (Certainly no CJLS decision has garnered as much attention as the December 2006 teshuvot concerning homosexuality.)

However, a recent teshuva on a delicate matter co-authored by Rabbi Kassel Abelson and Rabbi Elliot Dorff, and passed by an overwhelming majority of the committee, has received little attention. The paper, titled “Mitzvah Children,” was passed on December 12, 2007 and until today I had not seen any articles published about it.

The essense of Rabbis Abelson and Dorff’s argument is that Jewish couples who are able to reproduce more than two children should do so, and Conservative rabbis should counsel couples in this manner during pre-maritial sessions.

In yesterday’s Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Reuven Hammer (a CJLS member who voted in favor of the teshuva) wrote:

How many children should a Jewish couple have? Although that may seem like a strange question and one that impinges on the private and most intimate life of a couple, it has been addressed by Jewish law in the past and is now the subject of a new teshuva (responsum) issued recently by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the International Rabbinical Assembly of which I am pleased to be a member. Jewish law (Halacha) has dealt with this because the very first mitzva found in the Torah is: “And God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and replenish it…'” (Genesis 1:28). It should be noted that this is not phrased in the Torah as a command in a negative sense and certainly not as a punishment, but as a blessing. To understand how to fulfill this mitzva the sages discussed and debated it. Who is responsible to fulfill it? How many children and of what sex are required? Without going into details, suffice it to say that the traditional answer has been that the mitzva is fulfilled when a couple has had two children, one boy and one girl. The Talmud, however, determined that two children are the minimum, but that Jews should continue to have as many children as they can (B. Yevamot 62b), and Maimonides codified this as law.

Even though the authors of the “Mitzvah Children” paper did a very good job explaining their position while remaining sensitive to those couples unable to reproduce or unable to reproduce beyond one or two children, many will still take exception to rabbis imparting their beliefs on such a personal matter (even though the Torah and Jewish law codes certainly enter this arena).

Rabbis Abelson and Dorff propose that Jewish couples who can have children and do not suffer from specific physical, mental or other problems preventing it should have one or more additional children beyond the two required by Jewish law. These children would be called “mitzvah children” as they would assure future Jewish existence.

Rabbi Elliot Dorff (right), rector of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, has been preaching this idea for many years. During my second year of rabbinical school he was on faculty at the Jewish Theological Seminary and spoke to my class about his views. While he was sensitive with his language, he nevertheless offended several of my classmates — specifically the single women over a certain age — when he argued that Jewish couples should start having children in their early 20’s and have more than just two offspring. As he does in the teshuva, Rabbi Dorff surmised that it was the responsibilty of the Jewish grandparents (as well as the larger Jewish community) to help financially support these children and their Jewish education. His theory was that Jewish women are putting off starting a family until after their prime childbearing years because of their desire to fulfill their academic and professional aspirations first.

The Holocaust also factors into his belief. As he writes in the teshuva:

The world’s Jewish community has not recovered numerically from the devastating losses during the Nazi era. Demographic studies point to a Jewish birthrate that will not maintain the Jewish population in the United States, with serious implications for the future of the American Jewish community, the Jewish people as a whole, and Judaism itself. It is essential that we encourage fertile Jewish couples to have at least two children in compliance with the early Halacha, and one or more additional children, who are mitzva children in the additional sense that they help the Jewish people replace those lost in the Holocaust and maintain our numbers now. Adopting children, converting them to Judaism, if necessary, and raising them as Jews helps in this effort as well.

This all makes good sense to me, but I maintain that the reaction will be mixed among Jewish couples. Everyone cares about the future vitality of the Jewish people, but among modern Jews I believe the response will be that rabbis should stay out of the personal family planning decisions of couples. And for that reason, the “Mitzvah Children” teshuva is a gutsy position paper.

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Hartman Institute

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date January 11, 2008

Many new rabbinical schools have opened in the past decade. The American Jewish University (formerly the University of Judaism) Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies ordained its first class of rabbis in 1999, the modern Orthodox Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT) has been ordaining progressive Orthodox rabbis for a few years in New York, and the pluralistic Hebrew College will ordain its first rabbis this Spring.

Now, the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem has announced that it will open its own rabbinical school at its German Colony location. In a Jerusalem Post article titled “Hartman Institute to ordain women rabbis”, Matthew Wagner writes:

In a step that marks a major change in gender roles within modern Orthodoxy, women will be ordained as Orthodox rabbis. Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute, founded by Rabbi David Hartman (right), himself a modern Orthodox rabbi, will open a four-year program next year to prepare women and men of all denominations – Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and also Orthodox – for rabbinic ordination.

The decision to ordain women Orthodox rabbis will certainly be met with much criticism in the Orthodox community, especially since the rabbinical school will be in Jerusalem. Rabbi David Hartman’s son Rabbi Donniel Hartman is the co-director of the Hartman Institute. He said, “For too long now we have been robbing ourselves of 50 percent of our potential leaders; people who can shape and inspire others. The classic distinctions between men and women are no longer relevant.”

Each of these emerging rabbinical schools have had, and will continue to have, a major impact on the modern Jewish community. It will be interesting to see what role the first women rabbis to be ordained by the Hartman Institute will have in Israel and beyond. Best of luck to the Hartman Institute in this new endeavor.

Conservative Judaism

Uganda Beit Midrash

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date December 28, 2007

I met Gershom Sizomu, the leader of the Ugandan Jewish community called the Abuyadaya, when he visited New Jersey several years ago. Now Gershom is about to be ordained as a Conservative rabbi at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles.

At the International Convention of United Synagogue Youth (USY) in Anaheim this week, it was announced that the Conservative movement will build an adult yeshiva for the Abayudaya. The 800 members of the Abayudaya, who had been living as Jews for years, were formally converted to Judaism in 2002 by a visiting delegation of Conservative rabbis.

The JTA reports that “the $15,000 gift was presented to Gershom Sizomu, the first member of the Abayudaya community to enter rabbinical school.” Gershom is a research fellow at the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco.

Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said the gift of the yeshiva sustains the youth movement’s support of the Abayudaya Jews begun last year with a donation for a Jewish library.The library will be housed in the new yeshiva, which is expected to be completed by summer. Four or five students will begin studying next fall, Epstein said. Other students are expected to follow, some from “lost” African Jewish communities elsewhere in Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria and southern Africa.

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The Mega-Shul

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date December 19, 2007

In my second year of Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary, my seminar leader (a congregational rabbi in New Jersey at the time) predicted the death of the large, high-church American synagogue. The 1,000-plus households synagogue with the vast, ornate sanctuary and a stadium-sized parking lot would soon see its demise he assured me.

I figured he was right. The trend, at least among the younger generation, was toward smaller, more intimate congregations. After all, in the larger cities young Jews were flocking to the do-it-yourself minyans rather than to the large, institutional congregations. At least that was true among Conservative Jews.

However, at the recent Reform Movement‘s Bienniel Convention in San Diego, the focus was on the Mega-Church. The JTA featured this in its article “Reform finds inspiration in mega-church techniques”.

I first read of the Jewish interest in the mega-church philosophy back in 2006 when the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles reported that Pastor Rick Warren (right) spoke at Sinai Temple’s Friday Night Live. Jewschool then reprinted a press release from Jewish Women Watching about Pastor Rick Warren and Synagogue 3000 leader Dr. Ron Wolfson being strange bedfellows. Turns out that when Synagogue 3000 invited Rick Warren (author of “The Purpose Driven Life”) to speak about building a spiritual community, Jewish Women Watching was outraged because of Warren’s conservative views on abortion and homosexuality.

In November, the New York Times picked up on Synagogue 3000’s analysis of Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church with Samuel Freedman’s article “An Unlikely Megachurch Lesson”. Freedman writes:

One Sunday morning in 1995, Ron Wolfson and Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman braked to a halt in an oddly enlightening traffic jam. The line of cars was creeping toward Saddleback Church in Southern California, whose services were drawing thousands of worshipers. As two Jews, Mr. Wolfson and Rabbi Hoffman had crossed the sectarian divide to try to figure out how and why.

As they inched down the road, they spotted a sign marked “For First-Time Visitors.” It directed them to pull into a separate lane and put on emergency blinkers. Bypassing the backup, they soon reached a lot with spaces reserved for newcomers. When Mr. Wolfson and Rabbi Hoffman emerged from their car, an official Saddleback greeter led them into the church.

Those first moments on the perimeter of the church set into motion a dozen years of increasing interaction between a Jewish organization devoted to reinvigorating synagogues and one of the most successful evangelical megachurches in the nation, the Rev. Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.

This has not been a studiously balanced bit of ecumenicism. Synagogue 3000, the group led by Mr. Wolfson, an education professor, and Rabbi Hoffman, a scholar of liturgy, went to the church to figure out what evangelical Christians were doing right that Jews were doing wrong or not at all.

“To put it bluntly,” Mr. Wolfson said, “if there are thousands of people waiting to get in, I want to know what’s going on. I want to know what they’re doing that’s tapping those souls.”

Now after more than a decade of Ron Wolfson (left) studying Saddleback Church‘s success, the entire Reform Movement is looking to Rick Warren for answers. The JTA reports that at the Bienniel, “the mega-church influence was felt as well during Friday night prayers, where 6,000 worshipers gathered in a cavernous room on the convention center’s ground floor for a choreographed production of sight and sound. Multiple cameras projected the service on several enormous screens suspended over the hall. A live band buoyed a service that was conducted almost entirely in song.”

Rick Warren was a speaker at an evening plenary session at the annual Reform Movement convention. He explained how he grew Saddleback so large that he expects 42,000 worshipers to attend his 14 Christmas services next week. And two years ago he rented out Anaheim Stadium on the occasion of his church’s 25th anniversary so he could speak to his entire congregation at once.

I’m not sure that any baseball stadiums will be holding Kol Nidrei in the near future, but the idea of a mega-shul is intriguing.

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Samuel Freedman on Hechsher Tzedek

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date December 4, 2007

In today’s Jerusalem Post, Samuel Freedman, the author of Jew Vs. Jew, wrote the best article about the new Hechsher Tzedek that I have yet to see. Freedman does a balanced job of explaining the rationale behind Rabbi Morris Allen’s idea for a “new form of kosher certification, which reflect[s] a commitment to justice on behalf of kosher food companies rather than solely their adherence to the laws of kashrut in food preparation.”

What I liked most about Freedman’s article is how he returned to the civil rights era and Martin Luther King, Jr. to portray the history of what we now call tikkun olam (social justice) in Judaism. The Jewish men and women who joined the Civil Rights Movement were passionate about their activism but, for the most part, dispassionate about the basis for their activism in their Jewish heritage. Freedman writes,

One of the whopping paradoxes of the civil rights movement was that the Jews who comprised a disproportionate share of white activists and volunteers were largely ignorant of the theological roots of their idealism. With some rare rabbinic exceptions like Abraham Joshua Heschel and Jack Rothschild, they had to learn their own Bible from the black Christians in the campaign.

As Freedman understands it, there has long been a disconnect among Jews between the social activism that is practiced and the textual tradition that promotes such activism.

In the parts of the Jewish spectrum with the strongest involvement in tikkun olam, particularly among the secular and unaffiliated, there is the least awareness of the Judaic foundations of that concept. (In fact, there is often an antipathy to religion itself as mere superstition.) In the parts with the deepest knowledge of text and tradition, particularly the Orthodox sector, a formidable apparatus of charities exists almost entirely to serve internal needs.

Freedman points to the American Jewish World Service, led by social justice trailblazer Ruth Messinger, which has become such a phenomenon because it has “overtly connected activism to a disciplined, ongoing study of Jewish texts.” I agree. I would also add the work of two Conservative rabbis in two other Jewish organizations that are both successfully connecting their passion for activism with their devotion to Torah. Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps, started by Rabbi David Rosenn (left), integrates work for social change, Jewish learning, and community building. Rabbi Jill Jacob’s work with Jewish Funds for Justice helps achieve social and economic security and opportunities for the poor in our country, but is deeply grounded in her scholarly and passionate Torah. Jill’s ability to mesh her Torah with her Jewish values of tzedek are often expressed on the jspot blog (although I disagree with her take on Thanksgiving).

The Conservative Movement, through the Hechsher Tzedek, is also bridging the divide between justice work and the Torah’s mandate to pursue justice (Deuteronomy 16:10). There is textual bases for the Hechsher Tzedek in our sifrei kodesh (the Jewish textual tradition from the Bible to the Talmud and through the rabbinic codes of law and modern-day commentaries). So rather than call Conservative Judaism a “wishy washy” branch on the American Jewish scene, I choose to look at it as the best of both worlds. We can have the commitment to social justice that is so prioritized in the Reform Movement while also having the commitment to Jewish law and lore (the Halakhic and Midrashic traditions), which is the primary focus of Orthodoxy.

Perhaps Samuel Freedman’s article serves as the best response to the comments posted to this blog regarding my thoughts on Rabbi Harold Kushner’s article in the recent Conservative Judaism journal.

How does the Conservative Judaism of today differ from an increasingly more traditional Reform Judaism? Conservative Judaism emphasizes a commitment to the system of mitzvot (Halakhah), while also emphasizing social justice and k’vod habriyot (human dignity). And while we’re at it, How does Conservative Judaism differ from Orthodox Judaism? Conservative Judaism wants its adherents to be committed to the 613 mitzvot and to engage in an ongoing ascension up the ladder of Jewish commitments (Shabbat and holy days, Kashrut, prayer, study, tzedakah, etc.) while still being able to brush their teeth on Shabbat without buying one of these.

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The Future of Conservative Judasim

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date November 30, 2007

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Bienniel Convention commenced yesterday in Orlando and as the Forward pointed out, the Conservative Movement faces new realities.

The Conservative movement has struggled in recent years to maintain a sense of identity without abandoning its “big tent” philosophy and to boost its sagging membership. This turmoil has been exacerbated in the past year by the movement’s change in policy toward gays and lesbians – and by a change in the leadership at the Conservative-affiliated Jewish Theological Seminary, which brought in a new chancellor, Arnold Eisen.

Everyone seems to be talking these days about the poor state of Conservative Judaism with the movement’s decreasing membership numbers and some Conservative synagogues being forced to merge or close up completely. Personally, I see much excitement on the horizon for Conservative Judaism and something that resembles the renaissance that changed and strengthened the Jewish campus organization Hillel a decade ago.

At the end of the summer, The Forward published an article titled “Conservative Judaism at a Crossroads”. The article, published the week before Prof. Arnie Eisen was officially installed as the new chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, quoted prominent Conservative Jewish leaders and some outside observers who weighed in on the future of the Conservative Movement.

Conservative rabbis including David Wolpe, Alan Silverstein, Naomi Levy, and Harold Kushner each gave their recommendations for the Conservative Movement’s recovery from what the former chancellor of JTS, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, referred to in his 2006 commencement address as suffering from “malaise” and a “grievous failure of nerve”. Other respondents included Scott Shay (author of “Getting Our Groove Back: How to Energize American Jewry”), Douglas Rushkoff (author of “Nothing Sacred: The Case for Open Source Judaism”), and Jay Michaelson (Zeek.com).

These short summaries of the current state of Conservative Judaism and what can be done for the future serve as good food-for-thought for movement leaders. Chancellor Arnie Eisen’s power-packed stump speeches that he’s been delivering across the country for over a year have also infused Conservative Judaism’s laity and leadership with newfound exhilaration and hope for the future. Top leadership changes will also force the movement on a new course for the future. Rabbi Jerry Epstein (Executive VP of United Synagogue) and Rabbi Joel Meyers (Executive VP of the Rabbinical Assembly) have both announced their retirements will take place in 2009. In addition to those two expected changes and the new JTS chancellor, there is a new dean of the JTS Rabbinical School (Rabbi Danny Nevins) and there will be a new dean of the William Davidson School of Education at the Seminary next year to replace departing dean Rabbi Steve Brown. [update: Prof. Barry Holtz replaced Prof. Steve Brown as Dean of the Davidson School in 2008]

The best, most concise vision for the future of Conservative Judaism is presented by Rabbi Harold Kushner (at right with me at the 2007 Rabbinical Assembly Convention) in his article that appears in the current issue of Conservative Judaism. Rabbi Kushner’s article should be required reading for every Conservative Jew. Reading it I was reminded of Rabbi Neil Gillman’s assertion that the Conservative Judaism treatise Emet Ve’Emunah is not a pareve (neutral) document, but rather is full of blockbuster statements. Rabbi Kushner’s article, “Conservative Judaism in an Age of Democracy” is likewise full of blockbusters.

Rabbi Kushner writes, “In the absence of an enforcement mechanism, halakhic Judaism is no longer viable. To the commanding voice of halakhah, ‘You shall do the following,’ the modern non-Orthodox Jew responds, ‘Why should I?’ He need not be saying it dismissively. He may simply be asking for a persuasive reason, but the dimension of recognized obligation is no longer there.”

Referring to Rabbi Hayim Herring’s brilliant article “The Commanding Community and the Sovereign Self,” Rabbi Kushner comments, “The end of the halakhic age for the vast majority of Conservative Jews may not be such a bad thing.”

On the subject of Conservative Judaism not being able to effectively market its product or tweak its product to ensure success, Rabbi Kushner quotes Gil Mann who makes the following comparison: “If Procter and Gamble find that one of their household products is not selling well, they don’t take out full-page ads chastising their customers for being too lazy of disloyal to do the right thing and buy what they are selling. They take out ads emphasizing the benefits of using their product, and if necessary tweak the product to make sure it lives up to their claims.”

On halakhic changes that the movement has made, Rabbi Kushner writes, “We permitted driving to synagogue on the Sabbath, countenanced eating dairy foods in non-kosher restaurants and welcomed women as shelihot tzibur. None of those decisions can be justified by Orthodox halakhic criteria, but there would not be a Conservative movement today without them… When our movement was at its most creative and most relevant, our appeal was not to halakhah but to history, to the argument that the forms in which Jews lived their Jewishness had always changed as circumstances changed.”

Rabbi Kushner clarifies his understanding of mitzvah, stating that in “in the 21st century, [mitzvah] can no longer mean ‘commandment, obligation.’ I would prefer not to translate the word mitzvah at all, but I would understand it to mean ‘opportunity,’ the opportunity to be in touch with God by transforming the ordinary into the sacred.”

Conservative Judaism’s numbers may continue to decline, but that is not a fair assessment of the state of this movement. There is much promise for Conservative Judaism in the coming decades of the 21st century. Excitement and success are sure to follow Arnie Eisen’s vision, the emergence of new leadership, the rethinking of how to handle intermarriage and GLBT inclusion in Conservative synagogues, a new Ramah camp in the Rocky Mountains, and new grassroots projects (Elie Kaunfer’s Mechon Hadar, Menachem Creditor’s Shefa Network, etc.). The new rabbinical school curriculum at the American Jewish University and the expected new curriculum for the JTS rabbinical school will also have positive effects on the future of the Conservative Movement.

Rabbi Harold Kushner concludes his article as follows:

Our movement, our generation is called on to do what Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai and his colleagues did two thousand years ago, to reinvent Judaism in a way that will meet the needs of people today to fulfill their human destiny and make God a constant presence in their lives in an age when the currency of Jewish loyalty and faith will no longer be obedience but the pursuit of holiness.

May Conservative Judaism realize a revitalization and bring its adherents of all ages and all levels of observance closer to God and Torah. Ken Yehi Ratzon.

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Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date November 20, 2007

The Jerusalem Post reported that the former Sephardi chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu explained in his book that “Reform and Conservative synagogues reek of hell and a Jew should not even come near their entrance.” I don’t think this rabbi will be invited to give a keynote address at any pluralism retreats any time soon.

Putting aside his deplorable comments, I found the story he recounts about having to enter a three-story building to attend a bris very comical. He describes the quandary he faced trying to get to an Orthodox synagogue on the third floor of a building in Israel where a Reform and Conservative synagogue occupy the first and second floor respectively. Hmmm… A three-story building with Reform, Conservative and Orthodox prayer services under one roof? Sounds like a campus Hillel building.

In response to his comments, the Masorti (Conservative) Movement in Israel said that it would sue Rabbi Eliyahu for slander.

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Ann Coulter and Alan Colmes Square Off

Post author By Rabbi Jason Miller
Post date November 2, 2007

I had to laugh today when an article on the Media Matters website was sent to me by way of my Google Alert for the term “Conservative Rabbi.” This has been an effective Google Alert that sends me any articles or websites that mention a rabbinic colleague of mine from the Conservative Movement. However, the reason the Media Matters article was included in the Google Alert today was the mention of the Orthodox rabbi and TV personality Shmuley Boteach. The Media Matters article contains the transcripts of the October 30 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, when co-host Alan Colmes interviewed Ann Coulter. Colmes quotes his “good friend, the conservative rabbi Shmuley Boteach.”

Yes, Shmuley Boteach is conservative (with a lower-case “c”) and also a rabbi, but he is most certainly not a Conservative Rabbi!

I thought Colmes did a good job of questioning Ann Coulter about her controversial comments about Jews and Christians from her “Danny Deutsch Show” interview last month. Never one to miss an opportunity to say something outlandish, Coulter explained that she wears the criticism from Jewish groups like the ADL and the American Jewish Congress “as a badge of honor.”

Rabbi Yehuda Levin, a spokesman for the Rabbinical Alliance for America and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, came to Coulter’s defense explaining that “She said nothing that in any way indicates anti-Semitism.” Rabbi Levin’s defense of Coulter was enough for her to claim the support of 1000 orthodox rabbis. Rabbi Yehuda Levin is the ultra-Orthodox rabbi who tried to ban the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem. Rabbi Levin also has a website, Jews for Morality, that includes essays claiming that hurricane Katrina was God’s Judgment on a sin-loving America.

Perhaps the only thing funnier that the phrase “conservative rabbi Shmuley Boteach” is the final exchange in the Coulter-Colmes interview. Even after watching the video of the interview (see below) it makes no sense. Just more ridiculousness from Ann Coulter. Oy!

ANN COULTER: How about eating soup? Is that a classic food of anti-Semites?

ALAN COLMES: Yeah, that’s lovely, Ann. I’m going to move on in spite of yourself, and maybe save you from saying something else that’s ridiculous.