One way to understand a movement’s approach to Jewish law is to study the various theories that have been produced by its members. In a forthcoming book, I have done that for Conservative Judaism, and other authors may do the same for the other movements in the future.

Another way to understand anything, though, is to become clear about what it is not. In fact, the very word “define” in English (like le’hagdir in Hebrew) means to draw borders around, thus mapping out what is within the phenomenon being defined and what is outside its bounds. So at the risk of leaving readers with the old impression that Conservative Judaism is only what it is not, an impression that I hope articles and books on Conservative legal theories by many writers have dispelled and that my forthcoming book will do yet further, in this paper I will explore the borders between the Conservative theories and those on its right and left, thus hopefully clarifying the process of defining characteristics of all three. (I do not here examine the borders between Modern and Haredi Orthodoxy, but that would be another interesting test case of the boundaries between groups.)

I will use two different approaches in this paper. With regard to Conservative Judaism’s boundary on the right, I will use an Orthodox rabbi whose theory sounds remarkably close to what some Conservative theorists have written. This will illustrate one piece of the process of defining movement borders, namely, that the lines between movements are not hard and fixed; what instead exists is a spectrum of theories of Jewish law. Some theories of Jewish law will fit unmistakably into one movement or another, but some will be on the left end of one movement or the right end of another, sometimes to the point of making it hard to determine by the theory alone which movement it fits. This will demonstrate that for individuals, including theorists of Jewish law, movement identification depends not only, and perhaps not primarily, on theoretical concerns, but rather on the accidents of various authors’ personal biographies – with whom they grew up and associate now, where they went to school, whom they want to influence, where they live, and, possibly most importantly, how they want to see themselves. This will not please philosophers who like clarity and certainty in definitions and boundaries, but it will exemplify what those same philosophers know all too well – that life often refuses to lend itself to neat, definitive categories, a factor that affects the divisions between the Jewish movements as much as it affects all other aspects of life.

On the left end of the Conservative movement, I will use a different tactic, namely, comparing the official statements of both movements. I can do that because both the Reform and Conservative movements have produced official platform statements. The Reform movement, in fact, has produced four platforms between 1885 and 1999. Tracing the changes in those statements’ view of Jewish law as they have gotten closer to the one official Conservative statement and to a variety of Conservative theorists will thus enable me to explore how movement definitions function not only on a personal, but also on an institutional level. What will hopefully become clear in this section of the paper is that even in the presumably centrist, official statements of each movement, one must understand similar verbiage against the background of how those words are put into practice in order to see what the words actually mean for people within the movement. Here the fuzziness is not a function of the spectrum of people in each movement but rather derives from the slippery connections among words, meanings, and actions.

One word about the term “movement” in these comparisons. Neither the Conservative nor the Reform movements are monoliths; there is a spectrum of belief and practice within each one. Moreover, there is no such thing as “the Conservative (or Reform) Movement, Incorporated.” Each consists of a number of organizations that share an approach to Judaism and cooperate on a number of projects. Still, institutionally it makes sense to speak of a Conservative or Reform movement because of the institutional framework, albeit loose, that links Conservative (and Reform) Jews to one another and gives them a sense of a coordinated movement.

None of that is true for the Orthodox, who are badly splintered into a variety of groups, from Modern Orthodox, to Aggudah, to a variety of Hasidic sects. These groups are not linked institutionally at all, and they sometimes even question the Jewish legitimacy of the other groups. The closest that any of these groups comes to a “movement” is the Modern Orthodox, with its primary seminaries (Yeshiva University in New York and Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Illinois), its rabbinical organization (Rabbinical Council of America), and its congregational body (Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations) working together on some projects. Thus the term “movement” throughout this paper refers less to an institutional structure than it does to the ideological convictions and Jewish practices of the people who consider themselves part of a given movement.

One other introductory comment. This essay is not intended as a comparison of the movements. For that, on the ideological level one would choose a more central figure in Orthodoxy than David Hartman, and on the institutional level one would ask such questions as how each movement makes halakhic decisions, whom it deems to be Jewish and who it construes to be a rabbi, the scope of authority of the individual rabbi, and how it treats Jewish marriages, divorces and rabbinic ordinations done by other movements. This paper is instead about the boundaries between the movements, and so it deliberately compares a thinker on the left wing of Orthodoxy with Conservative thinkers, and it probes the places where the platform statements of the Conservative and Reform movements overlap. In my view, the movements, qua movements, have clear differences in both philosophy and practice, as I have described elsewhere;[1] moreover, I think that the availability of diverse movements is ultimately good for both Jews and Judaism, and so I would be among the last to pretend that those distinctions do not exist. This essay, though, is about the borders, where things get much fuzzier than they do at each movement’s core.

An Orthodox Theorist at the Border of Conservative Judaism: David Hartman

Rabbis Eliezer Berkovits, Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, and Emanuel Rackman and Professor Tamar Ross are all modern Orthodox thinkers whose theories of Jewish law bear remarkable resemblances to Conservative approaches. I will use Hartman to illustrate just how difficult it sometimes can be to distinguish an avowedly Orthodox theory from a Conservative one.

Although Hartman has spent most of his life in Israel and may therefore be construed to be ineligible to represent North American Orthodoxy, even at its fringes, he was born, raised, educated, and ordained in the United States, served a congregation in Montreal before emigrating to Israel, and continually interacts with North American rabbis and laypeople whom he invites to his institute. Furthermore, his major treatment of Jewish law, for which he was awarded a National Jewish Book Award in the United States, was written in English and published in the United States. Clearly, then, his theory of law was intended to influence North American Jews, especially his fellow Orthodox Jews, in their thinking about Jewish law. Finally, to this day, Hartman identifies as Orthodox. Other Orthodox Jews may doubt his Orthodoxy, but that is just the point in using his theory, for it indeed tests the borders between Orthodox and Conservative approaches to Jewish law.

The very title and subtitle of Hartman’s book on Jewish law, A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism, announce that he, in sharp contrast to more centrist Orthodox theorists like Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and Joseph Soloveitchik, construes Jewish law to be living (i.e., dynamic) and innovative while yet traditional. As he states in the first pages of the Introduction, he wants to dispel conceptions of Jewish law that would paint it as legalistic and inducing passivity (Marx’s “the opiate of the masses”) and instead locate the vivid spirit and activism inherent within Jewish law. He then announces his thesis:

In contrast to the above characterization of the Torah and Judaic spirituality, this book attempts to characterize Judaism in terms of a convenantal anthropology that encourages human initiative and freedom and that is predicated on belief in human adequacy. I argue that a covenantal vision of life, with mitzvah (divine commandment) as the central organizing principle in the relationship between Jews and God, liberates both the intellect and the moral will. I seek to show that a tradition mediated by the Sinai covenant can encourage the development of a human being who is not afraid to assume responsibility for the ongoing drama of Jewish history. Passive resignation is seen not to be an essential of one whose relationship to God is mediated by the hearing of mitzvot.[2]

He then specifies that he will “not argue against the viability of secular humanism. Nor do I claim that a system of ethics must be founded on the authority of divine revelation.” In fact, later in the book he appeals to morality as an outside source that must continually interact with Jewish law to make it whole. Moreover, he specifies at the outset that the viability of Judaism is not established through a critique of other faiths; he is not interested in showing that “Judaism is unique or superior to other faith communities.” At the same time, he will argue strongly “for the significance of Jewish particularity, not for its uniqueness.”[3] If one did not know the author, this last sentence could easily be construed as being written by Mordecai Kaplan, for that is exactly his theory about the nature of the Jewish people.

Hartman uses the covenantal metaphor, not only because that is the Torah’s metaphor, but also to call attention to the tension that must exist between “the dignity of the autonomous self and unswerving commitment to the community”: “Since the covenant is made with the people as a whole and not with Jews as individuals, the ample scope it gives to individual spiritual self-realization cannot exist in isolation from a communal political consciousness.”[4] Even though he acknowledges that the covenant theme in the Torah is rooted in ancient vassal treaties, he wants to downplay the Torah’s metaphors of king and father in favor of the Prophets’ metaphor of husband and wife to depict the relationship between God and the People Israel [5] as well as the Rabbis’ metaphor of God as our teacher. “Marriage is an invitation to enter a relationship that is close and intimate but that does not abolish the individuality of either partner...The self remains autonomous, but it is an autonomy in which the relational framework is fundamental to one’s self-understanding.”[6] Similarly, “God, as teacher, encourages His pupils to think for themselves and assume intellectual responsibility for the way Torah is to be understood and practiced.”[7] Both of the latter metaphors also have the advantages of minimizing the role of reward and punishment in the relationship, focusing instead on the love between the partners and on their ongoing relationship.

That continuing, covenantal relationship between God and the People Israel leads Hartman to a clearly dynamic theory of Jewish law:

Torah, therefore, should not be understood as a complete, finished system. Belief in the giving of the Torah at Sinai does not necessarily imply that the full truth has already been given and that our task is only to unfold what was already present in the fullness of the founding moment of revelation. Sinai gave the community a direction, an arrow pointing toward a future filled with many surprises. Halakhah, which literally means “walking,” is like a road that has not been fully paved and completed...

The covenant is not a purely legal obligation; it is a total relationship. The logic of a legal system cannot do full justice to the relational framework of the covenant built upon the metaphors of God as lover and teacher....[8]

Hartman here is clearly different from people like Yeshayahu Leibowitz in the Orthodox world and Joel Roth in the Conservative movement, both of whom depict Jewish law as a deductive system, but Hartman is remarkably close to my own covenantal theory, which employs the same biblical and rabbinic metaphors and draws from them some of the same conclusions.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Hartman’s teacher and one of his chief influences, maintains that we should obey Jewish law as a “lonely man of faith” who comes into the world with autonomy and creativity but also with complete dependence on God. Soloveitchik thus accepts God’s law as law out of sheer terror, much as the Israelites did under the influence of the thunder, lightning, and earthquakes at Mount Sinai. Hartman, however, thinks that Soloveitchik underestimates the role of human beings in defining the law. Worse, “Such an attitude can have dangerous implications. When the faith experience is insulated from outside criticism, there is a risk of moral sloppiness and religious arrogance....When the faith commitment has been insulated from, and unresponsive to, rational criticism, there is nothing that cannot be justified in the name of tradition.”[9] Hartman expressly includes Western culture and spirituality, which “should be examined critically by Jews but also recognized as a stimulus to internal Judaic reappraisal and renewal.”[10] He also disagrees with Leibowitz’s claim that the only proper reason to obey the law is out of obedience to God.

Instead, Maimonides is Hartman’s primary ideal, for Maimonides affirms a real faith in God as he also provides for rabbinic creativity. Moreover, Maimonides is a model for Hartman in asserting that nothing in Jewish law should be inconsistent with reason or ethics:

...For myself, it is the Maimonidean-Aristotelian spirit that guides my approach to the mitzvot. For Maimonides, mitzvot are essentially related to the well-being of the community and the building of a healthy moral character....

Israel’s uniqueness is not ontological but normative: it reflects the sanctifying power of Mosaic legislation to rescue human beings from idolatry and allow them to show what it means to be created in the image of God...Moral concern is not an appendage to the life of faith. It flows from the total covenantal relational identity of one committed to the life of mitzvah.[11]

Hartman states this not only as a governing principle of his theory, but as a rule to be applied in practice:

...I allow that the Torah may challenge some accepted current patterns of behavior, but I cannot imagine that it requires us to sacrifice our ability to judge what is just and fair. The covenant invites a community to act and to become responsible for the condition of its human world. This invitation to full responsibility in history would be ludicrous if the community’s rational or moral powers were negated in the very act of covenantal commitment....That means that the development of halakhah must be subjected to the scrutiny of moral categories that are independent of the notion of halakhic authority.[12]

Such moral norms are not restricted to, or dependent upon, Judaism: “Parallels to the ethical mitzvot in Judaism can be found in many other civilized religious or nonreligious communities. The question of what makes for a viable social and moral order is not a problem confined to the particular context of a Jewish state.”[13] In fact, identifying moral norms and living a moral life does not require religion or revelation altogether: “Human history has shown that individuals are capable of developing viable ethical systems not rooted in divine authority.”[14]

What, then, is the relationship between Jewish law and morality? For Hartman, Jewish law is simply one effective way among others to live a moral life: “The halakhah...does not give authority to what constitutes moral character, but rather is a way of life that effectively fosters those principles of healthy moral character dispositions that are known through reflection on the nature of the human individual.”[15] The fact that other nations and religious groups seek to be moral in no way diminishes the importance of morality for Judaism; on the contrary, “the divine power and mystery must never be used as a justification to undermine the category of the ethical.”[16]

As much as Hartman emphasizes the rational and moral aspects of halakhah, he insists that it is improper to reduce Judaism, as some Reform leaders have, to ethical imperatives. The nonrational commandments, the hukkim, give the Jewish people identity and give them forms through which to worship God: “Many of these hukkim, as mitzvot that structure Judaic particularity and provide a vivid framework for expressing the community’s particular passion for its God, resemble intimate family customs. Through them the community builds familial solidarity grounded in a common memory and destiny....They complement and absorb the ethical.”[17] Jewish life and law would, in fact, be greatly impoverished if they were reduced to the moral:

A family seriously committed to the ethical life does not only engage in social and political action. The family enjoys music, art, strolling in the country, intimate family meals and discussions, and the joy of just being together in familial solidarity....Ethical seriousness is not the only value in the covenantal appreciation of the religious life; the community and social action do not exhaust the yearning of the religious soul for God. Prayer, religious awe, and the nonrational retain their place in the religious life even as one makes the ethical a controlling category for the development of halakhah.[18]

I have quoted extensively from Hartman’s book because his theory is so radically different from what most people expect from Orthodox writers. He surely has not eliminated the divine basis of the authority of Jewish law, but he just as certainly has toned down its emotional impact and ultimate determining power, for now human reason and morality play critical roles in defining what the law requires. God is no longer just a commanding God who expects Jews to obey passively; God is rather Jews’ covenantal partner, who does indeed expect things of us – just as marital partners and teachers do – but who also is significantly affected in those demands by how God’s human partners respond to those commands. God is even, on this view, prepared to change His will as a result of human moral and rational critiques of the law. This is indeed a far cry from Leibowitz and sounds, in both its covenantal and moral emphases, remarkably close to my own theory. I, though, draw some other implications from the covenantal theory for both relations among Jews and interfaith relations, and I frankly explore the ways in which law and morality interact much more thoroughly than Hartman does; in fact, Hartman himself states that “My book does not attempt to work out the way in which ethics can control halakhic development, nor does it try to establish the limits of tolerance and pluralism,”[19] both of which I explicitly try to do in my writings.

With all this emphasis on the law’s historical development, ethical grounding, and “innovative spirit,” to quote the subtitle of Hartman’s book, what makes Hartman’s theory Orthodox? He surely sees it as such. When I was once on a panel with him, I suggested that his theory sounded more Conservative than Orthodox. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders, but then he tried to defend its Orthodoxy by pointing out that he was basing himself on the Talmud and Maimonides. Those are certainly classical Jewish sources; but they are sources shared by all Jews, and he is interpreting and using them to form an understanding of Jewish law and a methodology for applying it that is very much like mine, much more so than most other Orthodox writers.

Furthermore, in practice few Orthodox Jews think about Jewish law in the way he does, and even fewer Orthodox rabbinic rulings use the methodology he describes. On the other hand, many Conservative Jews think of Jewish law in exactly the way he does, and many of the rulings of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards apply Jewish law in just the way he suggests. In truth, if I had not identified the author of many of the excerpts quoted above, most readers would justifiably identify the approach described in those excerpts as Conservative.

What makes Hartman’s theory Orthodox, then, is primarily a matter of factors external to the theory itself. Hartman, after all, grew up within the Orthodox world, was ordained by Yeshiva University, and served as the rabbi of an Orthodox congregation before emigrating to Israel. Most Orthodox rabbis stay within Orthodox circles, many of them not even joining the local Board of Rabbis; Hartman, in sharp contrast, has actively fostered contacts with Jews and rabbis of all stripes. Still, he identifies himself as Orthodox and prays and lives within an Orthodox community. Furthermore, even though his thought shares many elements of most Conservative theories of Jewish law, including their concern for interpreting classical Jewish texts and Jewish law in historical context and applying the law with moral and other human concerns in mind, Hartman nevertheless would probably not implement his theory in all the ways that the Conservative Movement’ Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has. On the contrary, another important factor identifying his theory as Orthodox is the group he wants to convince, and that is, first and foremost, his own Orthodox community.

In the end, then, one must understand that the border between Orthodox and Conservative theories of Jewish law, as manifested in a theory like Hartman’s, cannot always be determined by the theory alone. People’s patterns of affiliation, after all, are not only a function of what they think; all kinds of biographical factors play a role in that – even for philosophers like Hartman.

That does not undermine the significant differences that usually characterize Conservative theories in contrast to Orthodox ones -- and the specific rulings that grow out of those disparate approaches. It only means that while one can generally differentiate the middle of one movement from the middle of another with clarity, there are some people whose theories and/or practice straddle the line and make it more fuzzy. This may be intellectually frustrating, but it should not be surprising: life, after all, does not come in neat intellectual boxes, and so we should expect that real people take stances that do not fit into clear categories. For that matter, some people who usually fit quite nicely into one or another of the movements most of the time may on occasion surprise us by their position on a given issue. There is thus a spectrum of positions, and while the middle of each of the three categories that mark the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox positions on the Jewish spectrum can be described quite clearly and can be easily distinguished from one another, the exact dividing points between each of the movements is harder to discern.

The Boundary on the Left: Reform Movement Platforms and Practice

Anyone who has had experience with the Reform movement during the twentieth century

would certainly have noticed that it has taken some major steps to the right during that time. In mid-century, it was unusual for Reform congregations to allow men to wear head covering during worship, let alone insist on it; now men in Reform services commonly wear not only head covering but a tallit, and some women do too. The Reform movement has produced prayer books during the last fifty years that have considerably more Hebrew than the old Union Prayer Book had. There were no Reform day schools in 1950; today there are a number of them. Reform movement summer camps for children and families have blossomed. Some Reform congregations now have kosher kitchens, for many Reform rabbis and some Reform lay Jews now observe the Jewish dietary laws. The Reform movement has also not only changed its anti-Zionist stance of the years before the founding of the State of Israel, but it has founded congregations and communities there and has aggressively acted to change Israeli law to permit Reform Judaism to flourish there.

TThese changes in practice have produced parallel changes in the official platform statements of the organization of Reform rabbis, the Central Conference of American Rabbis.[20] Indeed, Rabbi Paul Menitoff, current Executive Director of that organization, now claims that in the near future there will be no Conservative movement because the Reform movement has basically come to articulate what most Conservative Jews do in their personal and family practices in such areas as Sabbath observance and the dietary laws. Moreover, on controversial issues, such as interfaith marriages, same-sex marriages, the ordination of homosexual rabbis, and patrilineal descent, Menitoff maintains that most Conservative laypeople agree with the liberal stances that the Reform movement has taken.[21] Thus to capture the institutional implications of movement definition, instead of considering one of the Reform movement theorists on the right end of that movement -- people like Richard Levy, Dean of the rabbinical program at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles and recent president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis; Mark Washofsky, Professor of Rabbinics at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and Chair of the Reform rabbinate’s Responsa Committee; and the current President of Hebrew Union College, David Ellenson -- I will trace the changes in the movement’s official platform statements’ treatment of Jewish law, comparing them to the Conservative movement’s official statement of its theory. I will then consider the claims of another Reform rabbi, Clifford Librach, who articulated Menitoff’s thesis six years earlier and ask whether Menitoff and Librach are right in their claims that despite differences in legal theory, in practice the two movements are quickly becoming one.

1. Theory. The Reform rabbinate’s first statement on Jewish law, adopted as part of the Declaration of Principles at the 1885 Pittsburgh Conference (“the Pittsburgh Platform”), stated the following about Jewish law:

3. We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the view and habits of modern civilization.

4. We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.

This was clearly a rejection of Jewish ritual laws, except those that “elevate and sanctify our lives.” The latter expressly do not include the dietary laws or “dress” – clearly intending head covering for males at services, possibly the tallit as well, and probably also tefillin. The Sabbath and festivals would be observed, but not necessarily according to the traditional laws governing those holy days.

The second Reform platform statement, adopted more than fifty years later as “The Guiding Principles of Reform Judaism” in Columbus, Ohio in 1937, was much more sanguine about traditional Jewish practices. While it specifically maintains that “certain of its [the Torah’s] laws have lost their binding force with the passing of conditions that called them forth,” the accent has shifted dramatically from the negative to the positive. The document is divided into three parts – A. Judaism and Its Foundations; B. Ethics; and C. Religious Practice – and the parts relevant to Jewish law, quoted below, very much encourage Jews to make traditional Jewish practice part of their lives:

A-4. Torah....The Torah, both written and oral, enshrines Israel’s ever-growing consciousness of God and of the moral law. It preserves the historical precedents, sanctions, and norms of Jewish life, and seeks to mold it in the patterns of goodness and of holiness. Being products of historical processes, certain of its laws have lost their binding force with the passing of the conditions that called them forth. But as a depository of permanent spiritual ideals, the Torah remains the dynamic source of the life of Israel. Each age has the obligation to adapt the teachings of the Torah to its basic needs in consonance with the genius of Judaism....

B-6. Ethics and Religion. In Judaism, religion and morality blend into an indissoluble unity. Seeking God means to strive after holiness, righteousness, and goodness. The love of God is incomplete without the love one’s fellowmen. Judaism emphasizes the kinship of the human race, the sanctity and worth of human life and personality, and the right of the individual to freedom and to the pursuit of his chosen vocation. Justice to all, irrespective of race, sect, or class, is the inalienable right and the inescapable obligation of all. The state and organized government exist in order to further these ends.

B-7. Social Justice. Justice seeks the attainment of a just society by the application of its teachings to the economic order, to industry and commerce, and to national and international affairs. It aims at the elimination of man-made misery and suffering, of poverty and degradation, of tyranny and slavery, of social inequality and prejudice, of ill-will and strife. It advocates the promotion of harmonious relations between warring classes on the basis of equity and justice, and the creation of conditions under which human personality may flourish. It pleads for the safeguarding of childhood against exploitation. It champions the cause of all who work and of their right to an adequate standard of living, as prior to the rights of property. Judaism emphasizes the duty of charity, and strives for a social order which will protect men against the material disabilities of old age, sickness, and unemployment....

C-9. The Religious Life. Jewish life is marked by consecration to these ideals of Judaism. It calls for faithful participation in the life of the Jewish community as it finds expression in the home, synagogue, and school and in all other agencies that enrich Jewish life and promote its welfare. The Home has been and must continue to be a stronghold of Jewish life, hallowed by the spirit of love and reverence, by moral discipline and religious observance and worship. The Synagogue is the oldest and most democratic institution in Jewish life. It is the prime communal agency by which Judaism is fostered and preserved. It links the Jews of each community and unites them with all of Israel. The perpetuation of Judaism as a living force depends upon religious knowledge and upon Education of each new generation in our rich cultural and spiritual heritage.

Prayer is the voice of religion, the language of faith and aspiration. It directs man’s heart and mind Godward, voices the needs and hopes of the community, and reaches out after goals which invest life with supreme value. To deepen the spiritual life of our people, we must cultivate the traditional habit of communion with God through prayer in both home and synagogue.

Judaism as a way of life requires, in addition to its moral and spiritual demands, the preservation of the Sabbath, festivals, and Holy Days, the retention and development of such customs, symbols, and ceremonies as possess inspirational value, the cultivation of distinctive forms of religious art and music, and the use of Hebrew, together with the vernacular, in our worship and instruction.

Without knowing that these paragraphs are part of official Reform tenets of faith, one might well think that they were written for Conservative Jews. The practices common in Reform congregations and among Reform Jews at the time were markedly different from those common in Conservative synagogues and households, and there is no specific mention in the document itself of such Jewish rituals as the dietary laws or tefillin. Furthermore, there is no claim here that Jewish law is binding, whether one sees the point in it or not; the only motivations listed appeal to individual Jews to adopt Jewish practices to enrich their lives and fulfill Jewish ideals. Still, the rabbis who wrote and approved this document were clearly trying to deepen the Jewish roots of their constituents.

By 1976, the date of the third Reform platform statement, the practices of Reform synagogues had become more traditional. By that time, the new Reform prayer book, Gates of Prayer, had already been issued, and it contained much more Hebrew than the Union Prayer Book had. Still, it was not nearly as traditional as the Silverman prayer book commonly in use in Conservative synagogues; it offered the rabbi a variety of options for Friday night and Saturday morning services, all of which were considerably shorter than the traditional liturgy; and Reform synagogues then, as now, commonly did not schedule Sabbath morning services altogether unless there was a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Some Reform rabbis and laypeople were keeping kosher, and some were wearing head covering and a tallit in services. The Reform movement in the 1960s was heavily invested in the civil rights movement, to the point that some Reform rabbis were worried that Judaism for themselves and their congregants had been reduced to civil rights. By 1976, though, there was a turn to more traditional practices for both the individual and the community. The platform statement reflects this in asserting that while the founders of Reform Judaism emphasized only the moral parts of Judaism, Reform rabbis now wanted to reenforce the many other parts of Judaism as well, including a number of Jewish rituals that are specifically mentioned, even “daily religious observance.”

One underlying principle of Reform Judaism that had characterized it in practice from its very beginnings but had surprisingly never been expressed in its 1885 and 1937 statements was finally articulated in 1976 – namely, the autonomy of each individual Jew to decide which Jewish practices to adopt. The 1976 statement tries to achieve a balance between accepting the tradition as part of one’s life and making an autonomous choice by asserting that to make an intelligent choice Jews must first study the tradition. Thus this statement’s paragraph relevant to Jewish law, quoted below, represents a breakthrough in both articulating the governing assumption of individual autonomy for the very first time and simultaneously asserting that intelligent use of that autonomy makes demands of knowledge and judgment:

4. Our Religious Obligations: Religious Practice. Judaism emphasizes action rather than creed as the primary expression of a religious life, the means by which we strive to achieve universal justice and peace. Reform Judaism shares this emphasis on duty and obligation. Our founders stressed that the Jew’s ethical responsibilities, personal and social, are enjoined by God. The past century has taught us that the claims made upon us may begin with our ethical obligations but they extend to many other aspects of Jewish living, including: creating a Jewish home centered on family devotion; lifelong study; private prayer and public worship; daily religious observance; keeping the Sabbath and the holy days; celebrating the major events of life; involvement with the synagogues and community; and other activities which promote the survival of the Jewish people and enhance its existence. Within each area of Jewish observance Reform Jews are called upon to confront the claims of Jewish tradition, however differently perceived, and to exercise their individual autonomy, choosing and creating on the basis of commitment and knowledge.

Finally, in 1999, again, ironically, in Pittsburgh, the Central Conference of American

Rabbis adopted its most recent Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism. While the Pittsburgh Platform of 114 years earlier had emphasized the ways in which Jews and Judaism should be part of a universal, human culture, the 1999 statement focuses on affirming Jewish tradition, albeit in dialogue with modern culture and within the boundaries of personal autonomy. This is clear from the very first paragraph of the Preamble, which explains the reason for writing the document as a response to today’s conditions “when so many individuals are striving for religious meaning, moral purpose, and a sense of community” (my italics); the last of those would have been an anathema to the Reform rabbis of 1885, who were trying to rise above individual communities and nations to form a universal, human culture. The second paragraph of the Preamble presents even a more stark contrast to the tone and direction of the 1885 statement: instead of stating all the parts of the Jewish tradition that Reform Jews should discard, the 1999 statement strongly affirms Jewish tradition:

Throughout our history, we Jews have remained firmly rooted in Jewish tradition, even as we have learned much from our encounters with other cultures. The great contribution of Reform Judaism is that it has enabled the Jewish people to introduce innovation while preserving tradition, to embrace diversity while asserting commonality, to affirm beliefs without rejecting those who doubt, and to bring faith to sacred texts without sacrificing critical scholarship.

If the second sentence read instead “The great contribution of Conservative Judaism...,” the rest of the paragraph would clearly articulate how Conservative Judaism understands itself! This is clearly a much more traditional form of Reform Judaism, one much closer to Conservative Judaism and harder to distinguish from it. While that statement refers to a number of issues other than law, on the specific point of enabling “the Jewish people to introduce innovation while preserving tradition,” compare this paragraph from the official statement of the beliefs of the Conservative Movement, Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism:

We in the Conservative community are committed to carrying on the rabbinic tradition of preserving and enhancing Halakhah by making appropriate changes in it through rabbinic decision. This flows from our conviction that Halakhah is indispensable for each age. As in the past, the nature and number of adjustments of the law will vary with the degree of change in the environment in which Jews live. The rapid technological and social change of our time, as well as new ethical insights and goals, have required new interpretations and applications of Halakhah to keep it vital for our lives; more adjustments will undoubtedly be necessary in the future.[22]

As will be described below, important differences between the two movements in both theory and practice remain, but these paragraphs bespeak a remarkable similarity in current self-perception.

The 1999 Reform document is divided into three sections – God, Torah, and Israel – just as the Conservative Movement’s Statement of Principles, Emet Ve-Emunah, is. In the section on Torah, the Reform document says this about the commandments:

We affirm the importance of studying Hebrew, the language of Torah and Jewish liturgy, that we may draw closer to our people’s sacred texts.

We are called by Torah to lifelong study in the home, in the synagogue, and in every place where Jews gather to learn and teach. Through Torah study we are called to mitzvot, the means by which we make our lives holy.

We are committed to the ongoing study of the whole array of mitzvot and to the fulfillment of those that address us as individuals and as a community. Some of these mitzvot, sacred obligations, have long been observed by Reform Jews; others, both ancient and modern, demand renewed attention as the result of the unique context of our own time.

We bring Torah into the world when we seek to sanctify the times and places of our lives through regular home and congregational observance. Shabbat calls us to bring the highest moral values to our daily labor and to culminate the workweek with kedushah, holiness, menuchah, rest, and oneg, joy. The High Holy Days call us to account for our deeds. The Festivals enable us to celebrate with joy our people’s religious journey in the context of the changing seasons. The days of remembrance remind us of the tragedies and hte triumphs that have shaped our people’s historical experience both in ancient and modern times. And we mark the milestones of our personal journeys with traditional and creative rites that reveal the holiness in each stage of life.

We bring Torah into the world when we strive to fulfill the highest ethical mandates in our relationships with others and with all of God’s creation. Partners with God in tikkun olam, repairing the world, we are called to help bring nearer the messianic age. We seek dialogue and joint action with people of other faiths in the hope that together we can bring peace, freedom and justice to our world. We are obligated to pursue tzedek, justice and righteousness, and to narrow the gap between the affluent and the poor, to act against discrimination and oppression, to pursue peace, to welcome the stranger, to protect the earth’s biodiversity and natural resources, and to redeem those in physical, economic and spiritual bondage. In so doing, we reaffirm social action and social justice as a central prophetic focus of traditional Reform Jewish belief and practice. We affirm the mitzvah of tzedakah, setting aside portions of our earnings and our time to provide for those in need. These acts bring us closer to fulfilling the prophetic call to translate the words of Torah into the works of our hands.

In all these ways and more, Torah gives meaning and purpose to our lives.

Note several features of the new statement. While Zechariah Frankel had left the organization of Reform rabbis in 1845 to form what became Conservative Judaism because the Reformers were moving away from a largely Hebrew liturgy to one in the German vernacular, the Reform rabbis of today state openly that Hebrew is important for both study and prayer. In the third section of the document, they go yet further: they “urge Jews who reside outside Israel to learn Hebrew as a living language.”

In this platform, the Reform rabbis encourage Torah study of all kinds, and the rationale is not intellectual stimulation or cultural rootedness, but rather because “Through Torah study we are called to mitzvot.” Here the Reform rabbis are following an ancient talmudic dictum, where the Rabbis of the Talmud decided that study is greater than action because study leads to action.[23]

Moreover, the Reform rabbis are clearly articulating a new focus on a life of following the commandments, and indeed a new language of mitzvot. Although they never translate that term as “commandments,” probably because that would lead to all kinds of questions about the authority and enforcement of such commands, they do describe the mitzvot as “the means by which we make our lives holy” and even as “sacred obligations.” The former definition suggests that doing them is a good idea, but voluntary: one may not, after all, want to make one’s life holy or even understand what that means. The latter definition, “sacred obligations,” indicates instead that there is an obligatory character to them, that they are not a matter of autonomous choice, but it leaves out explanations of some crucial aspects of such “sacred obligations” -- namely, who imposes them (God, the Jewish people, Jewish tradition, or some combination); whether or not individual Jews may autonomously decide to opt out of such obligations or ignore them; how we know what exactly we are obliged to do; whether they are subject to change and, if so, by whom, for what reasons, and through what process; and what the consequences are for failing to fulfill such obligations. The document, in other words, is fuzzy on the exact nature of the mitzvot and their relationship to modern Jews, and it fails to describe some of the most important features of a philosophy of law. Still, it is remarkable that the document speaks in such traditional terms, a clear indication of the new direction in which the rabbis of the movement want to take it.

That is made even clearer by the document’s assertion that while Reform Jews have observed some of the mitzvot in times past, “others, both ancient and modern, demand renewed attention as the result of the unique context of our own times.” One can only guess what the framers had in mind, but current Reform practice would indicate that the “ancient” practices they might have referred to would include such rituals as circumcision, the dietary laws, kippah (although that is not so ancient), tallit, and maybe even tefillin, regular prayer, and all of the specific holidays and life-cycle ceremonies that they mention in the succeeding paragraphs. The “modern” ones probably refer to new rituals for welcoming baby girls into the Jewish community and a host of other new rituals for women as well as some new rituals that have been created in response to modern history, such as Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) and Israel Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzma’ut). Note also that the document reaffirms the Reform movement’s historical emphasis on Jewish moral norms, this time spelling them out in much greater detail than in any previous platform statement.

Finally, note that the 1999 document never makes explicit reference to individual autonomy. It continually refers to “we,” as evidenced in the paragraphs quoted above, and it includes a strong statement of community identity: “We are Israel, a people aspiring to holiness, singled out through our ancient covenant and our unique history among the nations to be witnesses to God’s presence. We are linked by that covenant and that history to all Jews in every age and place.” The closest the document gets to affirming a role for individual decisions is in the Preamble, which “acknowledges the diversity of Reform Jewish beliefs and practices” and which “invites all Reform Jews to engage in a dialogue with the sources of our tradition, responding out of our knowledge, our experience, and our faith.” But even here the language is in the first-person plural, and it is unclear whether the framers intend that individuals decide what to take from the Jewish tradition – as a matter of goals, and not just as a matter of fact due to freedom of religion in Enlightenment countries – or whether they intend to move to a more communitarian form of decision making. Reform rabbis tell me that that is a source of tension in the current Reform rabbinate.

For all of its embrace of traditional practices, the new Reform statement differs markedly from Conservative theory and practice in how the law is to be understood and applied. Thus, immediately after the paragraph cited above, Emet Ve-Emunah says the following:

While change is both a traditional and a necessary part of Halakhah, we, like our ancestors, are not committed to change for its own sake. Hence, the thrust of the Jewish tradition and the Conservative community is to maintain the law and practices of the past as much as possible, and the burden of proof rests on the one who wants to alter them.[24]

Furthermore, in contrast to individual autonomy, Emet Ve-Emunah specifically asserts that “Authority for religious practice in each congregation resides in its rabbi (its mara d’atra). It derives from the rabbi’s training in the Jewish tradition, attested by his or her ordination as a rabbi, and by the fact the congregation has chosen that rabbi to be its religious guide.”[25]

Thus with all of the serious movement of the Reform rabbinate to more tradition, the principle of autonomy still governs, in sharp contrast to Conservative movement theories that routinely speak in communal and legal terms. Within the autonomous context of Reform Judaism, its use of the term “mitzvot” remains unclear in its degree, scope, and grounds of authority. Indeed, the very existence of a Responsa Committee might be seen as an anomaly: How can there be a legal ruling if everyone is to choose what to do independently? The Committee is, at best, a vehicle to give Reform Jews advice, which is surely a worthwhile thing in itself but not the same as a legal ruling in the authors’ intent or the receivers’ understanding and action.

2. Practice. The decidedly traditional turn in the life of the Reform movement in the years between the 1976 statement and the 1999 one has led some in the Reform and Conservative movements to question whether there are any longer any distinctions in practice between them worth noting and maintaining. Those who argue that there are not, like Rabbi Paul Menitoff, point to Jewish population studies that indicate that the laity within both movements are remarkably similar in many of their practices and attitudes. Thus, while a greater percentage of Conservative than Reform households are kosher, the percentage within the Conservative movement is not very high to begin with. Conservative lay Jews, like their Reform counterparts, may light Sabbath candles (although, especially in winter, not necessarily before sunset), and only a small percentage of them observe Shabbat in accordance with all of the traditional rules – or even intend to. Conservative Jews overwhelmingly think that their rabbis should perform the marriages of Jews to non-Jews, especially as they worry that their grandchildren will not be Jewish. Some, harking back to Milton Steinberg’s distinction between Orthodox and liberal Jews in his 1947 book, Basic Judaism, maintain that we are now entering a “post-denominational age,” in which all such boundaries among liberal Jews have become meaningless and even inaccurate and misleading.

That was exactly the thesis of Reform Rabbi Clifford E. Librach in his September, 1998 Commentary article, “Does Conservative Judaism Have a Future?” In it he claims that the Conservative movement has lost its roots in tradition and that, with the increasing traditionalism of the Reform movement, the Conservative movement no longer has a distinct identity or mission. As part of his argument, he cited my own stand on homosexuality and my claim in an earlier article[26] that custom drives Jewish law on the status of women.

I responded to him in a letter published the January, 1999 issue of Commentary[27] that while my personal practice and the overwhelming (sometimes unanimous) approval my rabbinic rulings for the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards together indicate that I am somewhere in the middle of the movement, on this particular issue I am definitely on the left end of it, and so my own stance on homosexuality cannot be invoked to show where the movement is. Moreover, in contrast to those who have the same view as I do about homosexuality within the Reform movement, I feel the burden of arguing for it in halakhic terms, and that is a burden that few, if any, of the Reform writers feel or respond to. On the latter issue, the status of women in Jewish law, an appeal to custom is not a new approach at all; as I demonstrated in my article, the classical rabbis did the same thing on this very topic.

To move to Rabbi Librach’s broader point, he admits that the ideologies of the two movements remain substantially different, but he claims that the realities of the two movements are no longer distinct. As a traditional Jew, I certainly welcome the efforts on the part of the current leadership of the Reform movement to increase the Jewish education and practice of its members. In the meantime, however, in my response to him I pointed to some very real differences in practice that continue to mark the Conservative movement from the Reform movement – namely:

1) Every Conservative congregation that has a kitchen has a kosher one. Few Reform congregations have kosher facilities, and in those that do, kosher meals are simply one option that they provide.

2) Something like 95% of Conservative worship is in Hebrew. Current Reform liturgy employs more Hebrew than in past Reform prayer books, but even the most Hebraic services in Gates of Prayer use Hebrew for less than half the service.

3) Every Conservative synagogue holds services on Saturday mornings, while Saturday-morning services take place in most Reform congregations only when there is a bar or bat mitzvah.

4) Every Conservative synagogue that can do so holds morning and evening services daily. I know of no Reform congregation that does.

5) Conservative day (and supplementary) schools spend more time on Jewish studies and focus more on traditional texts than do their Reform counterparts. Similar curricular differences characterize adult education in the two movements, including conversion programs and even the schooling of future educators and rabbis.

6) When a Jewish couple divorces in civil law, Conservative rabbis require that they procure a Jewish writ of divorce (get) before remarriage is permitted. Reform rabbis do not require this document, with the result that, according to Jewish law, children from a woman’s second, civil marriage are Jewishly illegitimate (mamzerim).

7) Despite considerable sociological pressure, the Conservative movement continues to define Jews in the traditional way – namely, as the children of Jewish women or those who have been converted to Judaism according to the demands of halakhah. The Reform movement also includes as Jews those whose fathers, but not whose mothers, are Jewish , and not all Reform rabbis insist on the traditional rituals of conversion.

8) Conservative standards forbid full synagogue membership to non-Jews, even if they are married to Jews, although many Conservative synagogues are seeking ways to welcome the non-Jewish spouses of members in ways that do not violate halakhah, especially if they have agreed to raise their children as Jews. Many members of Reform congregations are non-Jews, failing to fulfill any standard of Jewish identity.

As both the 1990 and 2000 National Jewish Population Studies have demonstrated, however, Conservative and Reform laypeople share much in their patterns of personal observance and in their attitudes toward the topics that Rabbi Menitoff listed. Even so, the institutional practices that I listed above still divide the movements considerably, and my guess is that it is unwise to predict what will happen in the institutional future of the movements. A look at such predictions about the movements fifty years ago and what in fact happened should give anyone pause.

Conclusions

There are, then, two general conclusions of this study. The first is a warning to all theorists -- namely, that all statements of theory must be understood in the life context of the particular theorist. People identify with movements for all kinds of reasons, only some of which have anything to do with theory. This includes, of course, the people who create Jewish legal theories. As a result, in understanding two or more theories, sentences and paragraphs that seem very similar may, in fact, have very different meanings and implications for both the authors and their audiences, depending upon the authors’ background, beliefs, and practice. That is, on a personal level, one must understand what a person affirms in writing in the context of his or her actual life. So, in my example, David Hartman’s theory sounds very much like mine, but we nevertheless belong to two different movements, in large part, I suspect, because of growing up in them and currently belonging to them. Consequently, one must understand the affiliation of a theorist in terms of the group for whom the theorist writes, especially if that group ultimately accepts the theory as a valid expression of their faith, including their legal convictions..

Second, on an institutional level, even when the individual levels of observance of two groups of people have come to resemble each other in significant respects, as sociologists claim is now true of the Conservative and Reform laity in a number of areas of Jewish practice, such similarities may be grounded in importantly different understandings of Jewish law and the ways it functions. This is not trivial, for such differing viewpoints often produce different self-perceptions among the people acting in those ways in their private lives, different ways of approaching new issues, and, demonstrably in the case of Conservative and Reform Judaism, different expectations of their synagogues and rabbis. Conversely, this paper has shown that theoretical similarities do not necessarily translate into the same forms of practice; indeed, there remain significant differences in the ongoing practices of Conservative and Reform institutions.

To return to the theme with which I began, the movements exist along a spectrum. In closing, though, I would like to make the opposite point from the one I made at the outset. Whatever ambiguities exist at the borders of the movements, the centrist theories and practices of the various movements are, indeed, markedly different from each other, and so the existence of the various movements accurately reflects differing understandings of Jewish law and Jewish existence altogether. The pluralism that American Judaism offers is a real blessing, one that our Israeli brothers and sisters might learn from, for the options for Jewish expression that exist in American Judaism make it possible for Jews of all sorts to find an appropriate and meaningful path into Judaism. At the same time, those who love clarity and neatness must not push the movements’ definitions too far, for at the borders of each movement things are messier in both theory and practice than one might want or expect. In that movements mirror life itself, which also does not lend itself to neat categories.

Notes

[1] Elliot N. Dorff, Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors to Our Descendants (New York: United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 1977; 2d, revised edtion 1996), Chapter Three, Section D.

[2] David Hartman, A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism (New York: Free Press, 1985; reprinted by Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1997), p. 3.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., p. 4.

[5] Depicting God as Groom and Israel as His bride was initiated by the Prophet Hosea (2:4, 9, 18, 21-22), used by Isaiah (e.g., 54:5-8; 62:4-5), and applied by Rabbi Akiba to the whole book of Song of Songs (Avot D’Rabbi Natan, chapter 1). Hosea, of course, is complaining about Israel’s adultery in going after foreign gods, but in doing so, he depicts God and the People Israel as husband and wife.

[6] Hartman, A Living Covenant (at note 20), p. 5.

[7] Ibid., pp. 4-5.

[8] Ibid., pp. 8, 14-15.

[9] Ibid., p. 102 -3.

[10] Ibid., p. 105.

[11] Ibid., pp. 14, 105, 107.

[12] Ibid., p. 98.

[13] Ibid., p. 96.

[14] Ibid., p. 98.

[15] Ibid., p. 99.

[16] Ibid., p. 97.

[17] Ibid., p. 96.

[18] Ibid., p. 97.

[19] Ibid., p. 18.

[20] All of the platform statements of the Central Conference of American Rabbis can be accessed at www.ccarnet.org/platforms.

[21] Joe Berkofsky, “Conservative Death Prophecy Draws Fire,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 5, 2004. Menitoff’s essay appeared in the newsletter of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which is available in print and on line only to its members.

[22] [No author listed; this was the work of a commission chaired by Robert Gordis], Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, The Rabbinical Assembly, United Synagogue of America, Women’s League for Conservative Judaism, Federations of Jewish Men’s Clubs, 1988), p. 23.

[23] B. Kiddushin 40b.

[24] Emet Ve’Emunah (at note 21 above), p. 23.

[25] Ibid., p. 25.

[26] “Custom Drives Jewish Law on Women," Conservative Judaism 49:3 (Spring, 1997), pp. 3-21. Response to critics: Conservative Judaism 51:1 (Fall, 1998), pp. 66-73. Reprinted in Gender Issues in Jewish Law: Essays and Responsa, Walter Jacob and Moshe Zemer, eds. (New York: Berghahn.Books, 2001), pp. 82-106.

[27] Letter to the Editor, Commentary 107:1 (January, 1999), pp. 3, 5, 6.