Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

Latest Reconstructionist Rabbinical College News

Conservative Judaism is in a tizzy. The demographers have just now determined that the movement radically declines. It used to form 50 percent of American and Canadian Jews. Now it adds up to only 30 percent. At their recent meeting in Boston Conservative Jews could talk of little else than halting the decline in relative position within American Jewry, which they equated with the coming demise of Conservative Judaism.But these things are relative. So two questions present themselves.First, when half of American Jewry identified with Conservative Judaism, what were the traits of American Jewry? And now that a third does, what kind of Jews are Conservative Jews a third of?And, second, since the vast majority of American Jews are either Reform or Conservative -- more than 80 percent of the whole, with about 10 percent forming one or another variety of Orthodox Judaism, and the rest scattered every which way; Reconstructionist, New Age, and so forth -- we have to ask a simple question: what difference does it make whether a Jew belongs to a Reform or to a Conservative synagogue? Do the labels stand for anything - quality of commitment, for example? Or, are these brand names that conceal - more available