Talk:Conservative Judaism
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Danny, please tell me why you disagree with my definition. Ezra Wax
It is not a definition in terms of itself. It is a definition in relationship to some other movement--Orthodoxy. Also Conservative Judaism has a very precise definition. It means something very specific and has a genuine history and ideology. It is not a matter of "level of observance." Finally, you are confusing Conservative and conservative. Danny
Ok. Suppose I change the first definition to a definition of conservative Judaism? Ezra Wax
There is no value to the second definition. Why do you feel a need to rank movements along your spectrum of values? Danny
Not to butt in, guys, but... "Conservative Judaism refers to the unified movement of Conservative Judaism."
Does this sentence mean anything at all, or can it be deleted? Tokerboy 02:05 Oct 31, 2002 (UTC)
- delete away! Danny
Conservative Judaism, like Reform Judaism and Orthodox Judaism, is a denomination, and is certainly not a sect. According to the ReligiousTolerance.Org website (which uses pretty mainstream definitions):
- A Denomination is an established religious group, which has usually been in existence for many years and has geographically widespread membership. It typically unites a group of individual congregations into a single administrative body. Denominations differ greatly in the sharing of power between individual congregations and the central authority.
- A Sect is a small religious group that is an offshoot of an established religion or denomination. It holds most beliefs in common with its religion of origin, but has a number of novel concepts which differentiate them from that religion.
Although this would make certain readers cringe, this would mean that both Ultra-Orthodox Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism may possibly be sects, and it is only Orthodox, Reform and Conservative that are denominations of rabbinic Judaism. RK
I agree with nearly all of Billfish's recent edits. The one exception is his addition of the word "allegedly" before a listing of Conservative Jewish beliefs about God. That word should only be used when someone is making an (as yet) unproven or controversial claim about someone. Conservative Jews are open about their monotheism, i.e. belief in one God, and open about the fact that the Conservative movement has never affirmed one specific form of monotheism. It has allowed, and many would say encouraged, members to read sacred Jewish texts and come up with their own views on this issue. (Of course, as the article states, the draw the line at trinitarianism and dualism. All forms of Judaism reject such beliefs as non-monotheistic.) Their own papers, journals, websites and sermons mention all of the stated forms of monotheistic belief. This range of beliefs is well documented in Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff's book, Conservative Judaism: From Our Ancestors To Our Descendants, and in the many articles on theology published in the Rabbinical Assembly's quarterly journal, Conservative Judaism. I can also provide additional references on any of these topics, per request. RK 23:01, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)
Views of revelation
Orthodox Jews believe that God can and has revealed his will to man in essentially a verbal, quotable form. Rabbi Norman Lamm writes: "I believe the Torah is divine revelation in two ways: in that it is God-given and in that it is godly. By "God-given," I mean that He willed that man abide by his commandments and that will was communicated in discrete words and letters. Man apprehends in many ways: by intuition, inspiration, experience, deduction and by direct instruction. The divine will, if it is to be made known, is sufficiently important for it to be revealed in as direct, unequivocal, and unambiguous a manner as possible, so that it will be understood by the largest number of the people to whom this will is addressed. Language, though so faulty an instrument, is still the best means of communication to most human beings. Hence, I accept unapologetically the idea of the verbal revelation of the Torah." (The Condition of Jewish Belief, Macmillan 1966)
This point of view is allowable within Conservative Judaism, but the great majority of Conservative Jews do not accept this. Due to their beliefs about the nature of God, most Conservative Jews hold that revelation must be non-verbal and non-literal. However, many C Jews believe that the Jewish prophets were inspired by God, just not in a verbal-like fashion. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes "As a report about Revelation, the Bible itself is a midrash. To convey what the prophets experienced, the Bible could either use terms of descriptions or terms of indication. Any description of the act of revelation in empirical categories would have produced a caricature. That is why all the Bible does is to state that revelation happened; How it happened is something they could only convey in words that are evocative and suggestive." [God in Search of Man, Heschel, p.194]
Similarly, Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser writes: "Man receives a divine communication when the divine spirit rests on him, but man must give form to that communication; He must express it in words, in images and in symbols which will make his message intelligible to other men. Out of this need to give form to the truth that is revealed to him, the prophet places the stamp of his own individuality upon that truth."
Many other Conservative Jews believe that God's will is revealed through the interaction of man and God throughout history. In this view, by viewing how the Jewish people have understood God's will throughout history, we see how God has influenced the development of Jewish law; it is this process that we should recognize as "revelation".
Rabbi Louis Jacobs writes "Revelation is an encounter between the divine and the human, so that there is a human as well as a divine factor in revelation, God revealing His will not alone to men, but _through_ men....The new knowledge need not in any way affect our reverence for the Bible and our loyalty to its teachings. God's Power is not lessened because God preferred to co-operate with His creatures in producing the Book of Books." [We Have Reason to Believe, p.81]
In the foreword to the fourth edition of this book (1995), Rabbi Jacobs writes notes that "for all their vast wisdom and knowledge, the Talmudic rabbis and mediaeval thinkers did not operate with the tools of modern historical research. How could they? They had no access to the historical methodology, which remained undeveloped until the post-mediaeval period....The task of the Jewish theologian is not to try to defend the mediaeval picture of how Judaism came about. Such a picture has gone, never to return. The modern Jewish theologian, true to tradition, has to try to understand how, now that Judaism is seen to have had a history...the traditional view of Torah Min Ha-Shamayim can be reinterpreted....The solution, as Zechariah Frankel saw in the last century, is to see the whole process in dynamic, rather than static, terms; that, in the words of Robert Gordis, God gave the Torah not only to the Jewish people, but through the Jewish people.....Such a position in no way involves any rejection of belief in the Torah and in the mitzvot as divine commands. The Torah is still God-given if the 'giving' is seen to take place through the historical experiences of the Jewish people in its long quest for God. [We Have Reason to Believe]
Some within Reform Judaism accept this view, with the added proviso that such a view of revelation implies that Jewish law is no longer binding. Rabbi Dorff summarizes this Reform view: "God reveals His will to human beings through the use of human reason and moral striving. Each individual can be the recipient of revelation (in that sense) if he or she will only pay attention to the evidences of God in the natural and moral orders of the universe, and deduce from that what God requires of him or her. Moreover, as humanity has more experience, human knowledge of what is and what ought to be grows, and so the scope and accuracy of revelation progresses as time goes on. This explains why Reform Jews believe that Jewish law of previous eras is not binding, and why it is the individual who decides what to observe in Reform Judaism." [Elliot Dorff Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors to Our Descendants United Synagogue, 1996]