This is the Forward’s coverage of Conservative Judaism, one of the three major streams of U.S. Judaism. Conservative Jews are generally more observant than Reform Jews but less so than Orthodox Jews. The movement is led by the…
Conservative Judaism
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News Boycott Schm-oycott! Trump Insists He Never Planned To Call Rabbis For High Holidays
Did liberal Jewish denominations succeed in making a brave statement against President Trump’s divisive leadership by effectively torpedoing an annual High Holidays conference call with rabbis? Or did Trump hang up on them before they could hang up on him? Less than 24 hours after Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis announced they would not organize…
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Fast Forward Jewish Denominations Pull Out Of Trump’s High Holiday Call — Say He Should ‘Repent’
Citing President’s Trump “moral failure” in response to Charlottesville, Virginia, the rabbinical arms of three American Jewish denominations have decided to pull out of the annual conference call held by the president before the High Holidays. The rabbinical groups of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements said in a joint statement that Trump’s recent remarks…
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Opinion Why We Are Spending Tisha B’Av At An Immigrant Detention Center
Jews know something about the immigrant experience. We know what it means to be a stranger, an unwelcome resident sometimes tolerated but always in danger of being uprooted and forced to become refugees. Whether we’re marking the Jews’ exile from the Land of Israel following the destruction of the Second Temple, or mourning our exile…
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Opinion On Intermarriage, The Conservative Movement Is At Odds With Its Members
The current crisis in Conservative Judaism can be traced to a potentially fatal flaw that has been present in the movement since its inception: It has never been one movement. It is really two movements: The movement of its rabbis and philosophical leaders, and the movement of its constituents, the laity. For generations, this tension…
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Opinion ‘Liberal’ Jews Are Just As Judgmental As The Orthodox Behind The Kotel Decision
Like most of my fellow liberal Jews, I find it deplorable that the Israeli government reneged on a deal for egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall. I’m also feeling something that others probably aren’t, though: hope for a lesson learned about liberal Judaism’s own walls. What the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate is doing to the liberal…
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Opinion How Trump Has Driven Jewish Conservative Thinkers To Brink Of Extinction
Over the coming years, environmental scientists will probably chronicle the many species that Donald Trump’s presidency has brought to extinction. Political scientists may add another: the conservative Jewish intellectual. I’m using the phrase in a specific way. By “intellectual,” I mean someone who traffics in ideas, not tribal or partisan loyalties. By “conservative,” I mean…
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Community Sorry, Netanyahu: The Diaspora Won’t Take This Betrayal Lying Down
On the morning of July 12, I read a piece in the Opinion Page of the New York Times titled “Israel to American Jews: You Just Don’t Matter” by Thomas L. Friedman. In this piece, Friedman states that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu has yielded to the whims of the Orthodox and has basically…
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Fast Forward Conservative Jewish Leader Warns Of ‘Distancing’ Between Israeli, Diaspora Jews
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli and Diaspora Jewry are in a “very precarious place,” the head of the Conservative movement in the United States warned members of Israel’s Knesset. Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, spoke Tuesday in front of the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, which was…
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Fast Forward 200+ Bnei Menashe immigrate to Israel from India, the first to make the journey in years
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דאָס בוך איז גרונטיק געפֿאָרשט, לעבעדיק אָנגעשריבן — אָבער אידעאָלאָגיש באַפֿאַרבט
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Sports Today’s American Jews finally have their era’s Sandy Koufax
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Fast Forward Netanyahu reveals prostate cancer treatment, says he hid diagnosis during Iran war