Welcome to 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
The Latest
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Community 5 Steps and an Unlikely Outsider Can ‘Save’ Conservative Judaism
Recently Dr. Roberta Kwall wrote an article entitled “Saving Conservative Judaism” for Commentary Magazine. Kwall writes “In short, the Conservative movement needs to return to [Solomon] Schechter’s mission of conserving Jewish tradition by focusing its educational and spiritual energies on enlarging and strengthening a root group of Conservative Jews who are drawn to tradition.” Kwall’s…
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Fast Forward Conservative Rabbi: Let Clergy Officiate Intermarriages
As Conservative religious leaders continue to debate whether the movement should bless intermarriages, one rabbi is adding his voice to a growing group that wants to officiate such ceremonies. Rabbi Steven Abraham of Beth El Synagogue in Omaha penned an op-ed in The Times of Israel this week calling on the movement to change its…
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Fast Forward Activists Protest Non-Union Construction At Jewish Theological Seminary
Activists held a protest on Monday outside the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan against the contractor that the rabbinical school hired to manage a massive construction project on campus. JTS, the flagship seminary of Conservative Judaism, hired the contractor Gilbane to build a new library and residence hall as part of a major refiguring of…
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Fast Forward Gay Rabbi Leads Conservative Effort To ‘Radically Reimagine’ Traditions
Gil Steinlauf, the prominent Washington, D.C. rabbi who made waves when he came out three years ago to his congregation, will leave his post as senior rabbi at Adas Israel to head up a new “innovation lab” for the Conservative movement. Steinlauf described the initiative as “far reaching” and “designed to radically reimagine the ancient…
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Fast Forward It’s Jew Vs. Jew As Conservative Pol’s Popularity Rises In Rio
RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) – A few days before they read from the Passover Haggadah about how God split the Red Sea waters, Brazilian Jews have never felt so split between right and left. At the center of the divide, although hardly in the Moses role, is Jair Bolsonaro, a 61-year-old conservative lawmaker who appears…
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News Conservatives Welcome Non-Jews — But Will They Be Second-Class Citizens In Synagogue?
When Holly first kissed Jeff on a dance floor back in the 1990s, she was a college freshman from Staten Island and he was a frat brother from Long Island. They both had New York accents. He thought the petite brunette was Jewish. But Holly Rizzuto was and still is an Italian Catholic, named Holly…
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Community Dennis Prager, Shmuley Boteach and the Diabolical Bargain of Pro-Trump Jews
Jewish Conservative pundits who have long stood for family values and moral rectitude but now stand with Trump have revealed what apparently lurked underneath the whole time, in a manner no less maddening than the Evangelical Trump supporters who can lift their hand from a posture of prayer to shake the hand of a man…
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Life Jewish Conservative Women, In Their Own Words
I’d like to tell you a story. Picture it, a classroom in Harvard’s Kennedy School, early 2008: I often find myself in classes hearing my political party and its members caricatured. Last year, a professor informed one of my classes that Mike Huckabee would be my party’s nominee, because we all take marching orders from…
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