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 Patrilineal Jews Still Find Resistance
Rachel Brook, a 29-year-old vocalist living in Brooklyn, was born to a Jewish Israeli father and a non-Jewish mother. After her parents divorced when she was 3, Brook was raised by her father as a Jew in a Reform synagogue. Last year, she decided to apply to cantorial school at the Academy for Jewish Religion,…
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News Orthodox Jews Find Pick in Santorum
While presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is the pick of the Republican Jewish establishment, Rick Santorum enjoys notable support among Orthodox Jews — a phenomenon that could become more visible with the approach of primaries in states that have large Orthodox populations. Romney, the front-runner in the Republican primary race, has raised millions from prominent Republican…
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Life Why Is Clothing the Focus at JTS?
Coming this Sunday, to the intellectual and spiritual fountainhead of the Conservative movement, the best and brightest women (and men) in the movement will be talking about….clothing. As Renee mentioned in this post, JTS will be hosting “What to Wear?” on March 11. It is an event billed as “An All-Day, Multifaceted Exploration of Women’s…
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Opinion How Biology, Psychology Dictate Political Beliefs
I’m not quite sure where this sort of thing takes us, but I’m noticing a growing amount of chatter on the Web about scientific research into the nature of the conservative mind. The general tone seems to be one of wondering what flaws in one’s physical makeup lead to political conservatism. It could be just…
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News Welcoming Special Needs Students
One Jewish day school in Kansas cut its tuition in half. Another school, in Oakland, Calif., grew its endowment 15-fold. And a third, in Houston, succeeded in recruiting families from as far away as New Jersey, Venezuela and Israel. These institutions embraced bold, even risky moves in an effort to generate revenue and boost enrollment,…
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Culture Conservatives Have Jewish Values, Too
Jewish conservatives continue to spend significant amounts of effort and money to swing American and Israeli politics to the far right. Most visible is gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson, whose funding of Israeli media affected the 2009 Israeli election and who is now spending a fortune to equate American “support for Israel” with support for Israel’s…
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News What Does Schechter Decline Mean?
Long considered a crown jewel of the Conservative movement, the Schechter Day School Network is fast contracting — its enrollment dwindling and its schools being closed, consolidated and, increasingly, transformed into nondenominational community day schools. Since the late 1990s, the network has lost about a third of its schools, a handful of which haven’t closed,…
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News Reform Reaches Past Synagogue
The leaders of Reform Judaism, America’s largest Jewish denomination, aim to staunch their movement’s erosion with a new strategy to reach beyond the synagogue and actively search for Jews living outside the community’s established framework. The strategy, articulated at the group’s recent biennial national conference, is the brainchild of Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the movement’s newly…
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