Reform Judaism Boasts 791 Congregations

Leaders of Reform Judaism, the most liberal of synagogue organizations, say they have outpaced the Conservative movement and now have a record-high 791 member congregations. They say they have been gaining new affiliates in the last three years at the rate of more than one a month.

“We believe the Reform movement is already the largest denomination in American Judaism,” said Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which opened its biennial national convention Friday in Los Angeles.

“It now seems clear that while Orthodoxy was strongest among the first generation of American Jews and Conservative Judaism in the second, Reform has the greatest appeal to the third and fourth generations--today’s young Jewish families,” Schindler said in a statement.

But an official of the Conservative movement, reached by telephone, questioned the Reform leader’s assertion. Rabbi Jerome Epstein, the New York-based director for regions of the United Synagogue of America, said the number of synagogues affiliated with the Conservative movement in North America now stands between 795 and 800.

The actual number of people holding membership in Reform and Conservative synagogues has to be estimated because the congregations speak of their memberships in terms of families rather than individuals. Epstein estimated that there are 1 million Conservative Jews in North America whereas Reform now claims 1.3 million.

Though Orthodox Judaism has appeared to gain adherents in recent years, especially in Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox groups, surveys have shown that the great majority of Jews interested in synagogue affiliation have chosen to join the centrist Conservative movement or the progressive Reform branch.

A United Synagogue of America report in 1979 said demographic studies indicated that Reform Judaism would replace Conservative Judaism as the largest synagogue movement within a decade or two. However, Epstein said that prognosis was disputed by some Conservative leaders then and that United Synagogue membership is stable at present.

Similarly, Jerry Schoem, executive director of the Pacific Southwest Region of United Synagogue, said the numbers remain rather steady here. “We have two congregations that are just dying out, but we have a new one that has just affiliated, the Agoura Jewish Center, and we know of others interested in affiliating,” Schoem said.

Reform Judaism has 63 congregations in Southern California, southern Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, compared to 58 under the Conservative umbrella.

In figures prepared for the Reform convention this weekend, officials said that in the last 10 years the number of synagogues rose 20%, from 659 to 791, while the number of synagogue members has grown 23% to its record high of 1.3 million.

The Reform organization’s growth has been especially strong in the so-called Sun Belt states of Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, said Charles J. Rothschild Jr., chairman of the board of trustees.

Schindler called this the greatest decade of growth since the immediate post-World War II period. The increases have come despite controversy engendered by some proposals first made by the 60-year-old president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Schindler said the changes have instead brought in new members.

The Union of American Hebrew Congregations approved a Schindler-outlined “outreach” program to welcome converts to Judaism, reversing a 500-year tradition that discouraged proselytizing. Reform Judaism’s Central Conference of American Rabbis also approved a Schindler proposal to designate as Jewish the children of Jewish fathers in interfaith marriages, making patrilineal descent equal to matrilineal for defining one’s Jewishness. Conservative and Orthodox rabbis have vigorously opposed the latter Reform action.

Schindler said the Reform “commitment to the equality of women, both in our rabbinate and in our lay leadership” also contributed to the movement’s growth.

Composer-arranger Sheldon Cohen, assistant musical director on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” has written a Mass commemorating the upcoming beatification of Father Titus Brandsma, a Dutch-born Carmelite priest killed by Nazi guards in the World War II Dachau concentration camp.

The beatification, the initial step toward canonization as a saint, will be conducted Sunday by Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. When Brandsma was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942, he was in the forefront of Catholic journalists in Holland who opposed National Socialism and Nazi propaganda.

The new Mass, Cohen’s ninth, will be sung for the first time during the Christmas Eve midnight Mass at St. Mel’s Catholic Church in Woodland Hills. The Rev. Pat Robertson, who has been exploring the possibility of seeking the Republican nomination for President in 1988, will be speaking at the afternoon and evening sessions Sunday of the 1985 International Conference of Women’s Aglow Fellowship, which meets through Wednesday at the Anaheim Convention Center Arena.

More than 6,000 women are expected to attend from 1,750 U.S. and 500 foreign fellowships that identify with the Pentecostal-like charismatic movement. Robertson is founder-president of the Christian Broadcasting Network, which also ministers from the premise that authentic Christianity includes speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing and other “spiritual gifts.”