A broad-ranging Statement of Principles, released one...

A broad-ranging Statement of Principles, released one week ago by Conservative Judaism leaders after nearly three years in the making, will be discussed along with other contemporary issues Sunday in Westwood at an unusual leaders-only regional meeting for the centrist Jewish movement.

When the consensus statement was released in New York, Rabbi Robert Gordis, the commission chairman, said, “We are thus able to prove that Conservative Judaism offers a way of life for the Jew today to live in loyalty to the tradition without resigning from the 20th Century.”

The regional conference at the Sinai Temple is titled “the challenge to the religious center,” reflecting the difficult position of being between the Orthodox on the right and the Reform on the left in terms of religious practice and attitudes. Conservative synagogues and other institutions in the movement sometimes are criticized as too lax or not innovative enough.

Practical problems facing all Jewish religious bodies were also on the agenda. “Day care was not a problem years before, but it is today with many families having two working parents,” said conference participant Norm Karchem.

The national statement takes an even-handed approach toward Israel, saying the nation and Jews abroad need one another, and even while professing belief in God as essential, the statement reserves the right to challenge intellectually the existence of God and whether God cares in the light of tragedies such as the Holocaust.

The statement suggests that strife between the branches of Judaism must be overcome to form national and local panels for a unified Jewish approach on touchy questions such as conversions to Judaism and the issuance of religious divorces for women whose husbands have abandoned their marriages.

PEOPLE

Bishop Jack M. Tuell and a group of fellow United Methodists in the Los Angeles area are expected to join ongoing protests at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site near Las Vegas on Friday. In a church newspaper column, Tuell wrote that the purpose was “to make a lawful and peaceful protest against continued nuclear weapon testing.” If anyone decides to “step over the line” onto the property and be arrested, the bishop said he would assume the person would do so under “the constraints of conscience.” However, Tuell said he detected a certain “modishness” in such acts. “A year or so ago, you weren’t considered ‘in’ if you hadn’t been arrested in front of the South African Embassy in Washington,” he wrote. His plans Friday call for an early morning vigil outside the entrance, then leading a communion service there.

DATES

The Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., former pastor of New York’s Riverside Church and now president of the Washington-based peace coalition SANE/FREEZE, will discuss the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that will come before the U.S. Senate during a public meeting 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Wilshire United Methodist Church in Los Angeles.

Biblical scholar W. D. Davies, an emeritus professor from Duke University, will lecture on a renewed emphasis on the Jewish background of the New Testament at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Honnold Library at Claremont Graduate School. The recent reemphasis in biblical studies on the Jewish atmosphere of the Jesus movement has occurred even as other studies have pointed to important Hellenistic influences in Christian origins.