Survey Spotlights Judaism Conflicts

A new survey of Conservative Jews shows that more than two-thirds reject traditional Judaism’s insistence that only the children of Jewish mothers can be called Jewish at birth, regardless of the father’s religious identity.

Yet the same survey also showed that 62% believe that Conservative Jews are “obligated to obey” traditional Jewish law.

Those findings underscore the degree of internal contradiction with which Judaism’s 1.8 million-member centrist denomination is wrestling. The majority of Conservative Jews may not be committed to personal religious observance, but they want to be associated with a movement that is.

“This has been the perennial dilemma of the Conservative movement since its inception,” said Jack Wertheimer, who directed the study for New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary, Conservative Judaism’s flagship institution.

“The movement’s Rabbinic and lay leadership has always had a high level of commitment while its membership has been quite equivocal.”

The survey also found that full acceptance of women in religious life has become the norm in Conservative synagogues.

When the movement’s leadership approved the ordination of women in 1983, some more traditional Conservative congregations broke away. But today, 63% of Conservative men and 71% of Conservative women favor full religious equality for women.

The survey also found that although Conservative Jews constitute 36% of the overall American Jewish population, they account for 47% of all adult synagogue members in the United States. By contrast, Reform Jews make up 36% of synagogue members and Orthodox Jews 11%.

This relatively high degree of Conservative synagogue affiliation prompted Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, to say in an interview that “what’s most important about the survey is that it shows that the center is holding.”

Schorsch said the survey “proves that Conservative Jews make a clear distinction between what is good communal policy and their personal preferences.”

He also cited the survey’s findings that show younger Conservative Jews to be more committed to Jewish observance and better educated about Judaism than their parents.

“That’s particularly encouraging,” he said.

Conservative Judaism--founded more than a century ago by German Jews as a middle ground between Reform Judaism’s radical rewriting of Jewish practice and Orthodoxy’s rigid adherence to tradition--has always looked upon halacha, or Jewish law, as open to modification in accordance with the needs of the day.

Given American Judaism’s 52% intermarriage rate, will adherence to matrilineal descent be the next traditional barrier to fall for Conservative Judaism?

Schorsch and Wertheimer said they do not believe that will occur within the near future.

Conservative leaders are “pretty firmly committed to maintaining matrilineal descent only,” Wertheimer said.

What may occur, said Steven Cohen, a demographer at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a member of the team that conducted the Conservative survey, is the continued defection from the movement of Jews who favor patrilineal, as well as matrilineal, descent to those liberal denominations that have adopted that stand.

Both the Reform movement and the minuscule Reconstructionist movement recognize the children of a Jewish father to be Jews, as long as they were raised as such, even if the mother is of another faith.

The survey also found that 24% of Conservative Jews who belong to synagogues adhere to Judaism’s dietary laws; 37% light Sabbath candles and 90% attend a Passover Seder. And 62% said Jews can be “religious” even if they are not “particularly observant.”