THE NATURE OF JUDAISM

Jews throughout the United States were stunned last week when they heard that an ultra-Orthodox Rabbinic group planned to announce that the two largest Jewish denominations in America--the Reform and Conservative movements--were not Judaism.

Reaction from the Reform and Conservative movements, as well as a more moderate Orthodox group, the Rabbinical Council of America, was swift. All three condemned the plans by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada to carry out their declaration at a news conference Monday in New York.

While non-Orthodox Jews had heard criticism and condemnation from ultra-Orthodox leaders before, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada (not to be confused with the Orthodox Union) served notice that it was elevating its long-held views to the formal status of a ruling in Jewish law.

“This declaration,” said the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada, “is a clarion call to all that, despite their brazen usurpation of the titles ‘Judaism,’ ‘Jewish heritage,’ ‘Jewish tradition’ and ‘Jewish continuity,’ Reform and Conservative are not Judaism at all. They are outside of the Torah [Jewish law] and outside of Judaism.”

The group did say that Jews who attend Reform and Conservative temples remained Jews, provided their mothers were Jewish or they were converted under Orthodox standards. But such Jews’ religion, the Orthodox group said, was not Judaism--a distinction that some Reform rabbis said was meaningless.

There was something else that was disturbing, in the view of Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, president of the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College: the declaration by the ultra-Orthodox group carried debates within Judaism into the secular media.

Following are three views on the controversy, from Rabbi David B. Hollander of the Orthodox group issuing the proclamation; Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, of the more moderate Orthodox Rabbinical Council of California; and Rabbi Harvey J. Fields, a leading Reform rabbi in the United States and spiritual leader at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles.