Home

Will the Conservative denomination have a new name in 10 years? Will it look more like Chabad-Lubavitch Hassidism? Should the movement formulate a more coherent message, or not bother? All those possibilities were fair game during a panel discussion at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism's International Biennial Convention in Cherry Hill.

On Monday night, the USCJ held "Where Are We Going? Conservative Movement in the Next Decade" with Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the movement's Rabbinical Assembly; Cantor Stephen Stein, executive vice president of the Cantors Assembly, Rabbi Steven Wernick, executive vice president and CEO of USCJ; and Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles.

Responding to a question on how all the silos and organizations of the Conservative movement can better work together, Artson, easily the bluntest panelist of the evening, said he hopes the day the movement has one coherent message never comes.

"We are a raucous, mature, and diverse family," Artson said. "I don't need uniformity. I don't want uniformity."

Ray Goldstein, outgoing USCJ president and moderator of the panel, started the opening statements by noting the organization's successful recent partnerships, such as Hekhsher Tzedek, the Cantors Assembly "Spirit Series," and productive strategic discussions with the Hayom Coalition, a group of 25 Conservative synagogues that joined forces last winter to demand that USCJ change its practices to be more responsive to congregations.

Over the last 10 years, the USCJ's number of member congregations has dropped from 720 to 670, a trend the Conservative umbrella clearly wants to alter during the next decade. "Those who care about our kehilot, our congregations, are sitting together at the same table, United Synagogue," Goldstein said.

Artson expressed that by seeing graduates of Camp Ramah, the Nativ year in Israel, and United Synagogue Youth in rabbinical school, he knows that "we are in excellent hands for tomorrow.

"Our challenge is to provide an immediate future that is worthy of our long-term future," he said.

Stein outlined an eight-part approach for the movement to stay relevant, first by creating "many more authentic Conservative Jews," ones who adhere to halakha "as is set forth by the movement." Other elements of Stein's approach included "taking a page from the Chabad playbook" with vigorous outreach to grow Conservative congregations; maintaining standards that are respected in areas like Jewish education; making congregations more hospitable; directing more resources into inspiring youth; making Jewish professionals think like contemporary Conservative Jews; making spouses of those professionals step forward as congregational leaders; and bolstering the relationship between the movement's organizations and its laity.

Schonfeld's approach involved acknowledging that the Conservative movement has not succeeded in being a force of innovation for itself. Wernick summed up his plan in one phrase, "La'asok b'divrei Torah," to busy ourselves with Torah and apply our traditions in ways that are meaningful each day.

"We, in the center, really need to put that in some ways as our motto," Wernick said.

Presenting a question about a possible name change for the movement, Goldstein joked that "Chabad is taken." Wernick said the movement will be judged by the communities it builds, not by its name, but acknowledged that on some level a conversation on a name change needs to come into play. However, arguing about a name right now gets the movement away from the core issues it needs to deal with, he said.

"We need to find a way to articulate our values more consistently and regularly, and have conversations about what we believe in and why that matters," Wernick said.

On how davening can be reinvigorated in congregations, Stein said "we can start by coming to shul," and if people come, Stein will sing anything from Adon Olam to Yankee Doodle Dandy to inspire them. Wernick explained that too often in shul, we are prisoners to the siddur, and we need to make our approach to prayers less mechanical.

Building off of Stein's remarks and using Adon Olam as an example, Wernick described how in the prayer, we affirm God as the master of the universe, and say we are going out into a scary world with no fears because we have God by our side. We need to have more conversations like that for our prayers, he said.

"They become more than just sing songs and more than just rushing through the words privately, but words that inspire us to live," Wernick said.

Addressing if there is a problem with continuing to call the Conservative movement "the center" of the denominations, Schonfeld said she believed being in the center is hard to get passionate about, but yet, it resonates with the vast number of Jews who are looking for vibrant Jewish lives but want to be open to the rest of the world. The main problem, she said, was that those types of individuals are between and among the Conservative movement's institutions, not within.

The solution, Schonfeld said, was to stop describing the movement in a linear fashion, as falling between right and left, but rather to let people describe themselves based on the Jewish paths they are trying to put together.

Asked if he supports Solomon Schechter as the right school system for Conservative children and Ramah as the right summer camp system, Artson joked that he was holding a hand grenade with the pin pulled by answering the question. Nonetheless, he was open as usual, saying that it is a tactical and religious mistake for the movement to fixate on one school or camp system because "the solution isn't one fits all." Instead, we should be keeping the best interests of each specific child in mind, since each child has a different way of best growing as a Jew, he said.

Regarding how the movement can bring Israel into a more positive focus, Artson said the focus should be on teaching youths about the country's art, literature, science, technology, and people -- not its politics.

"Nobody ever fell in love with Israel because of political science," Artson said.

Wernick asked the crowd if they have been to Israel, and when practically everyone raised their hand, he said "Go again." To a question about whether congregations are making a mistake by devoting money to Israel when there are many domestic needs for Jews, Wernick said the answer is a simple "no" because the global Jewish community is responsible for each other.

North America and Israel are the world's two largest Jewish communities, Wernick noted, and without American Jews' ongoing efforts on behalf of Israel, "let us not kid ourselves, there wouldn't be a state of Israel," he said.

"What happens to one, I think in some regard is going to happen to the other," Wernick said to describe the "symbiotic" relationship between North American and Israeli Jewry.

Asked about how the movement will use music to build community, Stein said he is excited by the ongoing proliferation of Jewish a capella groups on college campuses, and that the Cantors Assembly will let some of those groups perform at its next convention.