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March 5, 2004/Adar 12 5764, Vol. 56, No. 24
Reform leader slams Conservatives
JOE BERKOFSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - A top Reform rabbi is predicting the death of Conservative Judaism, drawing protests from the Conservative movement's leadership.
The objections surfaced this week in response to an essay by Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive vice president of the Reform movement's Central Confer-ence of American Rabbis. The essay argued that within several decades Conservative Jews likely will move either to the more liberal Reform movement or to the more traditional Orthodox world.
Major wedges between the modernist movements will force this exodus, Menitoff argued, including the Conser-vative movement's opposition to intermarriage; its ban on ordaining homosexual rabbis and on same-sex marriages; and its opposition to patri-lineal descent, all of which the Reform movement supports.
The Conservative movement may continue to attract those for whom Orthodoxy remains "too restrictive" and Reform "too acculturated," but a more likely outcome will be "the demise of the Conservative movement," Menitoff wrote.
"If the Conservative move-ment capitulates regarding these core differences between Reform and Conservative Judaism, it will be essentially obliterating the need for its existence," he wrote. "If, alternatively, it stands firm, its congregants will vote with their feet."
Conservative leaders called the argument "delusional" and the product of "immature" analysis.
"His description of the future is rather silly," said Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice presi-dent of the Conservative movement's Rabbinical As-sembly.
The essay "is an immature look" at the currents shaping American Jewry, he said, "or maybe it's wishful thinking."
Unusual in its bluntly pessimistic predictions, Meni-toff's essay comes as Conser-vative Jewry, which once dominated the American Jewish landscape, is facing major challenges.
In the past few years, the movement has been split over major issues, including its stance on homosexuality, and some rabbis have accused the movement's leadership of lacking vision.
Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs for the fervently Orthodox Agudath Israel of America, agreed with Menitoff. In 2001, Shafran wrote in Moment magazine that the Conservative move-ment was a "failure."
"It does seem the Jewish community is heading for a crystallization between those who affirm the full truth of the Jewish religious tradition and those who, to one degree or another, don't accept that," Shafran said.
One of Menitoff's Reform colleagues, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, disputed the essay.
Conservative Judaism is "a movement filled with so many vibrant congregations that whatever its problems, I don't believe its future is threaten-ed," said Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the Reform movement's congregational arm.
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