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June 4, 2004/Sivan 15 5764, Vol. 56, No. 37
Schorsch marks 18 years at JTS
JOE BERKOFSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Rabbi Ismar Schorsch blasts the Bush administration for going to war in Iraq, and predicts that his Conservative movement will not alter Jewish law to accommodate homosexuality.
"For the Conservative movement, the issue is whether one can be politically liberal and religiously conservative," Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, said in a mid-May interview with JTA. "I happen to think that's possible and tenable."
Schorsch, 68, has succeeded in balancing that nuanced world view during 18 years at the helm of the movement's academic and intellectual bastion. JTS honored his tenure and his role as a leading voice in the centrist movement on May 24.
"By dint of longevity, maturity, prominence and scholarship, someone has become the most recognized spokesperson for the movement, and at this juncture it's clearly Dr. Schorsch," said Rabbi Jeffrey Wholberg of Adas Israel Congregation in Washington.
The tribute comes as Conservative Judaism is at a crossroads: Its educational institutions are flourishing and its synagogues are experiencing a renewed vitality, but some say a leadership vacuum is leading to a dwindling of the ranks in what was the dominant American Jewish movement as little as a decade ago.
While many Conservative Jews share Schorsch's world view, the question hovering over the movement is whether Schorsch - or any single figure - can speak for Conservative Jewry at a time of intense soul-searching within the movement.
"Rabbi Schorsch has been a wonderful leader," said Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, who is seen as a rising star in the movement. But "he is the victim of being in a position from which people over-expect. He just can't be everything."
Several rabbis who gathered at JTS last winter for a conference on the latest National Jewish Population Survey criticized the movement's leaders - while not pointing fingers directly at Schorsch - for failing to articulate a strong vision for Conservative Jewry.
Their complaints came in the wake of NJPS results that showed Conservative Jewry falling behind the Reform movement in membership.
According to the NJPS, only 33 percent of 4.3 million connected U.S. Jews identified as Conservative.
That represented a drop of 10 percentage points over the past decade, a time when the other major streams saw their ranks swell.
Schorsch points to education as one area where the Conservative movement is thriving: Of some 200,000 Jewish day school students around the country, 25 percent hail from the movement's Solomon Schechter Day Schools or community schools largely funded and populated by Conservative Jews.
In addition, 8,000 Conservative youths attend Ramah summer camps, two new camps are going up in Northern California and Georgia and 70 percent of movement synagogue children attend congregational schools.
Meanwhile, JTS' William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education, which Schorsch helped launch, is about to graduate 130 students, its largest class.
All non-Orthodox programs for Jewish educators at the other liberal seminaries together "don't equal 130," Schorsch charged.
"Jewish education is the growth sector of the Conservative movement," he said.
When it comes to one movement debate, the seminary leaders diverge sharply.
Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, who wants to welcome gays and lesbians into Conservative congregations, remains highly critical of Schorsch's warning that the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards should not revise the movement's opposition to ordaining openly gay rabbinic students or holding gay commitment ceremonies.
That controversy has been stirring for several years, and is likely to continue at least until the committee hears arguments on the issue next March.
Schorsch feels the conflict was complicated by a Massachusetts court decision legalizing gay civil marriages, which sparked a rush of gay weddings in that state and also in San Francisco and in the New York town of New Paltz.
"This is an agenda formulated by secular society that confronts Judaism with an enormous challenge," he said. But "since Conservative Judaism remains a halachic movement, it is not going to be able to accommodate everything secular society wants."
Schorsch, who as JTS chancellor appoints five members of the 25-member law committee, said he has "been afforded the opportunity to express my views" on the subject to the panel.
"The law committee will stand its halachic ground and not support same-sex marriage," he predicted.
Dorff agrees that the movement should not bend to cultural trends. But, he says, "if you're going to have a legal system that affects people's lives, you have to take into account what's going on in people's lives in order to make it relevant."
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