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What is the origin of the Conservative movement?
Who are its founders?
[From Elliot Dorff's "Conservative Judaism: Our Ancestors to Our Descendants" and Pamela Nadell's "Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook"]
Zechariah Frankel (1801-1875), a respected scholar and rabbi, at one time was in the traditional wing of the nascent Reform movement. After the second Reform rabbinic conference (1845, Frankfurt, Germany) he resigned after coming to believe that their positions were exceedingly radical. In 1854 he became the head of a new rabbinical school, the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau. In his magnum opus Darkhei HaMishnah Rabbi Frankel amassed scholarly support which showed that Jewish law was not static, but rather had always developed in response to changing conditions. He called his approach towards Judaism 'Positive-Historical', which meant that one should accept Jewish law and tradition as normative, yet one must be open to changing and developing the law in the same historical fashion that Judaism has always historically developed.
Frankel's essay "On changes in Judaism" is available here:
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/363_Transp/ZFrankel.html
Near this time in America, Rabbi Sabato Morais championed the conservative reaction to American Reform. At one time R. Morais had been a voice for moderation within the coalition of Reformers. He had opposed the more radical changes, but was open to moderate changes that would not offend traditional sensibilities. After the Reform movement published the Pittsburgh Platform, Rabbi Morais recognized the futility of his efforts and began the creation of a new rabbinical school in New York City. He was soon joined by Rabbi Alexander Kohut and Rabbi Bernard Drachman, both of whom had received smicha at Rabbi Frankel's Breslau seminary. They shaped the curriculum and philosophy of their school after Frankel's seminary. Not only did they adopt the positive-historical approach to Jewish study, but they named their school the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS).More about the history of JTS can be found here:
http://www.jtsa.edu/academic/abul9899/jtshist.html
In 1902, Professor Solomon Schechter assumed presidency of JTS. In a series of papers he articulated an ideology for the movement. In 1913 he presided over the creation of the United Synagogue of America. (The name was changed in 1991 to the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.) Under his leadership the Seminary obtained a distinguished faculty, and a dynamic momentum. His greatest academic fame came from his study of the Cairo genizah, an extraordinary archive of ancient Jewish texts that were preserved in an Egyptian synagogue. The find revolutionized the study of Medieval Judaism. See the following web site for more info:
Solomon Schechter and Higher Biblical Criticism
http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/reading/bookexc/gillman_conservativej/chap3/par t7.shtml
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/ajh/84.3kiron.html
Mathilde Roth Schecter (1859-1924) - Founder of the National Women's League of Conservative Judaism in 1918. She founded and taught at the Columbia Religious and Industrial School for Jewish Girls. After assisting Henrietta Szold in creating Hadassah, Schechter later served as its national chairwoman of education. For more info see:
http://www.jtsa.edu/wlcj/Mathilde.htm
Cyrus Adler (1863-1940) - Third President of the Seminary (1915-1940). He was responsible for the putting the Seminary on a solid financial and administrative footing, undersaw the expansion of JTS, and helped bring Solomon Schechter to head the reorganized Seminary in 1902. He helped found and direct The Jewish Publication Society, The American Jewish Historical Society and many other important organizations.
http://library.cjs.upenn.edu/FindingAids/Adler/ADLERBIO.HTM
http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/reading/bookexc/gillman_conservativej/chap5/par t2.shtml
Louis Finkelstein
http://www.jtsa.edu/pubs/books/tradren/greenbaum.html
http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/reading/bookexc/gillman_conservativej/chap5/par t2.shtml
Louis Ginzberg (1873-1953). One of the outstanding Talmudists of the twentieth century, he was the author of a number of scholarly Jewish works, including a commentary on Talmud Yerushalmi and his 7 volume magnum opus "The Legends of the Jews", which combined hundreds of legends and parables from a lifetime of midrash research. He wrote some 450 articles for the "Jewish Encyclopedia", some later collected in his "Legend and Lore". He was an important halakhic authority of the Conservative movement in North America; for a period of ten years (1917-1927), he was the halakhic authority of this movement. He was also founder and president of the American Academy of Jewish Research.
http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/diduknow/lgresponsa/index.shtml
http://philologos.org/__eb-lotj/default.htm
Isaac Klein (1905-1979). During World War II R. Klein served as a chaplain in the U.S. Army, and later served as a Conservative rabbi in Buffalo, NY. He was one of the outstanding halakhists of the movement, was president of the Rabbinical Assembly from 1958-1960, a leading member of the CJLS from 1948 until his death in 1979. As a leading authority on halakha he authored many important teshuvot, many of which were published in his influential "Responsa and Halakhic Studies". From the 1950s to 1970s, Rabbi Isaac Klein wrote a comprehensive guide to Jewish law which was used to teach halakha at JTS. In 1979 he assembled this into "A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice"
http://emanuelnyc.org/bulletin/archive/05.html
http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/diduknow/jrpguide/
http://www.jbuff.com/ikle.htm
Mordechai Kaplan (1881- 1983) - Ordained at JTS 1902, Kaplan began his career as an Orthodox rabbi at Kehillath Jeshrun in New York. He helped to create the Young Israel movement with Israel Friedlander. In 1909 he joined the staff at JTS, where he had his greatest impact by teaching JTS students over a 50 year period. His central idea of understanding Judaism as a religious civilization was accepted within the Conservative movement, but his naturalistic conception of God was not as accepted. His naturalistic conception of God and rejection of the concept of Israel as a Chosen People led to him being excommunicated by the Orthodox. In 1968 his followers induced him to formally leave Conservative Judaism, and set up the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) in which his philosophy would be promoted as a separate religious denomination.
http://www.rrc.edu/
http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/reading/bookexc/gillman_conservativej/chap5/part3.shtml
http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/reading/bookexc/gillman_conservativej/chap5/par t4.shtml
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) - Perhaps the most significant Jewish theologian of the 20th century, Heschel was a descendant of preeminent Rabbinic families of Europe, both on his father's and mother's side. After receiving a traditional yeshiva education, he studied at the Univ. of Berlin, where he obtained his doctorate, and at the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums, where he taught Talmud. Escaping from the Nazis, he found refuge both in England and America, where he briefly served on the faculty of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. In 1946 he came to JTS as Professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism, where he served until his death in 1972. Rabbi Heschel explicated many facets of Jewish thought including studies on Medieval Jewish philosophy, Kabbalah, and Hasidism. He was also known as an activist for civil rights in the USA, and an activist for freedom for Soviet Jewry. You can learn more at:
http://www.congregationbeth-el.org/heschel.html
http://www.jcn18.com/heschel
http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/reading/bookexc/gillman_conservativej/chap5/par t5.shtml
Robert Gordis (1908-1992) - Founder of the first Conservative day school, former President of the Rabbinical Assembly and of the Synagogue Council of America, and professor at JTS from 1940 to 1992. He wrote one of the first pamphlets explaining Conservative ideology in 1946, and in 1988 he chaired the Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism which produced the official statement of Conservative ideology "Emet Ve-Emunah".
http://www.erskine.edu/library/catalog/wpacdata/ENG/alinks/a003801.htm
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