It wasn’t long after the release of the Pew Research Center survey of American Jews last fall that the death, or at least terminal illness, of Conservative Judaism was pronounced.
There was some evidence to support the dire prognosis. The report showed that not only did significantly fewer Jews identify as Conservative than had in previous surveys, but also that the people in the pews were getting older while their adult children were declining to join synagogues at all.
The report “hopefully will be a slap across the face,” but it really should have surprised no one, says Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ).
It’s a call that the Conservative movement needs to radically rethink how it will attract young adults and families and how it needs to strengthen its institutions, he says.
However, supporters of Conservative Judaism say it’s not only premature, but actually false to write the movement’s obituary, as some critics have done.
The Pew report, which only looked at American Jews, found that 18 per cent identified as Conservative, down from 38 per cent in a 1990 study. Just 11 per cent of Conservative Jews are between 18 and 29 years old.
The survey also found that Jewish life was subject to the same trends as North American life in general. Fewer young adults were defining themselves as religious at all, and certainly not in terms of denominations.
While similar surveys have not been done in Canada, most observers believe the landscape here is similar, although Canada tends to lag by about a decade to a generation behind American trends.
Still, Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice-president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of the movement’s rabbis, says the narrative that emerged from the report, painting Conservative Judaism as dying or in need of saving, is wrong.
“There has been a real and measurable decline of the numbers of Conservative Jews,” she says, “but you also find a number of significant factors of growth.”
The Conservative movement may be smaller in actual numbers than in previous years, but Conservative Jews are living “intensively Jewish lives of meaningful Jewish practice,” she argues.
As a result, much of the good news about the vibrancy of Conservative Jewish life was obscured in the Pew survey, Rabbi Schonfeld says, pointing to data that show the majority of Conservative Jews marry within the faith and that one-third of their children are in day schools.
The CJN asked academics, laypeople and rabbis from across the country how
they would save the Conservative movement. Their answers can be found here:
• Rabbi Philip S. Scheim: Learn from Chabad
• Rabbi Lionel Moses: Become more engaging and responsive
• Howie Sniderman: Promote diversity within a centrist movement
• Rabbi Jarrod Grover: Commit to Torah and mitzvot
• Yedida Eisentat: Revive community, not Conservative Judaism
As well, Ramah camps, an arm of the Conservative movement, have grown since the mid-1990s, adding both campers and new camps in the last 20 years.
Finally, she notes, Conservative Jews have traditionally filled a disproportionately large number of communal leadership positions and accounted for well over half of Jewish philanthropy.
But this is no guarantee for the future, says Rabbi Wernick, who paints himself as a realist, equal parts pessimistic and optimistic about the future of a centrist movement in Judaism.
The time is ripe, he argues, for a radical rethinking of time-honoured measurements such as looking at membership numbers and dues.
“There needs to be a reconceptualization of what success looks like. It’s not how many members we have, it’s how many Jews do you impact in meaningful ways.”
Synagogues that are busy chasing young adults, hoping that they’ll stay once they walk through the shul doors, are misguided, he says.
“What the congregations have to let go of is that success is for those kids to come back and join their shuls,” he says.
The goal instead has to be asking the question: “How many of those young people are reached by a member of the clergy? How many different Jewish behaviours is that person adding to their Jewish life?”
It’s a long-term investment, Rabbi Wernick argues that will take place outside the synagogue’s walls.
In many cases, synagogues and the Conservative movement know what works. Jewish camp and educational programs for teens who are past bar and bat mitzvah age pay off in exponentially higher rates of Jewish involvement. But Ramah camps, which reach “barely 10 per cent,” of Conservative Jewish kids need to greatly increase their capacity and lower their fees, Rabbi Wernick says.
Conservative Judaism needs to return to its core values, which he characterizes as “serious Torah study… that is intellectually honest,” and “prayer experiences that are thoughtful.”
Synagogues need to build on these values and give people opportunities for social action more satisfying that simply “bringing a can of food,” he argues.
The Conservative movement has been changing, albeit slowly. Rabbi Philip Scheim, spiritual leader of Toronto’s Beth David B’nai Israel Beth Am Synagogue and vice-president of the Rabbinical Assembly, sees the demographic changes in the pews of his own shul.
While his congregation is indeed growing greyer, it has had success in attracting young families. But because Conservative Jewish families are having fewer children than their more observant peers, it’s still not as lively as the Orthodox shul down the street.
More synagogues have become egalitarian, including his own, which he says was inconceivable to him 20 years ago.
“If we’re really speaking to young Jews living in a world where there’s no distinction between what men and women can do,” becoming egalitarian is inevitable, he says.
Canadian Conservative synagogues have also been buffeted by internal rifts when six years ago, a number of synagogues left the USCJ.
While the synagogues that left characterized the split as least partly ideological, it was mainly driven by financial reasons, says Edmonton lawyer Howie Sniderman, the only Canadian vice-president on the USCJ board.
The recent decision by Toronto’s Beth Tzedec Congregation, Conservative Judaism’s largest shul, to rejoin the USCJ is heralded as a vote of confidence for the movement, and Sniderman says he hopes that it will add new life to the USCJ’s youth wing, United Synagogue Youth.
“That might be the catalyst and entrée back for some of the Conservative synagogues,” which left, he says.
Ultimately, the debate over the health of Conservative Judaism is not about the number of synagogues in the official movement, but the future of a centrist vision of Judaism that “anchors” the Jewish collective, says Rabbi Wernick.
“When you look at engagement levels, you see a great base and a great opportunity of revitalizing the vital religious centre.”