I've created a monster.
In a jtsfuture thread that was discussing (inter alia) Ismar Schorsch's davening habits, someone said "Obviously something, and perhaps I have not even identified it yet, draws some people to RO Friday night who get up the next morning and daven at JTS, or Hadar or Ansche Chesed or wherever Conservative." So I had to jump in and defend Hadar, making it clear that Hadar is not Conservative. This has led to a massive conversation, both in the same thread and in a new thread that it spawned, about Hadar and its significance to the current debates in the Conservative movement. At various points I have spoken up (to clarify facts about the dar and its participants; to explain in what ways Hadar isn't Conservative; to explain why people like me would be involved with Hadar and not with the C movement) or sat back as a disinterested observer (when they ask questions like "What can be done in the future to ensure that future experiments take place within the movement?"). Since I have zero investment in the existence of the Conservative movement, it doesn't really matter to me whether the movement revitalizes itself or not, but it's interesting to watch the conversation.
However, the C movement (in contrast to the Reform movement, from which I am an expatriate) does get credit for two things: 1) having this discussion at all. I haven't seen any Reform equivalent of JTS Future (or the many Orthodox blogs), where the future and nature of the movement are being discussed and debated in public. 2) recognizing the fact that educated young Jews are leaving the liberal movements, either for Orthodoxy or for independent communities. I haven't seen any public acknowledgement of this from the Reform movement. Maybe it's just more noticeable at JTS, because the JTS students themselves are davening at Hadar (or Kol Zimrah or Orthodox shuls), whereas the HUC students are spending Shabbat at their student pulpits.
And your point still doesn't really seem to be getting through to them. Which doesn't surprise me: I was raised Conservative (and still sort of identify that way), and I've had to hear what you say regarding Hadar about 8 times before I finally started to get it.
ReplyDeleteI don't think many Conservative Jews will ever understand what Hadar is. It's sort of hard for someone who tends to define Conservative Jews as anyone on the "spectrum" between too unegalitarian (Orthodox) and too uninterested (Reform). And I bet that's how a lot of people in the Conservative movement subconsciously feel. (I myself still assume that anyone approximately interested in Judaism, but who doesn't appear frum, either went to USY when they were younger, or else made a conscious decision not to go to USY. NFTY and NCSY never occur to me.) And by this view, yes, nearly everyone at Hadar is Conservative, and whyever should it break off from the parent movement???
i just read the threads. thanks for introducing me. cool. I also have heard you make the point many times. I enjoy hearing you say it with such fervor and self-righteousness
ReplyDeletecheck out http://anshetikvah.org/ for more on the post-demoninational world in which we live. A must for any OSRUI or CFTY alum
ReplyDeletehow does the reconstructionist movement factor into your analysis?
ReplyDeleteI don't know enough about it to have an opinion. What happens to the young adults who grew up in Recon shuls? Is there a place for them in the Recon communities?
ReplyDeletei suppose i ought to respond as a recon kid. reconstructionism has long been intertwined with the havurah movement.
ReplyDeletethe Conservative movement is also similarly intertwined. the difference is that in the recon movement many of the leaders are publicly and proudly members of havurot. i grew up in a recon havurah and continue to be involved in both the recon world and the havurah world and appreciate the synergy.
it is interesting to note that the recon movement is committed to transdenominationalism and many see that as the future of american judaism. i also tend to float back and forth. perhaps this is part of what leads to most recon types being less doctrinaire with regards to movement affiliation.
zach
moving back to the question of who defines as part of what movement...
ReplyDeletethe taxonomy of american movements is messy.
i think its helpful to imagine the model as looking somewhat like the olympic rings. the intramovement variation is so great that it nearing the point where it exceeds certain intermovement differences (if it hasn't already exclipsed them). for instance, the difference between certain consevative shuls (from no microphones and no mixed seating to synthesizers and driving to shul) is probably greater at the moment than the difference between the median recon shul and conservative shul. this is what makes it so hard to lump folks into the increasingly old categories of Ref, Rec, Con, Mod Orth, Haredi.
zach
The ways to categorize people are self-identification and institutional affiliation. And lots of people these days don't identify or affiliate with any movement, so there you go. Communities are easier to categorize than individuals, but there are also lots of unaffiliated communities, all the way from davening in my living room to the behemoth BJ.
ReplyDeleteperhaps its an overreach but it seems that the rise of havurah influences in amercian judaism has a lot to do with the transition away from the days when communities and by extention the people who grew up in them were easy to label.
ReplyDeleterabbis went to rabbinical schools (and still mostly do).
those rabbinical schools were affiliated (which they still mostly are).
the difference is that before havurot emerged davening was largely organized around rabbis who necessarily had labels.
these days davening is organized less directly around rabbis, so the communal labeling can be less clear.
zach