Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Conservative Judaism, one of the three major streams of U.S. Judaism. Conservative Jews are generally more observant than Reform Jews but less so than Orthodox Jews. The movement is led by the…
Conservative Judaism
The Latest
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News Reform Reaches Past Synagogue
The leaders of Reform Judaism, America’s largest Jewish denomination, aim to staunch their movement’s erosion with a new strategy to reach beyond the synagogue and actively search for Jews living outside the community’s established framework. The strategy, articulated at the group’s recent biennial national conference, is the brainchild of Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the movement’s newly…
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News Yoffie Led Return to Reform Roots
Say this about Rabbi Eric Yoffie: He goes where others have not. In 2006, he went to that bastion of Christian fundamentalism, the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, and reminded the students of the religious values he shares with them, and the ones (reproductive rights, gay rights) that he does not. Then, in 2007, he…
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Opinion GOP Gets It Right on Israel
The Republican presidential contenders have campaigned hard for the pro-Israel vote. Recently they each made bold promises of fealty to Israel while addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition (save for Ron Paul, who wasn’t invited) and sparred verbally, not just over whether the United States should support a Palestinian state, but over whether the Palestinians were…
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News Not Your Grandma’s Poland Anymore
When Poland’s new Sejm, or Parliament, was seated recently, the nationally televised event showed something never before seen in this conservative nation: a transsexual woman and an openly gay man being solemnly sworn in along with other parliamentarians. The seminal event was a consequence of the emergence of Palikot, a new, explicitly anti-clerical, libertarian-oriented party…
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News Conservatives Grapple With Gay Wedding Rite
Having recognized gay rights with their 2006 acceptance of gay unions, Conservative rabbis are now wrestling with the issue of gay rites. The recent efforts of three leading rabbis to construct a kosher wedding ceremony for same-sex couples hews closely to the traditional Jewish heterosexual ceremony, in an effort, they say, to ensure that same-sex…
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News Canada Stakes Out Strong Pro-Israel Stand
Canada’s foreign affairs minister, John Baird, reacted swiftly last month when word reached him that the Palestinian Authority’s envoy to Ottawa had promoted a YouTube video in which a Palestinian girl urged sympathizers to “destroy the Jews.” Linda Sobeh Ali’s re-Tweet of the video, Baird made clear, had ended her credibility as a diplomat in…
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Opinion Pernicious Attempt To Brand Protest as Anti-Semitic
Is the Jewish congressional representative from heavily Jewish Long Island, Steve Israel, “standing with those calling for the killing of Jews”? Does the Jewish representative from heavily Jewish Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, “agree with various calls for Jews to be ‘run out of the country’ and to oppose and ‘destroy’ the State of Israel”? Sean…
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News Conservative Synagogues Crack Open Door to Intermarried Families
In June, after a year of internal discussion, Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El, a Conservative synagogue just outside Philadelphia, made a tiny amendment to its constitution: It redefined household membership to apply to families with one Jewish parent as well as those with two. Though the amendment impacted a small number of intermarried congregants —some 10…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn’t heed his warnings
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
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Fast Forward Meet Lev Kreitman, who brought down Tel Aviv shooter and survived Nova music festival on Oct. 7
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Forverts in English How can Jews committed to Yiddish culture call a massacre of Jews ‘resistance’?
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Fast Forward Suspect arrested in U of Michigan rabbi’s home robbery, with no evidence of antisemitic intent
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