Reform Judaism and the Judaism of Reform Jews: A Conservative Perspective

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A JEWISH RIP VAN WINKLE WHO HAD FALLEN ASLEEP IN 1955 and awoke half a century later would be dumbfounded by the reversal of fortune experienced by each of the major Jewish religious movements. Who could have imagined in the middle of the twentieth century that Orthodoxy, which had been written off as a fossil, would regenerate with such dynamism and increasingly come under the sway of haredi and Hassidic groups, rather than the modern Orthodox? Who could have foretold that the Conservative movement, which had occupied a broad swathe at the center of the American Jewish community and had outpaced all the other movements at mid-century, would lose significant populations to either end of the spectrum and find itself hemmed in on both sides? And who could have foreseen in the mid-fifties that the plurality of synagogue-affiliated American Jews would join Reform temples that their forebears would have regarded as alien, if not "goyish"?

Although it was not his primary intention to explain why Reform Judaism is now the largest of the religious movements, Dana Evan Kaplan provides some suggestive answers in his book, American Reform Judaism: An Introduction. His chapters on "The Outreach Campaign" trace the history of Reform's embrace of intermarried Jews and their families, a population that now constitutes approximately 30 percent of Reform synagogue members, according to the 2000 National Jewish Populations Study. By virtually cornering this particular market, the Reform movement insured its own growth.

Beyond that fateful decision, the movement embarked on a deliberate program in the 1990s (and perhaps even before) to transform Reform synagogue life. Kaplan surveys the clearly focused campaign to revolutionize religious services, led by what was then called the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Movement leaders called upon cantors to foster congregational participation rather than rely upon choirs to sing …