Conservatism and Orthodox Judaism in America after 1900
The Reform community, in its 1885 Pittsburgh Platform,13 had embodied a statement of radical progressive Jewish thought which had rejected the Oral Law, ritual, the centrality of Hebrew and Zionism together with nationhood.
It had added a strong emphasis on social justice and on the Jewish mission to bring about the messianic age, while rejecting the person of the Messiah. Fifty years later, in its Columbus Platform, it came back to ritual, Zionism, more tradition and an affirmation of Jewish nationhood. But alongside it there had emerged a strong central position of Conservative Judaism, building upon the teachings of Zechariah Frankel’s Historical Judaism. The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York (founded 1886) gave the scholarly Solomon Schechter (1848-1915) an instrument for creating a strong Conservative community with ever-growing traditional practices, even though much of its thinking was progressive and refused to submit itself to the discipline and interpretations of the Orthodox rabbinate.No central Orthodox authority could establish itself in the United States. The congregationalist pattern was too strong, and Europe was too far away. There had been great traditional thinkers (Isaac Leeser, Benjamin Szold and the many rabbis who came with their own communities including, later on, the heads of Hasidic dynasties). They were able to supervise traditional observances, and maintained contact with the great Halachic authorities of Eastern Europe. In time, major yeshivot (seminaries) were established in the Midwest and the East, and New York’s Yeshiva University is a tower of traditional strength today. A vibrant and strong traditionalism maintained itself in the Jewish East End of New York and in the major cities, and much of the European way of life and thought continues to exist in the United States.
But Orthodoxy could not become the normative way of expression for Americanjewry. Throughout the twentieth century, it has stood alongside Conservative and Reform Judaism— sometimes as an unwilling partner, but also as an influence for greater observance and traditional rituals among the rest of America’s Jews.Out of Conservative Judaism there also arose a small splinter movement, Reconstructionism. Its founder, Mordecai Kaplan (1881—1983), viewed Judaism as a religious civilisation (Durkheim’s influence), God as a process and the State of Israel as basic to Jewish life. His rejection of supernaturalism evoked a response among pragmatic Jews adjusted to the American scene and more aware of Jewish identity outside a pattern of belief. The group has remained small but is not without influence. In the period between the two World Wars, Americanjewry developed along predictable lines. The Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel caused a radical change within American Jewish thought. Since that community leads world Jewry (Conservative, Reform and Orthodox American Jewry number well over a million in each section, with perhaps two million Jews unaffiliated), its dynamic tension with Israeli Jewish life and thought (over two million Jews) is part of any definition of contemporary Judaism.