Print This Essay - The Jewish Theological Seminary

Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary from 1940
to 1972, summed up what he considered the “fundamental premises” of
Conservative Judaism in the twin affirmations that Judaism “is a developing
religion” that has always undergone change; and that “this change was not one
of deterioration and ossification but of growth, self-expression and foliation.” Our
task and privilege, now as ever, is both to study the sages of old and to emulate
them: to render Judaism compelling for our revolutionary age, as our learned
ancestors did for theirs.
Finkelstein’s statement explains why, for Conservative Jews even more than
others, the rabbinic principle holds. “Talmud Torah ke-neged kulam: the study of
Torah is weighed against the importance of all the other commandments
combined.” The task of following the Torah’s precepts is difficult. Relating Torah
to the finest insights of the larger culture and responsibly adapting Judaism to
changed conditions, when necessary, is still more so. Both tasks require
thorough, complex, and nuanced knowledge of the Jewish past, including
understanding of the manifold ways in which Jews over the centuries have
interacted with the larger cultures of which they were a part.
Indeed, the Conservative vision of Judaism as evolving religious civilization only
makes sense if one has studied enough Jewish history to know that our tradition
has always been evolving in this fashion—sometimes radically and sometimes
gradually, at times explicitly and at other moments unaware.
Learning Torah, for Conservative Jews as for all others, remains one of
Judaism’s major commandments—a discipline of study and practice that I shall
describe in detail in my next posting.
But it is crucial to stress, as Finkelstein did, that Jews often come to love the
learning of Torah. That passion is nurtured for Conservative Jews, I think, by the
distinctive ways in which our learning combines study of text with study of the
history that shaped the text and was shaped by the text; this wider lens takes in
both the history of Jewish communities throughout the centuries and the
interactions between those communities and Gentile societies and cultures.
Conservative Jews, like others—if fortunate in their teachers and studypartners—experience
moments of excitement, joy, and gratitude from active
participation in the age-old conversation with Torah.
I will never forget the man in his 50s who, in tears, told our prayer group of the
day he had first understood the Shema’—word by word—when it was read from
the Torah.
Or the times when study of the dilemmas facing a Jewish community hundreds of
years ago informed and inspired members of synagogue and Federation boards.
Or the heated conversation about drawing boundaries between Judaism and the
larger culture in relation to the Mishnaic passage about “Rabban Gamliel in the
bath of Aphrodite.”