by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement) The initial effort to extend Conservative Judaism’s embrace of Zionism beyond the United States was launched by Rabbi Bernard Segal, who served as executive director of United Synagogue of America (later United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism) from 1953 to 1970. As noted […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement) With Israeli statehood a reality, Conservative Judaism became a full-fledged Zionist movement. For JTS chancellor Louis Finkelstein, the commitment to Israel was personal as well; his daughter had settled and established a family in Jerusalem, with her father making visits year after […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement) Soon after the outbreak of World War II, Jewish Theological Seminary chancellor Dr. Cyrus Adler passed away, and leadership of the JTS and of Judaism’s Conservative Movement was placed into the hands of Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, a JTS graduate and longtime assistant […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement) After his death in 1915, Solomon Schechter’s legacy of Zionism continued through key members of the Jewish Theological Seminary faculty and through the stream of rabbinical school graduates. Conservative Movement historian Rabbi Simcha Kling noted: “Conservative Judaism was unique among the contemporary […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement) In “The Zionism of the Jewish Theological Seminary, 1902-1948,” Dr. Naomi Cohen affirmed that Solomon Schechter’s “religious Zionism found a ready response among seminary students, many of whom were already Zionist sympathizers. The young men flocked to sermons and lectures […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement) Upon assuming the leadership of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Solomon Schechter immediately proceeded to assemble a high-quality roster of faculty committed to joining with him in interpreting Judaism for American Jews. As Norman Bentwich observed, Schechter’s recruitment […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement) In Professor Naomi Cohen’s “Diaspora Plus Palestine, Religion Plus Nationalism: The Seminary and Zionism” (“Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America,” Vol. 2), she emphasized Solomon Schechter’s early adherence — already in the 1880s — to […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement) The European roots of Zionism in Conservative Judaism commenced with an emphasis on Jewish history and peoplehood as espoused by Rabbi Zechariah Frankel in the mid-19th century. Rabbi Frankel had withdrawn from the German rabbinical conferences of the 1840s due […]