Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Indictment of Conservative Judaism

This attack on the Conservative movement was sent to me as a comment on my video. My response follows.
"the Conservative movement is no longer conservative and it is no different then reform judaism. Rabbi Ronald Price an Ordained conservative Rabbi now associated with the Union of T the Conservative movement is no longer conservative and it is no different then reform judaism. Rabbi Ronald Price an Ordained conservative Rabbi now associated with the Union of Traditional Judaism predicted once the Conservative Movement Ordained women eventualy they would accept Gay and lesbian rabbis. How right he was! The next thing that will come will be same sex marriages done by a Conservaive Rabbi! Next thing down the pike will be patralienal descentand kashrut will be optionalas reform judaism.You made up your own rules by allowing one to drive to syangouge on the Shabbat FIRE?
Conservative Judaism has no inherent truth and if there is a conflict with halscha and modern society. Modern society or history always wins! Infact some conservaive leaders say the movment should abandon haalcha
There was always a tradtion of Mechitza in Judaism. Reform Judaism was the first to jetson it and Conservative Judaism did it. My former Conservative syangouge has some seperate seating. Some conservaive syangouges are even trying a tii service with partial seperate seating
The Conservative movement is loseing their right wing to Orthodox Judaism and left wing to Reform Judaism.

My rersponse-You are right Conservative is "losing" (market share} but it still represent the best and true Judaism. Orthodoxy is founded on basic errors, of the Mosaic authorship word for word of the Torah. Some even believe literally in the world being 5767 years old, and that there was actually an Adam and Eve. That is all nonsense and make it impossible for a thinking person to accept.
Judaism has always changed. It changed in the Torah, see my videos on change and bnot zelophad. See Deut 17:9 and Talmud Rosh Hashanah 25. The Pharisees opened up a hugely different kind of Judaism than the Torah. You have to be in fairyland to believe the Mishneh is exacly what was passed down from God to Moses. Most of us can't tolerate the unequal treatmjent of women that Orthodoxy espouses. Its insane that women can't count as witnesses or in a minyon, lead services or read Torah.
The mehitza was never part of early Judaism. That is an error. The ezrat Nashim in the Temple was a mized place. We probably borrowed seperate seating it from Christians and Moslems. There is no mehitza in archeological excavations of early synagogues or at Massada. Conservative Judaism has made changes, some too much for me, but when I look around at the alternatives-one Movement stuck in the 16th century and another bringing pork into their youth group programs, it is still where I have a home, albiet on the far left edge. Why is there no music in an Orthodox service on Shabbat? See psalm 150. There was in the Temple. In my opinion,Its ghetto thinking-its just because the Christians did it. If you find a better home there. Fine. We all need to find a proper spiritual home and there is much that is wonderful about more traditional Judasim, as well as Reform too.

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