At centennial, United Synagogue aims to retool Conservative

By Uriel Heilman for JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — It’s being billed as the “Conversation of the Century.”

When the main synagogue organization of Conservative Jewry gathers this weekend in Baltimore to celebrate its centennial, there will be a lot to talk about.

The number of synagogues affiliated with the group, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, is in decline. The proportion of American Jews who identify as Conservative has shrunk to 18 percent, according to the recent Pew Research Center study of U.S. Jewry, down from 43 percent in 1990 and 33 percent in 2000. And with a median age of 55, Conservative Jews are older on average than Reform or Orthodox and more likely to leave their movement than Jews from either of the other two major denominations.

At this moment of challenge for Conservative Judaism, the movement’s leaders have a message for the biennial conference: We’re ready to change.

With a conference program markedly more diverse than past years, United Synagogue is promoting the idea that it’s not just embracing change — the need for change has been a constant refrain within the movement for at least a decade — but that the conference is a place for figuring out how to retool Conservative Judaism for the 21st century.

“It’s not just coming and talking for the sake of talking,” said Rabbi Steven Wernick, the CEO of United Synagogue. “It’s about coming up with ideas and strategies people can take back to their own communities or to their personal lives.

“This convention is an opportunity to pull all those people together who care about the future of an egalitarian, pluralistic and traditional approach to Jewish life, to learn from each other, to be inspired from each other, to come up with new strategies and ideas, and also to have a whole lot of fun.”

On the table is everything from how the movement should treat same-sex couples to how synagogues can be revamped to focus more on what people want. The Shabbat preceding the conference will feature five different prayer services simultaneously ranging from a contemporary-style service with instrumental music to a non-egalitarian minyan featuring the tunes of the late Orthodox spiritualist Shlomo Carlebach. Some of the presenters and entertainers at the conference are Orthodox.

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