The Birth of Conservative Judaism by Michael R. Cohen

Author:Michael R. Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL040050, Religion/Judaism/Conservative, REL040000, Religion/Judaism/General
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2012-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE RABBINICAL ASSEMBLY

To define just what separated them from everybody else, Schechter’s disciples increasingly turned “to self-scrutiny with more than usual zest” (32). Yet they needed to find a new place to do this, because with the United Synagogue moving to lay leadership, it was no longer a conducive home for their debates. It was in these lay-dominated United Synagogue meetings, one disciple noted, where “some of our men have been known to indulge in mock heroics, posing before their laymen as the brave Luthers who nailed protests on church doors.” The debates, instead, should appear “in the intimate circle of colleagues who need not pose before one another but who can afford to be honest and genuine with one another” (36). Schechter’s disciples found this institutional home in the Alumni Association, which they had renamed the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (RA).

As we have seen, the Alumni Association initially had no intention of crafting a platform, but instead was created to further the goals of the Seminary and to strengthen personal ties among the disciples. The organization reflected the emphasis on inclusivity that the name Alumni Association implied, providing an institutional home for all Seminary graduates. Moreover, the Jewish Exponent, when covering the organization’s first meeting, made specific mention of the fact that “the question of religious policy seems to have been left out of consideration; at any rate it has found no place in the resolutions set forth in the association’s preamble. This is very significant in so far as it seems that the graduates of the seminary, as a body, have considered the question of theological [sic] as non-germane to its raison d’être.”13 Additionally, Alumni Association president Max Klein declared in 1917 that “the primary function” of the Alumni Association was to “strengthen the spirit of brotherly cooperation among us.” This, he believed, would lead to success “in realizing every other aim dear to our alma mater into the cause we cherish in common.”14

Klein played a critical role determining the direction of the organization and overseeing its transformation, serving as its president from 1916–1922.15 Born in New York in 1885, Klein was a graduate of both the New York City public schools and New York University. He graduated from the Seminary in 1911 and served as the rabbi of Philadelphia’s Congregation Adath Jeshurun for his entire career—over fifty years.

While Klein initially viewed the primary function of the organization as a unifying group for Seminary alumni, he soon came to see it as the place where Schechter’s disciples could confront their differences in order to arrive at a platform for their emerging movement. The 1918 name change from Alumni Association to Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America reflected its broader focus—no longer would the group be a home only for graduates of the Seminary, but it would now welcome “rabbis other than [Seminary] alumni who are in accord with the principles of traditional Judaism and the aims of the Seminary.”16

Klein hoped

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