By “welcoming people as they are,” the Conservative movement is declaring that they accept intermarriage

Ihad to look twice at the recent headline in the Times of Israel: “American Conservative Judaism Apologizes, Signals New Approach To Intermarriage.” Finally, I mused, they are admitting that their spineless approach to Torah and mitzvos has only increased intermarriage, and they are courageous enough to acknowledge their historic error and to embark on a different path.

Empty hope. The very first sentence of the news story jarred me back into reality: They were “ apologizing for decades of discouraging intermarriage… and were now embarking on a new approach centered on engagement.” Surely this was a printer’s error: They whose abandonment of halachic norms and whose elastic approach to mitzvos resulted in the loss of their youth and the subsequent spike in intermarriage — they are now changing direction and will do what? They will be less discouraging about intermarriage, because that discouragement “alienated” Jews from Judaism. Instead, the Conservative movement “will welcome people as they are.” (Imagine a mother not correcting her child for fear of alienating the child.)

The statement issued by the committee, which consisted of representatives of the Conservative United Synagogue and the Rabbinical Assembly, should win an award for meaninglessness and left-liberal woke terminology. It is reminiscent of the old joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

Dotting the statement are jargon terms and concepts like “listening sessions,” “focal groups,” “consensus,” “repairing trust,” “having a conversation,” and “widening pathways into Jewish life.”

By “welcoming people as they are,” the Conservative movement is declaring that they accept intermarriage as a fact of life and will no longer fight it but instead work with it in order to “engage people who want to “build Jewish lives.”

Two questions seem not to have occurred to this blue-ribbon committee: a) if they wish to “engage” (whatever that means) those who want to “build Jewish lives,” how is it that the desire to build Jewish lives was not strong enough to deter them from marrying out of our faith? And b) did the committee ever wonder why it is that among Orthodox Jews, intermarriage is practically nonexistent? Could it be that for the Orthodox, the performance of mitzvos is a must , as is intensive Torah study, as is strong prayer and family life, as is unequivocal disapproval of interdating and intermarriage? Could it be that for the Orthodox, observance of Judaism is not the subject of consensus from focal groups and listening sessions, but instead emanates from Above? Which leads to another point: The news release is very verbose, but one word is missing. That word is “G-d.”

I grew weary from the steady fusillade of bromides and dozed off. In my dream, I found myself at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Several years after issuing the Ten Commandments, Moses had called all the Jews together and issued the following statement:

We have become aware that the Commandments did not have the desired effect. Idolatry and adultery have increased, and the rates of robbery, false witness, and Shabbat desecration are higher than ever.

It is clear that our commandments have not been transmitted effectively. People have rejected the authoritarian tone of our words, and have turned away from us. We will henceforth be more attuned to your needs, and will welcome you as you are. Even though you worshipped the Golden Calf, we know you want to build Jewish life. We apologize because — as our listening sessions and focus groups informed us — we alienated you by our overly rigid opposition to idolatry.

We therefore wish to resume our conversation and hereby resubmit revised suggestions for your consensus approval. These suggestions clearly state that nothing is absolute, and that everything is unequivocally relative. For example. terms like “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” will no longer appear, because they create feelings of shame and guilt. Thus, for example, we respectfully suggest that there is only one G-d, and that whenever feasible, please try to refrain from praying to idols. We recommend that theft, adultery, and false witnessing be discouraged whenever possible and that any negativity about such behavior should be softened.

Our ultimate purpose is to repair the trust between us so we can resume our conversation, engage with one another, and widen the pathways back to Judaism.

At that point I woke up. Normally, when one awakens from a bad dream, he is relieved to find that it was only a dream. In this case, however, waking up provided no relief, and I discovered to my chagrin that this committee statement was not a bad dream but a reality.

The Conservative movement clearly needs to apologize, but with a different thrust. They should apologize because they are now ready to accept intermarriage as a fact of life. And they should beg forgiveness from the hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews who over the years were under the impression that this movement was saving Judaism, when in reality — by being a weather vane and following the zeitgeist — it was doing just the opposite, and was leading its adherents into spiritual oblivion.

The “new approach” that they are now trumpeting is devoutly to be desired: a new firm and principled approach to Torah. Unless they do so, this committee statement will constitute the swan song of a movement that exited the scene — in T.S. Eliot’s famous phrase — not with a bang but a whimper.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1094)