Talking at or Speaking with?

By Matt Nover
Rutgers University

Back in 2009, an Orthodox rabbi announced that "we will soon say kaddish on the Reform and Conservative movements," implying that the movements were unsustainable, and that they would soon end. It seemed a little odd to me at the time that the relationship of the Conservative Movement with the Orthodox Movement was so bitter, since we are all Jews, after all. I started thinking about all of my experiences with Jews from other movements, and I came to a bit of a sad discovery: many Jews either think the Conservative Movement is a mistaken movement, or they don't know anything about Conservative Judaism.

When I was on Nativ, a friend and I went shopping in the Old City of Jerusalem. One of the shop owners, upon hearing that I went to the Conservative Yeshiva, began to ask how Conservative Jews could be Jewish if they drive on Shabbat. The only thing he knew about all of Conservative Judaism was that it had, at one point, made a single ruling that it was permissible to drive on Shabbat. He didn't know the circumstances of the ruling, and he didn't care to learn anything about it. He simply wanted to talk at me.

When I asked some of my Reform students to tell me something about Conservative Judaism, all they were able to say was, "It's somewhere between Orthodox and Reform." They didn't know that it had broken off from the Reform Movement, but they were interested in learning about it. We spoke with each other about what Judaism means to us.

Thinking about it now, it seems like the common denominator was not hate, but ignorance. Other Jews simply don't know what the Conservative Movement is. And this problem is one that is spread across the spectrum of modern Jewish movements.

At Rutgers, our Hillel noticed that the Jewish community was starting to fragment. There was tension and confusion among the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform communities. Members from each community came together to try to solve this problem and realized that arrogance wasn't the issue, but a simple lack of knowledge was the main problem. These members of our thriving Jewish community took it upon themselves to start a new program to fix this ignorance. The program, called "Beyond Bagels: Talk Amongst Ourselves," is an intra-faith dialogue that brings in representatives of as many denominations as possible to discuss, in the near-impossible time limit of five minutes or less, what their denomination stands for; then it is up to the students to discuss and debate in small groups what a particular aspect means to them. We have had Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Secular Humanist and Reconstructionist representatives so far at our program, to great acclaim. The program has caused a lot of discussion on our campus among members of the different religious communities, and speaking with each other helped us recognize the similarities we have.

There is only one way to correct the ignorance some Jews have about what the Conservative Movement stands for. That way is for us, as active Conservative Jews, to study and explain the basics of and basis for Conservative Judaism. So next time someone makes a crack about Conservative Jews, don't just walk away, but rather speak with them about Judaism. You may learn more from each other than you ever expected.

Matt Nover is a senior at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, double majoring in Jewish studies and physics. He is an alumnus of United Synagogue's Nativ College Leadership program, and the current Education Chair of the Rutgers University Hillel. In his spare time, he likes to experiment with new cookie recipes.

[Posted 2/4/11]