 Reports of 'death' exaggerated
I have been absent from this column for months, working hard to deal with the challenges facing my institution, which is struggling along with just about every other institution in the world in the current economic atmosphere. What might have sparked me back into life in the blogosphere were the reported comments of Rabbi Norman Lamm, predicting the imminent demise of the Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism. I have no idea, incidentally, if the very venerable Rabbi Lamm really said the things attributed to him in the Jerusalem Post article. Whoever did concoct the notion that non-Orthodox Judaism is on its last legs is guilty of an extreme case of wishful thinking. The truth is that there is ample and powerful evidence that a Judaism of meaning aimed at those for whom Orthodoxy is untenable, unpalatable or impossible is more urgently in demand today than ever before. Impressionists and Realists
Earlier last week history was made in Jerusalem. In a city in which history has been a cottage industry for three millennia, this is in itself not too much of a surprise. But the kind of history I am referring to is worthy of note in any case. The first ever serious academic conference on Reform Judaism in Israel took place. The Van Leer Institute, a highly prestigious center of research and public debate, initiated and hosted the conference, which attracted leading scholars from around the world - or at least from Israel and from the United States (the next conference of this kind will need to spend more time on the local varieties of this species to be found in South America, South Africa, Australasia, and Europe. And by the end of the century, we will no doubt be holding interplanetary seminars). |
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