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Oct 10, 2024, 6:19 AM

Conservative Judaism’s Zionism from World War II Until Israeli Statehood

Soon after the outbreak of World War II, Jewish Theological Seminary chancellor Dr. Cyrus Adler passed away, and leadership of the JTS and of Judaism’s Conservative Movement was placed into the hands of Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, a JTS graduate...

Sep 25, 2024, 11:49 PM

Conservative Zionism between the world wars

After his death in 1915, Solomon Schechter’s legacy of Zionism continued through key members of the Jewish Theological Seminary faculty and through the stream of rabbinical school graduates. Conservative Movement historian Rabbi Simcha Kling noted: “Conservative Judaism was unique...

Sep 24, 2024, 6:45 AM

The Zionism of Solomon Schechter’s Students

In “The Zionism of the Jewish Theological Seminary, 1902-1948,” Dr. Naomi Cohen affirmed that Solomon Schechter’s “religious Zionism found a ready response among seminary students, many of whom were already Zionist sympathizers. The young men flocked to sermons and...

Sep 12, 2024, 8:10 AM

The Zionism of Schechter’s Faculty

Upon assuming the leadership of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Solomon Schechter immediately proceeded to assemble a high-quality roster of faculty committed to joining with him in interpreting Judaism for American Jews. As Norman Bentwich observed, Schechter’s...

Aug 30, 2024, 11:52 PM

Solomon Schechter’s Zionism

In Professor Naomi Cohen’s “Diaspora Plus Palestine, Religion Plus Nationalism: The Seminary and Zionism” (“Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America,” Vol. 2), she emphasized Solomon Schechter’s early adherence — already in the 1880s —...

Aug 23, 2024, 11:37 PM

The Origin of Zionism in Conservative Judaism

The European roots of Zionism in Conservative Judaism commenced with an emphasis on Jewish history and peoplehood as espoused by Rabbi Zechariah Frankel in the mid-19th century. Rabbi Frankel had withdrawn from the German rabbinical conferences of the 1840s...

Aug 14, 2024, 10:05 PM

The Controversy of Ultra-Orthodox Draft Deferments

With the withdrawal of the British mandatory authorities, the State of Israel emerged in 1947-49 into a military conflict, its War of Independence. In a battle for survival, able-bodied Jews were expected to serve in self-defense of the new...

Aug 8, 2024, 8:38 AM

The Rise and Fall of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate

From 1517 until 1917, the entire Middle East was governed by the Ottoman Empire as a “caliphate,” an Islamic sacred polity. Within the vast terrain of Arab lands and North Africa, religious governance and a measure of minority group...

Jul 31, 2024, 10:10 PM

Addressing the core of Arab-Israel conflict

“If the core of the Arab-Israeli dispute is the Palestinian refugee problem, once the Palestinian issue is solved, would not everything else fall into place?” The core of the Arab-Israeli dispute is neither the “Palestinian problem” nor the issue of...

Jul 24, 2024, 11:19 PM

The UN is complicit in anti-Israel campaigning

As a child I remember bringing a UNICEF canister door-to-door to support the good work of the United Nations. Along with many other American Jews, my family believed in the value of international collaboration in furthering acts of hesed....

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About Me

Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD, was religious leader of Congregation Agudath Israel in Caldwell, NJ, for more than four decades, retiring in 2021. He served as president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis (1993-95); as president of the World Council of Conservative/Masorti Synagogues (2000-05); and as chair of the Foundation for Masorti Judaism in Israel (2010-14). He currently serves as president of Mercaz Olami, representing the world Masorti/Conservative movement. He is the author of “It All Begins with a Date: Jewish Concerns about Interdating,” “Preserving Jewishness in Your Family: After Intermarriage Has Occurred,” and “Alternatives to Assimilation: The Response of Reform Judaism to American Culture, 1840-1930.”