RABBI WEIN ON REQUIEM FOR A MOVEMENT

In an article that appeared two months ago in the Jewish Review of Books, Daniel Gordis wrote about the sorry state of the Conservative movement in the current American Jewish scene. The Pew Report documented, with a great body of anecdotal evidence, the demise of this once most numerous and powerful movement. Gordis himself is the scion of a distinguished rabbinical family that exercised great influence in the Conservative movement over the past six decades. Gordis correctly bemoans the fact that for most American Jews their connection to Judaism can only be found in halachicly rigorous Orthodoxy or in a vague liberal, upper crust, vacuous social agenda which claims somehow to be a representation of the Jewish religion.