Congregation Standards Define Conservative Synagogue
October 2007 - For millennia, it has been the Jewish style to weave text with commentary.
Readers can learn a great deal from the text alone, but they can learn even more when it is interlarded with explanation and interpretation.
That’s the style of the Talmud, the style of the Bible with commentary by Rashi (as well as many others), the style that constantly puts students in direct dialogue with the text as they learn both content and context.
The method is applicable not only to the foundational texts of our people but to the documents that govern our modern institutional life as well. Congregations affiliated with United Synagogue are expected to maintain certain standards – basic halakhic behaviors that are necessary in order to be part of the Conservative Jewish world – and those standards are spelled out in a document called Standards for Congregational Practice. That document was first adopted in 1957; now, for the first time, commentary explaining some of the rules has been included.
Some of the rules have been amended slightly as well.
The standards exist, according to Rabbi Moshe Edelman, director of United Synagogue’s department of congregational standards, “to help give definition to Conservative Judaism.” They describe “not only ritual but also moral and ethical behavior,” he said. “This is where the bar is set.”
United Synagogue expects that kashrut will be observed in all affiliated synagogues at all times, and it will be observed as well at all synagogue-sponsored events. It details how a congregation must deal with its staff – the rabbi, the hazan, the rest of the professional staff, and the nonprofessionals – and about how the necessary respect between neighboring synagogues does not allow for job poaching. It deals with such issues as appropriate fundraising, provides guidance in such important but nebulous areas as moral dignity, and tackles the ever-inflammatory issue of “who is a Jew” that underlies the question of who can join a Conservative congregation.
“What’s different from other years’ standards isn’t so much that we changed the content of the standards but that the commentary helps explain what is very often too terse or unclear,” Rabbi Edelman said.
Questions about who can be a member of a synagogue are challenging, he said, and so are the closely related questions of what is a Jewish family. “We wanted to acknowledge that since the last revision in 1991 families have changed, and so questions about membership have changed. Even what we call our members has changed. It used to be Mr. and Mrs. Cohen; now many synagogues address mail to the Cohen family, because the family is different. It can include interfaith families, people who are living together, same-sex families, or women who want to use their own names.”
Another difference between the 1991 standards and the new, revised version, Rabbi Edelman added, is that the commentary includes references. “If a congregation is dealing with a particular standard, it could refer to other documents written by the standards committee, or to responsa from the Rabbinical Assembly.” That way, members could understand the standard’s history and the logic that undergirds it.
The standards were dissected, discussed, and reassembled by the standard committee, under the leadership of Edward S. Rudofsky. The new standards were approved by United Synagogue’s board of directors at its June 3 meeting this year and will be brought to the biennial convention for discussion and ratification on November 30.
