From the Editors
Welcome to CJ: Voices of Conservative/Masorti Judaism
For the first time, USCJ, WLCJ, and FJMC, three of the organizations that make up the alphabet soup of Jewish life – more fully known as the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Women’s League for Conservative Judaism, and the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs – have joined to bring you a bigger and more comprehensive look at Conservative/Masorti Judaism, the movement to which we all belong. In this new magazine, we are joining forces to explore what it means to be at the vibrant center of Jewish life.
For years, each of the three organizations has published its own magazine, reaching its own membership with the United Synagogue Review, Women’s League Outlook, and Men’s Clubs’ Torchlight. Now, one magazine, a symphony composed of our many voices, will explore the tensions between halakhah and the 21st century, between faith and reason, between the past, the present, and the future. In this magazine, we will celebrate the opportunities to which those tensions give birth.
We are making this change for a number of reasons. One is purely practical. By pooling our resources, each of our organizations will be able to tell more stories to more readers than we could before.
A much more important reason, though, is that with this combined publication we are acknowledging that we are one movement. This magazine gives us a way to show who we are. Here we can display what we believe in and how we can turn those beliefs into action. With this magazine, we can model the cooperation that should come naturally to us.
All last year, representatives of United Synagogue, Women’s League, and Men’s Clubs, along with our movement partners in the Rabbinical Assembly, Camp Ramah, and other groups that make up the movement, met in Philadelphia to plan a program together. Just before Pesach, their work culminated in a day at the Franklin Institute, where Conservative Jews, in a kind of reverse Exodus, gathered at the King Tut exhibit to consider, among other things, Israelite life in ancient Egypt. There are many lessons for us in that day. One, of course, is the persistence of the Jewish people. Another can be taken from the constitutional conventions that also met in Philadelphia more than 200 years ago. There, 13 contentious colonies pledged themselves to forming the more perfect union that became the United States. We Conservative Jews can do no less. This magazine is one manifestation of that goal. Just as a smaller group came together in Philadelphia, all of us can come together as one movement, across North America and around the world.
Some things change, others remain the same. In the summer of 1957, the cover of the first issue of United Synagogue Review featured a black-and-white photograph of earnest young people studying Torah at a Camp Ramah lakefront. The issue included an article by a rabbinical student named Neil Gillman, who wrote about his summers working at camp. Ramah already had been introduced to the readers of Women’s League Outlook in 1951 in the first of what would be many articles about the camps. In this issue of CJ, Rabbi Gillman, who is retiring, looks back at his career at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and we look at Camp Ramah as it turns 60.
In the coming months, as CJ continues to find its own voice, as we listen to the voices of our movement, we hope to highlight the issues and showcase our many strengths.
May we all together go from strength to strength.
- Joanne Palmer
Rhonda Jacobs Kahn
