The Conservative Judaism movement (Masorti)

Conservative Judaism (known as Masorti outside the United States) is a movement that seeks a middle path between Orthodoxy and Reform Judaism. Its roots go back to the "Science of Judaism" movement (Wissenschaft des Judentums) and Zacharias Frankel's "positive-historical" school in nineteenth-century Germany, which acknowledged the historical evolution of tradition while affirming the binding value of halakha. The movement took on its full dimension in the United States with the Jewish Theological Seminary, reorganized under the leadership of Solomon Schechter at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the United Synagogue of America. Accepting historical criticism of texts and a degree of flexibility in the application of law, Conservatism sought to reconcile modernity with observance, notably through decisions such as permitting travel to synagogue by car on Shabbat. The dominant movement in American Jewish life in the postwar decades, it subsequently experienced a relative decline in favor of the Orthodox and liberal poles, while ordaining women as rabbis from the 1980s onward.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan
• Jewish Virtual Library ↗