The Birth of Conservative Judaism
Solomon Schechter's Disciples and the Creation of an American Religious Movement
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5703189 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dennis Moore (University of Michigan, corresponding author), D D Moore |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 100 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 233-234 |
| Publication date | 2013-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jat105 |
| OpenAlex | W2006477422 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
Michael R. Cohen argues that scholarship on new religious movements provides the best paradigm for understanding the forces that produced Conservative Judaism in the United States. Cohen applies this model by positing a key role for Solomon Schechter, the Romanian Jewish scholar who came to New York City via England to lead a revivified Jewish Theological Seminary of America (jts) in 1902. Cohen portrays Schechter as a charismatic figure who not only established jts as a premier institution of rationalist scholarship on Judaism but also inspired a cohort of young Jewish men eager to implement his vision of a “Catholic Israel” that welcomed all types of traditional Jews and supported English-language sermons, modern Jewish education, and decorum in worship. By placing the burden of the creation of Conservative Judaism on Schechter and his disciples, Cohen dismisses research that identifies continuities with the nineteenth-century German Jewish school of Historical Judaism or credits lay leaders with developing an ethnic version of Judaism
Archaeology · Charisma · German · Judaism · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Theology · Worship · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |