For the Record

[seekingferret]

My opinion on the Pew Survey of American Jews, as articulated dozens of times in the past weeks.

I don't really care about anything it says. But I am sick of being swamped by blogposts and pulpit sermons and conversation with other Jews drawing silly conclusions from the survey.


Orthodox Judaism: Possibly a seething mass of evil hypocrites, but not because the survey says so.

Conservative Judaism: Possibly dying, but not because the survey says no.

Reform Judaism: Possibly indistinguishable from secular Judaism, but not because the survey says so.



Any other ridiculous things you've heard in the past few weeks about Judaism that you want me to make clear are not proven by the survey?

Comments

[zandperl]

What's the difference between Orthodox and Conservative anyway?

[seekingferret]

According to my father, nothing is different but the Rabbis.

In general, Orthodox ideologies position themselves with respect to 'heterodox' ideologies. Any orthodoxy stems from the belief that there is a traditional, correct way of practicing the religious system and anyone who fails to observe this correct way has moved off of the path.

Orthodox Judaisms- and there are a number of them, and they are not always in agreement- believe that the thousands-year old mesorah of Judaism should be followed in all particulars, because it was transmitted to the Jews by God and therefore must be obeyed.

Reform Judaism believes that the mesorah was developed by the Jewish people, and it has a lot to teach us about ethical and spiritual practice because it reflects thousands of years of hard-learned experience about the world, but it also reflects the prejudices and failings of thousands of years of less modern people, and therefore it can be thoughtfully rejected when it no longer has anything to offer us in the modern world.

Conservative Judaism generally believes that the mesorah was transmitted by God to the Jewish people, but with the expectation that it would be adapted as the world changed. A conservative Jew still believes in living by the whole Torah as a divine document, but they do so in ways that an Orthodox Jew would consider heterodox because they have come to new understandings of the law to meet the needs of being Jewish in the modern world.

This is actually a terrible answer to your question, but a good answer would take hours.