Joseph H. Prouser
The Masorti/Conservative Movement endured seven lean years without publication of a peer-reviewed academic journal. That period of want was preceded not by seven years, but by fully seven decades of plenty. Conservative Judaism, published by the Rabbinical Assembly and the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1945 through 2014, provided its readers within the Conservative Movement and beyond a scholarly forum for serious, critical inquiry of Jewish texts and traditions, legacy and law, refining and defining Masorti/Conservative theology and ideology, and examining the changing Jewish community and its spiritual, social, and moral challenges. The current reinaugural issue of Masorti: The New Journal of Conservative Judaism strives to restore and continue that proud tradition, lefleitah gedolah—a welcome boon to those who have hungered for such an intellectual platform.
Masorti: The New Journal of Conservative Judaism is sponsored, more expansively than its predecessor, by the Rabbinical Assembly together with all five affiliated seminaries training Masorti/Conservative rabbis, cantors, and educational leaders: the Jewish Theological Seminary (New York); Schechter Institutes, Inc. (Jerusalem); Seminario Rabinico Latinoamericano (Buenos Aires); Zacharias Frankel College (Potsdam, Germany); and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at American Jewish University (Los Angeles). Reflective of the Masorti Movement’s global impact, the editorial committee and its academic advisory board currently include Rabbinical Assembly members and leading scholars from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Israel, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The committee membership is diverse in age, gender, perspective, and professional emphasis, as well as geographical origin and place of residence. I thank them for their service and their efforts in bringing this volume to publication, and for the extensive work already underway on future issues. The global reach of Masorti/Conservative Judaism is further underscored by this journal’s commitment to include in each issue articles in both Hebrew and Spanish, as well as English.
The editorial committee and I welcome the membership of both the Rabbinical Assembly (RA) and the Cantors Assembly (CA) among our primary subscribers. We are grateful to RA President Rabbi Harold Kravitz, CA President Rabbi Cantor Luis Cattan, and RA/USCJ CEO Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal for their commitment and support for our efforts.
Featured in these pages is JTS Chancellor Shuly Rubin Schwartz’s inaugural address, “Choosing Nuance,” in which she eloquently issues a call for “commitment to nuance and complexity,” which can produce “compelling visions of change and effective plans of action in response to the urgent challenges of our times.”
Special thanks are due to Rabbi David Golinkin both for his pivotal role in the relaunch of this journal and for contributing its first Hebrew article. We are grateful to Rabbi Ari Bursztein for his Spanish essay marking the fiftieth yahrzeit of Abraham Joshua Heschel.
In these pages, the Rev. Dr. Herbert Anderson, a Lutheran pastor and professor, and student of Will Herberg, offers wisdom to those charged with pastoral leadership and all those confronting their own mortality. The grateful continuity of this “new” journal with its predecessor is given much welcome expression in the scholarly contribution of Rabbi Martin Cohen, long-time editor of Conservative Judaism.
Also gracing this reinaugural issue are articles by Professor Michal Raucher on the Conservative Movement’s responses to abortion, Rabbi Debra Orenstein on the interplay between positive psychology and Judaism, and Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff on belief in God. Rabbi Jonathan Rosenbaum probes the strengths defining and the challenges confronting Conservative/Masorti Judaism, as well as the dramatic changes within the movement since Rabbi Robert Gordis addressed the same topic in introducing the first issue of this academic journal over seventy-five years ago. Included herein are also a number of book reviews by accomplished Jewish educators.
As this journal was being prepared for publication, we mourned the passing, at the age of ninety-six, of Rabbi Myron Fenster. Rabbi Fenster edited Conservative Judaism from 1977 to 1979. The memory of this exemplary rabbi is a blessing.
On a personal note, I am delighted that this issue is dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Asher Bar-Zev, Ph.D., my childhood rabbi and teacher, from whom I first learned of the joys, high privilege, and consequential responsibilities of rabbinic leadership. He instilled in me and countless others critical lessons of Torah and character and the wonder of scholarship and intellectual inquiry. I remain his grateful student.
Finally, to Rabbi Jill Hammer’s dedicatory prayer that readers of Masorti: The New Journal of Conservative Judaism find in this publication “new understanding” and a way to “deepen knowledge, grow in insight, and strengthen commitment,” I invite you to join me in offering a heartfelt “Amen.”
Joseph H. Prouser is rabbi of Temple Emanuel of North Jersey in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, and editor of this journal.