The Conservative
Movement, known in Europe as the Historical
Movement, was a reaction to what its founders
viewed as the overzealousness of the Reform
Movement. Many modern Jews felt that there
should be innovations in Judaism,
but they wanted to retain more traditional
practices than the reformers were willing
to accept. Unlike Holdheim and Einhorn, they
didn't view traditional practices as impeding
the modern contract with the Divine.
Rabbi
Isaac Mayer Wise tried to create a rabbinical synod which would
become the Jewish authority for all Jews in America. The more
traditional Jews, led by Isaac Leeser, were suspicious, and the
radical reformers were dissatisfied. When the reformers tried to push
through a measure that dietary laws were no longer part of the modern
Jewish world, the more traditional Jews left in disgust. They began
organizing their own American Jewish representation.
In the early 1880's, they tried
establishing a seminary and a movement, but they found very little
support. The Reformers weren't interested, and the new Russian
immigrants weren't interested. In 1902, they invited Rabbi Solomon
Schechter to become president of a newly revamped school, the Jewish
Theological Seminary.
Solomon Schechter
was born in Rumania in 1847 to a Chabad Chassidic family. His Chassidic upbringing
did not satisfy him, however, and, in 1879
he went to study at the Berlin Hochschule
fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums and at
the University of Berlin. In 1882 Schechter
was invited to be a tutor in rabbinics in
London. He quickly rose to prominence as a
rabbinic scholar and spokesman for Jewish
traditionalism. In 1890 he was appointed lecturer
in talmudics and in 1892 reader in rabbinics
at Cambridge University. In 1899 he also became
professor of Hebrew at University College,
London.
He gained international fame as a
scholar when he discovered and brought back to London more than
100,000 pages of rare manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza. Beyond
sorting and filing the documents, Schechter wrote on the newly-found
Ben Sirach materials, unknown until then.
Schechter accepted the invitation
to become president of the Jewish Theological Seminary and succeeded
in attracting an outstanding group of scholars to teach. The Jewish
Theological Seminary became a recognized center of Jewish learning.
In 1913 Solomon Schechter was
instrumental in founding the United Synagogue of America, the
umbrella organization of all Conservative congregations.
Though a staunch traditionalist,
Schechter admitted that there could be change in modern Judaism.
However, he felt that changes should not be introduced arbitrarily or
deliberately. Rather, "the norm as well as the sanction of
Judaism is the practice actually in vogue. Its consecration is the
consecration of general use—or, in other words, of Catholic
Israel."