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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/38071/full/38071/yu-chancellor-non-orthodox-judaism-on-the-way-out1/ <br /><br /> <b>YU chancellor: Non-Orthodox Judaism on the way out</b> <br /> Thursday, May 14, 2009 | by matthew wagner <br /><br /><p>The Reform and Conservative movements are disappearing, the chancellor of New York’s Yeshiva University said this week during a visit to Israel.</p> <p>“With a heavy heart, we will soon say Kaddish on the Reform and Conservative movements,” said Rabbi Norman Lamm, head of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary in Manhattan.</p> <p>“The Conservatives are in a mood of despondency and pessimism. They are closing schools and in general shrinking,” he said during an interview a few days before receiving an honorary doctorate May 12 from Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan.</p> <p>Then Lamm added, pointedly, “The Reform Movement may show a rise, because if you add goyim to Jews then you will do OK.” He was referring to the Reform movement’s policy, starting in 1983, of recognizing patrilineal descent.</p> <p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 126px;"><img alt="US jpost Lamm, Norman " class="left" height="174" src="http://dev.jweekly.com/images/uploads/z_photos_2009/ze_05_15_09/US jpost Lamm, Norman .jpg" title="Rabbi Norman Lamm" width="126" /> <div class="caption">Rabbi Norman Lamm</div> </div> The National Jewish Population Survey of 2001 found that of the 46 percent of U.S. Jewish households belonging to a synagogue, 33 percent were affiliated with a Conservative synagogue, a 10 percent fall from the 1990 survey.</p> <p>The Reform movement had 38 percent of those belonging to a synagogue (up from 35 percent), with Orthodox affiliation checking in at 22 percent (up from 16 percent). Two percent were affiliated with the Reconstructionist movement and 5 percent with “other types” of synagogues.</p> <p>Lamm’s conclusion: “Reform is out of the picture, because they never got into the picture, and the Conservatives are getting out of the picture … The future of American Jewry is in the hands of haredim and the modern Orthodox. We have to find ways of working together.”</p> <p>Lamm said he supports outreach to Reform and Conservative Jews, “but not by watering down what we believe.”</p> <p>Born in Brooklyn in 1927, Lamm was appointed president of Yeshiva University in 1976; he is credited with saving that flagship institute of American Modern Orthodoxy from financial demise. He is considered a representative of “centrist” Modern Orthodoxy.</p> <p>In an wide-ranging interview, Lamm also spoke about his feelings on homosexuality among Orthodox Jewish men, drawing a distinction between those who “kept it to themselves” and those who “proselytized.”</p> <p>He said, “Everyone should be made to feel comfortable” and “I would never exclude a person because his wife does not cover hair or because he does not adhere to the laws of Shabbat or because he is a homosexual.”</p> <p>But, he added, “I am opposed to saying publicly that homosexuals are welcome, or accepting people who are openly gay and who campaign for a gay lifestyle, just as I would oppose someone who openly campaigns to desecrate Shabbat or to speak slanderously.”</p> <p>As for the ordination of female rabbis, Lamm said his opposition is “social, not religious.”</p> <p>“Change has to come to religion when feasible, but it should not be rushed,” he said. “Women have just come into their own from an educational perspective. I would prefer not to have this innovation right now. It is simply too early. What will happen later? — I am not a prophet.”</p> <p>Lamm expressed dissatisfaction that Orthodox Jews historically have refrained from interfaith dialogue with the Church.</p> <p>“The people who have normally been speaking on behalf of Jewry have been secular and are not concerned with the Jewish religious point of view,” he said. “It was a mistake for religious Jews to shy away. As a result, the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] and the American Jewish Committee, who don’t always have believing Jews on their staff, have dominated.”</p>

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