Jews

U. S. Jewry classifies itself into Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed branches.

Orthodox Jewry holds tightly to tradition, regulates its religious life largely by the Talmud. Its adherents are mainly immigrants from the Polish Pale and European ghettos, folks who segregate themselves with the living memory of pogroms and national oustings.*

The Reformed, propelled in the 18th Century by the German Jew, Moses Mendelssohn, to bring his coreligionists out of their spiritual seclusion into the current cultural life, stresses the national culture of the country of which the adherents are citizens. Its ritual is quite up to date. From the Temple pulpits on Sunday morning (this shift of the Sabbath solemnities is a jibing with convenience) the congregations hear lectures hung on current news topics, as do those of many Christian churches. Yet one must note that the pulpit sideshows so currently prevalent are largely eschewed in Jewish houses of worship.

The Reformed might be termed modernist, the Orthodox fundamentalist. Between the two is the Conservative, a compromise which varies with the constitutions and by-laws of the particular congregation. Sometimes the determining on the fine points of such compromise creates bitter controversy (TIME, Mar. 30, RELIGION).

These three types are represented in the U. S. by national congregational and rabbinical organizations--the Reformed by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Central Conference of American Rabbis; the Conservative by the United Synagogue; the Orthodox by the Rabbinical Assembly and the Union of Orthodox Congregations. All these honestly adhere to a fundamental spiritual unity. But in interpretation and in ritual they often hold bitterly apart with a stiff-neckedness persisting from the time of Exodus, when Moses smashed the first stone copy of the Ten Commandments in a rage.

Last week, however, these organizations through representatives got together in Manhattan and took the first steps towards a national conference of Jewish religious organizations, resolved that: "We representatives, . . . recognizing the fundamental spiritual unity which binds us as Jews, believing that the synagogue is the basic and essential unit in our Jewish life, and believing in the desirability of taking counsel together for the sacred purpose of preserving and fostering Judaism in America, recommend to the organizations represented at this meeting that a conference composed of national congregational and rabbinical organizations of America be formed for the purpose of enabling them to speak and act unitedly in furthering such religious interests as all these constituent national organizations share in common, it being clearly provided that such proposed conference in no way interfere with the religious or administrative autonomy of any of the constituent organizations."

They also took the precaution to resolve that "all pronouncements of this joint conference shall have the unanimous approval of the constituent organizations as expressed through a majority vote of each delagation."

*Jews were exiled en masse from England in 1290, from France in 1394, from Spain in 1492. They eased back into England by the tolerance of Oliver Cromwell. Spain today is toying with the idea of permitting again their legal residence.