Reconstructionists Denounce the Sca for Denying It Membership in the Umbrella Organization

The Federation of Reconstructionist Congregations and Havurot (FRCH) sharply denounced the Synagogue Council of America (SCA) following the Council’s decision to deny it membership.

Warning that the denial can harm “Jewish unity,” Lillian Kaplan, president of the FRCH, charged in a statement issued here last week that this rejection “negates the very essence of its mandate.”

The application of the FRCH for membership in the SCA was rejected on March 11 after the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations exercised a unilateral veto by voting against the admission. The other members of the SCA — which was founded in 1926 by the three major synagogue movements of American Judaism (Reform, Conservative and Orthodox) and their rabbinical affiliates — supported the admission of the Reconstructionists. The SCA by-laws include the rule that a nay vote by any of its six members can veto any proposition put before its Board.

The six members of the SCA are: the Central Conference of American Rabbis and Union of American Hebrew Congregations (Reform); the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations and the Rabbinical Council of America (Orthodox); and the United Synagogue of America and the Rabbinical Assembly (Conservative). The FRCH claims to be the fourth major movement in American Judaism.

SCA’S CREDENTIALS DEMEANED

Noting that the SCA claims to be “the umbrella for Jewish religious life in America,” Kaplan said that the rejection “does not weaken our movement, but it does demean the Council’s credentials in terms of religious leadership.”

FRCH executive director Rabbi David Teutsch told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that following the veto, his organization held discussions with leaders of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations in an effort to change their opposition to the Reconstructionists’ membership in the SCA, but to no avail. It was after these efforts failed that the FRCH issued a statement last week denouncing the rejection.

THE SCA EXPLAINS ITS DECISION

Asked to explain the reasons for voting against the admission of the FRCH to the SCA, Rabbi Pinchas Stolper, executive vice president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations said in a telephone interview with the JTA:

“In our view there were and are three major divisions of the American synagogue community–the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. We feel that by admitting additional groups we open a Pandora’s Box which would needlessly confuse the already confused landscape. Our opposition to admitting the Reconstructionists is not directed at the Reconstructionists per se, but to the realization that there are many sub-groups of the three divisions and by tolerating the creation of further division we will only render a disservice.”

According to Teutsch, the FRCH last applied for membership in the SCA more than 10 years ago and was rejected. “We did not ask all these years to be admitted because we knew we are going to be rejected,” Teutsch told the JTA.

CITES ‘INSUFFICIENT COMMITMENT TO PLURALISM’

Teutsch said that the FRCH has about 75,000 members with over 56 congregations around the country. “Our congregations are located in most of the largest Jewish population centers of the country and our members are leaders in local Federations, branches of UJA, and other areas of Jewish communal life out of all proportion to their numbers,” Teutsch said, adding:

“The Council’s decision demonstrates woefully insufficient commitment to pluralism on the part of the Orthodox in the American Jewish community.”

The Jewish Reconstructionist movement was founded 60 years ago by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan. Its guiding principle is that Judaism is an evolving religious civilization — a culture and a way of life as well as a religious faith.