How do you increase the number of Conservative Jews?

Boston Globe: Conservative Jews set a conversion campaign
Aim at offspring of intermarriage

Sadly, there seems to be no acknowledgement the problem may lie in Conservative Judaism itself.

Trying to counteract the loss of membership and vitality in one of Judaism's principal groups, the Conservative movement yesterday launched what its leaders said will be an aggressive effort to convert to Judaism the gentile spouses and children of Jews who have married outside the faith.

The move is a break with a centuries-old Jewish tradition of shunning conversion efforts, an aversion traceable to the hostility that such efforts generated in countries with Christian or Muslim majorities. Even in the United States, Jews did not consider the idea of converting gentiles until the late 20th century.

The new policy is needed to preserve Jewish families in the face of high rates of intermarriage and assimilation among American Jews, said Rabbi Jerome M. Epstein, chief executive officer of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, a union of the 760 Conservative synagogues in the United States and Canada.

''We must begin aggressively to encourage conversions of potential Jews who have chosen a Jewish spouse," Epstein told representatives of the synagogue association's convention at Boston's Park Plaza Hotel. ''And if conversion is initially rejected, we must continue to place it on the agenda."

Conservatives -- who attempt to strike a balance between Orthodox Judaism's stricter adherence to Jewish law and the liberalism of the Reform movement -- once were the largest grouping of Jews in the United States. Since the early 1990s, the movement has fallen behind Reform Judaism in absolute numbers and behind both Reform and Orthodox Judaism in institutional vigor.

Anyone hear bells go off after that paragraph?

The National Jewish Population Survey of 2000, the most recent comprehensive data available, found that among Jews who affiliated with a temple or synagogue, 38 percent were Reform, 33 percent Conservative, and 22 percent Orthodox.

Orthodox Jews have a much higher birth rate than either of the other groups. The Reform movement has been gaining intermarried families in which the Jewish spouse was once Conservative but no longer felt comfortable in a Conservative synagogue after marrying a non-Jew, according to the population data and demographic authorities.

Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding.

Orthodox Jews maintain the tradition of discouraging conversions, while the Reform movement welcomes non-Jews who wish to convert. It is also fully accepting of intermarried couples, a position the Conservatives are far from adopting.

''We must become the movement that passionately encourages conversion and the raising of Jewish children . . . if we want to create a vibrant Jewish life," Epstein said. He called on clergy and lay leaders to make visits and telephone calls to invite gentiles married to congregants to participate and have their children participate in Jewish life.

Any group that offers an alternative to two competing movements by splitting the difference between them is bound to have problems.