Conservative responsa

Conservative Judaism views halakha (Jewish law) as normative and binding. The Conservative movement applies Jewish law to the full range of Jewish belief and practice, including thrice-daily prayer, Shabbat and holidays, marital relations and family purity, conversion, dietary laws (kashrut), and Jewish medical ethics. Institutionally, the Conservative movement rules on Jewish law both through centralized decisions, primarily by the Rabbinical Assembly and its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, and through congregational rabbis at the local level. Conservative authorities produced a voluminous Responsa literature.

Conservative Jewish thinkers take the position that halakha can and should evolve to meet the changing reality of Jewish life. Conservative Judaism, therefore, views that traditional Jewish legal codes must be viewed through the lens of academic criticism. As Solomon Schechter noted, "however great the literary value of a code may be, it does not invest it with infallibility, nor does it exempt it from the student or the rabbi who makes use of it from the duty of examining each paragraph on its own merits, and subjecting it to the same rules of interpretation that were always applied to Tradition".

Conservative Judaism believes that its view of Jewish law as evolving and adaptable is indeed consistent with Jewish tradition. (See also, the various positions within contemporary Judaism as regards halakha and the Talmud.)

Conservative Judaism relies on a somewhat different Jewish legal methodology than is typical of Orthodoxy. The prominent Conservative rabbi Mordecai Waxman has written that "Reform Judaism has asserted the right of interpretation but it rejected the authority of legal tradition. Orthodoxy has clung fast to the principle of authority, but has rejected the right to significant reinterpretations. The Conservative view is that both are necessary for a living Judaism. Accordingly, Conservative Judaism holds itself bound by the Jewish legal tradition, but asserts the right of its rabbinical body, acting as a whole, to reinterpret and to apply Jewish law."

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