מעגן פרויען גיין אין תפילין וציצית?

On what issues do Conservative
laypeople actually behave in a certain way simply
because their rabbinate says they should? “Few, if any,”

That is why it is particularly astonishing that such
a gargantuan volume has not even a single chapter devoted
to why Conservative Jews should care about living
an “observant life” in the fi rst place. There are moments
when some of the authors seem to want to try. “Halacha
is what committed Jews do,” Katz writes in his fi ne introduction.
This is absolutely true, but that is as far as the
claim gets pushed. “But why must committed Jews do
this?” is the obvious retort. Nothing in TOL suggests an
answer. It’s bound to leave thinking but yearning Jews
empty, searching elsewhere.
Conservative Judaism admittedly has a tough
row to hoe. Classic claims about the authority of halacha
are much harder to sustain in light of Conservative
Judaism’s openness to biblical criticism than they are
in classic Orthodox intellectual circles.

There are hungry souls in America, waiting for
the religious center to speak to them in a way that
will move them. But Conservative Judaism still seems
addicted to the soulless language that has dogged it
since the 1950s. Compare the following two sentences.
Rabbi Karen Reiss Medwed’s chapter on prayer, which
essentially opens the book, begins as follows: “The obligation
to engage in daily prayer is one of Scripture’s
less well-defi ned commandments.” In contrast, Rabbi
Jonathan Sacks’s introduction to prayer in the relatively
new Koren Siddur, intended primarily for use by
Orthodox Jews, opens by asserting that “Prayer is the
language of the soul in conversation with God.”
What more is there to say? Is there any doubt
about which mode of address will gain adherents?