Like Reform Judaism, the Conservative movement developed in Europe and the United States in the 19th century, as Jews reacted to the changes brought about by the Enlightenment and Jewish emancipation, a confluence of events that lead to Haskalah, or the Jewish Enlightenment.

In 2000, the NJPS showed that only 33 percent of synagogue-affiliated American Jews belonged to a Conservative synagogue.

Conservative Jews hold a wide array of views on the subject of revelation.

Many Conservative Jews reject the traditional Jewish idea that God literally dictated the words of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai in a verbal revelation, but they hold the traditional Jewish belief that God inspired the later prophets to write the rest of the Tanakh.

Many Conservative Jews believe that Moses was inspired by God in the same manner as the later prophets.

Conservative Jews who reject the concept of verbal revelation believe that God revealed his will to Moses and other prophets in a non-verbal form — that is, God's revelation did not include the particular words of the divine texts.

Conservative Jews believe that movements to its left, such as Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism, have erred by rejecting the traditional authority of Jewish law and tradition.

The Conservative movement is committed to Jewish pluralism and respects the religious practices of Reform and Reconstructionist Jews.

For instance, if two men and a woman were to eat a meal together, a Conservative Jew would believe that the presence of three adult Jews would obligate the group to say a communal form of the Grace After Meals, while an Orthodox Jew would believe that, lacking three adult Jewish males, the group would not be able to do such.

Conservative Rabbis are not allowed to perform intermarriages ( marriages between Jews and non-Jews ).

Orthodox Jewish leaders vary considerably in their dealings with the Conservative movement and with individual Conservative Jews.

Some Modern Orthodox leaders cooperate and work with the Conservative movement, while haredi (" Ultra-Orthodox ") Jews often eschew formal contact with Conservative Judaism, or at least its rabbinate.

From the Orthodox perspective, Conservative Jews are considered just as Jewish as Orthodox Jews, but they are viewed as misguided, consistent violators of halakha.

* Jews in the Center: Conservative Synagogues and Their Members.

* Conservative Jews in Israel: Official Masorti Movement website

The three largest Jewish denominations — Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism — maintain the belief that the Jews have been chosen by God for a purpose.

" On August 13, 2002 American Catholic bishops issued a joint statement with leaders of Reform and Conservative Judaism, called " Reflections on Covenant and Mission ", which affirmed that Christians should not target Jews for conversion.

While Conservative Jews have varied views regarding the origin of the Torah and its authority today, and believe it can be continuously reinterpreted.

In nearly all Orthodox and a few Conservative circles, only male Jews are counted toward a minyan ; most Conservative Jews and members of other Jewish denominations count female Jews as well.

They were thus technically Anabaptists, even though Conservative Mennonites, Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites and some historians tend to consider them as outside of true Anabaptism.

In other streams of Judaism there is considerable variability: Sephardic communities may use Ladino or Portuguese for many prayers ; Conservative synagogues tend to use the local language to a varying degree ; and at some Reform synagogues almost the whole service may be in the local language.

Orthodox Jews tend to have a lower intermarriage rate than their Conservative and Reform counterparts.

In 2003 he explained his editorial policy for The Spectator was to " always be roughly speaking in favour of getting rid of Saddam, sticking up for Israel, free-market economics, expanding choice " and that the magazine was " not necessarily a Thatcherite Conservative or a neo-conservative magazine, even though in our editorial coverage we tend to follow roughly the conclusions of those lines of arguments ".

Conservative historical linguists tend to classify the Korean language as a language isolate, although other suggest a relationship to Altaic languages or to Japonic languages.

Conservative historical linguists tend to classify a small number of Japanese languages as a language family of their own.

Sephardic women, even apparently secular ones, are reputed to follow them strictly ; on the other hand, the rules tend not to be followed by Conservative and Reform Ashkenazi women.

Leading rabbis in Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, and Orthodox Judaism tend to hold that the death penalty is a correct and just punishment in theory, but they hold that it should not generally be used ( or not used at all ) in practice.

Conservative scholars tend to see nonworking poverty as a more urgent problem than working poverty because they believe that non-work is a moral hazard that leads to welfare dependency and laziness, whereas work, even poorly paid work, is morally beneficial.

Rural residents tend to vote for the Republican ticket, although there are a sizable number of Conservative Democrats.

Conservative support is centred in the interior of the riding, particularly in the upscale Lorne Park area, while the Liberals tend to do better along the waterfront of the riding, such as Port Credit and Lakeview, and the eastern and western edges of the riding.

Voters in the Vanderhoof and Prince George tend to vote more Conservative while voters in the Cariboo ( Quesnel, Williams Lake ) do not vote Conservative as much and vote more NDP.

Conservative economist Thomas Sowell has noted the converse relationship, noting that conservatives tend to have a hereditarian view of human nature ( Sowell calls this the " constrained " view ) and liberals tend to have a behaviorist (" unconstrained ") view.

They believe that the Orthodox Jewish movements, on the theological right, have erred by slowing down, or stopping, the historical development of Jewish law: " Conservative Judaism believes that scholarly study of Jewish texts indicates that Judaism has constantly been evolving to meet the needs of the Jewish people in varying circumstances, and that a central halakhic authority can continue the halakhic evolution today.

It appears the Urquharts believe that the affair will give him a power over Mattie that will enable him to manipulate her position at the main newspaper, The Chronicle, and subsequently skew her coverage of the Conservative Party's leadership contest.

They are strong advocates of marriage and believe the Conservative Party should back the institution with tax breaks and have opposed Labour's alleged assault on both traditional family structures and fatherhood.

Denominations like the Amish, Old Order Mennonites, and Conservative Mennonites believe in a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount.

Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, who developed Reconstructionist Judaism and taught at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary of America, also rejected the idea of a personal God, Kaplan instead thought of God " as a force, like gravity, built into the very structure of the universe ," believing that " since the universe is constructed to enable us to gain personal happiness and communal solidarity when we act morally, it follows that there is a moral force in the universe ; this force is what the Constructionists mean by God ," although some Reconstructionists do believe in a personal God.

:" The Conservative belief that there is some law of nature which prevents men from being employed, that it is ' rash ' to employ men, and that it is financially ' sound ' to maintain a tenth of the population in idleness for an indefinite period, is crazily improbable-the sort of thing which no man could believe who had not had his head fuddled with nonsense for years and years.

Jews who adhere to Orthodox or Conservative Rabbinism therefore believe that Jewish status by birth is passed by a Jewish female to her children ( if she herself is a Jew by birth or by conversion to Judaism ) regardless of the Jewish status of the father.

I think back to the last time a Conservative government was running the country and can't believe we might do it.

Portillo unexpectedly lost his Enfield Southgate seat at the 1997 general election ; political commentators widely believe that he would have been elected Conservative leader had he retained it.

Some Reform Party supporters were frustrated by the party's decision to expand its political base into Quebec as they continued to believe that the party should represent English Canada and others from the right-wing and populist faction of the party were angry that Manning punished MPs Bob Ringma and David Chatters During the campaign the Reform Party released a controversial television advertisement where the faces of four Quebec politicians: Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe, Progressive Conservative leader Jean Charest, and the separatist Premier of Quebec Lucien Bouchard were crossed out followed by a message saying that Quebec politicians had dominated the federal government for too long and that the Reform Party would end this favoritism towards Quebec.

This raised the Conservative total in the House of Commons to 126 members. Some believe these results indicate that the Conservatives have consolidated their position as the main federalist option in Quebec, outside of Montreal.

According to Conservative Judaism, Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah have " crossed the line out of the Jewish community ".

Anabaptist descendants including the Amish, Old Order Mennonites, and Conservative Mennonites believe in the two kingdom concept which " essentially " views the Church as the Kingdom of God.

Davies made his decision public in a letter to the Conservative leader David Cameron in which he wrote, " Under your leadership the Conservative Party appears to me to have ceased collectively to believe in anything, or to stand for anything.

Rabbis and other trained leaders officiate at intermarriages between Jews and non-Jews, and the Humanistic Judaism movement, unlike the Conservative and Orthodox Jewish denominations, does not take any position or action in opposition to intermarriage, rather it affirms that " Intermarriage is an American Jewish reality -- a natural consequence of a liberal society in which individuals have the freedom to marry whomever they wish ... that intermarriage is neither good nor bad, just as we believe that the marriage of two Jews, in itself, is neither good nor bad.

This time, the Conservative and other right-wing / Eurosceptic parties share their opposition to the treaty with Leftist parties who believe that the treaty will cement the Classical reCapitalist economic model that they believe the EU follows.