Conservative Judaism has its roots in the school of thought known as Positive-Historical Judaism, developed in 1850s Germany as a reaction to the more liberal religious positions taken by Reform Judaism.

In Europe the movement was known as Positive-Historical Judaism, and it is still known as " the historical school.

He called his approach towards Judaism " Positive-Historical ," which meant that one should have a positive attitude towards accepting Jewish law and tradition as normative, yet one should be open to developing the law in the same fashion that it has always historically developed.

He called his approach towards Judaism ' Positive-Historical ', which meant that one should accept Jewish law and tradition as normative, yet one must be open to changing and developing the law in the same historical fashion that Judaism has always historically developed.

Conservative Judaism ( also known as Masorti Judaism outside of the United States and Canada ) is a modern stream of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s.

UK Reform, UK Liberal Judaism and Israeli Progressive Movement can all trace their intellectual roots to the Reform movement in Judaism.

Although North American Reform, UK Reform, UK Liberal Judaism and Israeli Progressive Judaism all share an intellectual heritage, they have taken places at different ends of the non-orthodox spectrum.

In his 1954 responsum on relations with non-Orthodox Judaism, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik developed the intellectual foundations for the way Modern Orthodox Judaism was to approach the issue in subsequent decades.

This school of thought was the intellectual progenitor of Conservative Judaism.

He claims, however, that the Jewish tradition did not base its belief in God primarily on intellectual activity because Judaism is theistic, believing in a personal God: just as we do not come to know people through creating proofs of their existence, so too that has not been the primary way in which Jews have come to know God.

Samson Raphael Hirsch ( June 20, 1808 – December 31, 1888 ) was a German rabbi best known as the intellectual founder of the Torah im Derech Eretz school of contemporary Orthodox Judaism.

This work made a profound impression in German Jewish circles because it was something new — a brilliant, intellectual presentation of Orthodox Judaism in classic German, and a fearless, uncompromising defense of all its institutions and ordinances.

Additionally, whereas the Modern Orthodox position is ( generally ) presented as " unquestioned allegiance to the primacy of Torah, and that the apprehension of all other intellectual disciplines must be rooted and viewed through the prism of Torah ", Haredi groups have sometimes compared Modern Orthodoxy with early Reform Judaism in Germany: Modern Orthodox Rabbis have been criticised for attempting to modify Jewish law, in adapting Judaism to the needs of the modern world.

The founder of the Chabad philosophy, Shneur Zalman of Liadi, developed an intellectual system and an approach to Judaism intended to answer criticisms of Hasidism as anti-intellectual.

The story of Bahshamiyya Mu ' tazili and Qadariyya is as important, if not more so, as the intellectual symbiosis of Judaism and Islam in Islamic Spain.

Each world religion, including but not limited to, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, Sikhism and Buddhism, is an interpretation of this universal truth adapted to cater for the psychological, intellectual and social needs of a given culture of a given period of history.

Pasachoff and Littman point to the reinterpretation of the lex talionis as an example of the ability of Pharisaic Judaism to " adapt to changing social and intellectual ideas.

The characteristically " Lithuanian " approach to Judaism was marked by a concentration on highly intellectual Talmud study.

Using the term Jewish ethnocentrism, he argues that Judaism fosters in Jews a series of marked genetic traits, including above-average verbal intelligence and a strong tendency toward collectivist behavior, as manifested in a series of influential intellectual movements.

It is the academic and intellectual center of Humanistic Judaism.

In 1946, he moved to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the intellectual center for Conservative Judaism.

Traditionally Judaism credits Ezra with establishing the Great Assembly of scholars and prophets, the forerunner of the Sanhedrin, as the authority on matters of religious law.

In 1946, he took a position at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America ( JTS ), the main seminary of Conservative Judaism, where he served as professor of Jewish ethics and Mysticism until his death in 1972.

Because of this potential for confusion, a number of Conservative Rabbis have proposed renaming the movement, and outside of the United States and Canada, in many countries including Israel and the UK, it is today known as Masorti Judaism ( Hebrew for " Traditional ").

In the United States and Canada, the term Conservative, as applied, does not always indicate that a congregation is affliliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the movement's central institution and the one to which the term, without qualifier, usually refers.

The moniker Conservadox is sometimes employed to refer to the right wing of the Conservative spectrum, although " Traditional " is used as well ( as in the Union for Traditional Judaism ).

* The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism ( USCJ ) in the United States and Canada,

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.

The fortunes of Conservative Judaism underwent a dramatic turnaround when in 1902, the famed scholar Solomon Schechter, lecturer in Talmud at the University of Cambridge, accepted the invitation to become president of JTS.

In 1913, the Conservative Movement founded its congregational arm, the United Synagogue of America, which would later become the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

Conservative Judaism enjoyed rapid growth in the first half of the 20th century, becoming the largest American Jewish denomination.

After World War II, Conservative Judaism continued to thrive.

Conservative Judaism occupied an enviable middle position during a period where American society prized consensus.

By the 1990s Conservative Judaism continued to flourish, yet dichotomies of practice and belief, which had been present for years, began to formulate.

Working with this 1990s trend of diversity and institutional growth, Conservative Judaism remained the largest denomination in America, with 43 percent of Jewish households affiliated with a synagogue belonging to Conservative synagogues ( compared to 35 percent for Reform and 16 percent for Orthodox ).

For the first time in nearly a century, Conservative Judaism is no longer the largest denomination in America.

`` I want to show respect for my parents' religion '' was the way in which a boy justified his inhabiting a halfway house of Judaism.

Rabbi Trugman states that in the last five centuries the concept of reincarnation, which until then had been a much hidden tradition within Judaism, was given open exposure.

Germain Morin broke new ground by suggesting in 1899 that the writer was Isaac, a converted Jew and writer of a tract on the Trinity and Incarnation, who was exiled to Spain in 378-380 and then relapsed to Judaism ; but he afterwards abandoned this theory of the authorship in favour of Decimus Hilarianus Hilarius, proconsul of Africa in 377.

In 2008, psychology professor Benny Shanon published a controversial hypothesis that a brew analogous to Ayahuasca was heavily connected to early Judaism, and that the effects of this brew were responsible for some of the most significant events of Moses ' life, including his vision of the burning bush.

Above all, he was a thorough believer in revelation and in a divine providence, and was a sincere, law-observing follower of rabbinical Judaism.

While Judah I was still living, Rav, having been duly ordained as teacher — though not without certain restrictions ( Sanhedrin 5a )— returned to Babylonia, where he at once began a career that was destined to mark an epoch in the development of Babylonian Judaism.

Heschel was particularly spurned by his colleague Mordechai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, and many students who attended JTS in the 1950s sympathized with Kaplan over Heschel.

Disraeli spoke in favour of the measure, arguing that Christianity was " completed Judaism ," and asking of the House of Commons " Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?

While animal sacrifice was part of the practice of ancient Judaism, the Tanakh ( Old Testament ) and Jewish teaching portray human sacrifice as one of the evils that separated the pagans of Canaan from the Hebrews (, ).

At the time of Jesus, there was no single, coherent form or order within Second Temple Judaism, and significant political, social and religious differences existed among the Jews.

Its principal founder was Rabbi Zecharias Frankel, who had broken with the German Reform Judaism in 1845 over its rejection of the primacy of the Hebrew language in Jewish prayer and the rejection of the laws of kashrut.

However, Frankel's use of modern methods of historical scholarship in analyzing Jewish texts and developing Jewish law set him apart from neo-Orthodox Judaism, which was concurrently developing under the leadership of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.

The differences between the more modern and traditional branches of American Judaism came to a head in 1883, at the " Trefa Banquet " at the Highland House entertainment pavilion, which was at the top of the Mount Adams Incline – where shellfish and other non-kosher dishes were served at the celebration of the first graduating class of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.

After a substantial gift from Los Angeles philanthropist Ruth Ziegler, a new rabbinical school was formed at the American Jewish University ( then University of Judaism ) in Bel Air, California.

Conservative Judaism is comfortable with higher criticism, including the documentary hypothesis, the theory that the Torah was redacted from several earlier sources.

However, Conservative Judaism also rejects the Reform view, that the Torah was not revealed but divinely inspired.

Conservative Judaism believes that its approach is the most authentic expression of Judaism as it was traditionally practiced.