A Manifesto for the Future: The ShefaNetwork Archive: Conservative/Masorti Judaism Dreaming from Within

The future of Conservative/Masorti Judaism depends on voices like those shared in this book, which was created to fulfill the mission of ShefaNetwork: to bring together dreamers from within the Conservative/Masorti Movement and to give their dreams an audible voice. ShefaNetwork was born in December of 2004 to create a virtual community of professional and lay activists in the Conservative/Masorti movement and a place to discuss the movement’s direction and ways of strengthening Conservative Judaism for the future. Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of the Shefa enterprise is the way it has avoided strict boundaries between the intellectual and the practical. Shefa has provided a very fruitful engagement between intellectuals and practitioners, many of whom should be described as falling in both categories. This is as it should be, because a religious movement needs both a coherent vision with philosophical rigor and historical perspective, and the practical wisdom to enact this vision. Usually, these two tasks are not done well by the same people, but that too is a bias that leads us to divide the world into “theorists” and “practitioners,” as if the two are from different planets. If the Conservative movement is going to succeed in creating spiritual communities in its schools, synagogues and camps, it will have to bring together the theological visions of the movement’s intellectual lights with the practical wisdom of professionals and lay people. The most important accomplishment of ShefaNetwork may be that it has begun a conversation that includes all of these essential voices.