How Conservative Judaism Got Everything Right but Religion

Reflecting on his intensely Jewish upbringing, with parents who were active members of a Conservative synagogue and who sent him to Conservative day schools, Gil Troy wonders why neither he nor his brothers remained loyal to what was once American Jewry’s largest denomination. Rather than move to Reform or lose their synagogue affiliation altogether, Troy’s brothers both became Orthodox, while he himself observes Shabbat and kashrut, even if he prefers the term “traditional.” Troy tries to explain why the once-vibrant movement “flopped.”