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The fourth chapter describes the rise of Jewish seminaries in America and their reconstruction of the tradition in the light of modern scholarship. Two traditions of schooling—one Reformed the other Conservative—are explored. The founder of Hebrew Union College (HUC), Isaac Wise, developed a curriculum for a “progressive and enlightened” Judaism that could engage with American education and culture. Moses Mielziner prepared a widely used introduction to the Talmud that argued for the reasoned development of halakah (law) from a more historical reading of the Torah. HUC included reforms of the Siddur or prayer book, egalitarian synagogue life for men and women, and a view of an “American Zion” as the best hope for Jewry. Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) was founded by the Orthodox rabbi Sabato Morais to advance a unified, developmental understanding of Judaism according to the Breslau school in Germany. Under Solomon Schechter, JTS became one of the world centers of Wissenschaft des Judentums (or modern study of) as it mobilized rigorous text-critical scholarship, historical studies, and the Hebrew language to advance the Jewish tradition.

This chapter focuses on events following Solomon Schechter's arrival in America in 1902. Schechter was recruited to transform the struggling Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) into a world-renowned center for scholarship. He shaped the new Seminary into an institution that came to be known simply as Schechter's Seminary. He also envisioned a unified American Judaism that would be both committed to tradition and would appeal to the children of immigrants. To implement his vision, he trained a diverse cadre of disciples, serving as not only a teacher and mentor to them but also as a father figure and friend. These personal relationships created a charismatic bond between master and disciple, overcoming the diversity within the group and ensuring that the disciples would endure great personal sacrifice to see Schechter's vision become reality. Their shared mission would be the first seed of a vague group consciousness, which was strengthened by the personal friendships and shared experiences amongst the disciples themselves. This vague group consciousness would later be institutionalized as the foundation of the Conservative movement.

This chapter discusses the time when Heschel joined the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary. By the end of June 1945, he had submitted his chapter, “The Mystical Element in Judaism,” for JTS president Finkelstein's edited volume The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion, explaining, “I had to confine myself to the Zohar in order to give the reader a somewhat comprehensive idea of one phase of Jewish mysticism.” In the following month, Heschel participated in the JTS alumni summer session, a symposium on the theme “My Faith as a Jew.” From that time forward, nuclear annihilation and the Holocaust became indelibly associated in Heschel's mind.

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, namely to explain the emergence of Conservative Judaism as the third movement in American Jewish life, after Orthodox and Reform, in the first half of the twentieth century. By focusing a historical lens on the role of rabbis trained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, it demonstrates that members of a previously neglected group—Solomon Schechter's disciples—were in fact the ones who created Conservative Judaism over the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter discusses how integrating the study of Conservative Judaism into the growing field of new religious movements explains its emergence in a way that previous approaches cannot. It also clarifies how Schechter can be viewed as a charismatic religious leader.

This epilogue first discusses the postwar growth of Conservative Judaism, which owed much to its shift from an all-embracing Catholic Israel to a movement of the religious center, positioned between Orthodoxy and Reform. It then describes the state of the Conservative movement in twenty-first century. It concludes that Conservative Judaism is currently at a crossroads, with its numbers sharply declining in recent decades. The movement faces difficult choices as it struggles between a commitment to tradition and a desire for change, between those who advocate for a broadly encompassing “big tent” movement and those who seek a more narrowly defined, ideologically coherent one. It will be best prepared to confront them if it understands itself historically and appreciates the way in which Schechter's disciples created this American religious movement.