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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 describes Solomon Schechter's efforts to turn his vision of a united American Jewry into reality. In 1912 Schechter was resigned to the fact that his vision for American Judaism was failing, with only a handful of congregations receptive to his message. Faced with the realization that he could not implement his vision on his own, he turned to his disciples. Initially, they worked closely with congregational lay leaders whom they felt might be receptive to Schechter's message. But it soon became clear that this unorganized and haphazard approach was bearing little fruit. Hoping to create a more effective system, Schechter's disciples pressed their teacher to create the United Synagogue of America, which would allow them to coordinate their efforts on a national scale. Schechter supported this idea, provided that the organization welcomed all disciples, regardless of their differences. Already aware of a vague group consciousness, the disciples heeded Schechter's call to work together, and this internal unity was institutionalized through the United Synagogue's inclusive leadership structure. That leadership structure remained in place after Schechter's death, and the group consciousness strengthened, sustaining the internal unity upon which Schechter had insisted.

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 chapter discusses the challenges faced by Schechter's disciples in the 1920s. Among these was increased marginalization by modern Orthodox rabbis in the Orthodox Union (OU) and by fervently Orthodox rabbis in the Agudath ha-Rabbanim. These rabbis refused to join the United Synagogue and instead began to define it as antithetical to Orthodoxy—precisely because of its inclusivity and its refusal to repudiate rabbis who deviated from Orthodoxy. Thus, ironically, the United Synagogue's commitment to inclusivity was making unity increasingly unlikely. The disciples also found their hegemony challenged by an increasingly empowered laity. Congregational lay leaders continued to hold power over rabbis at the local level and often expected more from the rabbi than he could possibly deliver. This, combined with the effects of an American religious depression, led to frequent job turnover and hampered Schechter's disciples' efforts to shape their congregations as they wished. Moreover, while the laity was firmly in control on the local level, the 1920s saw them gaining increased national prominence as well. All this meant that, by 1927, Schechter's disciples were on the brink of irrelevance.

From 1913–1918, the United Synagogue of America remained staunchly committed to diversity. Its members overlooked their vast differences, choosing instead to work together to implement Schechter's vision. Not everybody, however, believed that this was the best path for strengthening traditional Judaism in America. This chapter focuses on the two disciples who challenged Schechter's inclusivity: Mordecai Kaplan the “heretic” and Herbert S. Goldstein the “maverick.” The experiences of Kaplan and Goldstein demonstrate that prior to 1927 the United Synagogue did not represent a distinct, third religious movement with boundaries that clearly distinguished it from other movements. Instead, it was an ethnoreligious group with elastic boundaries that stretched wide enough to unify the disciples who chose to join forces to implement the vision of Solomon Schechter.