conservatism

Recently, I spoke to Reform rabbinical students in their class on \”Jewish Political Tradition.\” Which is, exactly, what? My expertise, I told them, is politics, not theology. Here was my dilemma: to talk reality or defer to the orthodoxy of Reform Jews, which is to say, political liberalism. (Forget the Reconstructionists, i.e., Jewish Unitarians, who are oxymoronic \”religious\” secular humanists.) How confusing all this, especially for non-Jews, who are further told that Conservative Jews are somewhere between Reform Jews and Orthodox Jews — sort of like the words \”liberal\” and \”conservative.\”