Go, go "Modern Conservative"!

In this weeks Jewish News of Phoenix, I read this interesting Letter to the Editor:

Editor:
I have been closely following the emergence of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT) and its leadership for some time. Your city and your newspaper are fortunate to have the enjoyable writing and avant garde thinking of Rabbi Darren Kleinberg.

The emergence of Chovevei Torah reminds me of the aspirations of the Conservative movement of yore. As a former seminarian myself, I hear in the voice of Rabbi Kleinberg and his brave YCT colleagues the voices of "reform" from an antiquated Orthodoxy and "conservation" of an essential, but modified, halachic framework that motivated the common path of my generation away from traditional observance. I applaud them for reigniting the theological flame of the early Conservative movement and wish Rabbi Kleinberg continued success in spreading a "modern" Torah in your city.

I only wish he and his leaders would call this brave venture the more apt "Modern Conservative" that I, at my age, believe it to be.

Alan Siegel
Netanya, Israel