ABSTRACT
Solomon Schechter (1850-1915), educated in Central Europe and Germany, after an academic post at Cambridge was appointed head of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. There, this scholar, deeply attached to Jewish traditions, yet open to modern currents of thought, convinced that the Reform tendency was cutting away too much and concerned to provide a Jewish educational framework for the new immigrants, spoke for what became Conservative Judaism. To adapt, but not to sacrifice what was valuable, was the the larger purpose behind Schechter's emphasis in his Commencement Address to the Seminary in 1907.
