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I heard anecdotally that the early JTS president Solomon Schechter was not, but I have been unable to find a citation either way on this claim.

Schechter was allegedly one of the most accomplished Jewish academic scholars and had enormous influence on the development of American Judaism, for better or worse. Consequently, knowing whether he was shomer shabbos has large implications for how we view JTS and Conservative Judaism as sociological movements at the beginning of the 20th century. Further, the answer to this question has possible implications on how we view contemporary halachic innovation movements such as YCT.

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    You might want to explain what this has to do with Judaism. As it stands this question is about a particular Jew, which is not on topic. – user6591 Feb 29 '16 at 01:53
  • @user6591 Hmmm... well this was left open http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/66747/759 Perhaps they should both be closed – Double AA Feb 29 '16 at 02:04
  • True. I've asked a question like this myself. Iirc you had a long discussion with someone about which of these types of questions get closed or not. I didn't vote to close, just offering advise to make the question somewhat more on topic and interesting to people. – user6591 Feb 29 '16 at 02:06
  • I am sure he was, but I agree this question isn't really on topic. In 1915, at the time of his passing, Conservative Judaism was still a Left-Wing Orthodoxy. Notice how he named the synagogue arm "United Synagogue of America", after the Orthodox Jewish synagogue organization of the UK. And even within C, he was among the more traditional. That said, he held beliefs that in retrospect were definitely the beginning of the slippery slope. – Micha Berger Feb 29 '16 at 02:09
  • Perhaps consider rephrasing the question to "Are the beliefs of Solmon Shechter consistent with Orthodox Judaism". A good answer would include some mention of his religious observance. – mevaqesh Feb 29 '16 at 02:12
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    AFAICT, a question that's about an individual (or anything else) is not off-topic if it's also about Judaism, and this is about sh'miras Shabas, so about Judaism. That said, I really don't think we should have billions of questions asking whether each person who's ever lived was shomer Shabas, so don't think we should have this question absent some explanation in it of why it's a Judaism-ly interesting question. – msh210 Feb 29 '16 at 07:21
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    @msh210, your argument puts this question into a similar class with questions that ask nothing more than "Does Judaism say anything about ?" As such, it's not off-topic, as written, but is unclear, so I'm voting to close it as such. The question about R' David M. Feldman, on the other hand, supplies Judaism-oriented motivation, so it does not have the same flaw. – Isaac Moses Feb 29 '16 at 14:50

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