The relationships between the various denominations of Judaism are complex and include a range of trends from the conciliatory and welcoming to hostile and antagonistic.
It views religious pluralism as a construct of the liberal movements, and does not see their ideology as rooted in historic Jewish norms.
When dealing with the individual, Moshe Feinstein is famously quoted as characterizing all current-day non-Orthodox Jews as Tinokot Shenishbu, literally, "captured children", in a category analogous to Jewish children captured by non-Jews who were never taught Judaism, meaning that they do not act out of wrong intent or motives, but out of ignorance and poor upbringing (Iggeroth Moshe).
[citation needed] However, when dealing with the movement/philosophy, they perceive the generation of other denominations to have historically been engendered by heretical intent and the 1800s widespread denigration of religion.
As such, Orthodox authorities have strongly fought attempts by the Reform and Conservative movements to gain official recognition and denominational legitimacy in Israel.
Haredi Judaism has seen a great resurgence in its popularity, and many formerly Modern Orthodox rabbis have been swayed to some degree by their views.
Some within the Orthodox world advocate that while non-Orthodox forms of Judaism are incorrect, they nonetheless have functional validity and spiritual dignity.
From a functional point of view, therefore, non-Orthodox rabbis are valid leaders of Jewish religious communities, and it is both fatuous and self-defeating not to acknowledge this openly and draw the necessary consequences - for example, establishing friendly and harmonious and respectful relationships and working together, all of us, towards those Jewish communal and global goals that we share and that unite us inextricably and indissolubly.... ...non-Orthodox rabbis and laypeople may possess spiritual dignity.
If they are sincere, if they believe in God, if they are motivated by principle, and not by convenience or trendiness, if they endeavor to carry out the consequences of their faith in a consistent manner—then they are religious people....
The first question the editor asked the rabbis was: "Do you believe that recent developments warrant the triumphalism exhibited by segments of Orthodoxy which predict the total disappearance of non-Orthodox movements?"
For example, since the Central Conference of American Rabbis passed their 1983 resolution to recognize patrilineal descent, the Conservative movement has not accepted Reform converts to Judaism.
A prominent Conservative spokesman has written: Reform has asserted the right of interpretation but it rejected the authority of legal tradition.
Reform viewed Orthodoxy as overly focused on tradition and a literal interpretation of scripture that conflicted with modern science.
Karaite Judaism does not recognize the Oral Law as a divine authority, maintaining that the Written Torah, and the subsequent prophets which God sent to Israel, whose writings are recorded in the Tanakh, are the only suitable sources for deriving halakha, which Karaite Judaism maintains, must not deviate from the plain meaning of the Hebrew Bible.
Karaite Jews also maintain that Rabbinic Jews are not observing Jewish holy days on their correct date, because the dates are fixed according to the pre-calculated Hillel II calendar, instead of beginning each month with the sighting of the New Moon from the horizon of Israel, and starting the year during the month when the barley reaches the stage of Aviv in the land of Israel.