For decades, conservative and Republican Jews have been waiting for their co-religionists to join them in larger numbers as members of the liberal intelligentsia and policymakers have become increasingly critical of or hostile to Israel and increasingly indifferent to or actual contributors to a generalized antipathy toward more Orthodox Jewish communities. Like the man in the shtetl who has given himself the job of waiting for the coming of the Messiah, it had long since come to seem hopeless