SMALL DENOMINATION SEES SELF AS BELLWETHER FOR U.S. JEWS.

Byline: Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

With just 10,000 members in the denomination, the Jewish Reconstructionist Movement is smaller than the congregations of some synagogues.

So is it the future of American Judaism?

The Reconstructionists seem to think so.

``Most non-Orthodox Jews are Reconstructionist. They just don't know it,'' Rabbi Mordecai Liebling quipped during a break in the denomination's annual convention this week at the Hotel Atop the Bellevue.

Such remarks may irk the nation's 2.4 million Reform Jews, the 2.2 million Conservatives and the 400,000 Orthodox. But the Reconstructionists, who view Judaism as an evolving religious civilization, believe their blend of ritual observances and creative liturgies is just what America's increasingly intermarried and assimilated Jews are looking for.

``Soon there will be just two branches of Judaism,'' Rabbi Ira Eisenstein told the denomination's board Thursday morning. ``Those who think they can keep all the mitzvot or commandments and those who keep only certain mitzvot, but know why and what they mean.''

He is the son-in-law of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, who founded Reconstructionism in the early part of this century. The denomination's headquarters and rabbinical college are in suburban Wyncote.

The movement stresses Jewish spirituality and liturgy but downplays traditional Jewish belief in a supernatural God or any strict observance of Jewish law.

``We don't think of ourselves as the chosen people and don't believe in the bodily resurrection of the dead,'' said Rabbi Liebling, executive director of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, the lay arm of the movement.