American Reform Judaism: An Introduction

Chapter 1: A Historical Overview

6 Chapter 1 We are children of the nineteenth century, proud of our mother, and her motto shall be our watchword: emancipation of the mind, mental culture, redeems the human family from the misery of existence in all its forms. —isaac mayer wise, 1884 The reform movement was a bold historical response to the dramatic events of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe. Despite the frequent claim that pluralism has always been a central feature of Jewish life, the idea that Jews could practice their faith according to the moral precepts of Judaism but without complete adherence to the code of Jewish law was a radical one. Jews had been a persecuted minority in Christian Europe for hundreds of years. Despite or perhaps because of this, they developed a thriving spiritual and religious life inside their own community. But the increasing political centralization of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries undermined the societal structure that perpetuated this way of life. At the same time, Enlightenment ideas began to influence not only a small group of intellectuals but also wider circles. The resulting political, economic, and social changes were profound. From a religious point of view, Jews felt a tension between Jewish tradition and the way they were now leading their lives. Many responded to this new situation by observing less and less of that tradition. As the insular religious society that reinforced such A Historical Overview A Historical Overview 7 observance disintegrated, it was easy to fall away from vigilant observance without deliberately breaking with Judaism. Over the course of a few decades, a large percentage of the Jews of central Europe were no longer sure exactly how much of the traditional belief they subscribed to. Some tried to reconcile their religious heritage with their new social surroundings by reforming traditional Judaism to meet their new needs and to express their spiritual yearnings. Gradually these efforts became a movement with a set of religious beliefs, with practices that were considered expected as well as practices regarded as antiquated, and with an identity as a coherent and cohesive modern Jewish religious stream or denomination. Reform Judaism was the first of the modern responses to the emancipation of the Jews, a political process that occurred over an extended period. Orthodoxy is the branch of Judaism that believes in the literal transmission of both the written and oral Torah from God to Moses at Mount Sinai. It believes that as a consequence of that revelation all Jews must observe halacha, Jewish law, as interpreted by the sages. Orthodoxy saw itself as the direct continuation of medieval Judaism, although the movement formed to protect traditional values from the corrosive effects of modernity. Conservative Judaism, which developed in response to the perception of many that Reform Judaism was going too far, traces its origins to 1845, when Zacharias Frankel protested the majority opinion at a Reform rabbinical conference in Frankfurt am Main that the use of Hebrew in worship was only advisable, not required. In the United States, the serving of shellfish at the first Hebrew Union College graduation precipitated the organization of those who favored change in the context of traditional observance. Eventually, these dissenters coalesced into what became the Conservative movement . A fourth denomination was Reconstructionism, the only one of the major movements completely indigenous to the United States. Mordecai Kaplan argued the Reconstructionist view that Judaism was an evolving religious civilization, not simply a religion in the narrow sense of the term. Reconstructionism developed out of Conservative Judaism before and after World War II but in recent decades has grown closer to the Reform movement. Nevertheless, Richard Hirsh has argued persuasively that the two movements remain distinct theologically .1 8 american reform judaism Because of its stress on autonomy—both of the individual and of the congregation—Reform Judaism has manifested itself differently in various countries. Nevertheless, Reform communities throughout the world share certain characteristics. Although many Orthodox Jews harbor the stereotyped view that Reform Jews believe nothing about religion , Reform Jews believe that religious change is legitimate and that Judaism has changed over the centuries as society has changed. While in the past this evolutionary process was subconscious and organic, in the modern world it has become deliberate. The guiding principal of the contemporary Reform movement is that it can adapt Jewish religious beliefs and practices to the needs of the Jewish people from generation...