Confirmation Education from the Old World to the New: A 150 Year Follow-up

The internet posting for Temple Beth Torah's (a Reform congregation in Ventura, California) confirmation class appears unremarkable: ¹

Kabbalat Torah (Confirmation)

Kabbalat Torah will be taught by Rabbi Lisa. "Kabbalat Torah" means, "receiving the Torah," which in turn means accepting the responsibility of living a life according to the teachings of Judaism. The curriculum, entitled "What Do I Believe?" will include topics such as personal ethics and choices, God, and Jewish observance, is designed to help the students clarify for themselves, with the guidance of the Rabbi, their personal beliefs within the context of Judaism.

This innocuous blurb masks major changes in American Jewish education. The confirmation ceremony was one of the flagship innovations of newly emancipated, early nineteenth century European Jewry. That the original Christian term "confirmation" has been replaced by the Hebrew neologism "Kabbalat Torah," shows how far Reform Judaism has traveled in these 200 years; that "confirmation" is retained parenthetically indicates that the change in terminology is recent. The content of these classes has also changed, from formal catechism to a search for personal Jewish meaning: "What do I believe" rather than "we." Finally, that the class is taught by "Rabbi Lisa" (Hochberg-Miller, ordained in 1991 by the Reform Hebrew Union College, which had ordained the first American woman rabbi in 1972) is appropriate for the educational innovation which was a major entree for Jewish girls into formal Jewish education in the modern era.

The dearth of research on the history of American Jewish education has been somewhat redressed by Graff's recent panoramic survey, which provides the broad framework for others to fill in. ² His book contains a single mention of the confirmation ceremony, the one instituted by the European-born and trained Orthodox rabbi Bernard Illowy, as reported in Illowy's son's 1914 biography of his father. Illowy targeted confirmation to those mid-nineteenth century Jewish children not enrolled in all day Jewish schools: "He introduced the confirmation on Shabuot . . . six months before Shabuot the class began its work, instruction in Bible history, in the tenets of the faith and its ceremonials, in the ceremonial laws and in the prayers. Boys who had not learned to lay Tephillin (phylacteries) were taught to do so and were impressed with the necessity of doing so every morning." ³ On this innovation, Graff comments: "[Illowy] adopted the confirmation ceremony that had been introduced by religious reformers. Consistent with the American pattern of equal educational opportunity for children of both sexes, it appears that the only gender-based curricular difference in the training he provided was in the matter of teaching boys to don tefillin."

Graff's comment is noteworthy in two regards. First, much of Illowy's career in America was spent battling the religious innovations of the Reform movement (e.g. his denouncing the new Merzbacher Reform prayer book in 1855). ⁴ His sixteen years in the active rabbinate (1853-1869) were divided among six different congregations, as he often left a pulpit when pressured by congregants to adopt Reform practice. ⁵ It seems we shall never know whether he knew of confirmation while yet in central Europe, or learned of the ceremony only on his arrival in America. Or, more intriguingly, perhaps he had rejected the practice in Europe (as did most of Orthodoxy) but accepted it in America, despite his staunch opposition to other religious reforms. Second, Graff points out the ostensible equal involvement of boys and girls in the confirmation ceremony (and Illowy's other educational endeavors), though without actual enrollment figures, the extent of the equality is unknown.

As there is no comprehensive history of the confirmation ceremony in the U.S., I intend to explore in a preliminary way four issues, which grow out of Graff's anecdote:

• • the transition of the confirmation ceremony to America from its beginnings in Europe;

• • the role confirmation played in providing girls access to Jewish education;

• • confirmation as an example of hybridity in modern Jewish education; and

• • historic ironies in the contemporary impact of confirmation versus its controversial origins. [End Page 214...