Beginnings '''" and omitting the traditional "
O gather our dispersions... Conduct us
unto Zion" passage. With the advent of
Jewish emancipation and
acculturation in Central Europe during the late 18th century, and the breakdown of traditional Jewish life, the proper response to the changed circumstances became a heated concern. Radical, second-generation Berlin
maskilim (Enlightened), like
Lazarus Bendavid and
David Friedländer, proposed to reduce Judaism to little above
Deism, or allow it to dissipate entirely. A more palatable course was the reform of worship in synagogues, making them more attractive to a generation whose aesthetic and moral taste became attuned to that of Christian surroundings. The first considered to have implemented such a course was the
Amsterdam Ashkenazi congregation, "Adath Jessurun", In 1796. Emulating the local
Sephardic custom, it omitted the "
Father of Mercy" prayer, beseeching God to take revenge upon the gentiles. The short-lived community employed fully traditional ("orthodox") argumentation to legitimize its actions, but is often regarded a harbinger by historians. A relatively thoroughgoing program was adopted by
Israel Jacobson, a philanthropist from the
Kingdom of Westphalia. Faith and observance were eroded for decades both by Enlightenment criticism and apathy, but Jacobson himself did not bother with those. He was interested in decorum, believing its lack in services was driving the young away. Many of the aesthetic reforms he pioneered, like a regular vernacular sermon on moralistic themes, would be later adopted by the
modernist Orthodox. On 17 July 1810, he dedicated a synagogue in
Seesen that employed an organ and a choir during prayer and introduced some German liturgy. While Jacobson was far from full-fledged Reform Judaism, this day was adopted by the movement worldwide as its foundation date. The Seesen temple – a designation quite common for prayerhouses at the time; "temple" would later become, somewhat misleadingly (and not exclusively), identified with Reform institutions via association with the elimination of prayers for the Jerusalem Temple – closed in 1813. Jacobson moved to Berlin and established a similar synagogue, which became a hub for like-minded intellectuals, interested in the betterment of religious experience. Though the prayerbook used in Berlin did introduce several deviations from the received text, it did so without an organizing principle. In 1818, Jacobson's acquaintance Edward Kley founded the
Hamburg Temple. Here, changes in the rite were eclectic no more and had severe dogmatic implications: prayers for the
restoration of sacrifices by the
Messiah and
Return to Zion were quite systematically omitted. The Hamburg edition is considered the first comprehensive Reform liturgy. While Orthodox protests to Jacobson's initiatives had been scant,
dozens of rabbis throughout Europe united to ban the Hamburg Temple. The Hamburg reformers, still attempting to play within the limits of rabbinic tradition, cited canonical sources in defence of their actions; they had the grudging support of one liberal-minded rabbi,
Aaron Chorin of
Arad, though even he never acceded to the removal of prayers for the sacrifices. The massive Orthodox reaction halted the advance of early Reform, confining it to the port city for the next twenty years. As acculturation and resulting religious apathy spread, many synagogues introduced mild aesthetic changes, such as vernacular sermons or somber conduct, yet these were carefully crafted to assuage conservative elements (though the staunchly Orthodox opposed them anyhow; secular education for rabbis, for example, was much resisted). One of the first to adopt such modifications was Hamburg's own Orthodox community, under the newly appointed modern Rabbi
Isaac Bernays. The less strict but still traditional
Isaac Noah Mannheimer of the
Vienna Stadttempel and
Michael Sachs in
Prague, set the pace for most of Central and Western Europe. They significantly altered custom, but wholly avoided dogmatic issues or overt injury to Jewish Law. An isolated, yet much more radical step in the same direction as Hamburg's, was taken across the ocean in 1824. The younger congregants in the
Charleston synagogue "
Beth Elohim" were disgruntled by present conditions and demanded change. Led by
Isaac Harby and other associates, they formed their own prayer group, "The Reformed Society of Israelites". Apart from strictly aesthetic matters, like having sermons and synagogue affairs delivered in English, rather than
Middle Spanish (as was customary among
Western Sephardim), they had almost their entire liturgy solely in the vernacular, in a far greater proportion compared to the Hamburg rite. And chiefly, they felt little attachment to the traditional Messianic doctrine and possessed a clearly heterodox religious understanding. In their new prayerbook, authors Harby, Abram Moïse and David Nunes Carvalho unequivocally excised pleas for the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple; during his inaugural address on 21 November 1825, Harby stated their native country was their only Zion, not "some stony desert", and described the rabbis of old as "Fabulists and Sophists... Who tortured the plainest precepts of the Law into monstrous and unexpected inferences". The Society was short-lived, and they merged back into Beth Elohim in 1833. As in Germany, the reformers were laymen, operating in a country with little rabbinic presence.
Consolidation in German lands , circa 1840. , circa 1850. In the 1820s and 1830s, philosophers like
Solomon Steinheim imported
German idealism into the Jewish religious discourse, attempting to draw from the means it employed to reconcile Christian faith and modern sensibilities. But it was the new scholarly, critical Science of Judaism (
Wissenschaft des Judentums) that became the focus of controversy. Its proponents vacillated whether and to what degree it should be applied against the contemporary plight. Opinions ranged from the strictly Orthodox
Azriel Hildesheimer, who subjugated research to the predetermined sanctity of the texts and refused to allow it practical implication over received methods; via the Positive-Historical
Zecharias Frankel, who did not deny
Wissenschaft a role, but only in deference to tradition, and opposed analysis of the
Pentateuch; and up to
Abraham Geiger, who rejected any limitations on objective research or its application. He is considered the founding father of Reform Judaism. Geiger wrote that at seventeen already, he discerned that the late
Tannaim and the
Amoraim imposed a subjective interpretation on the
Oral Torah, attempting to diffuse its revolutionary potential by
linking it to the biblical text. Believing that Judaism became stale and had to be radically transformed if it were to survive modernity, he found little use in the legal procedures of
halakha, arguing that hardline rabbis often demonstrated they will not accept major innovations anyway. His venture into
higher criticism led him to regard the Pentateuch as reflecting power struggles between the
Pharisees on one hand, and the
Saducees who had their own pre-
Mishnaic
halakha. Having concluded the belief in an unbroken tradition back to Sinai or a divinely dictated Torah could not be maintained, he began to articulate a theology of progressive revelation, presenting the Pharisees as reformers who revolutionized the Saducee-dominated religion. His other model were the Prophets, whose morals and ethics were to him the only true, permanent core of Judaism. He was not alone:
Solomon Formstecher argued that Revelation was God's influence on human psyche, rather than encapsulated in law;
Aaron Bernstein was apparently the first to deny inherent sanctity to any text when he wrote in 1844 that, "The Pentateuch is not a
chronicle of God's revelation, it is a
testimony to the inspiration His consciousness had on our forebears." Many others shared similar convictions. In 1837, Geiger hosted a conference of like-minded young rabbis in
Wiesbaden. He told the assembled that the "
Talmud must go". In 1841, the Hamburg Temple issued a second edition of its prayerbook, the first Reform liturgy since its predecessor of 1818. Orthodox response was weak and quickly defeated. Most rabbinic posts in Germany were now manned by university graduates susceptible to rationalistic ideas, which also permeated liberal Protestantism led by such figures as
Leberecht Uhlich. They formed the backbone of the nascent Reform rabbinate. Geiger intervened in the Second
Hamburg Temple controversy not just to defend the prayerbook against the Orthodox, but also to denounce it, stating the time of mainly aesthetic and unsystematic reforms has passed. In 1842, the power of progressive forces was revealed again: when Geiger's superior Rabbi Solomon Tiktin attempted to dismiss him from the post of preacher in
Breslau, 15 of 17 rabbis consulted by the board stated his unorthodox views were congruous with his post. He himself differentiated between his principled stance and quotidian conduct. Believing it could be implemented only carefully, he was moderate in practice and remained personally observant. Second only to Geiger, Rabbi
Samuel Holdheim distinguished himself as a radical proponent of change. While the former stressed continuity with the past and described Judaism as an entity that gradually adopted and discarded elements along time, Holdheim accorded present conditions the highest status, sharply dividing the universalist core from all other aspects that could be unremittingly disposed of. Declaring that old laws lost their hold on Jews as it were and the rabbi could only act as a guide for voluntary observance, his principle was that the concept of "
the Law of the Land is the Law" was total. He declared mixed marriage permissible – almost the only Reform rabbi to do so in history; his contemporaries and later generations opposed this – for the Talmudic ban on conducting them on Sabbath, unlike offering sacrifice and other acts, was to him sufficient demonstration that they belonged not to the category of sanctified obligations (
issurim) but to the civil ones (
memonot), where the Law of the Land applied. Another measure he offered, rejected almost unanimously by his colleagues in 1846, was the institution of a "Second Sabbath" on Sunday, modeled on
Second Passover, as most people desecrated the day of rest. The pressures of the late
Vormärz era were intensifying. In 1842, a group of radical laymen determined to achieve full acceptance into society was founded in Frankfurt, the "Friends of Reform". They abolished circumcision and declared that the Talmud was no longer binding. In response to pleas from Frankfurt, virtually all rabbis in Germany, even Holdheim, declared circumcision obligatory. Similar groups sprang in Breslau and Berlin. These developments, and the need to bring uniformity to practical reforms implemented piecemeal in the various communities, motivated Geiger and his like-minded supporters into action. Between 1844 and 1846, they convened three rabbinical assemblies, in
Braunschweig,
Frankfurt am Main and
Breslau respectively. Those were intended to implement the proposals of
Aaron Chorin and others for a new
Sanhedrin, made already in 1826, that could assess and eliminate various ancient decrees and prohibitions. A total of forty-two people attended the three meetings, including moderates and conservatives, all quite young, usually in their thirties. The conferences made few concrete far-reaching steps, albeit they generally stated that the old mechanisms of religious interpretation were obsolete. The first, held on 12–19 June 1844, abolished
Kol Nidrei and the humiliating
Jewish oath, still administered by rabbis, and established a committee to determine "to which degree the Messianic ideal should be mentioned in prayer". Repeating the response of the 1806 Paris
Grand Sanhedrin to
Napoleon, it declared intermarriage permissible as long as children could be raised Jewish; this measure effectively banned such unions without offending Christians, as no state in Germany allowed mixed-faith couples to have non-Christians education for offspring. It enraged critics anyhow. A small group of traditionalists also attended, losing all votes. On the opposite wing were sympathizers of Holdheim, who declared on 17 June that "science already demonstrated that the Talmud has no authority either from the dogmatic or practical perspective... The men of the
Great Assembly had jurisdiction only for their time. We possess the same power, when we express the spirit of ours." The majority was led by Geiger and
Ludwig Philippson and was keen on moderation and historical continuity. The harsh response from the strictly Orthodox came as no surprise.
Moshe Schick declared "they have blasphemed against the Divinity of the Law, they are no Israelites and equal to Gentiles". Yet they also managed to antagonize more moderate progressives. Both
S. L. Rapoport and
Zecharias Frankel strongly condemned Braunschweig. Another discontented party were
Christian missionaries, who feared Reform on two accounts: it could stem the massive tide of conversions, and loosen Jewish piety in favor of liberal, semi-secularized religion that they opposed among Christians as well, reducing the possibility they would ever accept new dogma fully. Frankel was convinced to attend the next conference, held in Frankfurt on 15–28 July 1845, after many pleas. But he walked out after it passed a resolution that there were subjective, but no objective, arguments for retaining Hebrew in the liturgy. While this was quite a trivial statement, well grounded in canonical sources, Frankel regarded it as a deliberate breach with tradition and irreverence toward the collective Jewish sentiment. The 1840s, commented Meyer, saw the crystallization of Reform, narrowing from
reformers (in the generic sense) who wished to modernize Judaism to some degree or other (including both Frankel and the Neo-Orthodox
Samson Raphael Hirsch)
a broad stream that embraced all opponents of the premodern status quo... to a more clearly marked current which rejected not only the religious mentality of the ghetto, but also the modernist Orthodoxy which altered form but not substance. After his withdrawal, the conference adopted another key doctrine that Frankel opposed, and officially enshrined the idea of a future Messianic era rather than a personal redeemer. Rabbi David Einhorn elucidated a further notion, that of the Mission to bring ethical monotheism to all people, commenting that, "Exile was once perceived as a disaster, but it was progress. Israel approached its true destiny, with sanctity replacing blood sacrifice. It was to spread the Word of the Lord to the four corners of the earth." The last meeting, convened in Breslau (13–24 July 1846), was the most innocuous. The Sabbath, widely desecrated by the majority of German Jews, was discussed. Participants argued whether leniencies for civil servants should be enacted but could not agree and released a general statement about its sanctity. Holdheim shocked the assembled when he proposed his "Second Sabbath" scheme, astonishing even the radical wing, and his motion was rejected offhand. They did vote to eliminate the
Second Day of Festivals, noting it was both an irrelevant rabbinic ordinance and scarcely observed anyway. While eliciting protest from the Orthodox, Frankfurt and Breslau also incensed the radical laity, which regarded them as too acquiescent. In March 1845, a small group formed a semi-independent congregation in Berlin, the Reformgemeinde. They invited Holdheim to serve as their rabbi, though he was often at odds with the board led by Sigismund Stern. They instituted a drastically abridged prayerbook in German and allowed the abolition of most ritual aspects. Practice and liturgy were modified in numerous German congregations. Until the conferences, the only Reform prayerbooks ever printed in Europe were the two Hamburg editions. In the 1850s and 1860s, dozens of new prayerbooks which omitted or rephrased the cardinal theological segments of temple sacrifice, ingathering of exiles, Messiah, resurrection and angels – rather than merely abbreviating the service; excising non-essential parts, especially
piyyutim, was common among moderate Orthodox and conservatives too – were authored in Germany for mass usage, demonstrating the prevalence of the new religious ideology. And yet, Geiger and most of the conferences' participants were far more moderate than Holdheim. While he administered in a homogeneous group, they had to serve in unified communities, in which traditionalists held separate services but still had to be respected. Changes were decidedly restrained. Liturgists were often careful when introducing their changes into the Hebrew text of prayers, less than with the German translation, and some level of traditional observance was maintained in public. Except Berlin, where the term "Reform" was first used as an adjective, the rest referred to themselves as "Liberal". Two further rabbinical conferences much later, in 1869 and 1871 at
Leipzig and
Augsburg respectively, were marked with a cautious tone. Their only outcome was the bypassing of the
Loosening of the Shoe ceremony via a prenuptial agreement and the establishment of the
Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, though officially non-denominational, as a rabbinical seminary. While common, noted Michael Meyer, the designation "Liberal Jew" was more associated with political persuasion than religious conviction. The general Jewish public in Germany demonstrated little interest, especially after the
1876 law under which communal affiliation and paying parish taxes were no longer mandatory. Outside Germany, Reform had little to no influence in the rest of the continent. Radical lay societies sprang in Hungary during the
1848 Revolution but soon dispersed. Only in Germany, commented Steven M. Lowenstein, did the extinction of old Jewish community life led to the creation of a new, positive religious ideology that advocated principled change. In Western and Central Europe, personal observance disappeared, but the public was not interested in bridging the gap between themselves and the official faith. Secular education for clergy became mandated by mid-century, and
yeshivas all closed due to lack of applicants, replaced by modern seminaries; the new academically trained rabbinate, whether affirming basically traditional doctrines or liberal and influenced by
Wissenschaft, was scarcely prone to anything beyond aesthetic modifications and de facto tolerance of the laity's apathy. Further to the east, among the unemancipated and unacculturated Jewish masses in Poland, Romania and Russia, the stimulants that gave rise either to Reform or modernist Orthodoxy were scarce. The few rich and westernized Jews in cities like
Odessa or
Warsaw constructed modern synagogues where mild aesthetic reforms, like vernacular sermons or holding the
wedding canopy indoors, rather than under the sky, were introduced. Regarded as boldly innovative in their environs, these were long since considered trivial even by the most Orthodox in Germany,
Bohemia or
Moravia. In the east, the belated breakdown of old mores led not to the remodification of religion, but to the formulation of
secular conceptions of Jewishness, especially
nationalistic ones. In 1840, several British Jews formed the
West London Synagogue of British Jews, headed by Reverend
David Woolf Marks. While the title "Reform" was occasionally applied to them, their approach was described as "neo-
Karaite" and was utterly opposite to continental developments. Only a century later did they and other synagogues embrace mainland ideas and established the British
Movement for Reform Judaism. The rabbinate was almost exclusively transplanted – Rabbis
Samuel Hirsch,
Samuel Adler,
Gustav Gottheil,
Kaufmann Kohler, and others all played a role both in Germany and across the ocean – and led by two individuals: the radical Rabbi
David Einhorn, who participated in the 1844–1846 conferences and was very much influenced by Holdheim (though utterly rejecting mixed marriage), and the moderate pragmatist
Isaac Meyer Wise, who while sharing deeply heterodox views was more an organizer than a thinker. Wise was distinct from the others, arriving early in 1846 and lacking much formal education. He was of little ideological consistency, often willing to compromise. Quite haphazardly, Wise instituted a major innovation when introducing family pews in 1851, after his
Albany congregation purchased a local church building and retained sitting arrangements. While it was gradually adopted even by many Orthodox Jews in the US, and remained so well into the 20th century, the same was not applied in Germany until after World War II. Wise attempted to reach consensus with the traditionalist leader Rabbi
Isaac Leeser in order to forge a single, unified, American Judaism. In the 1855
Cleveland Synod, he was at first acquiescent to Leeser, but reverted immediately after the other departed. The enraged Leeser disavowed any connection with him. Yet Wise's harshest critic was Einhorn, who arrived from Europe in the same year. Demanding clear positions, he headed the radical camp as Reform turned into a distinct current. On 3–6 November 1869, the two and their followers met in
Philadelphia. Described by Meyer as American Reform's "declaration of independence", they stated their commitment to the principles already formulated in Germany:
priestly privileges, the belief in Resurrection, and a personal Messiah were denied. A practical, far-reaching measure, not instituted in the home country until 1910, was acceptance of civil marriage and divorce. A
get was no longer required. In 1873, Wise founded the
Union of American Hebrew Congregations (since 2003, Union for Reform Judaism), the denominational body. In 1875, he established the movement's rabbinical seminary,
Hebrew Union College, at
Cincinnati, Ohio. He and Einhorn also quarreled in the matter of liturgy, each issuing his own prayerbook,
Minhag America (American Rite) and
Olat Tamid (Regular
Burnt Offering) respectively, which they hoped to make standard issue. Eventually, the
Union Prayer Book was adopted in 1895. The movement spread rapidly: in 1860, when it began its ascent, there were few Reform synagogues and 200 Orthodox in the United States. By 1880, a mere handful of the existing 275 were not affiliated with it. The proponents of Reform or progressive forms of Judaism had consistently claimed since the early nineteenth-century that they sought to reconcile Jewish religion with the best of contemporary scientific thought. The science of evolution was arguably the scientific idea that drew the most sustained interest. A good example is the series of twelve sermons published as
The Cosmic God (1876) by
Isaac Meyer Wise, who offered an alternative theistic account of transmutation to that of Darwinism, which he dismissed as 'homo-brutalism'. Other Reform rabbis who were more sympathetic to Darwinian conceptions of evolution were
Kaufmann Kohler,
Emil G. Hirsch, and
Joseph Krauskopf. These engaged with high-profile sceptics and atheists such as
Robert Ingersoll and
Felix Adler as well as with proponents of biological evolutionary theory, with the result that a distinctly
panentheistic character of US Reform Jewish theology was observable. In 1885, Reform Judaism in America was confronted by challenges from both flanks. To the left,
Felix Adler and his
Ethical Movement rejected the need for the Jews to exist as a differentiated group. On the right, the recently arrived Rabbi
Alexander Kohut, an adherent of
Zecharias Frankel, lambasted it for having abandoned traditional Judaism. Einhorn's son-in-law and chief ideologue, Rabbi
Kaufmann Kohler, invited leading rabbis to formulate a response. The eight clauses of the
Pittsburgh Platform were proclaimed on 19 November. It added virtually nothing new to the tenets of Reform, but rather elucidated them, declaring unambiguously that: "Today, we accept as binding only the moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives." The platform was never officially ratified by either the UAHC or HUC, and many of their members even attempted to disassociate from it, fearing that its radical tone would deter potential allies. It indeed motivated a handful of conservatives to cease any cooperation with the movement and withdraw their constituencies from the UAHC. Those joined Kohut and
Sabato Morais in establishing the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America. It united all non-Reform currents in the country and would gradually develop into the locus of
Conservative Judaism. The Pittsburgh Platform is considered a defining document of the sanitized and rationalistic "Classical Reform", dominant from the 1860s to the 1930s. At its height, some forty congregations adopted the Sunday Sabbath and UAHC communities had services without most traditional elements, in a manner seen in Europe only at the Berlin
Reformgemeinde. In 1889, Wise founded the
Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the denominational rabbinic council. However, change loomed on the horizon. From 1881 to 1924, over 2,400,000 immigrants from Eastern Europe drastically altered American Jewry, increasing it tenfold. The 40,000 members of Reform congregations became a small minority overnight. The newcomers arrived from backward regions, where modern education was scarce and civil equality nonexistent, retaining a strong sense of Jewish ethnicity. Even the ideological secularists among them, all the more so the common masses which merely turned lax or nonobservant, had a very traditional understanding of worship and religious conduct. The leading intellectuals of Eastern European Jewish nationalism castigated western Jews in general, and Reform Judaism in particular, not on theological grounds which they as laicists wholly rejected, but for what they claimed to be assimilationist tendencies and the undermining of peoplehood. This sentiment also fueled the often cool manner in which the denomination is perceived in
Israeli society, originally established on the basis of these ideologies. While at first alienated from all native modernized Jews,
a fortiori the Reform ones, the Eastern Europeans did slowly integrate. Growing numbers did begin to enter UAHC prayerhouses. The CCAR soon readopted elements long discarded in order to appeal to them: In the 1910s, inexperienced rabbis in the
East Coast were given
ram horns fitted with a trumpet mouthpiece, seventy years after the Reformgemeinde first held
High Holiday prayers without blowing the instrument. The five-day workweek soon made the Sunday Sabbath redundant. Temples in the
South and the
Midwest, where the new crowd was scant, remained largely Classical.
The World Union . In Germany, Liberal communities stagnated since mid-century. Full and complete
Jewish emancipation granted to all in the
German Empire in 1871 largely diffused interest in harmonizing religion with
Zeitgeist. Immigration from Eastern Europe also strengthened traditional elements. In 1898, seeking to counter these trends, Rabbi
Heinemann Vogelstein established the Union of Liberal Rabbis (Vereinigung der liberalen Rabbiner). It numbered 37 members at first and grew to include 72 by 1914, about half of Germany's Jewish clergy, a proportion maintained until 1933. In 1908, Vogelstein and Rabbi
Cäsar Seligmann also founded a congregational arm, the Union for Liberal Judaism in Germany (
Vereinigung für das Liberale Judentum in Deutschland), finally institutionalizing the current that until then was active as a loose tendency. The Union had some 10,000 registered members in the 1920s. In 1912, Seligmann drafted a declaration of principles, "Guiding Lines towards a Program for Liberal Judaism" (Richtlinien zu einem Programm für das liberale Judentum). It stressed the importance of individual consciousness and the supremacy of ethical values to ritual practice, declared a belief in a messianic age and was adopted as "a recommendation", rather than a binding decision. In 1902,
Claude Montefiore and several friends, including
Lily Montagu and
Israel Abrahams, founded the Jewish Religious Union (JRU) in London. It served as the cornerstone of
Liberal Judaism in Britain. Montefiore was greatly influenced by the ideas of early German Reformers. He and his associates were mainly driven by the example and challenge of
Unitarianism, which offered upper-class Jews a universal, enlightened belief. Meyer noted that while he had original strains, Montefiore was largely dependent on Geiger and his concepts of progressive revelation, instrumentality of ritual et cetera. His Liberal Judaism was radical and puristic, matching and sometimes exceeding the Berlin and American variants. They sharply abridged liturgy and largely discarded practice. Langton has argued for the distinctly Anglo-Jewish character of the movement, which was dominated by Montefiore's idiosyncratic ideas. In 1907, the former
Consistorial rabbi
Louis Germain Lévy who shared a similar worldview, formed the
Union Libérale Israélite de France, a small congregation that numbered barely a hundred families. It eventually evolved into the
Liberal Jewish Movement of France. Seligmann first suggested the creation of an international organization. On 10 July 1926, representatives from around the world gathered in London. Rabbi Jacob K. Shankman wrote they were all "animated by the convictions of Reform Judaism: emphasized the Prophets' teachings as the cardinal element, progressive revelation, willingness to adapt ancient forms to contemporary needs". The conference was attended by representatives of the German Liberal Union, the British JRU, the American UAHC and CCAR, and Lévy from France. After weighing their options, they chose "Progressive", rather than either "Liberal" or "Reform", as their name, founding the
World Union for Progressive Judaism. It began to sponsor new chapters globally. The first was founded in the
Netherlands, where two synagogues formed the
Verbond voor Liberaal-Religieuze Joden in Nederland on 18 October 1931. Already in 1930, the
West London Synagogue affiliated with WUPJ. In the coming decade, waves of refugees from
Nazi Germany arrived in Britain, bringing with them both the moderation of German Liberal Judaism (few mingled with the radical JRU) and a cadre of trained rabbis. Only then did British Reform emerge as a movement. 1942 saw the founding of the Associated British Synagogues, which joined the WUPJ in 1945. Preserving the relative traditionalism of Germany, they later adopted the name "Reform Synagogues of Great Britain" (since 2005,
Movement for Reform Judaism), distinct from the smaller "
Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues", which succeeded the JRU. Tens of thousands of refugees from Germany brought their Liberal Judaism to other lands as well. In 1930, the first Liberal congregation, Temple Beth Israel
Melbourne, was founded in
Australia. In June 1931, the South African Jewish Religious Union for Liberal Judaism was organised, soon employing HUC-ordained
Moses Cyrus Weiler. The
Congregação Israelita Paulista of
São Paulo, first branch in South America, was established in 1936. German refugees also founded a Liberal community named
Emet ve-Emuna in
Jerusalem, but it joined the Conservatives by 1949.
The New Reform Judaism , with some congregants wearing head coverings and prayer shawls. Kohler retired in 1923. Rabbi
Samuel S. Cohon was appointed HUC Chair of Theology in his stead, serving until 1956. Cohon, born near
Minsk, was emblematic of the new generation of East European-descended clergy within American Reform. Deeply influenced by
Ahad Ha'am and
Mordecai Kaplan, he viewed
Judaism as a Civilization, rather than a religion, though he and other Reform sympathizers of Kaplan fully maintained the notions of
Election and revelation, which the latter denied. Cohon valued Jewish particularism over universalist leanings, encouraging the reincorporation of traditional elements long discarded, not as part of a comprehensive legalistic framework but as means to rekindle ethnic cohesion. His approach echoed popular sentiment in the East Coast. So did
Solomon Freehof, son to immigrants from
Chernihiv, who advocated a selective rapprochement with
halakha, which was to offer "guidance, not governance"; Freehof advocated replacing the sterile mood of community life, allowing isolated practices to emerge spontaneously and reincorporating old ones. He redrafted the
Union Prayer Book in 1940 to include more old formulae and authored many responsa, though he always stressed compliance was voluntary. Cohon and Freehof rose against the background of the
Great Depression, when many congregations teetered on the threshold of collapse. Growing Antisemitism in Europe led German Liberals on similar paths. Rabbis
Leo Baeck,
Max Dienemann and Seligmann himself turned to stressing Jewish peoplehood and tradition. The
Nazis' takeover in 1933 effected a religious revival in communities long plagued by apathy and assimilation. The great changes convinced the CCAR to adopt a new set of principles. On 29 May 1937, in
Columbus, Ohio, a "Declaration of Principles" (eschewing the more formal, binding "platform"), promoted a greater degree of ritual observance, supported Zionism – considered by the Classicists in the past as, at best, a remedy for the unemancipated Jewish masses in Russia and Romania, while they did not regard the Jews as a nation in the modern sense – and opened not with theology, but by the statement, "Judaism is the historical religious experience of the Jewish people". The Columbus Principles signified the transformation from "Classical" to the "New Reform Judaism", characterized by a lesser focus on abstract concepts and a more positive attitude to practice and traditional elements. The
Holocaust and the establishment of the
State of Israel reinforced the tendency. The Americanization and move to the suburbs in the 1950s facilitated a double effect: the secular Jewish ideologies of the immigrants' generation, like
Bundism or
Labour Zionism, became anachronistic. Military service exposed recruits to the family-oriented, moderate religiosity of the middle-class United States. Many sought an affiliation in the early years of the
Cold War, when lack of such raised suspicion of leftist or communist sympathies. The "Return to Tradition", as it was termed, smoothed the path for many such into UAHC. It grew from 290 communities with 50,000 affiliated households in 1937 to 560 with 255,000 in 1956. A similar shift to nostalgic traditionalism was expressed overseas. Even the purist Liberals in Britain introduced minor customs that bore sentimental value;
Bar Mitzvah replaced confirmation. World War II shattered many of the assumptions about human progress and benevolence held by liberal denominations, Reform included. A new generation of theologians attempted to formulate a response. Thinkers such as
Eugene Borowitz and J.J. Petuchowski turned mainly to
existentialism, portraying humans in a fragile, complex relationship with the divine. While
religious humanism was ever-present, it remained confined to a small group, and official positions retained a
theistic approach. But the main focus in American Reform lay elsewhere: in 1946, Rabbi
Maurice Eisendrath was appointed President of the UAHC. He turned the notion of
Tikkun Olam, "repairing of the world", into the practical expression of affiliation, leading involvement in the
civil rights movement,
Vietnam War opposition and other progressive causes. In 1954, the first permanent Reform congregation was established in the State of Israel, again at Jerusalem. The
Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism was registered in 1971, and the worldwide movement moved the WUPJ's headquarters to Jerusalem in 1974, signalling its growing attachment to Zionism. The 1960s and 70s saw the rise of
multiculturalism and the weakening of organized religion in favour of personal spirituality. A growing "return to ethnicity" among the young made items such as
prayer shawls fashionable again. In 1963, HUC-graduate
Sherwin Wine seceded to form the openly atheistic
Birmingham Temple, declaring that for him Judaism was a cultural tradition, not a faith. Knowing that many in their audience held quite overlapping ideas, the pressure on the CCAR to move toward nontheism grew. In 1975, the lack of consensus surfaced during the compilation of a new standard prayer book, "
Gates of Prayer". To accommodate all, ten liturgies for morning service and six for the evening were offered for each congregation to choose of, from very traditional to one that retained the Hebrew text for God but translated it as "Eternal Power", condemned by many as de facto humanistic. "Gates of Prayer" symbolized the movement's adoption of what would be termed "Big Tent Judaism", welcoming all, over theological clarity. In the following year, an attempt to draft a new platform for the CCAR in San Francisco ended with poor results. Led by Borowitz, any notion of issuing guidelines was abandoned in favour of a "Centenary Perspective" with few coherent statements. The "Big Tent", while taking its toll on the theoreticians, did substantially bolster constituency. The UAHC slowly caught up with
Conservative Judaism on the path toward becoming the largest American denomination. On 26 May 1999, after a prolonged debate and six widely different drafts rejected, a "Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism" was adopted in Pittsburgh by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. It affirmed the "reality and oneness of God", the Torah as "God's ongoing revelation to our people" and committed to the "ongoing study of the whole array of Commandments and to the fulfillment of those that address us as individuals and as a community. Some of these sacred obligations have long been observed by Reform Jews; others, both ancient and modern, demand renewed attention." While the wording was carefully crafted in order not to displease the estimated 20%–25% of membership that retained Classicist persuasions, it did raise condemnation from many of them. In 2008, the Society for Classical Reform Judaism was founded to mobilize and coordinate those who preferred the old universalist, ethics-based and de-ritualized religious style, with its unique aesthetic components. ==See also==