Reform Judaism (1820 to 1877)

Reform Judaism (1820 to 1877)

Introduction

Reform Judaism is one of the three main branches of American Judaism. Its roots lie in the attempt to reconcile Judaism to the modern world. From the 1840s until the turn of the 20th century, Reform was the predominant branch of American Judaism. Overwhelmed by the massive immigration of eastern European Jews between 1880 and 1920, it lost its dominance, giving way to Conservative Judaism. By the early 21st century, however, it was once again the largest Jewish denomination in the United States.

Discussion

Reform Judaism emerged from the intellectual, social, and political changes that marked Europe in the late 18th and early 19th century. Intellectually, Reform Judaism originated in the Enlightenment emphasis on the moral aspects of religion and its derogation of the supernatural, ritual, and religious distinctiveness. The European Enlightenment had a Jewish counterpart in the Haskalah, the so-called Jewish Enlightenment. In this movement, Jews who had received university educations, primarily in Germany, began to apply secular learning to their own tradition. This movement supported reforming tendencies by demonstrating that certain "traditional" elements in Judaism were of recent origin and that apparently "radical" reforms had earlier roots within the tradition.

These intellectual elements converged with social and political concerns. Socially, some Jews, primarily upper-class German Jews, wanted to establish a Jewish worship service similar to that of their Protestant neighbors—more decorous, shorter, and less alien to the wider culture. Politically, the issue was whether Jews, considering themselves apart and viewing themselves in exile from their true homeland, could be citizens of the country in which they resided. As part of the struggle for legal equality, the reformers minimized the idea of Jewish people hood, emphasizing Judaism as a religion. They were Germans of the Jewish faith, just as their fellow citizens were Germans of the Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed faith.

The Reform movement, however, did not predominate among German Jews. The nature of the Jewish community and the conservatism of the German states limited its ability to gain strength in synagogues there. In America, to which many German Jews immigrated between 1820 and 1860, Reform found fertile soil. In 1824, several members of Charleston's Congregation Beth Elohim, seeking shorter services, increased use of English, and mixed seating of men and women, withdrew from their congregation, and formed the Reformed Society of Israelites—the first Reform organization in the United States. But this indigenous organization ...