Reform Judaism

Inspired by eighteenth-century German reformers, Reform Judaism is primarily an English-speaking Jewish movement governed by the Union for Reform Judaism in the United States and the Movement for Reform Judaism in the United Kingdom. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a creative energy took hold in the Jewish community. Disillusioned by traditional Jewish life and customs, Jews in Germany, England, and the United States sought to redefine what it meant to participate in Jewish life. Re-thinking the need for rigid observance to Jewish law and reliance on the Talmud, these Jewish reformers sought to breathe new life into the Jewish community by redefining Jewish ritual in a modern context while still holding firm to the Jewish tenets of God, Israel, and Torah.

Brief History

Reform Judaism was born out of a debate among the Jews in Central Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Beginning in the late 1770s, especially in Germany, a number of prominent Jews sought to re-imagine the place of the Jewish people in the modern world. This Jewish Enlightenment, known as the Haskalah, focused on integrating previously segregated Jewish communities and incorporating secular studies and culture into Jewish life. The proponents of the Haskalah movement, known as Maskil (plural Maskilim), also placed great emphasis on abandoning traditional dress and the Yiddish language to help the Jewish community better fit in and be part of larger European society.

Abraham Geiger, who is widely regarded as the father of Reform Judaism, was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1810, into this period of Jewish questioning and re-discovery. Like many young men who would eventually become leaders in the movement, Geiger was influenced by the ideals of Jewish Enlightenment and sought both a Jewish and secular education. As a teen, Geiger’s study of both traditional Jewish texts and secular classical history led him to question the absolute authority of the Jewish worldview and become disillusioned with Jewish traditionalism. Eager to learn more beyond the Jewish sphere, he also sought out a varied and worldly education far from home. While in residence at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Bonn, he studied a wide range of topics including Arabic, the Qur'an, and even archaeology.

After completing his studies, and unable to find a post in a university because he was a Jew, Geiger found a position as a rabbi and applied his studies to transforming the synagogue life in his congregation. During this period, he started discussing the discarding of Jewish law, or halakhah, for a more modern approach to Jewish life, and began organizing other like-minded young rabbis into a collective of reformers. In 1837, Geiger hosted a gathering of these young rabbis—many, like Geiger, with university educations—in Weisbaden. There, Geiger made a shocking statement for the time. He said that the "Talmud must go."

Over the next years, the assemblage proposed a number of radical changes to Jewish life. One of the most outspoken was Rabbi Samuel Holdheim, a Prussian-born rabbi who had studied both the humanities and the Talmud. Holdheim dismissed Jewish creeds and dogma and even wanted to abolish Jewish authority in marriage and divorce. Although his approach was seen as radical even among his fellow reformers, both Geiger and Holdheim would emerge as leaders in the growing Jewish reform movement that would eventually take shape in both England and the United States.

Overview

Although the Jewish Enlightenment helped inspire the Jewish reformers, Reform Judaism would not remain in Germany for long. In the United States, Jews had already made overtures toward reform by the 1820s. British reformers were making their own challenges to Jewish traditionalism. From these two streams, the modern Reform Judaism movement, with centers in both the United States and the United Kingdom, was born.

Although the reform movement in America was heavily influenced by the influx of German Jewish immigrants in the nineteenth century, in the 1820s American Jews had already started to transform Jewish communal life on their own. At Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, forty-seven members gathered in November 1824 to call for a more Americanized form of Jewish worship, including prayers and sermons in English. When the synagogue refused to meet their demands, the group formed their own Reformed Society of Israelites. The Reformed Society of Israelites dissolved after only ten years, but the idea of Jewish reform was not lost.

Bolstered by an influx of German immigrants, in 1942 Har Sinai Congregation changed to a reform style of worship. Three years later, Temple Emanu-El was founded in New York City. Organized by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, who also founded Hebrew Union College and wrote the first American siddur (prayer book) titled Minhag America, the American reformers joined together as the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873, which later became the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ).

In 1885, a group of reform rabbis met at the Concordia Club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to spell out the principles of the American Reform movement. The Pittsburgh Platform dismissed laws of kashrut and other halakhah (Jewish law) and retained only those laws which contained a moral imperative. The Pittsburgh Platform has since been revised, as the concerns of the community have evolved and attitudes on Zionism have changed.

Reform Judaism differs from other denominations in its definition of Jewishness and observance of Jewish law. A core value of Reform Judaism is commitment to inclusion and social justice. Women and LGBTQ people may be ordained as Reform rabbis, and Reform rabbis may officiate same-sex or interfaith marriages at their discretion. Reform Judaism is the largest Jewish denomination in the United States, comprising 37 percent of American Jews as of a 2020 Pew Research Center survey.

In the 1820s, another nascent reform movement was developing in England, independent of the German reformers, that also questioned the Jewish communities' reliance on the Talmud. In 1833, an anonymously published pamphlet, "The Genius of Judaism," criticized rabbis who taught and relied on the Talmud for their practices and teachings. The pamphlet, written by Isaac D' Israeli, the father of the future British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, did much to bolster the English reform movement.

In the twenty-first century, the Movement for Reform Judaism, previously known as the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, is an egalitarian movement that values both tradition and innovation and is a member of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.

In the twenty-first century, the predominantly diasporic Reform movement's looser adherence to Jewish law has engendered conflict with Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews who view the movement as illegitimate. Nevertheless, Progressive and Reform Judaism have gained some traction within Israel itself, as well as in North America and parts of Europe. At the same time, as Reform Jews had expressed solidarity with the Israeli state but advocated for Palestinians as well, the exacerbation of the longtime conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that began with Hamas's attack on Israel in 2023 and the outbreak of war in Gaza led to some disagreement within the movement as far as supporting Israel's actions.

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