Hello, and welcome (back) to my random ramble/blog! Still Trutharchivist here, and continuing from the last entry, today I want to talk about Reform Judaism, how it began and what it resulted. 

Just one clarification for the previous entry: I realized I might have indicated that the Haskalah movement caused religious degradation directly. This is not completely accurate; while secularity was caused by the Enlightenment in Jews just as much as it did with Christians, the Haskalah movement wasn't necessarily a part of it. Many of the members of this movement, like Mandelssohn, were devout practicing Jews. In some ways, the fraction of Orthodox Judaism I belong to is not unlike them. Just, the fact they tried to hold the rope on both ends sometimes led to them dropping things from their belief, as we'll see in this entry. As a side note I'd mention that none of Mandelssohn's descendants stayed a practicing Jew. Another clarification: I believe I forgot to include dates, which is kind of stupid of me, in hindsight. For reference, Mandelssohn lived during the 18th century (1729-1786), he arrived at Berlin in 1743, and the Lavatar incident occurred during 1769. Hope this helps with the chronology.

Anyway, Reform Judaism. So, we had talked about the gap between Jews and the general society of Europe. We explained (somewhat) the problems it caused, and showed how one person reacted to this, with a few tidbits about how others did. There were some Jews who became secular altogether; but we’re not really here to talk about them today. As odd as it may seem to me as an Orthodox Jew, we’re talking about the ones who didn’t want to abandon their traditions completely, the ones who thought that Judaism needed nothing more than a little fixing to fit with the times - Reform Jews. Odd to me because, well, Orthodox Judaism doesn't favor Reform over secularity by much.

It's been some time between the death of Mandelssohn and the actual start of something that was different enough to be dubbed Reform Judaism, though a few things that later became the movement's trademarks appeared during that time. A Maskil - a member of the Haskalah movement - named Saul Ascher wrote in his book “Leviathan, or religion in respect of Judaism” (1792) that the principles of faith are the important part of Judaism, while the practical commandments were secondary and by modern times didn’t serve their purpose. There were a few changes to the prayers in a synagogue in Amsterdam in 1796, including removing some Piyutim (religious poems, more or less) from the prayer and adding a sermon in the local language. In Westphalia it was decided by the local Jewish Consistory, headed by Rabbi Israel Jacobson, in 1810 to change the prayers a little and cancel some traditions in order to keep an atmosphere of seriousness in the synagogue - to somewhat look like a Christian church. Jacobson was later involved with more changes to the prayers - including in the incident of the Hamburg Temple Dispute.

The Hamburg Temple was a Jewish temple -  you could say. It's actually a synagogue, but it's almost always referred to as a temple. It may or may not be related to a certain point in the dispute about it - I'm not really sure. Anyway, the actual problem started with a few changes in how prayers went in the Temple. You see, the Hamburg Temple, unlike traditional synagogues, used a choir and an organ in the prayers (the organ was played by a gentile during Shabbat) and added prayers in German - of which at least the first two were perceived to just be added to make it more like a church. All that in itself, though, wasn't any worse than what we already mentioned, and what another congregation in Berlin already started doing - and while many Orthodox rabbis thought it problematic, it wasn't quite enough to create a schism just yet. What did that was a new Siddur - a Jewish prayer book, so to speak - published the same year the Temple was opened (1818) and used in it. In this Siddur, many mentions of wishes and prayers to return to Jerusalem and reinstate the Temple there were revised, and prayers to salvation of the Jewish people and the coming of the Messiah were changed to be about more universal salvation. And that started the heart of the problem. 

As an opening to what I'm about to say, I want to mention that while working on this essay I texted a Reform rabbi to try and hear things from their side. After mentioning this specific bit about the erasure of the hope to return to Zion, he remarked that while it's true that the Reform movement was anti-Zionist in its early days, the same could be said about Orthodox Judaism. This is, indeed, a good point, since some of the prominent rabbis who resisted the Reform movement - like Hatam Sofer and Rashar Hirsch, on whom I intend to elaborate in future essays - were anti-Zionists as well. So it isn't the anti-Zionism in this change that was seen as problematic; instead, it was the drastic change in understanding what salvation meant.

You see, for over 2000 years, Jews have waited for a certain series of events: the coming of a Messiah of king David's line, all the people of Israel being brought back to their ancestral land, the Temple in Jerusalem rebuilt and the ancient kingdom being refounded and getting peace at last. All that, under G-d's guidance, of course. I hope to delve in later essays as to why Zionism wasn't seen as fulfilling that dream, for now suffice it to say that's how it was. But Reform Judaism took a hard turn in the opposite direction: what if we already got our salvation without realizing it (or are much closer to it than we thought)? Throughout history, Christianity pursued Jews, only stopping short of completely destroying them due to a council decision from its early days. But in this modern day and age, in the most Enlightened Germany - home to Kant and Hegel, Schiller and Goethe, with emancipation for Jews being visible in the horizon… surely, we're already at the age of the Messiah. Surely, thought the early fathers of the Reform movement, this is all we could and should hope for. After all, the Temple in Jerusalem and the sacrifices made in it seemed far and kind of barbaric, really. Is that really what we hope and wait for? Opening a compound for butchering animals and burning their meat? Surely, that's not what G-d would want for us.

Other people had different reactions to the possibility of emancipation, and I promise you I'll get to them eventually, but that's probably a good approximation of what went through the early Reform rabbis' heads. In addition, they may have adopted the ideas of nationalism in a rather different way from the Zionists - why assume a nation so different from those around you, when you can be a German of Moshe's faith? The same could be applied to France, or England, or the newly-founded USA - all places Reform Judaism spread to and became prominent in. As a side note, I’ll say that this term (or, well, a very similar one) was apparently used first in the Grand Sanhedrin that Napoleon Bonaparte founded in 1806, where the assembly called Jews “French of Moses’ Faith”. While the Sanhedrin wasn’t necessarily Reform (well, the movement didn’t really exist at the time, so it wasn’t exactly a possibility), its decisions stretched the Halachah a bit and later the main Consistoire of France (Consistoire were the governing bodies of Jewish congregations in France from Napoleon’s time onward) was mostly Reform. 

Anyway, all that was directly opposed to traditional Judaism, which still hopes to return to Israel - if not in the way the Zionists did. Because even if you don't believe in pushing for founding an independent state, you can still believe that being a Jew is more than obeying the laws of a religion - it's belonging to a nation… Or maybe I'm just saying that because I'm a Zionist myself. Mostly, abandoning the Messianic beliefs entirely - which seemed to be what this new Siddur attempted to do - was seen as an unforgivable deed. Many Orthodox rabbis of the time went against it - prominent among them was the aforementioned Hatam Sofer of Pressburg (nowadays known as Bratislava), who voiced loud and clear objections to the changes made by the Reform Jews. Letters of rabbis who resisted the changes were published together under the title "Eleh Divrei HaBrit" (lit. Those are the Words of the Covenant). This pushed a little back on the whole affair, and some of the changes were withdrawn - at least temporarily.

All that does supposedly nothing to assert what I started with, that those were the ones who wanted to keep the religion and tradition. But the point is, secularity became common in Jewish youths at this time and place. Trying to settle Judaism with the spirit of the time like the Reform Jews did was their way to hold on to their beliefs. It was hard for some Jews to accept that the ideal is of Jews returning to an ancient, dead land from their birthplaces. The choice they saw before them, most probably, was either keeping Judaism without the messianic ideal, or abandoning it entirely. 

That's as to the Hamburg Temple Dispute. But in my work on those essays, I wanted to cover things from the angle of at least one rabbi or thinker from each movement, to give a better idea of what the movement’s ideology was. So, to elaborate some more about the changes - reforms - this Movement made, I'd like to talk about one of the prominent Reform rabbis - Abraham Geiger. 

Abraham Geiger was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1810. His family was Orthodox, though they were open to studying German and general science. In 1829 he went to study in the University at Heidelberg - leaving it after a short while due to his professor and fellow students laughing at recent Pogroms. He then went to the University of Bonn, where he met and befriended Rashar Hirsch - who later became his bitter rival, we'll talk about him in a future essay. 

He probably went to a university because it was required of would-be rabbis at the time in Germany -after all, he later asked for and got a Semikha - meaning, he was ordained as a rabbi - in 1832, and served as one in multiple places (including his hometown of Frankfurt and Berlin) during the following years. But considering his positions, he probably was very interested in studying history and critical studies of the Tanakh anyway. Either way, the things he taught were (unsurprisingly, considering our context) controversial. He believed that the Prophets and the Sages all worked to rid Judaism of being overly ritualistic. He believed that G-d's will is revealed differently from generation to generation - something of a reasoning as to why changing the Halakha should be fine. He had a somewhat more scholarly view of the Torah, and supported views of Biblical criticism - which are mostly opposed to traditional views of the Torah, though contrary to popular belief they aren't necessarily anti-religious.

There was a tidbit I wanted to add about views towards the Oral Torah; but it appears the only person to have said those was actually Zacharias Frankel, who went on to become the model for Conservative Judaism. I'm not sure if Geiger held similar opinions - he probably went even farther - after all, Frankel didn’t approve of Biblical criticism, while Geiger was apparently well known to be involved with it. He organized quite a few conventions of Reform rabbis, one of which Zacharias Frankel went to - only to run out and slam the door behind him. We'll talk about this event and Conservative Judaism in another essay.

In short: Reform Judaism sought to fit in better with the gentile society around them and with the ideals presented by the Enlightenment philosophers (well, the ideals of the era at least). This last part is shown by the tendency of Geiger to take a critical view of the Torah, for example - something that gentile thinkers of the time saw as essential, while Orthodox Jewish thinkers saw it as bad. The abandonment of the Messianic ideal served for assimilation, too - because the Messianic ideal itself set Jews apart by saying that one day they'll leave this land and go back to Israel. The Reform counterpoint, then, would be to define themselves as Germans of Moshe's faith - or, well, replace "Germans" with whatever other nation you want.

So, what happens with Reform Judaism nowadays? Well, today they are most prominent in the US - in fact, they are the most prominent Jewish denomination in America, meaning if you meet a Jew in the States (well, probably outside New York, where there are many Orthodox Jews) - chances are they are Reform. Not that I would know all that well - I don't live there and never have. 

In Israel, there are Reform congregations - the Reform rabbi I talked to is Israeli - but they aren't very prominent. We do hear from them every now and then, but not much. Their practices can vary, but they generally will be more receptive to modern ideals - the red lines are mostly not believing that there is one G-d and not circumcising the sons, IE not doing Brit Milah (though some early Reform rabbis did want to cancel this practice). Interestingly enough, modern Reform congregations are still somewhat opposed to ordaining intermarriage between Jews and gentiles - but a non-Jewish partner of a Jewish person will be accepted at a Reform temple. Generally they are much less strict than Orthodox Judaism in obeying the Halacha - they're willing to bend it for modern ideals such as equality and acceptance, and for having a Jewish experience even if it's not according to the halacha, like driving to a synagogue during Shabbat (Saturday). There is no separation between men and women in their temples and they ordain women as rabbis - both things that aren’t approved by Orthodox rabbis.

Well, that's it for now, hope it was helpful! Sorry for the huge delay, I procrastinated and tried to find good sources for a while. Can't promise the same thing won't happen again - I still am not sure whether I'll talk about Ultra-Orthodox or Conservative Judaism next time! If you have an opinion on the matter, or have anything to say, please do comment.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!