Reform Judaism

• 1. Introduction

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  Reform Judaism was born in a moment of cultural rupture. In the late 18th century, Jewish communities across Central Europe faced a question that could no longer be deferred: how do you remain Jewish in a world that is suddenly, and irreversibly, offering you a place in it? The Enlightenment had arrived, civil emancipation was spreading, and the walls of the old ghetto were coming down. A generation of young Jews found themselves caught between two worlds: the traditional faith of their ancestors, and the modern, rational European society inviting them in.

  On the 17th of July 1810, a philanthropist named Israel Jacobson held a service in a school chapel in Seesen. An organ played. A choir sang. Protestant chorales were woven into the ceremony. That day is now marked worldwide as the foundation date of Reform Judaism. What followed would reshape one of the world's oldest religions, producing a movement that today represents at least 1.8 million people across 50 countries, and accounts for roughly 35 percent of Jewish adults in the United States.

  But Reform Judaism has never been easy to define. Its entire philosophy rests on the idea that religion must evolve. And so the questions the story of this movement raises are not merely historical. They are alive: What does a faith owe to its past? How much can a religion change before it becomes something else? And what happens when a movement built on individual freedom finds it cannot agree on what it believes?

• 2. The Founding Idea

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  Abraham Geiger was the intellectual architect of Reform Judaism, and by his own account, the seed of his conviction was planted when he was seventeen. Reading deeply into ancient Jewish texts, he concluded that the late Tannaim and the Amoraim had imposed their own subjective interpretation on the Oral Torah. That recognition would define his life's work.

  Geiger's central theological contribution was the doctrine of progressive revelation. Rather than accepting the traditional view that God's word was delivered, complete and binding, at Sinai, Geiger argued that revelation is ongoing. Scripture, including the Torah itself, was authored by human beings who, though inspired, reflected the spirit of their particular age. Every generation of the Jewish people could reach new insights. Religion was not a fixed system to be observed; it was a living process to be renewed.

  This idea was not merely philosophical. It had enormous practical consequences. If no text is permanently binding, then practices can be discarded, prayers rewritten, and laws set aside when they no longer serve their deeper moral purpose. Geiger had already named his vision "Prophetic Judaism" by 1838, centering ethics and morality as the stable core of a faith whose ritual life could legitimately transform.

  He was not alone. Solomon Formstecher argued that revelation was God's influence on human consciousness, not a body of law. Aaron Bernstein wrote in 1844 that the Pentateuch was "a testimony to the inspiration His consciousness had on our forebears," rather than a divine chronicle. Claude Montefiore, the founder of British Liberal Judaism, reduced revelation to inspiration, saying it is not the location of an idea that makes it sacred, but the worth of its content.

  Geiger himself was notably careful in practice. He believed reform could only be implemented gradually, remained personally observant, and was more moderate in behavior than his radical reputation suggested. The tension between principle and practice would prove to be a defining feature of the movement he founded.

• 3. Germany and the Rabbinical Conferences

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  The Hamburg Temple, founded by Edward Kley in 1818, was the first institution to give Reform its theological teeth. Unlike the earlier, eclectic reforms introduced by Jacobson in Berlin, Hamburg's prayerbook eliminated prayers for the restoration of sacrifices by the Messiah and the Return to Zion in a systematic way. Dozens of rabbis across Europe united to ban it. Orthodox resistance was intense enough to confine the movement to Hamburg for the next two decades.

  But acculturation continued regardless, and by the 1840s the pressure for formal rabbinical assemblies had grown irresistible. Between 1844 and 1846, Geiger and his supporters convened three conferences, in Braunschweig, Frankfurt am Main, and Breslau, attended by a total of forty-two rabbis. The meetings made few sweeping decisions, but they established a framework. The first, held on 12-the 19th of June 1844, abolished Kol Nidrei and the humiliating Jewish oath still administered by rabbis. Frankfurt officially enshrined the concept of a Messianic era in place of a personal redeemer. Breslau, the last and most cautious of the three, voted to eliminate the Second Day of Festivals.

  The most radical voice in those rooms was Rabbi Samuel Holdheim. While Geiger stressed continuity and gradual change, Holdheim argued that present conditions held the highest authority. He declared mixed marriages permissible, a position nearly every other Reform rabbi rejected. At Breslau, he proposed creating a "Second Sabbath" on Sunday, modeled on the Second Passover, since most Jews were already desecrating the traditional day of rest. His colleagues rejected the motion offhand.

  The gap between the rabbis and the radical laity was also on display. In 1842, a group called the "Friends of Reform" formed in Frankfurt, abolished circumcision entirely, and declared the Talmud no longer binding. In response, virtually all German rabbis, including Holdheim himself, declared circumcision obligatory. Even the most progressive clergy had lines they would not cross.

• 4. Classical Reform in America

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  When Reform reached the United States, it found an environment unlike anything in Europe. There were no state-mandated communal structures, no Orthodox establishment with veto power, and a Jewish immigrant population whose Americanized children were eager for a new religious expression. As historian Michael Meyer observed, the basic principles brought from Germany were those Geiger had articulated: progressive revelation, historical-critical method, and the centrality of prophetic literature.

  Two figures led the American movement in different directions. Rabbi David Einhorn, who had participated in the German conferences of 1844-1846, was the movement's radical intellectual. Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, who arrived in 1846, was its pragmatic organizer. Wise founded the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873 and Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1875. In 1889, he established the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He was, by his own nature, a compromiser; Einhorn, by his, was a purist.

  The Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 defined the era. Proclaimed on the 19th of November by Kaufmann Kohler, Einhorn's son-in-law and chief ideologue, it stated in eight clauses what Reform believed: moral laws were binding; ceremonies were valid only when they elevated religious experience; bodily resurrection, the restoration of sacrifices, and a personal Messiah were set aside. The platform was never formally ratified by either the Union or Hebrew Union College, and some members actively tried to distance themselves from it, fearing its radical tone.

  At the height of this "Classical Reform" era, roughly from the 1860s through the 1930s, some forty congregations adopted a Sunday Sabbath. Almost all liturgy was in English. Converts and male babies were not required to undergo circumcision. From 1890 onward, converts faced no circumcision requirement. The movement in America had travelled far further from tradition than its German counterpart ever dared.

  The speed of that transformation was stunning: in 1860, there were few Reform synagogues and some 200 Orthodox congregations in the United States. By 1880, a mere handful of the existing 275 synagogues were not affiliated with Reform.

• 5. The Eastern European Shift

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  From 1881 to 1924, more than 2,400,000 immigrants from Eastern Europe arrived in the United States, increasing the American Jewish population tenfold. The 40,000 members of Reform congregations became a small minority almost overnight.

  These newcomers came from regions where civil equality was scarce and modern secular education rare. Even those among them who were ideologically secular carried a traditional understanding of Jewish worship and identity. Their presence fundamentally changed what the American Jewish community looked like, and what it wanted from its religious institutions.

  The Reform response was codified in the 1937 Columbus Platform. Where the Pittsburgh Platform had stressed universalism and the shedding of particularist tradition, Columbus stressed Jewish peoplehood, the Hebrew language, and a renewed connection to the land of Israel. It marked a pivot from what scholars call "Classical Reform" to "New Reform," a shift toward re-embracing elements the movement had once discarded.

  The practical changes were real. Circumcision or the symbolic letting of blood for converts and newborns became virtually mandated again in the 1980s. Dietary laws attracted renewed interest, though not in any strict sense. Phylacteries, prayer shawls, and head coverings returned. The 2007 prayer book Mishkan T'filah restored the Gevorot benediction with the optional formula "give life to all/revive the dead," a passage Reform had removed generations earlier. Even the movement's leadership was candid that this was a matter of heritage, not a return to belief in bodily resurrection.

  Critics like Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan warned that the turn toward inclusiveness had come at a cost. He argued Reform had become something closer to a Jewish activities club, a way to express ethnic affiliation rather than a coherent theology, noting that even rabbinical students were no longer required to hold specific beliefs or maintain specific practices.

• 6. Openness and Inclusion

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  Reform Judaism is considered the first major Jewish denomination to adopt gender equality in religious life. The Breslau conference of 1846 announced that women must enjoy identical obligations and prerogatives in worship and communal affairs, though that declaration had virtually no practical effect at the time.

  The practical milestones came later, and they were pioneered by specific individuals. Lily Montagu, a driving force behind British Liberal Judaism and the World Union for Progressive Judaism, became the first woman in recorded history to deliver a sermon at a synagogue, in 1918. Two years later she conducted a prayer. Regina Jonas was ordained in 1935 by Max Dienemann, who later served as chairman of the Vereinigung der liberalen Rabbiner, making her the earliest known female rabbi to be officially granted the title. In 1972, Sally Priesand was ordained by Hebrew Union College, making her the first female rabbi ordained by a rabbinical seminary in the United States, and the second formally ordained female rabbi in Jewish history.

  Family seating, an arrangement in which men and women sit together during services, was introduced to an American congregation by Wise in 1851, after his Albany congregation purchased a church building and retained its existing seating layout. The same practice was not applied in Germany until after World War II.

  On LGBT inclusion, the movement was again a first mover. In 1977, the Central Conference of American Rabbis declared intercourse between consenting adults to be legitimate. In 1990, Hebrew Union College accepted its first openly LGBTQ students: Leslie Bergson, Stephen Roberts, and Burt Schuman. That same year, the CCAR admitted openly gay clergy. Same-sex marriage was sanctioned by the year 2000. In 2015, the Union for Reform Judaism adopted a Resolution on the Rights of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People, urging clergy and congregants to actively promote tolerance and inclusion.

• 7. Tikkun Olam and Identity

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  The phrase tikkun olam, Hebrew for "repairing of the world," became the central motto of Reform Judaism from the second half of the 20th century. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism grew into an active lobby for progressive causes, including minority rights. In Israel, the Religious Action Center pursues litigation in civil rights cases and challenges concerning the official status of Reform Judaism within the state.

  The movement's embrace of social action also generated pointed criticism. Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan stated that tikkun olam had absorbed only leftist, socialist-aligned elements, describing Reform Judaism as, in critics' words, "the Democratic Party with Jewish holidays." These disputes reflect a deeper tension at the heart of the movement: how much of a religion's identity can be expressed through politics before the theological core is hollowed out.

  Questions of Jewish identity have also pressed hard on the movement's edges. Between 2000 and 2013, roughly 80 percent of Reform-raised Jews in the United States who married did so outside the faith. In 2012, officials of the Central Conference of American Rabbis estimated that about half of their rabbis participated in interfaith ceremonies, despite the organization's official opposition to such marriages. That reality drove the movement's recognition of patrilineal descent: a child born to one Jewish parent, whether mother or father, is accepted as Jewish provided they receive Jewish education and commit themselves as such. The North American Union for Reform Judaism accepted this in 1983; the British Movement for Reform Judaism affirmed it in 2015.

  The World Union for Progressive Judaism, founded on the 12th of July 1926 in London, now estimates it represents at least 1.8 million people in 50 countries, with roughly 1 million registered adult congregants and the rest identifying with the movement without formal affiliation. By that count, Reform is the second-largest Jewish denomination in the world, after Orthodox Judaism. The Union for Reform Judaism alone claims 814 congregations in the United States and 27 in Canada.