Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism is a movement that modified or abandoned many of the traditional Jewish beliefs, laws, and practices in order to bring Judaism into the modern world in all aspects of social, political, and cultural conditions. The movement began in Germany in the nineteenth century in response to appeals to update the Jewish liturgy and other rituals. The Jews were being liberated from the ghettos, and many began to question Jewish tradition and its dietary laws, prayers said in Hebrew, and even the wearing of special outfits that set them apart as Jews.
The First Reform Services
A Jewish layman, Israel Jacobson, began a school in Seesen, Brunswick, Germany in 1801. In 1809, he held the first Reform services. The liturgy was in German, not Hebrew; men and women were allowed to sit together; organ and choir music were added to the service; and Jacobson instituted confirmation for boys and girls to replace the traditional bar mitzvah. The services also left out all references to a personal messiah who would restore Israel as a nation. The questions being asked were: “Who is Israel? What is its way of life? How does it account for its existence as a distinct and distinctive group?”
The Spreading Movement
The Reform movement was not a success in Europe. Many European governments that regulated religious communities didn't countenance more than one form of Judaism in any particular locale. It was in the United States, to which the movement was imported by the mass German-Jewish immigration in the 1840s, that it flourished. By 1880, almost all the 200 synagogues in the United States had become Reform.
In 1885, the Pittsburgh Platform, put together by Reform rabbis, declared that Judaism was an evolutionary faith and should be deorientalized. One conclusion was that the Talmud should be looked at as religious literature, not as legislation.
What do Reform Jews believe?
One of the guiding principles of Reform Judaism is the autonomy of the individual. A Reform Jew has the right to decide whether to subscribe to each particular belief or practice. As Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut wrote, “Reform Judaism affirms the fundamental principle of liberalism: that the individual will approach this body of mitzvot (commandments) of freedom and choice.”
Current movements advocate a return to more traditional mores. In 1999, Leaders of Reform Judaism embraced rituals associated more with Conservative and Orthodox Judaism than with the Reform movement, wearing yarmulkes and prayer shawls, observing dietary laws, and conducting prayer services in Hebrew.
