Jeremy Rosen
The Emergence of Reform Judaism
Jeremy Rosen - The Emergence of Reform Judaism
- Hello everybody. This is a very delicate subject today, because the truth is, like in all religions and in all political parties, anybody who’s to the right of me is a fanatic, and anybody who’s the left of me is a failure. And unfortunately, people are very, very judgemental, and I don’t like being judgemental. I want to discuss today not only the history of the reform movement in Judaism, but also the issue of whether it has or has not succeeded, and what the future is. Until the middle of the 18th century, wherever you were in the world, each community of Jews was autonomous, and it was autonomous under the broad authority of the written and the oral law, so that the variations that there were were local variations. After the first millennium, Jews either were under Christian authority and Christian culture and influence, or under Islamic culture and influence. And that influence is reflected in degrees of strictness, in broad attitudes. So, for example, the question of how to live a Christian society inevitably imposed certain traditions on the Jews living in that society. Music, for example, the organ, which was an important church instrument, was part of their culture. The organ wasn’t part of the oriental culture. And so the question of whether you have an organ in a synagogue or not was of a different order. And yet, at that time in the Christian world, there was music in the synagogue, particularly in places like Venice and northern Italy, although before Shabbat came in, not after. Within the Western world, this began to change with what we call the Enlightenment. And the Jewish equivalent of the Enlightenment was the Haskalah. As the walls of the ghetto came down, certainly antisemitism didn’t stop, Jews mingled more in the host society and the process of assimilation or adaptation began quite seriously. Whereas in the Oriental world, that movement was not there.
And therefore, in this period, the period at the end of the 19th century, and the beginning of, sorry, the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th, you had trends that were creating schisms and divisions within the Jewish world. And I’m going to speak primarily about the Ashkenazi world, and I’ll explain to you later on why. People often date this schism from Moses Montefiore, not Moses Montefiore, I’m sorry, from Moses Mendelssohn. Moses Mendelssohn, who lived during the 18th century, managed to escape the ghettos, if you like, of Eastern Europe, and moved to Berlin where still Jews were not allowed to live, but could get special exceptional permission if you are an important individual and got a job as a tutor. And he was the first person to try to translate, or did translate Jewish texts from the Hebrew into German so they would become accessible to be able to explain how you could be a good citizen of Germany, even if you were a Jew. He, the whole of his life, lived what we would call an Orthodox life. But in the east, in the Polish, Russian, Ukrainian East, any movement towards Western culture was regarded as problematic. The fear of assimilation. And within Judaism, the Haskalah movement was a movement within these areas where Jews, Orthodox as well as not so, wanted to learn more about western society, western culture. And not only that, but began to want to examine Jewish sources from a scientific point of view, or from a rational point of view. This is a movement that developed in Judaism in middle Europe called, in other words, the academic study of something without necessarily taking a pro-religious or an anti-religious angle of things.
But nevertheless, at the beginning of the 19th century, people began to think in terms of how can we make the Judaism that we experience in the West different from the experience we had in the East. And so for example, for the first time, you have the question of whether in Germany you were allowed to give a sermon in a synagogue in German. And interestingly, it wasn’t just the ultra Orthodox who thought this was a scandal, stick to Yiddish or Hebrew, it was the Germans themselves who thought the German ought to be an ecclesiastical language, which only good Christians would use. But nevertheless, roundabout the beginning of this period in 1810, you have a man by the name of Israel Jacobson who decided that he would like to have a sermon in the synagogue, music beforehand to get in the mood, and an organ was the obvious thing to have, but apart from that, did not change anything fundamental. Still women were separate from men, and the old religious traditions and the texts were remaining there. But nevertheless, he decided to set up an alternative synagogue with that little innovation. And he was followed by a man called Edward Guns, who also set up in his little town a more of a reform community, although they didn’t call it reform in that way. It wasn’t until 1818, for the first time, in Hamburg, you have this desire to change, to conform much more strongly to German cultural ideas. And so for the first time, you didn’t call it a synagogue anymore, you called it a temple. That sounded a little less ethnic. And in addition, they said, it’s time to change the prayer book. Do we really want to go on worrying about sacrifices? Surely we don’t want to deal with that.
And not only, but reading the Torah every week in the synagogue can take about an hour to go through the whole lot, particularly if you break it up in the way for various other insertions, so why don’t we revert, instead of trying to complete it in one year, which is the norm, why not do it as they used to do it one upon a time in Israel, and split over three years, so it would be shorter and wouldn’t go on for that long. To us, these don’t sound like dramatic requests, but at the time it caused a few, because the Russian, Jewish, Ukrainian world, even the Haskalah members of it, those who are interested in combining with secular education, thought this was chipping away at tradition, and it was a very dangerous move to make. It was in 1847 that Berlin set up its own temple, but Berlin wanted to go a lot further than Hamburg. And so you had the beginning at that stage within the so-called reform movement, a split between reformers and liberals. Reformers wanting to make some modifications to the structure of the service, and to Jewish life, whereas the liberals wanted to take a much more open-minded, German cultural western view of everything. So anything that smacked off something ancient, whether it was messianism or resurrection or any of these concepts which seem to be non-rational concepts, they found offensive. Probably the man who’s regarded as the most important founder of what they became known as reformed Judaism was a man called Abraham Geiger. I don’t know if I spell that right, or if how he spelled it that way, or pronounced it that way. In Germany, a man who lived I think 1830 to about 1874, something like that. And he decided to lay out a kind of an agenda for reform. The first thing that came out was to say, look, we are essentially concerned with what we would call ethical monotheism. In other words, the idea, general idea of monotheism, but what nowadays we would call tikkun olam, being a good person, living a good life.
That’s what we want. We are not that so concerned with ritual. We are going to keep ritual. Sure we are, ritual has its importance, but we’re not that interested, and we need to make certain modifications. The most controversial of these, in fact, one he didn’t agree to, but other wings of his movement did, was to ban circumcision. But he wanted to remove the so-called oral law, take away Talmudic Judaism, which in some way, harked back to the Karaites, and indeed to some extent, to the Sadducees of the biblical period, of the late biblical period, of the second temple, rather. And this resulted in a kind of a, a fend off between Geiger on the one hand with his cohort, a man called Samuel Holdheim, both of them rabbis and scholars, and on the other hand, a man called Zaharia Frankel, who liked the idea of moderation and change, but didn’t want to destroy the, he saw it the prayer book, or get rid of tradition. His idea was, let’s keep tradition as a point of reference. We can interpret it differently. We can say things have changed, but tradition is tradition, and once you start chopping away, you never know where you’re going to end up. So this world of Geiger and Holdheim became the dominant world of German Jewry during that period of time. It didn’t go unnoticed within Germany. And you had other Jews like Rabbi Samson Hirsch, who strongly believed that Orthodox does not need to change, but it needs to be explained and understood. And he wrote beautifully in German the counter-arguments, and offered an alternative to the reform movement.
But nevertheless, this became, reform became the dominant mood of a German society that was rapidly assimilating. Remember one in which all of Mendelssohn’s sons and daughters converted to Christianity. And and throughout this period, only a good Christian could really advance within Austrian German society. Then what happened, something very interesting, is that in 1848, after Europe opened up for the first time to the idea that Jews could be normal, ordinary citizens, and could be allowed free rights within their society and allowed to move and get around, but at the same time a resurgence of national antisemitism, big migration from Germany came to the United States of America. Now the United States of America, interestingly enough, the earliest Jewish immigrants, basically were Spanish and Portuguese as they were in Holland, and in Holland as in America, they were much more enlightened. And so in effect, before the advert of German Jewry, there were already Jews in the southern states of the United States of America who are beginning to move away from a very traditional background, and start introducing certain changes. The first community to do that was Charleston, actually, in 1824. But slowly, slowly, rabbis started coming to America from Germany, and they began to exercise a profound influence on the United States of America. Parallel, at the same time, in 1840, there was the opening of a Jewish reform synagogue in London, in England, but Anglo Jewry faced certain different conditions. Anglo Jewry was a very, very conservative, controlled world, in which religion was dominated by the Church of England.
The Church of England was the Queen’s church. It was a body in which you had the religious, the bishops were lords, they’re part of the process. And the church was run by a synod in which lay members had a significant voice, but it made sure that it kept absolute control over the religion. And in Britain, British Jews initially were Spanish and Portuguese, but then with the massive migration, both from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, they became dominantly an Ashkenazi community. And the Ashkenazi community of England modelled itself remarkably on the Church of England. The whole structure of what became known as the United Synagogue, the idea that there were lay members who had a say in it, and they had a big input into what went on. And they were very much determined to preserve their power. And as they were the church, so to speak of Judaism, most Jews belonged to it, even if they didn’t go to it, as in the Church of England today, biggest official church, most people don’t belong or don’t go very regularly. But nevertheless, it’s absorbed a lot of Jews who were what we would call half, half. In other words, they might go to a synagogue on a Saturday morning, but then they’d go off either to a football match in the afternoon, or go and have lunch with their friends in the city. And they would not allow, and they blocked for a long time any expanse of the reform movement. So, the reform movement never took off in England the same way that it had in Germany, and the way as we’re going to see it did in the United States of America.
Because after this arrival of Jews from Germany, who quickly moved into senior positions in banking, and in finance, and in industry, and were wealthy and living in the north, and part in the main of the unionists of the north, although there were Jews fighting and banking for the South as well, and they established for the first time, large, big synagogues, whereas the Eastern Europeans coming in from a more orthodox or revolutionary background, either had no synagogues, alternatively had small little ones down in the Jewish ghettos of the Lower East Side. And therefore it was the German reformed Jews, all these famous names of Jewish banks, some of which still exist in name, although not in Jewishness, of course, they became the dominant force, and they dominated politics, they dominated welfare, they dominated almost every aspect of Jewish life. When the Russian immigrants start coming in 40 years later, in large numbers. As I said, most of them came from very traditional backgrounds, and even if they could not be religious now coming into a country where they had to work for a living, they had no money on Shabbat and other times, they still saw themselves initially as being part of the old world religiously, even though they were coming into the new world industrially and culturally. And remember, a lot of them were socialists. A lot of these socialists were not at all interested in religion whatsoever. Thire form of identity came with what was known as the landsman shaft, what town do you come from? We’ll take care of you over here. We’ll provide burial, we’ll provide whatever you need. We’ll help you charitably in anything we can do.
And so, although during that period there were certain movements to hold the middle ground, which I’ll come to in a minute, without question, reform grew into the dominant expression of Jewish religious life in the United States of America, as indeed numerically it still is today. The reform movement boomed. There was two very important rabbis, rabbi Isaac Mayer Weiss, and Rabbi David Einhorn. David Einhorn was the ideologist, Isaac Mayer Weiss was the practical guy expanding the movement. And they together set up what was called the Union of American Hebrew congregations to combine these reform community. And they set up the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati, which was a rabbinical training college for the United States of America. This, interestingly enough, drifted and pulled a movement very far to extreme reform. The extreme reform in some cases even reached as far as having services on Sunday rather than on Saturday, and actually banning any Hebrew in the synagogue. Initially, they didn’t have joint pews, but then they soon moved to mixed pews. But I want to read out to you a statement of what the reform movement stood for in 1885. It was called the Pittsburgh Platform. And its position was this, that mosaic legislation was of historical interest, but not relevant, except on ethical issues. Laws of diet, purity, dress, are totally alien. Observance should only instruct rather than elevate. Messianic hope is restricted to the idea of justice for everybody. This community has no interest in going back to the land of Israel. We can accept the idea of immortality of the soul, but we reject the idea of resurrection, heaven, and hell. Interestingly enough, in 1883, there was what was called the Trefa Banquet to celebrate the graduation class of the Hebrew Union College.
And this held in Cincinnati didn’t include pork, but did include every other non-kosher food that you can imagine. And that caused quite a reaction at the time. And to some extent, it put the brakes on going too far the other way because the outcry, even from within the reform movement, was so serious. Eventually, as this developed, it developed and changed over time, so that by the time you get to the middle of the last century, you have the famous 1937 Columbus platform in which they define it this way. Torah defines Judaism as the soul of which Israel is the body. The people is the body, the Torah is simply the soul. Religious tradition is a unifying bond. We do support the Jewish homeland, and we do support the preservation of traditions. That is a dramatic change in the court during a period of about a hundred years in the reform movement, so that the reform movement over time began to modify some of its extremes. And the interesting feature about reform Judaism, was that each community was able to make up its own mind about how far to go, and what to keep, which is why you never know when you go into a reformed community what their particular traditions are going to be, unlike, for better or for worse, if you go into an orthodox synagogue, you know what the main text of the prayers are going to be in advance, and you know where you stand. There will be minor variations. During the early part of the 20th century, two movements modified and came between reform and great orthodoxy on the one hand. One of these was the conservative movement, the theological college that had been founded the JTS in the previous generation, actually by Orthodox rabbis, Ashkenazi, who wanted to train moderate rabbis, had moved further away from the Orthodox, and under the influence of Shakta, had become what we now call the conservative movement.
The conservative movement took a much stronger view on preserving tradition and retaining Halakha Jewish law and making decisions on the basis of Jewish law. However, whereas within the Orthodox camp, Jewish law changed by consensus of opinion, and we know that consensus is difficult to achieve, and we know that it moves very slowly, within the conservative movement, their council of rabbis were able to make decisions regardless of the right. And in the early years, most of these decisions totally agreed with the more lenient side of the Orthodox world. At the same time, there was a movement by a Rabbi Kaplan called Reconstructionism. And Reconstructionism said, basically, custom is fine. It’s the theology I’ve got problems with. What happens if I don’t believe in God? And what does God mean? And what do all these theological issues mean that everybody has? And therefore I want to free us up to be able to think for ourselves. And initially, that did extremely well, but not nearly as well as the conservative movement, because many Jews who had come from Eastern Europe, even if they weren’t that orthodox, remember the orthodoxy of there, remembered how they liked it that way, wanted to preserve tradition, and they’d left the Orthodox world, but they didn’t want to go as far as the reform world went, and they joined the conservative movement.
And for I think the whole of, or at least for most of the 20th century, the conservative movement was the most successful in terms of growing numbers, and reaching out, and playing a very, very important part in American Jewish life. It still didn’t overtake the reform, but it was the only serious competition. Because on the other hand, the Orthodox world was very small. There were very small Orthodox communities, not numbering very many outside of New York, Los Angeles, and Florida, but they were not at all significant. They only became really significant in the century in which rabbis started coming from Eastern Europe just before World War II. There were one or two Orthodox rabbis who came over, the most interesting one that always intrigues me is in the 19th century, they bought over a very distinguished rabbi from Eastern Europe to become the chief rabbi of New York. The only time you had a chief rabbi in the United States of America. He lasted five years. He gave up in the end. And there’s never been a chief rabbi since. That’s another topic for discussion, of course. So, as we come forward in the the 20th century, to life here in the United States of America, you have this powerful, large reform movement of America. You have the conservative movement. And you have a significantly growing but small orthodox position here. Over the fifties and the sixties, things began to change. And they began to change with dramatic assimilation and marrying out in the United States of America. I would say in the millions, Jews were leaving Judaism. And the question then arose, what can we do about it? The reform movement, and the conservative movement to some extent said, look, we’ve got to make concessions to keep them in.
The main thing is to keep them in. How do we keep things in? By several methods. Let’s, first of all, put a bit more emphasis on education, a bit more emphasis on traditions, a little bit more emphasis on Zionism, and align to the land of Israel. And during the fifties, sixties, and probably seventies, this was the mood within the conservative. and within the reform movement. And Israel played a greater part. At the same time, the Holocaust played a very great part, and the Holocaust became a substitute religion for many Jews in the United States of America, as elsewhere, as, indeed, did Zionism. So in a sense, you had the church of the non-religious in the United States of America also playing a very important part. But in both of those areas, it became clear that they were not halting into marriage. They were not holding back attrition. And attrition got worse and worse. So then the argument was, okay, a, let’s be lenient into marriage. Let’s welcome the non-Jews. Let’s make conversions so much easier so that it’s not a hassle, and let’s do what we can to help mixed marriages and mixed families finding a place in our community. In both cases, there were arguments about whether to convert, how to convert, should they, what constitutes conversion? Is it enough to say I believe? Or do you have to practise in some way? These were the debates that went on. And in both communities, this was a very important new step, but it still did not halt the question of assimilation and marrying out. And so, over the last 20, 30 years, they have witnessed a decline.
A decline in numbers, a decline in the number of people wanting to become rabbis. And despite all the attempts to open up, like opening the rabbinate up to women, and giving them an equal role, which was the main feature initially of reform, they did it long before anybody else, but then the conservative movement followed, and by trying to find any way of making life easier, neither of those worked satisfactorily. At the same time, from the 1930s, orthodoxy, and particularly one thinks of New York, of Brooklyn, of the rise of what will be known as the Haredi Orthodox, black hat community, you saw a significant rise, because rabbis were coming from Eastern Europe and setting up Yeshivas, and setting up study areas, and alternative orthodox synagogues, not only New York, but in Chicago, and in Baltimore. And they were preaching the very traditional approach to religious life, and to moral life, that they felt would be the best way to preserve Jewish identity in the United States of America. And these rabbis fell into two broad categories. Those were from Lithuania, and they were, if you like, more intellectual, more scholarly. They believed in intense study, but at the same time, they were open to a degree of secular knowledge and qualification. On the other hand, you had the Hasidim. The Hasidim were en route, a mystical sect who totally rejected anything to do with the Western world, who believed in being different, looking different, and living in closed, protected communities, where they could guarantee no external influence and educate their children with a passion and a determination. Those two areas have grown exponentially since World War II, and both of them have been spurred on by the Holocaust, because they have both said, look, the Holocaust nearly destroyed us. There’s another Holocaust going on of assimilation.
We have to carry the banner of survival, and we’ll do this by studying Torah and by living in strict enclaves, and rejecting anything from the secular world whatsoever. So any attempt to change us to be like the non-Jews, we don’t want. We don’t want this. We are not interested. So don’t try to push any kind of liberal agenda on us. It’s not what we want. Over this period, has to be said, that whereas both reform and conservative seem to be struggling to some degree, still reform, numerically is the biggest group, to achieve its agenda. The Ultra Orthodox are growing, and expanding, and having 10, even 12 children per family. So they’re not worried about their future, even if two of them go off the track, they’re still way ahead of the demographic game. So here we are today, and the question is, can it be said therefore that conservative Judaism has failed, and reform Judaism has failed? Now, I don’t believe it has. I haven’t mentioned the middle of the road Orthodox, because that’s, in a sense, really not at this moment relevant to the point I want to make. I believe that any attempt that is made to keep Jews within the ambit of a Jewish life, whether it’s religious, or whether it’s secular, to what degree it might be or might not be, is important, and valid, and should be encouraged. So I would encourage there to be a movement, however reform it might be, that still sees itself as part of the Jewish people. The only problem that this raises is once a movement like the reform movement makes the decision to accept the patrilineal definition of a Jew, anybody born of either a Jewish mother or a Jewish father, because that means that the other denominations will not recognise the children as being Jewish. And I think that is a tragedy for both sides.
And yet, from a reform point of view, this is the right and the moral thing to do. And therefore they have every right to take that stand. The conservative movement hasn’t gone that far. The conservative movement still follows the more religious wing, and that is their right and what they do. And of course within the Orthodox world, as anybody who knows the Orthodox world, there are so many different denominations of people who do more, do less, or none at all. Interestingly enough, here I come back for a moment to the Sephardi world, because they didn’t experience the German European enlightenment. As a result, in the Ottoman Empire, and in the East, there was no such thing as reform congregation. The rabbi was the rabbi of his community, wherever it was, in whichever country, and he had to deal with everybody. And therefore, the rabbis of the Oriental world knew they couldn’t be too strict for fear of driving away those people who weren’t able or willing to be that orthodox. The result is, that whereas in the Western world, an Orthodox rabbi could always say to somebody, you don’t like the law? Vote to reform, I don’t mind. You’ve got somewhere else to be. In the Oriental world, there was no else to be. And therefore the rabbis were more tolerant on almost every level of Halakha of Jewish law, and still are to this day. So if you really want to find a a tolerant rabbi, you will go back to somebody like Rabbi Yosef, the greatest Sephardi rabbi of the last generation, Rabbi Uziel, the first Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, who were very, very, what we would call, tolerant and open-minded.
Unfortunately, that’s slightly changed today because of the particular conditions in Israel where for many years, the Sephardi felt themselves or were made to feel second rate. And as a result, many of them thought the only way to show we’re as good as the Ashkenazi, or the as they called them, was be to black hatted like them. So whereas Rabbi Usef said, I don’t want them to dress the way the Hasid dress, and the others dress with their black hats. I want them to dress the way they did when they were in the Oriental world. Now more and more of them including his own sons dress with a black hat. So, we are in a situation in which in Judaism we have this tremendous variety, which on one level is very healthy, and it’s very good. On another level it’s very bad, because people like to be judgmental all the time. And, as I said at the beginning, if you are more religious than I am, you are Haredi, And if you are less religious than I am, you are reform, and everybody busy calling everybody something else. And it seems to be human nature, because you find this in Protestantism, in Catholicism, and in Islam, everywhere there are splits and there are divides. And so, as I come to conclude, I have to say, that although I personally do not agree with a point of view that diminishes the priority of living a Jewish life practically through Halakah, I value any attempt, any attempt to reach out to Jews and to get them in, and bring them closer. There’s one outlier to all this. An interesting outlier. And that is the Chabad movement. The Lubavitch movement. The Lubavitch movement is a Hasidic movement that began in Eastern Europe, in the Ukraine, parts of Russia, the first Lubavitch, but the past one came over to United States of America just before World War II, as did his relative who would become the famous Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson in the fifties. And they had a Messianic vision. But where is the Messianic vision of the Williamsburg black hats was, let’s leave it ‘til the Messiah comes and we’ll deal with it then. Their vision was, no, we got to be proactive now. And how do we be proactive now? By reaching out to all Jews.
And so you have this movement, an evangelical movement, but evangelical to Jews, not trying to get anybody else, you know, they’re having good relations with others, who are not judgmental, who say, look, you can come and pray in our traditional synagogues. We’re not going to impose on you. You like it, fine, you don’t like it, you go somewhere else. We’ll reach out to everybody and be nice to everybody. Whereas on the other hand, you have, let’s say the groups in Williamsburg who say, look, no, it’ll contaminate us if we reach out, they’ll influence us. Let’s turn our backs on them and just concentrate on ourselves and securing our survival under these very difficult conditions that we are all labouring under. I want to end here and start with questions, but again, by reiterating, there’s a principle in Judaism called Ahavat Yisrael. We should try to love each other. Now, just as a principle in Judaism is that we should love everybody, and love our neighbours, and it’s nice in theory, but in practise it doesn’t work, doesn’t work in Christianity any more than it does in Judaism. Similarly, it doesn’t seem to work as the political system in Israel is showing very clearly. And that depresses me, and it worries me very, very much. And so I think to spend time complaining about other attempts to revive Judaism, or other attempts to express Judaism, is a desperate no win game, and we should forget about it. Let’s focus on being good people to whatever degree we choose to actually practise our religious life. So, there I end my presentation, and I move to now questions and answer.
Q&A and Comments:
Q: Wasn’t the whole enterprise Alan Myers ask initiated as a result of the French revolution during which Jewish emancipation was encouraged?
A: Now, you are right and you are wrong, Alan. The, as you know, Napoleon, the French Revolution actually, the French Revolution itself did give Jews freedom. Didn’t stop antisemitism, but it did. And already in the French Revolution, Jews were beginning to assimilate and take sides, but they were not trying in any way to change the religion, or vary it. As you know, Napoleon gave equal rights to the Jews in the famous words of one of the members of his cabinet to the Jew as a person, everything, to the Jews as a people, nothing. And he convened a Sanhedrin. And indeed, one of the members of the Sanhedrin did advocate at that Sanhedrin reforming Judaism. But he was just a sole voice. He took no steps to actually carry it out. And it was only after Napoleon fell when Europe, for example, then backtracked in almost every place on rights to Jews. And it wasn’t 'til the second, if you like, republic, or a third revolution in 1848 that really the freedom of Jews, in terms of legislation, became established. And I’m talking about a period between those two times. Jacobson was between that period. So yes and no. Service reformed ritual, belief, faith not says William. These were all elements that were part of the reform agenda. So, I’m not certain what you are asking. If you wouldn’t mind William, redefining your question. I’ll deal with it lower down.
Q: Barry asks, does reform system allow cremation?
A: Yes, it does. It does allow cremation. I think that’s, I don’t think there’s anyone that doesn’t, but definitely reform does allow for cremation. Remains this enlightenment at odds with tradition. Well, I don’t think it is. It depends what you mean by enlightenment. I am a graduate of a Western university. I have the same Western education as any other enlightened member of the West. At the same time, I have a very fundamentalist, very traditional Jewish education, and I fit in just as well in that extreme environment. So, I believe therefore, that it is possible to combine the two. There are many in the extreme right world of Judaism believe you can’t, that you will only be corrupted. And they might think that I, poor guy, have become corrupted by the secular education, to which, and they will say something like, he who walks in the middle of the road gets knocked over. And I would recount by saying, ah yes. But a pendulum that swings from one side to the other that can go from secular to religious, and back again and back again, keeps time right in the middle.
Q: Alan wasn’t- Sorry about that. I thought I’d managed to turn my logs off. Wasn’t the United Synagogue opponent of positive historical Judaism was bound by Zhari Frankel, the founder of Conservative Judaism?
A: Well, not entirely. Not entirely, because the the main academic leaders of the United Synagogue, whether they were at one stage chief rabbis from Hertz, on through to those in our own lifetime, and the teachers of Jews College, or followed what we would call a fundamentalist line, in which they drew a distinction between academic study on the one hand, and their religious position on the other, a kind of a schizophrenia. And in many ways you might say I’m schizophrenic. But the United Synagogue always was committed to the rule of Halakha. It always had a Beth Din, which was the chief rabbi’s court. And all of the members that sat on the Beth Din were absolutely solidly fundamentalist.
Karen, I grew up in Rochester, New York, attended direct Kardash, which was reformed. We had an organ. Most of the services in English. Friday night service was better attended than Saturday morning, I went to religious school on Sunday. My current reform temple in Barkley, California is much more conservative. And since I never learned Hebrew, I often feel somewhat lost during the services, although they do provide translation, transliteration, please comment on the reformation of reform in the US after the 1960s. Well, Karen, you make a very good point, and a lot of form of people who attended reform synagogues in the old days feel out of sync with it in the new days. But on the other hand, I think every community has the right to make its own decision, and find the way you want to pray. Here I am, for example, on the Upper West side with a preponderance of synagogues, most of whom, whether they are orthodox, or conservative, or reform, I don’t particularly like praying in. I do like praying, but I tend to find somewhere which is more like they call it a little Siebel, a little small gathering of people in private homes or private areas, because I feel it more intimate, and we have to choose what suits us. And I’m sorry that you feel somewhat out of touch, but I’m glad that they are making an attempt to compensate. And if anything I can do to help you, I’d be happy to help you in any way online.
Q: Ron, would it been an exaggeration to describe reformed Judaism in the US as primarily a secular movement based on a foundation of religious Judaism?
A: It’s a good point. You know, in New York we have something called the Ethical Society, which is an example of, it was founded by Jews, and they wanted to have a system of ethics, but without any trappings of religion. I think you have to say that what still defines reform Judaism is a religious movement. How they define their religion is entirely up to them. And most of them define it in moral, ethical terms, similar to the ethical society. But the truth of the matter is, all of Judaism defines itself as ethical. All of Judaism follows the ethical standards of the Torah and of the prophets. We all think that’s a divine, those are divine commandments, and we have to keep them. And just as we are failing if we don’t keep the ritual, so we are failing if we don’t keep the ethical. But I think that the vast majority of the reform movement consider themselves to be an ethical religion. Interestingly enough, only a small number consider themselves to be pro-Zionist. We have in New York, in the Stephen Weiss Synagogue, rabbi Atmel Hirsch, who is a reform rabbi, and very, very passionately, strongly Zionist, but most of them are not. Most of them have given their interpretation of ethical life a priority over being Jewish and supporting the Jewish people through Israel.
Jerry C, my rabbis were- Yes, I knew Hugo Green very well, I lived near to him. I was very, very friendly with him. I met Erwin Rosenblum and a Rabbi Colick. They told me Judaism, am I reform?
I’ve no ideas. I attend Orthodox- You are wonderful. I don’t think you have to define what you are. You are eclectic. And I think that is magnificent. So hang in there. I mean, I know rabbis in all of these areas. I like them all. I think they’re all doing a good job. And so don’t let anybody tell you you are right or wrong. You choose and stick to it.
Interpreter Ellie, I’ve read “New York Times” was founded by devout reformed Jews who disdained Israel, saw the death of idea of treasonous. That was apparently the basis of the anti-Israel outlook today and today’s anti-Semitic bias. That is true. The family that founded “The New York Times” were very assimilated Jews. They were strongly opposed, always strongly opposed to Zionism. They thought Jews were a religion and not a nationality. They’ve married out a long time back. And yes, “The New York Times” has become anti-Israel, anti-Orthodox, expresses its contempt for the Haredi world, and it is a paper that I cannot read anymore unless I censor it, because of its biases. I’m afraid same thing can be said in the New York Review of books, which I like, you know, in part, as they say of the curits egg, it’s good in parts.
Is that so? Yes, I’m afraid to say I believe this to be the case and many people in recent years have left “The New York Times” because the mood there is so antipathetic to Jews and to Israel. They feel they just cannot work in that environment. The Americans seem to live by labels. In Europe, I lived for many years so-called Unity Enheights communities run by Orthodox in many shades of religious communities. There are very few reforms synagogues in Germany, Switzerland, even France. Well, that’s true because most of the members of the reform communities originally in Germany, were massacred, or got rid of. So, reform suffered dramatically. So did ultra Orthodox, but somehow the ultra Orthodox were better able to reconstitute because they had survived in other locations outside. Now there is, there are reform movements in France. There’s a big, big one in Paris, and there are in Germany, but they are relatively small, also because a lot of the Jews that came to Germany after the Second World War tended to be to more traditional communities, even if they weren’t particularly religious. And so they, as many people in Israel, affiliate in theory to what we call a traditional Jewish way of life, even though they don’t live an orthodox life themselves.
Q: Why has modern orthodoxy succeeded as far right has?
A: Arlene, that’s a very good question, and I think one of the reasons is that the more successful moderate orthodoxy is, the more its children move to the right. Some move to the left and move out, but almost every modern orthodox community per family I know has a child or children who have moved to the right and joined the Haredi movement, either in Israel, mainly in Israel, but also here. So, the whole, if you like, agenda of modern orthodoxy is to strengthen the Haredi. And so, even though my children have made their own choices, some of them are Haredi and some of them are not. I’m delighted that they are still strongly contributing to Jewish survival in Israel and in the diaspora. It’s common to say modern orthodoxy is losing numbers, and it is as all groups are losing numbers who feel, let’s fit into western society, it’s easier. No restrictions, we can do what we like, we can have fun. We don’t have anybody breathing down our back, and that was what Paganism was. And so you know, we are living in an era of paganism. Religion is hanging on, and in parts, it’s surviving and growing, but we’re still living in a battle between a religious world and a pagan world.
Stewart says, I’m 77, raised Orthodox in Brooklyn, but my wife is reformed, so we draw on conservative. I felt more comfortable in conservative synagogue where yarmulkas and tallisim are worn, Hebrews is a large part of the service, but occasionally attend reform synagogues. I’ve noticed more Hebrew is used, more tallisim are worn in reform synagogues, and indeed you might also mention that more of them were kipot on their head, which was originally forbidden. Central synagogue in New York is reformed, services very traditional, during pandemic, often Zoomed their services. Yes, lots of people I know Zoomed their services. They were very, very successful, and good luck to them and more power to their elbow. And I am very glad you’ll find somewhere you enjoy. Is the conservative synagogue in apparel- Yes, England is different. England started with reform movement in the middle of the Victorian era, and its main central was the the West London synagogue in Barkley. 50 years later, a new movement started up by Montefiore, and it was called the liberal Movement. And the liberal movement was much less traditional than the reform movement. So, in fact the liberal movement in England was the equivalent of reform in America. So, unfortunately in England the reform kept the name reform, and they got tarred with a brush of American reform. They are small, they haven’t grown as much as the Orthodox world because of the nature of Anglo Jewry, which I mentioned earlier. And now it seems that both of them are coming together to merge into one movement. At the same time, a conservative movement developed. It developed out of the Orthodox Rabbi Louis Rabinovitz, who had a disagreement with the Orthodox chief rabbinate over fundamentalism.
And I have to say, with every chief rabbi of England, no matter how enlightened they might have appeared. or in their time, and none of them were prepared to tolerate Louis Jacobs. And as a result, his son helped set up what became known as the conservative movement Masorti. Masorti, not conservative in England, although I don’t believe Louis Jacobs himself ever joined, but nevertheless, he supported them. That now has a synagogue in North London with Rabbi Wittenberg is the rabbi, and it is the equivalent of conservative in America, although it prefers the Hebrew term, the Israeli term, Masorti, which is traditional, and therefore it would be misleading to try to call them conservative.
Barbara, you haven’t said anything about reform the UK. Well I hope I’ve added a little bit there, but get back to me if you want to ask a specific question.
Lorna says that the whole picture’s a really broad church. Yes, and I think it should be a broad church, and I’m delighted if it’s a broad church.
Interpreter Ellie, I heard talk recently about how the tolerant live and let live attitude has produced a growth of religious affiliation in Israel because people don’t live the condescending attitude of Orthodox rabbis. To me this would appear to be an important lesson. Yes, I think it is a very important lesson. A very important lesson. And I wish there were more of that elsewhere, but it’s also true in England. In England now there are a lot of synagogues, and the society synagogues also tend to be much more tolerant and much more open-minded. And so, I approve. Thank you Sarah. Your approval means a great deal to me. Thank you.
Q: Sally, can you please say something about reform movement view of revelation?
A: Well, yes, I think I would describe it this way. The Orthodox world believes revelation was an event that happened on Sinai that resulted in the Torah. That is, covers broadly speaking, their attitude. But that’s a very left-wing attitude because a lot of them also believe every single word that we have in the Torah today was dictated by God to Moses on Sinai. The conservative movement would take a view and part of the orthodox movement would to say, we don’t know exactly what happened, how it happened. Was it a Dictaphone machine? Did Moses type out the details? Did he come off the mountain with an oxcart carrying all the oral law as well as the written law? But that was the foundation constitution, and we believe it to be the foundation constitution of Judaism, and we adhere to it, and to adhere to its rabbinical authorities. The conservative movement would go towards saying, look, it is the basis of our tradition. We’re not going to go into analysis of how it happened, where it happened, what happened, when it happened. It is the core of our tradition.
And the reform movement says, look, we don’t know if it happened, probably didn’t happen. And if it did happen, it’s not relevant to us. What’s relevant to us is where we are today. There’s another funny little indication of differences between them. One is to say that at an orthodox wedding, it’s usually the mother of the bride who is pregnant, because they’re having babies all the time. At a conservative synagogue, it’s usually the bride who is pregnant, because by and large, they’re not too strict about laws or sex before marriage and so forth. And in a reformed synagogue, it is the rabbi who is pregnant. Well, even that nowadays, is not necessarily the case. So, but anyway, these are the variations. They are fun, don’t take them seriously. And there are so many different variations and gradations in each community that it doesn’t make sense to try to fix, just doesn’t make sense to fix, who is a Jew? I mean, there’s so many different definitions of who a Jew is, that even that’s a problem. So, you’re getting into trouble trying to put people into little boxes.
Q: Bernie Radamski, is it true that reform do not accept the oral law and Torah’s hand down God to Moses?
A: Yes, that’s true. They do not accept it. That’s not part of their tradition. And they’re perfectly happy to say so.
Q: What’s the difference between traditional and modern Orthodox?
A: I think the core issue is the extent to which a modern orthodox, and I don’t like to put myself in any category, but by and large to say the modern Orthodox is prepared to say there is something of value in western civilization, and western culture, even though we make our Jewish life a priority.
Q: Why is reform movement in Israel struggle for recognition?
A: Well, the reason for that is, that because initially, the reform movement did not encourage either Zionism or people going to settle in Israel, the number of Jews who went was very few, and most of, shall we say, the Jews from Germany who were more inclined that way, when they got to Israel, their attitude was not to join a particular religious identity and consider themselves to be secular Israelis. And being Israeli was their religion. On the other hand, when most of the Jews who had lived in Israel for hundreds of years called the oldies, the old black coated ones, they controlled religious life and were very orthodox. And then, when the massive immigration came from the Safadi world into Israel, they had no idea of reform. And they were what we call traditional. They liked their tradition. A lot of Safadi boys know how to read from the Torah, know how to take services. And yet, they’re not that religious. They go to church, synagogue on on Shabbat, in open shirt, and jeans, and shorts. And they go to play football in the afternoon. So the overwhelming number of Jews in Israel are, if not orthodox, and orthodox is considered to be about 30%.
And then there’s another, at least 20% if not more, who are what we would call masorti. We’re traditional, we like traditional, we don’t want to scrap traditional, we don’t want to change all the words in the Torah, change all the words in the prayer book. And then you have those who are secular. So, the number of people who are reform in America, in Israel, which is growing, is still very small. And so control of Israel is in the hands of the political parties. The religious political parties are religious. Some are more modern orthodox, the others are orthodox, and they’re not sympathetic to reform. And that’s why, occasionally you find lords, mayors of certain towns in Israel who encourage this reform movement. But in general, they are too much of a minority. And that’s why any attempt they make to change religious life in Israel is bound to fail. And the only way it’s going to change is either they grow internally, or massive immigration, which I don’t think is going to happen.
Richard says, people study Torah and read Hebrew in the reform movement. This is a strong intellectual component.
Angela is a model example of contemporary liberal rabbi. Wonderful model. Yes, I would agree. I will tell you, when I first went into Temple Emmanuel, which is the biggest reform temple in New York, and a temple that once had no Hebrew whatsoever, then it moved to a small amount of Hebrew, but in the old Ashkenazi pronunciation, 'cause they didn’t want to seem to be pro-Zionist. And in many reform synagogues, there is no English at all. There is no Hebrew at all. Although, many of them are coming back, many of them are not. And therefore you choose which one you are comfortable in. And I’m glad you’ve found one you are comfortable in.
Q: Mickey Mayer. What about modern orthodoxy?
A: I think I’ve mentioned that already.
Yan, is it worth in this evening- Well, that’s one of the variations you have within the Orthodox world. Those who live a very orthodox life in practise, and those who have independent ideas, who don’t necessarily mean Moses and God had a conversation on Mount Sinai who was recorded, who don’t necessarily believe there is resurrection of the dead. And so yes, you do have that as a component within the Orthodox world.
Do you think that Jewish education that focus only on reading prayers and festivals doesn’t give your youth enough knowledge of the broad Jewish- Yeah, I agree with you 100%. I’ve often said that. It’s something I share with Trudy Gold here, that Jewish education has failed in not emphasising enough the history side. And so many people come back to Jewry of history, because learning history doesn’t impose any kind of behavioural restriction. Not only that, without history, you don’t know how to answer the anti-Semites in the universities, or the anti-Zionists. So, I think Jewish education must emphasise history more, and it’s a scandal, and one of the reasons why I think it has failed so much.
Alan Meyers, if you look at the chart of the United Synagogue in 1930s, it does state they follow positive historical Judaism, that soon changed in the 1950s. Well, because it depended what you meant by historical, by positive historical Judaism. They interpret it in different ways, as we all do all the time. But thanks for that.
Q: Barbara, my mother was a German Jew who escaped to the US converted to Christianity due to fear of Nazi coming here. I try not to judge, am I Jewish?
A: Yes, you are absolutely Jewish, 100%. If your mother was Jewish, you are Jewish. And anybody who converted out of fear doesn’t even have to do anything to come back in at all, and are considered still Jewish. So she was still considered Jewish by Orthodox Jews. I live on the Upper West Side, would love to meet you. Fine. So get in touch with me, and we’ll arrange to meet for coffee. JeremyRosen@msn.com.
Q: Linda Nusbam, is there a reform movement making any progress in Israel?
A: Yes, it is, but from a very low base. It is making progress, and I hope it does make progress because better that than no religion whatsoever. Absolutely.
Robert, please comment on Chabad movement. I think I’ve mentioned the Chabad movement. All I will say is that in August, no, the next month, I’m giving a lecture on Rabbi Cook, and the Rabbi Schnarso of Chabad. And so, more of that will come then. Shelly Shapiro, the initial reform movement, believing God, many Jews nowadays not believe in God. Also nowadays there’s no consensus on ethics. Example, gay marriage. Yes, true. That’s why there’s no one system, and there’s no one answer. And you find the solution that makes you happy. Just read Thomas Friedman in “New York Times,” how anti-semitic it is. Point, not question. Yeah, I’m afraid so. It doesn’t surprise me. Doesn’t surprise me. We’re all picking that, picking on a couple of loud mouth, nasty pieces of work that are in the government, and they’re ignoring all the nice, lovely people. This is what the journalists bloody well do all the time. If a young man pushes a lady off the bus, they all say, oh, look what young men are like. And if a young man helps a lady onto the bus, nobody mentions it.
Esther, I’m a daughter of a religious rabbi who felt there’s enough religion at home and gave us a general education. Fair enough, good for him. I would go the other way now. I would say in most homes there’s not enough Jewish education, whereas on the outside you can get on the internet, and on YouTube, and on everything, so much secular information and education on everything. It’s an overload. So I think times have changed since then. And so, you know, I’ve always said I’d rather have my kids have a very orthodox early education, 'cause I know they’ll be able, by influence or society’s influence, to pick up on the other when they leave. And I also want to say this, that the mental training I got in a right wing yeshiva was far tougher than anything I experienced in Cambridge University in the philosophy department.
Lawrence Collin, please give you say a little about Masorti. Well, I’ve may mentioned that already, so I think I can go on from there.
Myrna, I met the intelligent young man on a plane, we chatted for a bit. He was obviously Jewish, very ethnic name. He said he wasn’t Jewish, his parents were reconstructionists. I asked him what was that? And he didn’t know. Well, he should look it up, look up Reconstructionism in the Wikipedia, and you’ll find out that what it is. And if his parents were Jewish, then mother was Jewish, then he is Jewish.
Q: How would you describe your own Judaism?
A: I suppose non-conformist orthodoxy, but I don’t like to describe it. I am a Jew. I live my life according to the Jewish way of life. That’s what what matters to me. When it comes to thoughts and ideas, they’re very subjective. You know, an intelligent person thinks differently to a less intelligent person. A mystical person feels less intelligently, differently to a rational person. And we’ve all got a bit of everything within us. Friedman comes from an Orthodox family, has continuously moved away and become the ultimate anti-semite. Ah, you’re talking about Tom Friedman? Yes. Sadly. There are others. What’s the other guy from from South Africa? His name, with a B, I can’t remember his name, But another example of somebody who’s moved further and further away from Judaism. It’s sad. It happens. Just as many people become more religious. It works the other way. Lack of sense of communities affected our education. I went to Sams Field, Hirsch, Breyers, ah, yes, very orthodox. We got a superb secular education. Yeah, it’s all right. Unfortunately the current state was resulting in the school moving so far to the right. Education suffered. Sad. I agree. We’ll talk about it.
Anita, thank you for brilliant- Peter, yes, that’s exactly the guy I was thinking of. Another case. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for listening, and hope to see you again sometime soon.