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The Canon · No. 096

Reform Judaism

Liberal or Progressive Judaism

1810s CE – present · Abrahamic · Living · US, UK, Germany, Israel, worldwide

VII. THE MODERN AGE — 1800 – 1945

How many

Roughly 2–3 million. The largest Jewish denomination in the United States, and one of the smallest in Israel, where it lacks state recognition for most religious functions.

Who began it

Israel Jacobson (1768–1828), who opened a reformed school and synagogue in Seesen, Germany, in 1810. Abraham Geiger was its principal theologian; Isaac Mayer Wise built the American institutions.

What it is for

To make Judaism liveable for Jews entering European civil society after emancipation, without either abandoning it or retreating from the modern world.

What it worships

One God, understood in progressively less anthropomorphic terms across the movement's history; many Reform Jews today hold non-personal or humanistic conceptions.

What it holds

Revelation is progressive, not a single fixed event; the Torah is a human record of the encounter with God rather than divine dictation. The ethical commandments are binding; the ritual and ceremonial ones are subject to informed individual choice — a principle called personal autonomy, and the movement's central distinguishing claim. Full equality of women. Since 1983 in the US, patrilineal descent is accepted if the child is raised Jewish, a decision the other denominations reject and which has real consequences for who counts as Jewish. Universalism: Israel's mission is to be a light to the nations.

What it does

Vernacular prayer alongside Hebrew; shortened liturgy; mixed seating; instrumental music. Kashrut and Shabbat observance are matters of individual choice and vary enormously. Bat mitzvah alongside bar mitzvah. Women rabbis and cantors. Same-sex marriage performed since the 1990s. Strong emphasis on tikkun olam as social action.

After death

Early Reform explicitly removed bodily resurrection and the personal messiah from the prayer book, replacing them with the immortality of the soul and a messianic age of justice brought about by human effort. Contemporary Reform is less doctrinaire and has restored some traditional language as optional. The movement's practical position is that Judaism is about this world and that the next is not knowable.

Its texts

Tanakh, read critically. The Pittsburgh Platform (1885), Columbus Platform (1937) and the Pittsburgh Statement of Principles (1999), which chart the movement's swing away from and then partly back toward tradition. Prayer books: Union Prayer Book, Gates of Prayer, Mishkan T'filah.

Its branches

Union for Reform Judaism (US); Reform and Liberal Judaism (UK); World Union for Progressive Judaism; the related Reconstructionist movement, founded by Mordecai Kaplan, which defines Judaism as an evolving religious civilisation and rejects a supernatural God.

Of note

Reform is the answer to a question no premodern Jewish community had to ask: what does Judaism become when Jews are citizens rather than a separate legal caste? Every other modern denomination is, in part, an answer to Reform.

Its timeline

  1. 1810 CE Jacobson's temple at Seesen; organ, German sermon, confirmation.
  2. 1819 CE Hamburg Temple; fierce Orthodox opposition.
  3. 1840s CE Rabbinical conferences in Germany; Geiger's scholarship.
  4. 1873, 1875, 1889 CE Wise founds the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Hebrew Union College and the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
  5. 1883 CE The Trefa Banquet — shellfish served at the first HUC ordination dinner — precipitates the split that produces Conservative Judaism.
  6. <strong>1885 CE</strong> Pittsburgh Platform: the most radical statement, rejecting dietary law, the return to Zion and bodily resurrection, and defining Jews as a religious community rather than a nation.
  7. 1937 CE Columbus Platform reverses course on Zionism and peoplehood, under the pressure of events in Europe.
  8. 1939–45 CE German Reform Judaism, the movement's birthplace, is destroyed.
  9. <strong>1972 CE</strong> Sally Priesand ordained — the first woman rabbi in America.
  10. 1983 CE Patrilineal descent accepted.
  11. 1990–2015 CE Full inclusion of LGBT members and clergy; same-sex marriage.
  12. Present Ongoing conflict with the Israeli rabbinate, which does not recognise Reform conversions or marriages.

Sources

Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.

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