Reform Judaism

Reform Judaism, as the term is understood in North America, refers to the first modern branch of Judaism that originated in Germany in the 1800s. This liberalizing movement sought to reform and modernize Jewish belief and practice in light of contemporary scholarship and views, and followed German Jewish emigration to countries including The United States of America, where it is currently the largest branch of Judaism. Its principles include:

Early Reform Judaism's view of Zionism

In the 1800s and very early 1900s, Reform Judaism rejected the idea that Jews would re-create a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland. They rejected the idea that there would ever be a personal messiah, and that the Temple in Jerusalem would ever be rebuilt, or that one day animal sacrifices would be re-established in a rebuilt Temple, in accord with the Hebrew Bible.

Related Topics:
Messiah - Temple in Jerusalem - Hebrew Bible

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Reform Judaism rejected the classical rabbinic teaching that the Jews were in exile ("galut"). For reformers, dispersion of Jews among the nations was a necessary experience in the realization and execution of its Messianic duty. Instead, the people Israel was viewed as the Messianic people, appointed to spread by its fortitude and loyalty the monotheistic truth over all the earth, to be an example of rectitude to all others. For reform Jews, all forms of Jewish law and custom were seen as bound up with the national political conception of Israel's destiny, and thus they are dispensable.

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Reform Jews ceased to declare Jews to be in exile; for the modern Jew in America, England, France, Germany, or Italy has no cause to feel that the country in which he lives is for him a strange land. Many Reform Jews went so far as to agree that prayers for the resumption of a Jewish homeland were incompatible with desiring to be a citizen of a nation. Thus, the Reformers implied that for a German, Frenchman, or American Jew to pray from the original siddur was tantamount to dual loyalty, if not outright treason. In the U.S., Reform intellectuals argued that their commitment to the principles of equal rights and the separation of religion and state precluded them from supporting Zionism. In a Jewish state, they contended, the Arabs would be second-class citizens and Judaism would be the official religion.

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Since the Holocaust and the establishment of the modern State of Israel, Reform Judaism has largely repudiated anti-Zionism, though the American Council for Judaism continues to support integration and oppose Jewish nationalism. Some Reform Jews who are not affiliated with the American Council for Judaism may hold anti-Zionist ideas privately, but virtually all factions and all official organs of Reform are now staunchly Zionist.

Related Topics:
The Holocaust - State of Israel - American Council for Judaism - Zionist

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