Reform Judaism

Overview

Recall questions on Reform views of revelation, changes to the synagogue service, observance and gender, the Haskalah, Reform in Germany, America and Israel, and Meyer and D E Kaplan on the movement.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   How do Reform Jews understand revelation, and what follows from it?

   Model answer

   As progressive and continuing rather than a single dictation at Sinai. God is held to have been genuinely encountered, but the record is human, conditioned by its time and open to error. Because Judaism has visibly changed before, most obviously when the rabbis replaced sacrificial religion with prayer and study, Reform Jews argue that conscious further change is faithfulness rather than betrayal, and they treat the ethical demand as permanently binding while judging ritual law by whether it still serves Jewish life.

2. 2

   What changed in the synagogue service under early Reform?

   Model answer

   Prayers and sermons in the vernacular alongside Hebrew, a choir and an organ, shortened liturgy, men and women seated together, greater decorum, and the introduction of confirmation for boys and girls. The Hamburg temple of 1818 became the flashpoint, since its prayer book cut the requests for a return to Zion and for the restoration of sacrifice.

3. 3

   Which observances do Reform Jews handle differently?

   Model answer

   The dietary laws and the detailed Shabbat prohibitions were largely set aside by classical Reform as no longer serving their purpose, though many Reform Jews have since taken parts of them back up as personal practice. The governing idea is informed choice: a Reform Jew is expected to know the tradition and then decide, rather than either to obey or to ignore it.

4. 4

   What has Reform Judaism done about gender?

   Model answer

   It removed separate seating, counted women in the prayer quorum, introduced bat mitzvah for girls alongside bar mitzvah, opened the reading of the Torah to women, revised prayer book language that referred only to the patriarchs, and ordained women as rabbis and cantors. Equality of men and women has become one of its defining commitments.

5. 5

   What was the Haskalah?

   Model answer

   The Jewish enlightenment movement of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which argued that Jews should acquire secular learning, write and speak the languages of the countries they lived in, and enter general society, while remaining Jews. Its followers, the maskilim, promoted Hebrew literature, modern schooling and civic emancipation.

6. 6

   How did the Haskalah shape Reform Judaism?

   Model answer

   It supplied the mentality Reform needed. From it came the confidence that reason may judge inherited practice, the historical study of Judaism that showed how much of the tradition had itself developed over time, and the drive towards acceptance as citizens, which made a decorous, vernacular, patriotic form of worship seem both possible and necessary.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.