The facility with which the Jews attach themselves to changed
circumstances stands out characteristically through their whole
history. It might, indeed, be said with some show of truth that this
pliability is the weak side in the Jewish character. The readiness of
the Jew to be almost anything and not simply his own self has been one
of the factors producing a certain ill will against him. Disraeli was
the most jingo of all imperialists in England; Lasker, the most ardent
advocate of the newly constituted German Empire. This pliability is the
result of the wandering life he has led and the various civilizations
of which he has been a part. He had to find his way into Hellenism
in Alexandria, into Moorish culture in Spain, into Slavism in Russia
and Poland. When the first wave of the modern spirit commenced to
break from France eastward over the whole of Europe, it reached the
Jew also. While in France the new spirit was largely political, in
Germany it was more spiritual. In its political form as well as in
its spiritual form it reacted not only upon the political condition
of the Jew, but especially upon his mental attitude. The new spirit
was intensely modern, intensely cosmopolitan, intensely Occidental,
and intensely inductive. The Jew had preserved to a great degree his
deductive, Oriental, particularistic, and ancient mode of thought and
aspect of life. The two forces were bound to meet. As a great oak is
met by the storm, so was Israel set upon by the fury of this terrible
onslaught. It is of interest to see in what manner he emerged from this
storm—whether he has been able to bend to its fury, to lose perhaps
some of his leaves and even some of his branches, but to change only
in such a way as to be able to stand upright again when the storm is
past.
This great clash of ideas has produced what is known as the Reform
movement. It had its origin in Germany under the spiritual influences
of the regeneration of German letters produced by such men as Goethe,
Schiller, Herder, Lessing, and Mendelssohn. It was aided in a large
measure by the fact that the government in Germany, although distinctly
opposed to anything which militates against the established order of
things, mixes itself very seldom in the internal affairs of the Jewish
communities. This Reform movement has colored the religious development
of Judaism during the three-quarters of the century which is past. The
heat of the controversy is now wellnigh spent. Many of those who stood
in the front ranks have passed away, so that a more just estimate of
its value can be reached. It was a period of tremendous upheavals, of
great physical as well as mental pain. Many a congregation was split
in twain, many a family disrupted. At one time it looked as if two
distinct bodies of Jews would emerge from the struggle, and the union
of Israel be destroyed forever. A common enemy—anti-Semitism—joined
the two forces together for a common defence; and the danger of such a
split is now fairly a thing of the past.
The latter half of the eighteenth century found the Jews of Middle
Europe at the lowest intellectual and social point they had up till
then reached. The effect of the long Jewish Middle Ages was plainly
visible. Few great minds lit up the darkness, and an intellectual
torpor seems to have spread its pall over everything. A passive
uniformity of practice prevailed in all the communities, whether
Sefardic (Spanish and Portuguese) or Ashkenazic (German and Polish); a
uniformity, because actual intellectual life had been made to run in
one single groove. The Talmud had been the great saving of Judaism in
the past. In the intellectual exercise which its study necessitated,
the mind of the Jew had been given a field in which it could rove at
will. Living apart from the rest of the world, with a wide jurisdiction
over his own affairs, Talmudic law in its latest development was still
the law supreme for the Jew. The Jewish Ghetto had everywhere the
same aspect; the language in common use was, in all the Ashkenazic
communities, the Judæo-German in one of its various forms. A certain
severity in evaluating those things which were part of the outside
world made itself felt. There was ample time and ample occasion for the
practice of all those forms and ceremonies with which the Judaism of
the Middle Ages had willingly and gladly fenced in the law. There had
been little occasion for the practice of the beautiful arts or for the
cultivation of letters. Life in the Ghetto was not necessarily gloomy,
but it was solemn. The law was not felt as a burden, but it required
the whole individual attention of those who bound themselves by it,
from early morn till late at night, from the cradle to the grave. There
was no place for things that come from outside, because there was no
time to devote to them.
But the new European spirit in its French political form was knocking
hard at the gates of the Ghetto. Little by little it made its way
here and there, into all sorts of nooks and corners. It was bound in
time to be heard by some of those living behind these gates. The name
of Moses Mendelssohn is indissolubly connected with the history of
German Judaism during the latter part of the eighteenth century. It
was due to him that a vehicle was found which the new spirit could
use. Himself a strictly observant Jew, he felt the pulse of the new
era. The friend of Lessing and of Nicolai, he entered fully into the
revival which was then making itself felt. Through his translation of
the Pentateuch (1778, etc.) into High-German, he prepared the way for
the further introduction of German writings to the Jewish masses. This
was bound to bring with it a larger culture and a greater freedom of
thought. Many of his friends, such as Wessely, Hertz-Homberg, and David
Friedlander, stood by his side in this work. With the introduction
of the German language and German literature, better and more modern
schools were needed in which secular education should go hand in hand
with the former one-sided religious training. David Friedlander was the
first to found a school in the modern sense of the term; and he was
followed by Jacobson in 1801, at Seesen, Westphalia, and at Cassel,
and by Johlson, at Frankfort, in 1814. Between the years 1783 and 1807
such modern Jewish schools arose in Germany, Austria, Denmark, France,
and even in Poland. Literature was cultivated, and the first Jewish
journal (though still in Hebrew) was published in Königsberg, 1783
(_Hameassef_—the Collector). The _Gesellschaft der Freunde_, founded
in Berlin in 1792, was distinctly intended for the spread of this
modern culture; yet Mendelssohn’s own position was quite an untenable
one. He was a thoroughly Orthodox Jew in practice, but his mental
attitude was that of a modern German. He was and he was not a reformer.
He held that it mattered little what philosophical position a Jew held,
the Jew must observe all the ceremonies connected with the faith; these
were binding upon him by the mere fact of his having been born into the
Covenant. It is therefore no wonder that his translation was put under
the bann in Hamburg, Altona, Fuerth, Posen, etc. His friend Friedlander
wished to make of the synagogue a sort of Ethical Culture Society;
and Jacobson’s preaching in Berlin contained very little of what was
distinctly Jewish. The salons of Berlin, Königsberg, and Vienna,
which were presided over by brilliant women, who were more or less
immediate disciples of Mendelssohn, nurtured the cosmopolitan spirit
which was bound to be destructive of practical Judaism. That this fruit
on the Tree of Knowledge ripened too quickly is seen from the fact
that all the descendants of Mendelssohn, Friedlander, and others, led
astray by this cosmopolitan spirit and the philosophic presentation of
Christianity by Schleiermacher, have all become devoted members of the
Lutheran Church and have been completely lost to Judaism.
It was natural that these new influences should influence also the
training of the modern rabbis. Secular education had been introduced
into primary schools, and in some places—as, for instance, Lombardy,
in 1820—the government demanded a certain amount of secular knowledge
from the candidates for rabbinical positions. The Jew also desired that
his leaders should have the same training as he gave his children, that
they should be educated in the same atmosphere in which he himself
had grown up. The old rabbinical seminaries, or Yeshibot, in which
the instruction was entirely on Talmudic lines, had already run their
course; the study had been found insufficient by the pupils themselves,
and the schools of Frankfort, Fuerth, Metz, Hamburg, and Halberstadt
had all been closed for want of students. The need of a modern seminary
was felt quite early during the century; and in 1809, a Lehrer-Seminar
was founded in Cassel. The earliest regular seminary for the training
of rabbis, however, was founded in Padua in 1829. In Germany attempts
had been made in the year 1840, but these attempts were unsuccessful.
The first modern seminary was not founded in Germany until the year
1854 (Breslau). Then followed Berlin, in 1872; Cincinnati, in 1873;
Budapest, in 1876. Similar institutions exist now in London, Paris, and
Vienna.
In the first convulsions of the Mendelssohn period the way was paved
for the second period of the Reform movement which covers the first
quarter of the nineteenth century. The real issues touched the central
point of Jewish life, the synagogue. It is interesting to note that
during this period the chief questions were not so much theological as
æsthetic. The æsthetic side of life could not be largely cultivated in
the Ghetto; and the form of the service had greatly degenerated. In the
course of centuries, so many additional prayers and songs and hymns had
been added that the ritual was largely overburdened, and often tended
rather to stifle than bring out the religious sense they were intended
to conserve. Contact with the outside world created and fostered this
æsthetic sense, and the influences of the writings of such men as
Lessing and Mendelssohn was largely in this direction. As this æsthetic
sense made its way into the homes, so also did it carve out its way
into the synagogue. Demands were heard for a shorter service; for the
organ to accompany the chanting of the reader; for the German language
in some of the prayers and for the German sermon. Each point was
bitterly contested; for the Orthodox wing had before it the wholesale
apostasy of the Salon Jews. In order to introduce the vernacular into
the service and into the sermon, private synagogues were opened by
small coteries in Cassel (1809), Seesen (1810), Dessau (1812), and
Berlin (1815). In Southern Germany the use of the vernacular was
introduced between the years 1817 and 1818, also in Hungary through
the influence of Abraham Chorin. In some countries the government gave
its active aid. In Vienna, in 1820, German was made obligatory, and
as early as 1814 Danish in Copenhagen. The greatest changes, however,
were made in the Hamburg temple (under Kley and Salomon, 1818), where
not only the service was made more æsthetic and the German language
introduced, but certain prayers referring to the Messianic time were
either omitted or altered. No wonder, then, that the Orthodox rabbis
in Germany, with the support of the rabbis in various other countries,
protested against such a course. The government even looked askance
at these Reform proceedings, and in 1817 and 1823 ordered a number of
these private synagogues to be closed. A further cause for displeasure
was the introduction in 1814 of the confirmation of children in German,
to replace or supplement the old Barmitzvah, a clear imitation of the
ceremony in the Protestant Church of Germany. Despite opposition,
however, the confirmation found its way into Berlin, Hamburg,
Frankfort, Cassel, Copenhagen, etc.
This æsthetic revolution in the synagogue could not, however, long
remain the only outward sign of the new life. The great weakness of
the Reform movement has been that it has lacked a philosophic basis;
and, as in its first beginnings, with the exception of Hamburg, it took
little note of the changed point of view from which those who fought
for reform looked at the old theological ideas. Æsthetic reform was the
work largely of individual persons and individual congregations. No
attempt had been made either to formulate the philosophic basis upon
which the reform stood, or to provide a body which should regulate the
form which the new order of things was to take on. Two attempts were
made to remedy these evils, both closely related one to the other.
The first was crystallized in what is now known as the “Science of
Judaism”; by which is meant the untrammelled, scientific investigation
of the past history of the Jews. The want of this was severely felt
just in those centres where reform had taken up its abode; and those
who assisted at its birth did so with the avowed purpose of getting
at the real kernel of Judaism by such investigation, and of freeing
that kernel from the accretions of ages. They saw also that some means
had to be found by which the result of these researches could be
brought before the people. The Mendelssohn period had also felt this;
but its organ had been written in Hebrew, and could not, therefore,
appeal to those who wished for the intellectual advancement of the
Jews upon modern lines. The Society for Culture and the Science of
Judaism in Berlin (founded 1819) started a journal, with L. Zunz as
editor. Though it only lived during the years 1822 and 1823, it was the
forerunner and the model for many of its kind that followed after. In
1835 appeared Geiger’s _Scientific Journal for Jewish Theology_, and in
1837 a regular weekly was established by L. Philippson, the _Allgemeine
Zeitung des Judenthums_. Around these and other journals which quickly
sprang up there gathered a coterie of historians, philologists, and
students of literature which in the fifty years between 1830 and 1880
has built up a science which has extended its investigations into every
corner of Jewish life in the past, and has followed to their sources
the various lines of development which have appeared from time to
time. A full estimate of what has been done will be apparent only when
the great Jewish Encyclopædia will be ready which is now in course of
publication in New York. Zunz, Geiger, Krochmal, Rapoport, Frankel,
Löw, Steinschneider, Graetz, Luzzatto, and Reggio are only a few of
the names of those who gave up their lives to this work. Most of the
early labor of these men was not dry-as-dust investigation pure and
simple, but was intended to have a bearing upon the actual life, upon
the burning questions which were then agitating Jewish thought. This
is clearly seen in the journal of which Zunz was editor, and in his
_Gottesdienstliche Vortraege_, the basis of nearly all the work done
after him, but which was evidently written to give the history of
preaching in the synagogue in order to justify the shortening of the
ritual and the introduction of the German sermon.
The second attempt was to found or create some central body which
would remove the purely personal element out of the Reform movement.
In 1837 Geiger had called his friends to a conference at Wiesbaden
for the purpose of formulating what they considered to be the essence
of Judaism. In 1844 a second such rabbinical conference was held
in Brunswick, largely at the suggestion of L. Philippson. Similar
conferences were held at Frankfort in 1845, and at Breslau in 1846;
for in the mean time the Reform Genossenschaft had been created at
Berlin, which went beyond all previous attempts and demanded some
positive statement of the theological position which it and its friends
occupied. The Frankfort assembly not proving satisfactory, the Berlin
society went ahead to establish its own synagogue; added a Sunday
service (which in a short while became the only service), and under
the guidance of S. Holdheim definitely broke with traditional Judaism,
removing nearly all the Hebrew from its service, abbreviating the
prayer-book still further, and diminishing the number of observances.
In Europe this Reform synagogue in Berlin has gone to the furthest
extreme; and though it has in a measure kept its members within the
pale of Judaism, it has neither been a great power nor has it found
imitators. The hope was generally expressed that a more general synod
would be held, to which the previous conferences were looked upon as
simply preparatory. The year 1848, however, put a stop to all normal
development; and it was only after a number of years that the question
was again taken up. In 1869 a synod was, indeed, held at Leipsic,
attended by eighty-one members; and in 1871 at Augsburg, attended
by fifty-two, both under the presidency of Prof. M. Lazarus. These
synods dealt, in a spirit of moderate reform, with questions relating
to the ritual, synagogue observance, the admission of proselytes,
etc. The general stand there taken would to-day be looked upon as
conservative; dogmatic questions were hardly touched upon excepting
so far as they recognized the principle of development in Judaism
both as a religious belief and as a form of religious exercise. It
was fondly hoped that these synods would become a court, which would
define and regulate whatever questions might arise. But it was not
to be. The synod represented only a part of the Jewish world even in
Germany. Not only did the large body of the Orthodox stand aside, but
even the so-called Conservatives left the conferences, as they could
not agree with some of the resolutions accepted there. In addition to
this, the Franco-Prussian war diverted the attention of all German
citizens; and ten years later the anti-Semitic movement succeeded in
driving the Jew back into himself. Jewish religious life in Germany
has therefore remained stationary since that time, the Orthodox and
Conservative parties being largely in the ascendant, leaving to another
land—America—the task of carrying further the work which it had
commenced. Yet, in spite of this arrested development, the Reform
movement has had a great influence also upon Orthodox Jews in Germany.
It produced the so-called historical school, which has the Breslau
Theological Seminary for its centre; and it called forth by way of
opposition the neo-orthodoxy of S. R. Hirsch, of Frankfort, which seeks
rather to understand the depths of the law than simply to follow it in
compliant obedience.
The æsthetic movement of the earlier period has also left its traces,
and especially in the Conservative congregation has succeeded in
introducing a service more in consonance with our modern ideas of
worship.
In 1840, under the influence of the movement in Germany, the attempt
was made to introduce a certain reform in the service of some of the
London synagogues. The measure demanded was exceedingly small—the
shortening of a few prayers and the omission of others, which were not
supposed to be in consonance with present ideas. The Orthodox party
did not, however, see its way to grant these requests; and, when the
Reformers protested, established their own synagogue, and issued their
own prayer-book, they were immediately placed under the bann both by
the Sefardim and the Ashkenazim. This congregation has not been of
much importance, and since its inception has made no further changes.
Compared with the Reform in America, the English movement would still
be classed as thoroughly conservative.
It was in the United States that the Reform movement developed its full
capacity and bore its most perfect fruit. In a new land, which was
untrammelled by traditions of the past, and where the congregational
system became the basis of Jewish communal life, the ideas which the
German Reformers had sown had a most fruitful ground in which to grow.
It cannot be said that the Reform movement here was actually started
by the Germans, for already, in 1825, one of the congregations in
Charleston, South Carolina, made up almost entirely of Sefardic Jews,
had developed “The Reformed Society of Israelites”; and the formation
of the society seems to have been due, not only to the demand for
an æsthetic service, but to an attempt to formulate a creed which
should omit all reference to the coming of the Messiah, the return to
Palestine, and the bodily resurrection. This attempt at formulating
a Theistic Church, however, was unsuccessful; and it was not until
the advent from Germany in the 50’s and 60’s of rabbis who had been
influenced by the movement in Germany that reform commenced to make
itself felt here. Merzbacher in New York, Isaac M. Wise in Albany and
Cincinnati, S. Hirsch in Philadelphia, David Einhorn in Baltimore,
are only a few of the names of those who fought in the thick of
the fight. About the year 1843 the first real Reform congregations
were established, the Temple Emanu-el in New York and Har Sinai in
Baltimore. It cannot be my purpose here to trace the history of the
movement in this country; suffice it to say that the untrammelled
freedom which existed here very soon played havoc with most of the
institutions of the Jewish religion. Each congregation and each
minister being a law to itself, shortened the service, excised prayers,
and did away with observances as it thought best. Not that the leaders
did not try, from time to time, to regulate the measure of reform to
be introduced, and to evolve a platform upon which the movement should
stand. Rabbinical conferences were held for that purpose in Cleveland
(1856), Philadelphia (1869), Cincinnati (1871), and Pittsburg (1885).
While in the earlier conferences the attempt was made to find some
authoritative statement upon which all parties could agree, in the
subsequent ones the attempt was given up. They became more and more
meeting-places simply for the advanced Reform wing of the Jewish
Church. The position of this wing of the Reformed synagogue may best
be seen in the declaration of principles which was published by the
Pittsburg conference. It declared that Judaism presents the highest
conception of the God idea; that the Bible contains the record of the
consecration of the Jewish people; that it is a potent instrument
of religious and moral instruction; that it reveals, however, the
primitive ideas of its own age; that its moral laws only are binding;
and that all ceremonies therein ordained which are not adapted to
the views and habits of modern civilization are to be rejected; that
all Mosaic and rabbinical laws regulating diet, priestly functions
and dress, are foreign to our present mental state; that the Jews
are no longer a nation, and therefore do not expect a return to
Palestine; that Judaism is a progressive religion, always striving to
be in accord with the postulates of reason; that the belief in bodily
resurrection, in the existence of a hell and a paradise, are to be
rejected; and that it is the duty of Jews to participate in the great
task of modern times to solve on the basis of justice and righteousness
the problems presented by the transitions and evils of the present
organization of society. Such a platform as this could not fail to
arouse intense opposition on the part of the Orthodox Jews, and to
lose for the conference even some of its more conservative adherents.
As in Charleston, in 1825, a platform of Theism was here postulated,
which was bereft of all distinctively Jewish characteristics, and which
practically meant a breaking away from historic Judaism. This position
of the advanced Reformers is also manifested in the stand which they
have taken in regard to the necessity of the Abrahamic covenant. At a
meeting of the Central Conference of American (Reformed) Rabbis, held
at Baltimore in 1881, a resolution was passed to the effect that no
initiatory rite or ceremony was necessary in the case of one desiring
to enter the Covenant of Israel, and that such a one had merely to
declare his or her intention to worship the one sole and eternal God,
to be conscientiously governed in life by God’s laws, and to adhere to
the sacred cause and mission of Israel as marked out in Holy Writ.
The service in Reform synagogues in the United States has kept pace
with this development of doctrine, or rather with this sloughing-off of
so much that is distinctively Jewish. The observance of the second-day
festivals has been entirely abolished, as well as the separation of
the sexes and the covering of the head in prayer. The ritual has
been gradually shortened, the ancient language of prayer (Hebrew)
has been pushed further and further into the background, so that in
some congregations the service is altogether English; and in a few
congregations an additional service on Sunday, intended for those who
cannot attend upon the regular Sabbath-day, has been introduced. Only
one congregation, Sinai in Chicago, has followed the old Berlin Reform
synagogue and has entirely abolished the service on Friday night and
Saturday morning. But whatever criticism one might like to offer on
the Reform movement in the United States, it deserves great praise
for the serious attempt it has made to understand its own position
and to square its observance with that position. It has also been
most active in its modern institutional development. It has certainly
beautified and spiritualized the synagogue service; it has founded a
Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and a seminary (Hebrew Union
College in Cincinnati). It has published a Union Prayer-book and a
Union Hymn-book, and has given great care to the development of the
Confirmation and the bettering of the Sunday-school. It has tried to
make the synagogue a centre for the religious and spiritual development
of its members; and it cannot be denied that the very large mass of
educated Jews in this country, in so far as they have any affiliation
with the synagogue, belong to the Reform wing. But at the same time,
it must not be forgotten that there is a very large body of Orthodox
and Conservative Jews, whose number has been greatly increased during
the last twenty years through the influx of Russian, Galician, and
Roumanian Jews. It would be outside of my province were I to attempt
to criticise either the work or the results of Reform Judaism in
this country. But it is a question in the minds even of some of the
leading Reformers themselves how far success has been attained in
developing the religious sentiment of their people in the direction of
a pure Theism uncolored by any Jewish, or, as they call it, Oriental
observances. They themselves confess that the Sunday-service movement
has not developed as they had hoped it would, and a number of them
feel that in weakening the hold which specific Jewish observances have
always had on the Jewish people, they are doing away with one of the
most powerful incentives to the rekindling of the religious flame among
the Reformed Jews.
Reform Judaism without some centrifugal force is bound to continue
on the road it has once taken. The logical outcome of the principles
formulated at the Pittsburg conference is a gradual development into an
ethical Theism without any distinctive Jewish coloring. The leader of
advanced Reform Judaism in this country has recently said that Judaism
must be recast along the lines of a universal ethical religion; that
then all distinctive Jewish elements of the synagogue symbolism will
pass away, and that such a denationalized Jewish temple will seek a
closer alliance with Unitarianism and Theism, and with them, perhaps
in a few decades, will form a new Church and a new religion for united
humanity. That such a tendency is inherent in Reform Judaism is seen
also in the formation of the Society of Ethical Culture in New York.
The leader of this movement is the son of a former prominent rabbi of
the leading Reform congregation in this country. In seeking to bring
out the underlying ethical principles of Judaism, he has gone entirely
outside the pale of the ancient faith; and the movement would not
concern us here were it not that nearly all the members (at least of
the parent society in New York) are Jews, whose evident desire it is
not to be recognized as such, at least so far as religious ceremonies
and social affiliations are concerned. The society does not even
bear the name Jewish, but with a certain leaning towards liberal
Christianity tries to find a basis for the morality and ethics of
the old synagogue outside the sphere of supernatural religion. While
the Ethical Culture Society has been quite a power in certain lines
of charitable and educational work, it may reasonably be questioned
whether it has any future as a form of Church organization. The inborn
longing of man for some hold upon things which are supernatural will
lead many of its members to seek satisfaction elsewhere. That they will
seek it in the Jewish synagogue is hardly probable, seeing how the
racial and other ties have been broken or at least greatly loosened.
They or their children will glide rather into some form of the dominant
Church, possibly, in the swinging of the pendulum, into some orthodox
form of that Church. I cannot help quoting the words of an intelligent
outside observer of the Jewish question, the Right Hon. James Bryce,
M. P.: “If Judaism becomes merely Theism, there will be little to
distinguish its professors from the persons, now pretty numerous, who,
while Christian in name, sit loose to Christian doctrine. The children
of Jewish theists will be almost as apt as the children of other
theists to be caught up by the movement which carries the sons and
daughters of evangelical Anglicans and of Nonconformists towards, or
all the way to, the Church of Rome.”
Where, then, is this centrifugal force to be found, which will
hold together the various elements in Israel, no matter what their
theological opinions may be?