Jeremy Rosen
The Rise of Reform Judaism in Nineteenth Century Germany: Did it Succeed in its Aims?

Jeremy Rosen - The Rise of Reform Judaism in Nineteenth Century Germany: Did it Succeed in its Aims?

- I’d like to take you back to the 18th century. This is the century of the French Revolution, the century of the Enlightenment and great French thinkers who look for equality in humanity, and yet, at the same time aren’t prepared to grant that same equality to the Jews. And the Jews living in Europe have what we call, if you like, the Germanic Central European Hartsburg dynasty. The Jews have no rights. They are allowed to settle in small areas only with special permission. There’s a limit to how many marriages they’re allowed to have so that they don’t increase too often. They’re at the mercy of the rulers, the dukes, the people who are in charge of society, and they are caught between the demands of the church that everybody in the society should belong to, whether it’s Catholicism or Protestantism, and the power of the bishops to control popular feeling amongst the populace in general. Into this world comes the magnificent presence in a way of Napoleon who, whatever one may think about him, and there are arguments in favour and arguments against, wherever he went, he gave the Jews equal rights. And that was a fundamental turning point in Jewish life because up until that moment, not only did Jews not have any rights, but Jews could not assimilate, they could not become members of the wider society because they belong to this race or people who were considered to be alien. Into this world came a man called Moses Mendelssohn, who illustrates perfectly the problems that Jews experienced at that moment. He wanted to come into Germany, into Berlin as the centre of culture in order to find out more about the world in which he lived. He was born in 1729 in a place that was technically desolate of town within the range of Jupdens.

But he moved to Berlin in 1743 under the rule of Frederick The Great, and remember, this is still before the unification of Germany under Bismarck. There he was able to come simply because he was employed as a tutor. And as a tutor, he was, in effect, in the position of being an indentured servant of the Duke, who was impressed by his brilliance. And he started developing and working within a framework of Western philosophy and culture, which is something that had been, in effect, closed to the Jews. The Jews were not allowed to go to any of the universities because they simply were not Christian, and therefore they relied almost entirely on their own culture, their own Talmudic structures of learning and of intellectual development to compensate, in which they did brilliantly. But nevertheless, they could see outside another world. Now, if you were very wealthy, you could act as a middleman, as an agent for one of the Dukes. You could live with them under their protection, but again, you wouldn’t have rights to bring your family or anybody else yet into that environment. In Germany, Mendelssohn came into contact with the intellectual elite and he became a member of the intellectual elite, but he was still regarded as an oddity. And despite his brilliance, his submission of incredible philosophical arguments that attracted the attention of the elite of that day, they would correspond with him, but they would still feel, you know, “He’s Jewish, we’ve got to convert him.” And as we know, all the family of Mendelssohn ended up converting to Christianity because that was the only way they were going to be able to get on in their own careers, and eventually they were given permission to settle.

This is a period of what is known as the Haskalah, the Enlightenment, when very slowly Jews are enabled to come into a wider society. After Napoleon was defeated, all the rights everywhere else, apart from France, were removed from the Jews and didn’t come again for another 20 years or so. But already at this moment, you have people who are coming into a Western society and feel they want to find a solution to the problem of how Jews fit in. So on the one hand, you have those who say, “He’s not going to fit in at all. We just don’t want him in our society.” And you have those who say, “No, on the contrary, we’ve got to find ways of breaking down these barriers.” And one of the ways was education, which would open up the ghettos and open up the communities to empower them to find new ways of earning a living and of thinking. And in this situation, there is a beginning of change that has not been seen within the Jewish community for thousands of years. At first, the change came in Germany with an interesting character who wanted not so much to change anything, but to find a way of educating the Jews, a man called Isaac Yumahamasef, the gatherer of information. And you had a remarkable man called David Friedlander who was a financier, worked for Emperor Joseph II, and he decided that it was time to try to adjust Jewish life to life in central Europe. And one of the ways of doing this was by making the religious life of the Jews more compatible with the religious life of the Christians. Moses Mendelssohn was the first man to argue philosophically of how Judaism could coexist and should coexist with German culture, European culture. But Freidlander was the first person to say, “No, we’ve got to change.” What he had in mind in terms of changing was this. Up until this moment, wherever Jews were, their services, their religious life was based on the Hebrew language. And as people began to assimilate, they were less familiar with the Hebrew language.

And so his first idea was to have services in which there was either an English translation or there was an English sermon and ceremony or German ceremony and German service that would make it accessible to people who didn’t have this very strong Jewish education and already began to feel more other than Jewish, so that during this period, for the first time, you have an attempt to change the traditional service to, as they put it, bring it up to date. Now, none of this was a challenge to the religious structure that existed up to now. All those early attempts to bring about change were by people who still saw themselves as part of the Jewish religious community. Meanwhile, of course, in Eastern Europe, there was a reaction against this new enlightenment, the Haskalah, of people who were eager to absorb more of secular culture and secular civilization and have a Jewish life that combined the two of them comfortably together, not in conflict, but this conflict, the Huskala, was throughout the Jews of Europe at this time in eastern Europe, in central Europe, and in western Europe. In 1810, Isaac Jacobson was a philanthropist who had been on a visit to Amsterdam where he discovered in Amsterdam that there was, within the orthodox service and ceremony, some interesting changes in the liturgy, in the language of prayer, and certain parts were being kept out or cut out because they were thought to be unnecessary and taking the service on for too long.

That was a first. And when he returned to West Failure, where he came from, he convened a group of people and he set about doing two things. One of them was demanding that there was decorum in the synagogue. Those of you who have been to traditional synagogues will know that very many of them are social centres where there’s a lot of chatting and talking going on and interruptions in the service. So the one thing he liked and thought was important was decorum, that we should have a nice atmosphere. In addition to that, just as all the churches had organs, he introduced an organ, but his idea of an organ was just for other occasions, not on Shabbat. He didn’t want to contravene the orthodox tradition of not having musical instruments in the synagogue on Shabbat. Already in 17th century Venice, it was customary to have music before Shabbat came in, during the preparation of the Shabbat in the synagogues. But once Shabbat came in, music stopped. So he was interested in that, and above all, he was the guy who introduced the idea of sermons, in his place, German, sermons in the synagogue that people could listen to, could be educated. And these were the first steps of what were called reform, but hardly reform in any serious ideological way at all. After Napoleon’s emancipation, an emancipation of the Jews of Germany as was for a while, and it was shut down afterwards when Napoleon was removed, a movement developed in Hamburg, and in Hamburg, the idea was to bring about some serious change in the ideology.

And so certain things that were found to be out of date or unnecessary, like sacrifices or like wanting a Messiah or any reference within the liturgy that people found to be unpalatable for whatever reason would simply be removed. Service would continue in Hebrew, but there would be non-Hebrew elements coming into it. In fact, in Hamburg, there was a temple which was established in 1818 precisely to carry out these renovations. In 1819, there was a terrible outbreak of antisemitism in Germany, the famous Hep-Hep Riots in which Jews were attacked throughout the states. It was a horrific period, and it was the inspiration for large numbers of Jews to leave Germany and to move to America. And that’s how reform came to America. And in the end, of course, it far outstripped anything in Europe. But nevertheless, it was the 1848 Revolution, 1848 France and across Europe that brought some measure of relief for the Jewish world, and there was a campaign that was led to insist for the first time on Jewish emancipation as we will call it. It took time and would take time, but in this atmosphere there were two major figures who decided that we need to change the mood and the atmosphere of orthodoxy because there was so much in it that they found unacceptable and intolerable. And these two men were the founders of what we call reform Judaism. Before that, there was no label. They were the ones who began. One of them was a man called Abraham Geiger and the other one was a man called Samuel Holdheim, who ultimately would migrate to America. Geiger was very traditional in terms of Jewish scholarship, but he did want to change the stranglehold of traditional rabbinic Judaism.

He felt that they were imposing too many ridiculous, old-fashioned, out of date rules, and that is something that you will hear said in many places to this very day. But he was still wedded to tradition, and all he wanted to do was to modify tradition as it was. On the other hand, his, if you like, compatriot and his colleague, a man called Samuel Holdheim, was much more in favour of being radical in how you change and removing a great deal. And between them, they began to look at a complete renovation of the prayer book, which followed those earlier points of removing sacrifices, removing any reference to temples or to King David or to the Messiah and anything that they found unpalatable or had problems with. There was this famous conference in Brownshvide in which there was a battle between the two of these giants, one of whom more traditional, the other more revolutionary, and it led to a major split even within the reform movement with those who felt we should still keep Hebrew and those who felt, no, we should get rid of Hebrew altogether and forget about it. Now, it’s interesting that those who were in favour of getting rid of it mainly gathered around the Jewish community in Berlin, and they were the, if you like, the leaders of this constant progression away from tradition. And at the same time, there were others, particularly a man called Zaharius Frankel, who wanted to retrain tradition within the structure of renovation and reform, but with greater loyalty to this tradition. And this battle was played out, of course, in America, but that’s a subject of a different talk on some other occasion of what happened to reform in the United States of America.

At the same time as this was going on, more and more Jews were, in fact, feeling comfortable within the framework of reform communities. But these were also Jews who, by and large, wanted to integrate into German society and would do whatever they could to feel comfortable within that context. And this was also a time when something called Vizenshaft, that is to say the academic study of Jewish life, became a very, very important feature, and colleges were set up for the first time to look at the Bible historically, to analyse Talmudic Judaism and other developments from an intellectual point of view, and not just from a religious, passionate commitment point of view. And so as reform in Germany began to develop and gain strength, there was a very strong counter development between those Jews who would not tolerate any kind of reform at all, and those Jews who wanted to keep tradition but to explain it and to teach it in a reasonable way and wanted to combine the idea of traditional Judaism with what we would call, or what this famous rabbi Samson Fuhurst called, he called it deleheretz, which is as he understood it, culture of a broader nature. Now, he was living in Frankfurt, very, very strong, intelligent, intellectually-orientated, an incredible apologist for traditional Judaism and making sense of it in a way that preserved the tradition without, so to speak, throwing the baby out with the bath water. And he combined with two other very, very important rabbis who set up shops, so to speak, in Berlin. One was called Hildisheimer and the other one was called Hoffman, and together this represented a very strong reaction against reform, which although it didn’t in any way undermine reform directly, it did offer an alternative without going into that particular, down that particular route.

This raised the question, the important question of whether reform was going to be able to totally overcome the opposition of those who were traditionalists. Reform carried on in Germany under different, once it became Germany, under Bismarck and that empire and spread down to Austria and into Hungary, and presented this challenge which many people found attractive, and the last, in a sense, of the great reform rabbis of Germany was a man called Leo Beck. And Leo Beck belonged in the reform tradition, but he was also a traditionalist and brilliant man, a very good teacher, very popular, and was very highly regarded in German society. When the Holocaust came, Leo Beck refused to leave Germany and he stayed behind, even though he had opportunities to get out, was taken with his family to Verazianshtat and survived the war in Verazianshtat. There were some people who regarded him as a hero because he tried to do what he could to ameliorate the situation of those Jews in Verazianshtat, and others who saw him as having betrayed the community. He’d encouraged them to stay initially and try to combat Nazism, and he took care of himself, so to speak, by acting as a kind of an intermediary in the camp.

But nevertheless, after the war, he moved to Britain where not only did he become the senior influence in British reform society until the early ‘50s when he died, but also represented something of that great German culture, which in England was being subordinated to the English response, which was the famous United Synagogue which was a brand of orthodoxy in the School of Hirsch in the School of the Great Rabbis of the Berlin Academy. And it did not, in a sense, manage to establish itself as a serious rival even though it became very important in Anglo-Jewish life. Now, the big question is, these changes that took place, these changes that altered the liturgy and the way people prayed, that told people not to bother too strictly with these traditional laws and pick and choose for themselves what they wanted to do, that didn’t have to take these ideological issues too seriously. The question was, what was their motive? Their motive essentially was, how do we preserve the Jewish community? If on the one hand it’s so extreme, not many people want to belong to it, and if on the other hand people are disappearing altogether, is there room for compromise? And if there is, what compromise are we going to be able to have and is going to work? And this was a challenge. Now, the truth was in all parts of the Jewish world, in the 19th century and later on in the 19th century and in the 20th century, lots and lots of people were assimilating. It’s true to say that there was hardly a family in which one or two members of the family were not drifting away from traditional Judaism, which was very difficult, very, very difficult because if you wanted to earn a living in any society outside of the closed Jewish ghetto, so to speak, it was very difficult to do so if you were not keeping, if you were wanted to keep Shabbat and you wanted to keep Kashrut and you wanted to do all these things, it was a tremendous challenge.

And most people found it, if you like, acceptable to move away. And whether the question was, if you move away some of the way, how far away do you move? On the right hand side, you had those people who would say, “Look, any movement away is not going to work.” Their firmest response was those who try to walk in the middle of the road get run down by the traffic. And in one way, that is true. But on the other hand, the other option is that if you only look at one side of the street and you only see one angle, you are missing out on everything else, on the possibility of a combination between them. Whereas the Jews of let’s say, the Hirsch tradition of Torah in dereheresch, Torah together with some outward external culture and civilization, if you can join that, you can find a way. If you can’t, then you’re out. This debate has gone on for the last 100 years, and it goes on and it continues, and no doubt it will always continue because in the world in which we live, we have freedom of choice, and people do make choices as to how far to go one way or another. But the problem that exists is that the statistics clearly indicate that as people move away and as they do less and less, and as their children feel less and less committed, so they disappear off the scene. We saw, for example, particularly in America where large, 100 years ago, large numbers of Jews coming over from Eastern Europe, unable to earn a living, very often without the normal support structure. They were used to often in places way away from the Jewish centres of New York or wherever else it was that they did disappear. And we see today that the statistics of disappearance are phenomenal.

And the question therefore is, does reform succeed or does reform not succeed? And I believe that that is not the right question to ask. The right question to ask really is, how do we keep Judaism alive? How do we keep the Jewish tradition going? The fact is that throughout history, under Greece, under Rome, even under Christianity, the majority of Jews did either assimilate willingly or did so through forced conversion or other ways. So it’s always been a minority that have managed to keep things going. Can we say that there is an alternative to keeping things going other than an ultra-orthodox life? And the answer is clearly yes, because there are Jews for lots of different reasons who are not religious at all in our day and age. But at the same time, they do feel committed. Some people feel committed out of a sense of history. Some people feel committed because of a reaction to the Holocaust. Some people feel committed simply for social reasons as too for other reasons. They all play a part, but always have played a part within Jewish life. So Jewish life has always, in one way or another, been able to accommodate differences, even though on a religious level, it was always kept together by what we will call a constitution. And this constitution was what succeeded in keeping things together. And this was the debate of reform in Germany, do we need a constitution or do we not? And I believe that the movement that wanted to dispense with a constitution, that is to say, to have a Judaism based more on general ideals of an ethical life, which we share with Christianity, which we share with Islam, which we share with every religion in a different way, that these values are enough without having to impose any specific sectarian ideas.

An interesting contrast would be the Sephardi world. The Sephardi world never had the idea of reform or conservative or the various movements that were in favour of change, including people like Kaplan’s Reconstructionism. They never had that. And one of the reasons they never had that is because in the Islamic world, there was no enlightenment, not until much, much later than in the West. The communities under the Sephardi world divided according to where they came, from location, the Moroccan Jews as opposed to the Egyptian Jews, the Iraqi Jews, and the Aleppo, and the Syrian Jews, the Persian Jews, not what denomination you belong to. And the Sephardi rabbis tended to be much more tolerant because they had communities which included everybody, the very, very orthodox and the non-orthodox. And there was no alternative for a non-orthodox person to go to. So in that sense, they belonged to this group which retained loyalty to the Constitution in theory, even though it allowed people to make their own choices and their own ideas. And I happen to believe that that is a preferable approach to take. If you insist on people belonging to one group or another group and then they feel uncomfortable in it for whatever reason, then you have a major problem. And one of the, shall we say, successes of the orthodox world in combating assimilation, apart from building up their own communities as strongly as they can, even though they’re a minority, but they are at this moment growing more than any other section of Judaism, that apart from them, you have groups, let’s say like the Habad Lubuvitch.

There are other people like them, not just them, but they’re an example. And they reach out to everybody, and they’re happy with everybody no matter what background they come from so long as they become part of their social community, and they provide for everybody who wants to take advantage. On the other hand, you have the reform movements, and within the reform movements, you have a range of opinions. At this moment, there are within the United States of America and wherever reform is, some of them, some of the rabbis who are very strongly Zionist and some of the rabbis who are not as pro-Zionist. There’s a debate about does an American come first or does the Jew come first? What are you more than any other? There is, in my view, absolutely no cookie cutter, one, single answer to this problem. We have an amazing variety of different options, and reform, conservative, reconstructionist, whatever you want to call these, play a part in that structure, and people can choose where they belong. And it upsets me tremendously that one section can say, “I refuse to talk to that section,” or, “I don’t want to have anything to do with that section.” Unfortunately, that is a feature of humanity. We humans are very, very much concerned with where we belong and who we are prepared to talk to and who we are not. And therefore, in my view, the more variety there is, the more options and alternatives there are, the better for everybody. I do happen to believe that orthodox or traditional commitment to a constitution, as I put it, to Torah Judaism is a very important principle. But I believe that too could do with certain amounts of changes. It’s just that I believe that change should come within the Constitution and not outside of the Constitution.

I also believe that change going slowly sometimes is preferable to sudden spurts and then stepping back and then going forward and then moving off in different directions. So what started in my view as a reasonable idea is what we suffer from all the time, and that is reasonable ideas being taken off in different directions, being captured by vested interest invested groups, and then it becomes a battle of ideology. And I regret the idea of this battle of ideology. I like to think of Judaism as a broad camp. I think that those that took reform in Judaism too far, in the end, circumstances showed that they were going not to be the dominant form. And even though still in parts of the world, members of the reform community are more in number than the orthodox community, I believe that the trends seem to indicate that those who are really committed survive and those who are less committed are likely to drift away. So that’s where I’m going to stop for today and start asking questions and answering the questions that you may ask.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: And the first one is, “Why did Mendelssohn,” Carol asks, “teach the Duke’s children?”

A: Well, Mendelssohn wanted a job. He had left the world of the ghetto behind him. He wanted a job, he was a teacher. He started as a teacher and lived as a teacher for the whole of his life. And that was how he survived.

Q: Gene asked, “Why were the references to King David unpalatable to the early German reformers?”

A: That’s a very good question. Well, the early Jew reformers said, “Look, let’s start with the prayers we say in the synagogue.” First of all, we pray in the synagogue for returning sacrifices, but we don’t like the idea of sacrifices. We are glad we don’t have them anymore. And in fact, that idea to some extent can be found much earlier, 1,000 years earlier in the debate of the Jewish philosophers in Spain and elsewhere who were saying, “Look, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that when the Messiah comes, we will not have sacrifices or sacrifices will be modified,” or my monitor’s point of view, the sacrifices were just an example of the stage in the development of the religion from a time when everybody sacrificed. And then they started talking about, “Well, do we really want a Messiah? I mean, Messiah is something we associate with Christianity and somebody who comes and solves our problems and changes the world. Well, we haven’t changed the world yet. We’ve had Messiahs around for thousands of years, so this seems to be a bit out of date.”

And originally it only applied to a new king coming to repair the damage done by the Babylonian exile. So that’s then linked to the idea of, you know, we’re beyond monarchy now. We’re moving to different systems of government. Why do we want King David to come back? Was King David such a good king? Was the idea of the Jewish kingdom of Judea such a wonderful example of good governance and good government? Maybe we don’t need these things anymore. That was the example of things that they wanted to remove from the prayer book, or for example, a prayer which is something like, thank God for not making me a slave, thank God for not making me a woman. There were lots of things in the prayer that they didn’t like. Just as nowadays people don’t like saying Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because it sounds male chauvinist. And what about the women, and why can’t we change some of those things there? So that debate is still going on within the orthodox world of some degree, depends where, there are the fundamentalists who will brook absolutely no change, but there are a lot of people in the middle who are open to certain modifications, but as I say, within the constitution,

Q: Adrian asks, “How is reformed Judaism different from conservative Judaism?”

A: Well, that’s an excellent point. In America, conservative Judaism is a term that’s applied in America. Initially, American Jewry this is a subject of another talk some other time, but initially, American Jewry was founded by Spanish and Portuguese refugees who came from Iberia and had a very, very traditional service, Sephardi Oriental, Spanish and Portuguese, they like to differentiate themselves. And they set up the first communities in America in the 18th century. With the big influx of Jews from Germany who had experienced reform and came over in the middle of the 19th century and did very well in business and integrated into the community 'cause they’d already experienced that in Germany, they became the new force of Jewish life. And in fact, many of the synagogues, I think particularly of synagogues in Baltimore as a case in point, but there are others further in the south that turned to reform because rabbis came over from Germany funded by the reform community in America, and many of the first rabbis of American Jewry were reformers from Germany. And they succeeded in building up reform communities by carrying out the agenda that started in Germany, and in fact, they took much further than the German reform community did. And so they, in effect, became the dominant Jewish community in the United States of America. But slowly this started going further and further away from tradition, even to the point of one stage, the graduate class of the Hebrew Union College of Reform Judaism had the famous Trafer graduation banquet at which non-kosher food, not pork but shellfish and crab and frogs and meat milk and everything like that, was eaten at this ceremony of graduating rabbis.

And not only that, but they followed the German tradition of some communities of not praying on Saturday but praying on Sunday, of taking Hebrew out altogether of the services and not having any Hebrew in it, which remained for a very long time and still is in some reform communities. And therefore, many Jews who’d come over from Eastern Europe, who wanted to break away from this stranglehold of fundamentalism wanted a middle ground. And so the middle ground became what was known at the end of the 19th century as the conservative movement. We want to conserve tradition. You know, there was a kind of an interesting, humorous way of differentiating between orthodox reform, orthodox conservative and reform, and it went something like this. Orthodox believe that halakha, the constitution, Jewish law is absolutely binding and any change comes from within it. Conservative Judaism took the view, “Look, halakha Jewish law is important. It’s important because of its history, because of its position, but there are things there that need to be adjusted and we will adjust them. And if necessary, sometimes we will take a decision of our leading rabbis to make changes even if the orthodox don’t like it.” And in addition to that, they were very progressive in having men and women sitting together, although initially some orthodox synagogues did that too, men and women sitting together, of being much more open to many different points of view, much more open in our society now to sexual variations and removing limitations. And meanwhile, the reform position was, “Look, we’re not interested in Jewish tradition, as such, as an obligation, we’re interested in it as a guide, as a nod to the past, but we’re really concerned primarily with the ethical issues, not with the behavioural issues of the constitution.” So I hope that explains it.

Rita is referring me to my blog, thank you Rita. If anybody wants to get a weekly blog from me, you can sign up at Jeremy Rosen’s blog, or ask me and I’ll sign up for you.

Q: Shelly says, “How does the 30% conversion rate of German Jews to Christianity, especially in the first half of the 19th century fit in? Was reformed Judaism founded as a response to that?”

A: It was part of that, the conversion rate actually nowadays in the United States of America is 70% rate. But in Germany, the conversion rate to Christianity was primarily because you couldn’t get a job in a secular society. Even composers like Marla had to convert in order to become a conductor in Vienna. So throughout the 19th century, the pressure of secular society before Jews had a right and were given any kind of rights was that you couldn’t have a job, you couldn’t have a career if you, in cultured world, if you were not converted. And so conversion became virtually a requirement of European Jews of culture, and only those who could find a living either within the Jewish community or were self-employed traders of some sort of that kind were able to make a living. So for very practical reasons, and not only that, but the Jews were seen as backward. The Jews from Eastern Europe wore clothes, old-fashioned clothes, largely because they were forced to, but then they turned that from a compulsion by the German and Polish authorities as a badge of pride, they were compelled to. And because of all these pressures on them, that’s why conversion was seen as a way out of this particular problem.

Q: “Since when in the reform movement were women equal in the synagogue and could become female rabbis? Did that start already in Germany or in the United States much later?”

A: No, remember, the whole world was male, should we say, we’ll call them male-dominated. I mean, just look within the Catholic church today, you don’t have women priests, you don’t have women popes, you don’t have women bishops. The whole world was sexist, there’s no question that it was, and looked at the world from that point of view and did just consider that, in Switzerland, women didn’t have a vote until 1970 something or other. So the equality of women was not even raised in Germany at that time. German was a male-dominated society. The whole of the reform movement was male-dominated. And although, for example, women and men were able to sit in together in synagogue, the idea of a woman rabbi is, you know, very, very recent. We’re talking about 30 years. I think there might have been one rabbi before that, 40, 50 years ago, but certainly not until very, very recently. And just as there are changes taking place, so even within the orthodox world there are changes taking place. If 50 years ago you would’ve said, “Could you employ a woman in an orthodox synagogue in a position of being either a leader or a teacher or a preacher?” People would say, “No way.” But now it’s happened, it’s happening a lot. And so there are changes everywhere, but that’s, again, a subject for another lecture. I was really focusing on the evolution of reform in Germany, because this is actually part of a series about German Jews.

Q: “Does Zoom keep Judaism going as we exit the pandemic?”

A: Well, you know, I don’t think Zoom keeps anything going as such because you’ve got to be committed to switch on to Zoom in the first place. But I think Zoom has played a very important part in spreading Jewish education like this. This opportunity to reach people and teach about different aspects of Judaism together with general culture is part of the boon of Zoom in bringing Judaism and bringing Jewish education on the internet and elsewhere to many, many more. But still, it’s the personal relationship that matters. And so, you know, it’s rather like the sort of dating on the internet. You can have a relationship on the internet, but until you meet up with somebody, it doesn’t count. And so I think Zoom helps people who want to know more, but I don’t think it’s going to keep people in who are already drifting away.

Q: “What is the constitution?”

A: Do you mean the Torah or particular rules of behaviour in the handbook? That’s a very good question. To me, the constitution, like the American Constitution, is made up of different sections. You’ve got the written Constitution, you’ve got the amendments to the Constitution, and you’ve got the development of law through the Supreme Court and through the judiciary. In England, you have an example, no constitution, but the development of law through parliament and through the legal system, through precedent. So when I talk about a constitution, I’m talking about, I’m giving Torah the general term. This is the Jewish constitution, but it’s made up of the written law, of the oral law, of rabbinic law, and all this legal development is written down and documented. So Moses didn’t know about heart transplants, and yet Jewish law now deals with heart transplants, deals with fertility treatment, deals with all kinds of modern technological issues, but does so within a legal framework. And so to expect, if you like, somebody to change the law who’s not a lawyer would be realisable.

And so the orthodox world believe that somebody who doesn’t change the law coming from within the law is not somebody who we consider to be an authority. Nowadays, we don’t have a Supreme Court, and I’m glad we don’t, and we don’t have papal authority. Nowadays, Jewish law evolves through consensus, through what’s called Shayla and Shuva, which is somebody posits a question on Jewish law, "Am I allowed to go on a cruise ship on a Shabbat?” Somebody else replies and says yes, somebody else replies and says no. Somebody else replies and says, “I’m not sure.” And the debate goes on until a consensus emerges. And then those who are loyal to the tradition abide by that consensus. And then there are customs, so many different customs, customs from place to place to place. Some of these customs are just passing customs and not relevant all the time. Some of them are just relevant to a location. And so there’s a grey area called the custom area. Custom isn’t as powerful as Jewish law, but many people feel bound by custom. Again, the sort of clothes you wear, the fur hat and the coat, these are matters of custom, but many people treat them as though they are law. So that’s what I think about constitution.

Q: Fern says, “How do you feel about what’s going on in Israel today where pluralism is under attack?”

A: Well, everything’s under attack, Fern. I remember when I came to Israel first in the '50s, orthodoxy was under attack. You couldn’t get a job if you were orthodox in many places, you were attacked, even I had stones thrown at me. And once when I wanted to get some candles to light Shabbat candles at a youth hospital in Tiberius, I was told that’s ridiculous. “You only need religion in the diaspora, you don’t need religion here.” And remember, the state of Israel was founded by socialists who were atheists who wanted to create a new Jew, nothing like the diaspora Jew. And they thought that religion was all right for the diaspora, but really not relevant for us today. And so this battle has been going on in Israel from the very, very beginning between the secularists, between the traditional Sephardi, the Ashkenazi, and the different Ashkenazi and the different Jews themselves, the moderates and the extreme and the fundamentalists. The orthodox are divided amongst themselves, everybody is, and Israel is divided, as you know, between different communities, Ethiopian community, the Russian community, the European community, the oriental community. It’s an amazing mix up, and it’s always been, and that’s been its strength and its weakness. I, in 1962, sat at the table of a wonderful man, one of the most wonderful men I ever met, called Yitzhak Hertzog of the famous Hertzog family. He was the second son of former chief rabbi of Israel. His brother became president. He was a brilliant, brilliant man who ran the Prime Minister’s office, who was also the Canadian ambassador, the Israel ambassador to Canada, a very orthodox man, and at one stage, even appointed chief rabbi of England.

But in the end said, “No thank you, I want to stay in Israel.” At his table he said, “Make no mistake, if it were not for the external threat, the Jews in Israel were tear each other apart.” And he’s right. And we are seeing this today on paper. On paper, this is just a matter of trying to modify a situation of government and a situation of law. There are people unhappy in America with how the law works, who don’t like the Supreme Court appointed by politicians and subject either to the right or the left. There are people who don’t like the Constitution of America and want it changed in the voting system. In England, we don’t have a constitution, but there’s a battle going on between left and right, and look at France, there are demonstrations in the streets every day. Wherever you look in democratic countries, the democracies are tearing each other apart. I hope it’s not going to be fatal, but it’s going on everywhere and wherever you are, so this is a battle. I personally don’t take sides, but I do care about ethics, I care about ethics very much, and I oppose anything that smacks of corruption. But there’s always been corruption in the Knesset. There’ve been members of the mafia sitting in the Knesset as well as extreme right wing, who I don’t agree with at all. But the problem is, how, when you have a country divided, do you deal with it? You deal with it by compromise, and I pray that there will be compromise. I hope there will be compromise. That’s the only way because both extremes are wrong. The extreme right is wrong, the extreme left is wrong. It’s always the middle that counts, and it’s usually the middle that loses out everywhere. I think it’s losing out in America too today. So that’s my response. It’s sad, it’s built into the system. It’s our strength and it’s our weakness.

Q: Brian asks, “Do you think that the current halakha definition of who is a Jew were relaxed then the loss of Jews to assimilation would not happen?”

A: I don’t think so because, look, take reform, reform has been very open, has been very open to half marriage, part marriage, coming in, being part. All the evidence shows that the majority of those who marry out, the majority disappear, over time they disappear. Not altogether, not all of them, but a lot do. And neither the conservative nor the reform have been successful in gaining ground. They’re all losing ground, not drastically, but they certainly are losing ground. So making life easier is not going to bring people back in my view. The only way to bring people back is getting them to experience Judaism, either as a passionate experience or by studying it, knowing about the history where the LU helps, and getting involved through study, which has always been the core of Jewish survival. And so I really don’t think, for example, I’ll give you another example. You say, why have two days of festivals? Two days of festivals for the orthodox of the tradition and the diaspora is totally out of order. And anyway, in Israel, you can have one day. I don’t believe for one minute that if we suddenly declared only one day in the diaspora, suddenly everybody would start keeping Pesach or keeping Shavuot or keeping Sukkot. They wouldn’t. By and large, those who want to do, those who don’t want to don’t. So I don’t believe any of these placebos, all of these easy answers can work. I do accept, I do accept the halachic definition of a Jew, which is not the definition that the state of Israel applies. The state of Israel allows definition of Jews to the law of return to be much looser and much broader. And so people can come back to Israel if they want to, you know, identify as being Jewish without having to become orthodox. But I think that when you, what I have against the orthodox definition is they are far too strict in how they welcome people who want to join in. But that is a different issue. That’s an issue of conversion, which I’ll come to some other time.

Q: “Might you do a talk on the ethical culture of society?”

A: Well, you know, that’s a good point. Ethical culture of society I think is a very good thing, but it’s not Jewish. It might been founded by Jews and a lot of Jews are part of it and I respect it for it and for its values as I wish more people were part of ethical culture society, but it’s not strengthening Judaism.

Q: “Thank you,” Rita says. “Is a member of the society community who’s married out entitled to be called up to the reading of the law?”

A: Well, that’s a good question because there are, you know, according to orthodox Jewish law, just because you marry out doesn’t stop you being a Jew and doesn’t stop you being called up to read from the Torah. Frankly, you know, I think there are bigger reasons not to call people up to the Torah. I wish we had a law which says if a man’s an adulterer, he wouldn’t be called up to the law. That would make more sense to me. So the Sephardi community in principle follows Jewish law, which says even if you marry out, you still are a Jew and you can still be called up to the Torah. There are some communities, particularly in the Sephardi community, in which they have been worried about assimilation and they believe that marrying out is the first step towards assimilation, as it is in many cases. In many cases, when one partner is not Jewish, the community, the children are less likely to become Jewishly committed afterwards. And they are very strict. And there are some like, shall we say, the Syrian community, which does have a law that doesn’t allow somebody married out or somebody who’s converted to be called to the Torah. But most Sephardi do not follow that. This is a matter of local custom. It’s not a matter of Jewish law, and it’s a custom that I constantly object to.

Q: Roger, “Could you redefine constitution?”

A: Look, Roger, I think I have, I already mentioned it, but if you want to come back and ask me again, I’m happy to do that. But let me deal with some other questions first, and if I’ve got time, I’ll come back to you. “The liberal movement has given women true equality. Yes, indeed it has, and that’s its right, and I am happy that they’ve made that decision, and those who are happy with it will stick with it. Yona, "Could it not be argued that discontinuation of sacrifices like destruction of temple was in God’s intention and thus prayer restores sacrifice, koriahashem.” Well, it definitely could be argued that way and Maimona did argue that way and I would argue that way, whether it was intent or not. But I wouldn’t call restoration a hinuhashem because everybody agrees we don’t know what the restoration is going to do. For example, there were vegetarian sacrifices, vegetable sacrifices in the temple. Maybe we’ll go back, if we have a temple, to having those kind of sacrifices. There are others point of view which will say all commandments, all commandments will be thrown out of the window when we have the temple because we’ll be on such a high spiritual level, we won’t need that anymore, and the Messiah will bring about that. There are so many speculations we don’t know. Hinuhashem is when you desecrate God’s name by behaving in an irresponsible, in an amoral, illegal, anti-spiritual way. So this is just a matter of disagreement.

Q: Jeremy, “Doesn’t increase intolerant attitudes amongst Jews, people becoming more vocal about their beliefs.”

A: Yes, there’s a greater intolerance everywhere. You can’t speak about Trump in New York or be killed and you can’t speak about Biden, not be killed, but be excoriated and condemned. You can’t speak about Biden in Florida because you’ll be considered to be a Marxist communist lunatic. So yes, people are intolerant, and this is what happens when you are under assault. Just think again, the Inquisition was introduced by the Catholic church at a time when Catholicism was under attack by reformers. And so it’s traditional that conservative movements tighten up when they’re under assault. And the harati world in Israel was under assault from the secular world for a long time and they had to fight for their rights. And this need to fight for their rights is still built into their Israeli genes. And nobody’s going to take that away until people learn to get on with each other. And they weren’t learning to get on with each other by fighting.

Jerry, “Someone who is or has been involved in habad, US sought to reform, I can say categorically, without these options, we would lose many Jews to complete assimilation.” Well, I certainly agree with you with some of these, but the evidence shows in terms of the reform movement that it’s not working. But I agree that anything that keeps Jews within, and if conservative movements and if reform movements are keeping Jews within the Jewish ambit, I’m delighted and I welcome them for that and I hope they continue doing it.

Q: Steven, thank you, “I may have missed this, but in terms of numbers, you think reform movement in the broadcast sense is a success?”

A: Well, not in England. In England, the reform movement is not a success. I would say in America it’s not a success, but I do think that in certain areas, on a personal level, it has succeeded in keeping people in. After all, there are people who are members of reform movements on second, third, even fourth generation. So you can’t say they haven’t kept some people in. You can say that the rate of disappearance from the reform movements is frightening, but it’s frightening everywhere. Elizabeth, “Could you comment on social justice in reform movement being associated so closely with Marxist ideology?” Well, you know, it has become associated with Marxist ideology, but it isn’t the only one. There are lots of other ideologies that believe in social justice, other religions that believe in social justice. Marxist ideology claims to believe in social justice, but it has one crucial flaw, and the crucial flaw is that the end justifies the means. And if the end is to make society better by forcing people, I don’t think that’s something that finds favour in my eyes, but anything that includes social justice, and the reform movement now emphasises social justice, which I think is very important, and I’m delighted that they do, is an important step. But in the end, it’s preserving Jewish identity that, as far as I’m concerned, is the priority.

Riva Foreman, “Progressive Judaism is growing substantially. Please see ARARZ’s Zionism IP Israel movement in progressive Judaism, more than 50 congregations in Israel. In progressive Judaism, the current sitting is now included more.”

That is quite true. There’s a big movement within Israel of the progressive Judaism to increase, but proportionately, to the Jews of Israel, it is very, very small. But nevertheless, I delight in its growth, I support it and am very happy about it. But in a democracy, you have to go by the majority, and the majority vote in Judaism is for a traditional Judaism, and a more traditional Judaism then, at this moment, progressive Judaism offers. But again, progressive Judaism in Israel is much more religiously committed than a lot of progressive Judaism outside. And whereas I welcome progressive Judaism within Israel, I do not welcome the interference of extreme non-religious Jews in the diaspora thinking that they have a right to interfere with Israeli democracy. So if progressive Judaism goes on growing substantially in Israel and can act as a counterbalance, I would welcome that.

Q: Monty, “Do we subconsciously shed numbers due to preserving our presence? The world can hardly cope with less than 20 million. Imagine hundreds of millions on this planet.”

A: Well, you know, it’s the old story. You know, if you want to reduce the numbers in the planet, why don’t you start with those who are increasing the most? And you know, to say something horrible. There are many people in other religions who number in the billions, well, start with them. They’re going to have a bigger impact than starting on a few million.

Q: “Do I understand that the US today conversion of Jews is 70%?”

A: No, 70% is those who are marrying out in certain communities, that is the statistic.

Q: Austin, “Do you see egalitarian movement as a valid alternative traditional orthodoxy?”

A: No, I don’t, I see it as a compliment. I see there’s no reason to stop people having a traditional orthodoxy if that’s what they want so long as there’s an alternative for people who want something different. So I’m all in favour of alternatives.

“The first woman rabbi ordained Regina Joseph in Germany in 1935, first reform rabbi was in '72.” Yes, that was the one I was referring to. Sally Prisand in '72, you’re right. I could have mentioned Regina Joseph in Germany.

Q: Daniela, “Is liberal Judaism another name for reformed Judaism? Thank you for your lectures.”

A: Yes, in Germany it started, the difference between reform and liberal, and liberal was, at that stage, considered to be more extreme. And in England, for example, liberal is more extreme reform than the reform community in England. And so in certain parts of the world, liberal is more to the left and more reformed than reform. In America, it’s not the same way. In America, reform is the equivalent of liberal in England, for example, and liberal elsewhere. Zoom user, “According to Pew Research, overall, nearly 9 out of 10 adults who are raised Jewish, 88% are still Jewish today. This includes 70% who identify Jewish religion, 18% who don’t identify another religion, who consider them Jewish in some way and such culturally ethical or family background.” Well, you know, I am always suspicious of Pew Research. I do so say that “raised Jewish” is the important issue. How do you define “raised Jewish”? So that is the debatable question.

Cynthia Kraus, “I grew up going to one of those very reform singles in Baltimore. A friend of mine spent 10 minutes searching for a yama before entering the sanctuary, couldn’t find one. It was almost all in English. Even there, it wasn’t thought it was necessary for girls to be Bar Mitzvah. Lockdown has helped me remediate my education.” Thank you, Cynthia. I’m delighted to hear that. “First woman was Sally Prisend.” Thank you, yes, I forgot I could have mentioned Sally Prisand.

Riva Forward, “Progressive Jews led the way for Jewish women and LGBT to gain dignity and status within the synagogue, which modern orthodox is now beginning to accommodate. We need all storms of orthodox, even secular ones.” I agree with you 100%.

Robert Turner, “Thank you for an exceptional lecture, I’ll save it for my mixed children marriage. Very secular Jew, no alliance. Been married to a Christian for 30, attended Roman Catholic University, served US Navy six years now. 17 years to a Jewish one.” I’m so delighted to hear that, Robert, delighted to hear that.

Allen Warshaw. “Having one day holidays based on Torah, two days is based on a bit of approach, time of day, sunset. Since when one is in Israel, one is exactly when sunset is controlled. Have one day Tuesday, and nothing make it easier.” Has nothing to do with making it easier. I don’t understand what your question is. I was only addressing those who thought that if we take away one day it would make life easier in the diaspora.

Alan, “This is a good session, kala kavod.”

Q: Barbara, “I think it’s interesting that parents with young children suddenly start going to service when their kids are in Sunday school and then promptly stop after bar mitzvah, thoughts?”

A: Well, yes, a lot of people become, even within the ex-orthodox world, more committed when they have children and they want their children to have a Jewish background and they come along and say, you know, “I want to give them a choice.” But the trouble is if the parents are not that committed, then the kids are not going to be that committed. And why should they choose to adhere to a tradition that’s going to mark them out as different in university, which is going to limit their choice of spouse, which IS going to put them in an atmosphere where in America they are attacked and they’re regarded as a problem and you’d find university difficult. Why should they do that if they don’t have a good reason to be committed? And where does a good reason come from? Not from theory. It comes from having an atmosphere either at home, or if you go to study in Israel, in a college after high school, before university, where you experience a Judaism which is vibrant, exciting, and positive. But if you don’t have that experience, why the hell should you stay? If it’s just a social club, Judaism, why join a hard social club if you can join an easy social club? Why join a social club with only a few members when you can join a social club and make contacts with many more members?

Q: “Do reformed conservative Jews believe God gave Moses the trial sign?”

A: No, they don’t, they don’t believe. They believe that, well, many of them believe that the development of Torah came many, many, many years or generations after, that Mount Sinai never happened. And so it’s true to say that I don’t think you’ll find one reform or conservative Jew who will believe that God gave the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai literally. You might say metaphorically, but not literally. “Well, you earlier said you didn’t take sides. Your statements values Israel over your right-leaning view about our world, Jewish sisters, brothers who care about Zionism with voices for women democracy. We feel our voices in Israel are better. It’s not a feeling,” but I agree with you. I dunno where you’ve got that idea from. I’m fully in favour of people having the freedom and the choice. I am just saying that the more intense you are, the more likely you are to survive.

Monty’s question about numbers. “Too many numbers, more antagonism, therefore keep the published numbers low.” Okay, well, you know, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, and it depends who you ask. And the samples you ask depend on location. They depend on so many different factors that I honestly am not a big fan of statistics. I’m a bigger fan of what I experience.

And so there we are, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much, and hope to see you again, bye.