1- . 871

' THE PITTSBURGH PLATFORM — A HUNDRED YEARS ON

A hundred years ago today something Tather important happened in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: important that is, for the history of Pro— gresfive . But before I tell you what it was, let me fill you in on the background.

Progressive Judaism, as I am sure everybody knows, began in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was Started by lay people, and it was only a generation later, towards the middle of the century, that a number of‘rabbis were drawn into the movement and be— came its leaders, chief among them Abraham Geiger. He stayed in Germany, but several of his colleagues emigrated to America. One of them was

David Einhorn, who settled in Baltimore, then_Philadelphia and ultimate— ly New York: a man of prophetic fervour and champion of civil rights. a nod 01-30mm er Another was Isaac Mayer Wiseblwho settled first in Albany, then in

Cincinnati, and founded the great institutions of American Progressive

‘Judaism such as the Union of American Hebrew Congregaéions and the

Hebrew Union College, which he served as President for the rest of the century.

A third, though a generation younger, was Kaufmann Kohler. He had connections with all the people I have mentioned. For he was a disciple of Geiger; he married Einhorn's daughter and succeeded him in New York; and he ultimately succeeded Wise as President of the Hebrew Union College.

Kohler was only twenty—six when he arrived in America and settled in

Detroit. That same year he attended a conference convened by Einhorn in Philadelphia which drew up a set of principles of Progressive Judaism, known as the Philadelphia Platform.

LET-C But Kohler was not satisfied, and in 1885 he took the initiative

in convening another conference, this time in Pittsburgh. It began

on the sixteenth of November, which was a Monday, and was attended by

fifteen rabbis, including Wise but not'Einhorn, who was no longer alive.

By the end of the first day the conference had agreed a new set of

principles which became known as the Pittsburgh Platform. It was in

its time, and remained for fifty years, the most important self-definit—

ion of Progressive Judaism; and though it has since been superseded,

I thought it might be instructive as well as appropriate if this morn- / / \,»x_~/~' ,,./;_ 1ng§,_ }‘we were “Md r2 —,A/' " *V v- m‘mr /»r/‘»u to take a \~/ J close look at it, which is why copies of the text have been distributed.

But just before we look at the text let me say a word or two about

the sequel. In 1903 Kohler became President of the Hebrew Union College.

Two years later there arrived there one of its most brilliant students,

Israel Mattuck, who became our first rabbi. So there is a continuous

chain of tradition which stretches from Geiger through Einhorn, then

Kohler, to Mattuck and his disciples. Soon after Rabbi Mattuck came

to England the First World War broke out and swept away much of the

optimism of the nineteenth century. It was followed a few years later

by the rise of Hitler, then the Se§ond World War and the Holocaust, which swept away most of what had remained of nineteenth—century optim-

>ism. It was during the gathering of the clouds, in 1937, at a meeting

of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in ColumbuSIOhio, that

the Pittsburgh Platform was finally discarded in favour of a new

statement, known as the 'Guiding Principles' or the 'Columbus Platform'. After the War the State of was established, producing a further shift'in Jewish attitudes, and finally, in 1976, which marked the cen- tenary of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, yet another platform was agreed, which superseded all the previous ones and became known as the 'Centenary Perspective'.

Of course none of these platforms have ever been formally adopted in this country. gThey are strictly American.' But they reflect changes in outlook which have occurred on this side of the Atlantic also;[énd of all the Progressive movements in fhe world, our own Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues is probably closerin spirit to the American movement than any other] What, therefore, we want to ask ourselves as we go through the Pittsburgh Platform is, on the one hand, how far we have travelled from it, and, on the other, how far it nevertheless ex— presses beliefs and aspirations which we still cling to.

If, then, you will look at the first clause you will see that it be— gins, where it should begin, with . With remarkable modernity for its time,;i§ acknowledges that there is authenticity in other religious traditions also, but goes on to assert that "Judaism presents the high— est conception of the God-idea". By way of comparisoh, the Columbus

Platform is a little more modest; it merely says that "the doctrine of the One, living God" is "the heart of Judaism and its chief contribution to religion";[yhile the Centenary Perspective, while afffifiing God, says that Jews have "conceived of God in many ways" and wistfully acknowledges that “the trials of our own time...have made steady belief and Clear understanding difficult for some." I suppose it is in this last state— M“ Av“ -- r‘ 7': M:‘~F~m.v~ -~ « » M x A 1 «NJ, .._.,vfl___ ._ 4-... WNW ment“‘4‘ that "- we ch;efly" recogq;se e glves:]' < “kl " ‘- v“ ‘- vA- /\~v -_’Mfi_fix _\ _‘ /_; V \Q“ . _ 4 _

.The sepond clause is about the , which it describes both as a

"record" and as an "instrument of religious and moral instruction" but which, it says, must be understood in the light of "modern discoveries" and is then seen as sometimes "reflecting the primitive ideas of its own age". We, I think, would go along with that but would prefer to put it more positively, as the Columbus Platform does when it says that

"Revelation is a continuous process" and that the "enshrines

Israel's ever—growing consciousness of God and of the moral law."

—— \f —— x—uN VF—‘W- "'1 k" '5“; ‘_.» -,~«a .—.~ ~7‘W' ~ , . . \,.~ The <§hirdy/xyl and:?ourth .-,._R__ cigfiggé degig:fifiggfi§p§;:flcgily, w1th Sigllgglv— and rabbmnlc. — WA__ 7 ~.\,,\\ *~, A ,,_~ “x, , “Kim”, ,1 $33<::EEE§ they see essentially as a stage in the history of our people which became obsolete long ago excepging only that the "moral laws" remain binding and that those "ceremonies" are to be maintained which

"elevate and sanctify our lives",[énd that does 322 include those which

"regulate diet”, priestly purity and dress" All that is, of course, an over— simplification. Jewish law does not fall so neatly into two categories, moral and ceremonial. There are many more, and they overlap, and all of them deserve careful study for the relevance they may (or may not) still have. We would therefore prefer, would we got, the wording of the Columbus Platform which says of the Torah, "Being products of hist— orical processes, certain of its laws have lost their binding force with the passing of the conditions that called them forth" but that neverthe— less "the Torah remains the dynamic source" of Jewish lifeC>and "each age has the obligation to adapt" its teachings to ifis needs]

Furthermore, although it remains true that ceremonies must "elevate and sanctify", there is no Simple rule for determining which of them _ 5 _

are capable of doing so, and not a few which former generations discard-

ed have been found to be religiously valuable, after all. The Centenary

Perspective strikes, I think, the right balance when it says: "Within

each area of Jewish observance" Progressive Jews "are called upon to

confront the claims of Jewish tradition...and to exercise their individual

autonomy, choosing and creating on the basis of commitment and knowledge."

Clauses Five and Six of the Pittsburgh Platform are, on the face of them,the_\ most dated. For they speak with an optimismc and a confidence <::i::‘wu"k::>which the past hundred years have all too tragically

falsified. The modern era, they say, is one of "universal culture of

heart and intellect" and heralds "the realization of Israel's great

Messianic hope for fhe establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice

and peace among all men". Again, they refer to "the spirit of broad

humanity of our age" as presaging - one gathers in the fairly near

future - "the establishment of the feign of truth and righteousness

among men." In other words, the Messianic Age is just round the corner!

And because the Pittsburgh Rabbis believed that, because they saw the

glittering vista of universal brotherhood and peace as attainable within

only a generation or two, therefore the idea of a return to Palestine,

which in 1885 had only just begun to be advocated in Eastern Europe,

seemed to them unnecessary, incongruent and irrelevant.

We, with hindsight, know better - or, rather, different. We know

that the world has not changed; or if it has changea for the better,

it has also changed for the worse, andnone of us can say with any con—

fidence whether, compaked with a hundred years ago, we are a little

nearer along the road towards the messianic goal or, on the contrary, farther away from it. Certainly our Jewish experience in the last

hundred years, and especially in the last fifty, has made the re-

establishmept of a Jewish autonomous state in Palestine not only

highly relevant but a dire necessity.‘ And that experience, in its

turn, is now seen by us, in retrospect, as a continuation of a long

past.

[Erime Minister Shimon Peres put the point extraordinarily well, I

thought, when, in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly

last month (on 21st Octoberh he said to the delegates: "Search the map

of Western civilization across the ages: Not a place will be found

where Jews were not persecuted. Save for the New World, you will find

yourselves marching along the trail of Jewish blood and tears, tracing

the chronology of Jewish martyrdom. This was the history of my people

for two thousand years — until there came a point when the Jews tired

of dependence on the hatred_or tolerance of others to settle their

fate." This;" said Mr. Peres, "is the very essence of ."i]

In that sense, at least, we all affirm Zionism nowadays, do we not?

At any rate, we would surely endorse what the Columbus Platform says

about that: that "in the rehabilitation of Palestine , the land hallowed

by memories and hopes, we behold the promise of renewed life for many

of our brethren", and what the Centenary Perspective says, that the

State of Israel provides "unique opportunities for Jewish self—expression“,

[glthough we would also go along with it when it redresses the balance

by speaking of "the mandate of our tradition to create strong Jewish

communities wherever we live" and by affirming that "a genuine Jewish

life is possible in any land."i1 _ 7 _ ‘So yes, the Pittsburgh Platform is dated. It was drawnlép in an

age so different from ours that we can hardly imagine what it must have

been like to live in it. We can respect and we can envy the optimism

of those fifteen rabbis gathered in Pittsburgh in 1885, but we cannot

share it. And yet we share — with them that is to say, I 2929 we share

with them — at least five convictions. First, that Judaism is about

Goa and<<:::> His will, about good and evil, right and wrong. Secondly,

that Judaism is a developing religion. It has developed in the past, in

response to changing circumstances, and it must do so in the present and

_the future if it is to keép pace with truth and answer to the needs of

succeeding generations. Thirdly, that through this Judaism of ours we

have a contribution to make to the spiritfial and moral well—being of

mankind. We have a service to render. God is still saying to us, as

He said to our ancestors in Patriarchal times: V‘HIT-BAR'CHU V'ZAR—ACHA

KOL GOYEY HA—ARETZ, "Through your descendants all the nations of the

earth shall be blessed" (Gen. 26:4). Fourthly, that, much as we re-

joice in the existence of the State of Israel, nevertheless it is possible

to live as Jews in other lands, and indeed it is positively desirable,

if we are to render such a service to mankind, that we should maintain

a presence throughout God's earth, and that we should work together with our fellow human beings of other races, nations and religiofis for

the betterment of human society; that, to quote from the last clause of

the Pittsburgh Platform, it is our duty "to participate in the great

task of modern times, to solve on the basis of justice and righteousness

the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present society.” .\ ~.. ~8—

And finally this, that though the Messianic Age is not round the corner, and the road to it is long and winding and full of difficulties and ob- stacles, nevertheless, under God's providence, our children's children will get there in the end. We do not say it glibly. We hardly dare to say it at all after what we have experienced. But deep down we yet know that it is true, that "the path of the righteous is as the light of dawn, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (Prov. 4:18).

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