A Crisis in American Reform Judaism in the 21St Century

From Haskalah to Reinterpretation of Tradition: A Crisis in American Reform Judaism in the 21st Century

Martina Topić

This chapter discusses the changes in the self-understanding of American Reform Judaism (hereafter the Reform Movement) in the second half of the twentieth century and traces them back to the second half of the 19th century.1 This is done against the background of the Haskalah, which is the Jewish Enlightenment and emancipation movement. It developed in 18th century Europe as an effect of societal modernization processes. The Haskalah is the frame in which Jewish communities started to reconstruct their self-concep- tion in the increasingly secular environment of modern European societies. This re-orientation concerns the boundaries between religion and politics as well as the question of national and cultural belonging.2 Consequently, Jewish communities not only modernized their traditional way of life in the ghettos, but they also tried to strengthen their bonds with Christian majority societies. This resulted—among other things—in the modernization of Jewish educa- tion, accompanied by a revival of Hebrew and the assimilation of European languages. At large, the Haskalah aimed at the integration of Jews in modern European nation states and their recognition as equal citizens. In contrast to this cultural assimilation movement, political Zionism, which was established at the end of the 19th century, aimed at the foundation of a Jewish nation. From that time on, Zionism was at the center of heated debates in Reform Judaism.

1 Reform Judaism is sometimes discussed separately and sometimes together with Progressive Judaism. Reform Judaism calls itself Progressive Judaism, and Israel also considers Reform Judaism as a part of Progressive Judaism (Livni 1982). As is obvious from the Statement of Reform Judaism (1999) and the World Union for Progressive Judaism (2013a), Reform Judaism has been seen as a synonym for Progressive Judaism. However, Progressive Judaism presents a further development of reform ideas and, thus, encompasses Reform, Liberal, Progressive, and Reconstructionist streams of Judaism (World Union for Progressive Judaism 2013). 2 In France for example, the Assemblée nationale constituante attributed full citizenship rights to Jews in 1791.

In this chapter, this discussion is narrowed down to the relations between the American Reform Movement and the state of Israel. On the one hand, the Reform Movement always had a particular bond with Israel, but on the other hand, it rejected political Zionism right from the beginning. In this regard, the Reform Movement is distinct from Orthodox and Conservative Judaism. What makes the Reform Movement particularly interesting is its change of attitudes toward Israel and political Zionism over the course of time, not least as a response to the Shoah as well as the recent past of the conflict-riddled Middle East. The main argument of the chapter is that this change reflects a tension between the Reform Movement’s identification with Israel as a nation state, and the ideals of the Enlightenment that have been so important to the movement. This change reflects a crisis within the movement itself, as it seems to reinterpret its traditions based on Enlightenment ideals, including rejecting religiously based views about the state of Israel. This development will be discussed against the background of selected documents of the American Reform Movement, such as its founding declaration (1885) and other resolutions issued by the movement until the recent past, particularly in regard to Israel. The documents show that the Reform Move- ment adapted its convictions over the course of time. This finds its expression particularly in the statement of principles from 1885, the so-called Pittsburgh Platform, which was revised in 1937 and a second time in 1976, and the State- ment of Principles for Reform Judaism in 1999. The selected documents are exemplary for the transformation of the American Reform Movement’s attitudes and notions regarding the boundaries between religion and the nation state. In other words, the movement’s relation with Israel has evolved from the rejection of Jewish identity expressed in a political form (1885), to acceptance and acknowledgement of ethnic identification (1976), toward interconnected- ness and national identification (1999 and onwards). Since the Statement of Principles from 1999, the Reform Movement accepts the Sephardic understanding of the Jewish people as a separate nation, which undermines the original concept of Reform Judaism that insisted on the position that Jews outside of Israel are not a separate nation and members of the Diaspora. With this, an ongoing dispute over the position of Israel in the Reform Movement contin- ued, and reached a status where the Reform Movement is undermining its basic postulates of rejecting religiously founded views and the Diaspora concept. In order to demonstrate this, the chapter first discusses the founding ideals of the Haskalah and explains the basic conceptions of Reform Judaism. It discusses the relationship between the American Reform Movement and Zionism in light of the Reform Movement’s re-interpretation of tradition. This