Reformer
In the Germany of the 19th century, Geiger and Samuel Holdheim, along with Israel Jacobson and Leopold Zunz, stood out as the founding fathers of Reform Judaism. Geiger was a more moderate and scholarly reformer, seeking to found this new branch of Judaism on the scientific study of history, without assuming that any Jewish text was divinely written.
Geiger was not only a scholar and researcher commenting on important subjects and characters in Jewish history, he was also a rabbi responsible for much of the reform doctrine of the mid 19th century. He contributed much of the character to the reform movement that remains today. Reform historian Michael A. Meyer has stated that, if any one person can be called the founder of Reform Judaism, it must be Geiger.
Much of Geiger's writing has been translated into English from the original German. There have been many biographical and research texts about him, such as the work Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus by Susannah Heschel (1998), which chronicles Geiger's radical contention that the New Testament illustrates Jesus was a Pharisee teaching Judaism.
Some of Geiger's studies are included in The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book edited by Ibn Warraq. Other works are Judaism and Islam (1833) and An Appeal to My Community (1842).
Read more about this topic: Abraham Geiger
Famous quotes containing the word reformer:
“Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,—and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are not equal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A reformer knows neither how to do nor to undo.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)
“It may be worth the while to state that he is not a Reformer in our sense of the term.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)