Jewish Schisms - Orthodox Versus Reform (and Conservative), East Versus West

Orthodox Versus Reform (and Conservative), East Versus West

From the time of the French Revolution of 1789, and the growth of Liberalism, added to the political and personal freedoms granted by Napoleon to the Jews of Europe, many Jews chose to abandon the foreboding and isolating ghettos and enter into general society. This influenced the internal conflicts about religion, culture, and politics of the Jews to this day.

Some Jews in Western Europe, and many Jews in America, joined the religiously liberal new Reform Judaism movement, which drew inspiration from the writings of modernist thinkers like Moses Mendelson. They coined the name "Orthodox" to describe those who opposed the "Reform". They were criticized by the Orthodox Judaism rabbis such as Samson Raphael Hirsch in Germany, and condemned, particularly by those known today as followers of Haredi Judaism, based mainly in Eastern Europe. (Later on, in 1880s America, Conservative Judaism split from the Reform movement.)

Thus a cultural schism was also created between the more westernised English, German and French-speaking Western European Jews and their more religiously observant Yiddish speaking Eastern European brethren whom they denigratingly labeled Ost Yidden ("Eastern Jews"). These schisms and the debates surrounding them, continue with much ferocity in all Jewish communities today as the Reform and Orthodox movements continue to confront each other over a wide range of religious, social, political and ethnic issues. (Today, the largest Jewish communities are in Israel and in the United States, and the geographical separation has resulted in cultural differences, such as a tendency to identify as hiloni and haredi in Israel, as opposed to, say, Reform and Orthodox in the United States.)