Reform Movement In Judaism
The Reform movement in Judaism is a historic and on-going religious and social movement that originated in the early nineteenth century in Europe. The term is used by two widely read and frequently cited historians of the movement: David Philipson and Michael Meyer. Philipson wrote The Reform movement in Judaism (1903, 1931) covering the movement from its beginnings up until 1930. Meyer wrote Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (1978). Meyer's book, the first general history of the movement since Philipson, updates Philipson's coverage to reflect modern concerns with bias and to extend the history of the movement up to the 1970s.
Throughout its history, Jewish beliefs and practices in the reform movement have undergone dynamic changes and innovations. Due to its origins in Enlightenment-era Germany, the reform movement has eyed traditional Jewish beliefs through the lens of liberal thought, such as autonomy, modernity, universalism, and the historical-philosophical critique of religion. The reform movement in Judaism challenged many traditionalist Jewish doctrines, adapted or eliminated practices, and introduced its own theological and communal innovations.
Whether in support or reaction, some Ashkenazi Jewish denominations can trace their intellectual and organization origins to this critical time in Jewish history.
Read more about Reform Movement In Judaism: The Twentieth Century, The Emergence of Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism, Orthodoxy and The Reform Movement in Judaism, Bibliography, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words reform movement, reform, movement and/or judaism:
“... most reform movements in our country have been cursed by a lunatic fringe and have mingled sound ideas for social progress with utopian nonsense.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“Undoubtedly if we were to reform this outward life truly and thoroughly, we should find no duty of the inner omitted. It would be employment for our whole nature.... But a moral reform must take place first, and then the necessity of the other will be superseded, and we shall sail and plow by its force alone.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Failure or success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)