The Twentieth Century
At the start of the twentieth century, the European reform movement gained new steam organizationally. In Germany, rabbis and followers organized under the banner of Liberal Judaism. Meanwhile, inspired largely by Claude Montefiore, Lily Montagu spearheaded reform efforts in Great Britain. Around 1902, following liturgical changes and debates, they formed the Jewish Religious Union in London. Liberal Judaism steadily gained adherents after the founding in 1911 of the Liberal Jewish synagogue, the first of more than thirty Liberal congregations in the UK.
At the same time, reform-minded French Jews established the Union Liberale Israelite, which was criticized as a revolutionary schism.
In 1926, representatives from the U.S. and Europe convened the first international conference for the Reform movement in Judaism and formed World Union for Progressive Judaism. With British and then American leadership, the WUPJ spread the reform movement to many countries, most notably Israel, to which the WUPJ headquarters were relocated.
In the United States, the Reform movement grew significantly through the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and its affiliates. In 1922, Reform Rabbi Stephen S. Wise established the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, which merged with Hebrew Union College in 1950. Other centers were opened in Los Angeles (1954) and Jerusalem (1963).
On policy matters, the American Reform movement has had a number of official platforms. The Columbus platform was written in 1937 by the Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR). The CCAR rewrote its principles in 1976 with its Centenary Perspective and rewrote them again in the 1999 as A Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism. According to the CCAR, personal autonomy still has precedence over these platforms. In 1983, the Central Conference of American Rabbis took one of its most controversial stands and formally affirmed that a Jewish identity can be passed down through either the mother or the father, if the child is raised with a Jewish identity.
Read more about this topic: Reform Movement In Judaism
Famous quotes containing the words twentieth century, twentieth and/or century:
“A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious “retreat” of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.”
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“... the nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not. Not.”
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“One of the great triumphs of the nineteenth century was to limit the connotation of the word “immoral” in such a way that, for practical purposes, only those were immoral who drank too much or made too copious love. Those who indulged in any or all of the other deadly sins could look down in righteous indignation on the lascivious and the gluttonous.... In the name of all lechers and boozers I most solemnly protest against the invidious distinction made to our prejudice.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)