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:
“Film is more than the twentieth-century art. It’s another part of the twentieth-century mind. It’s the world seen from inside. We’ve come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, the film is implied in the thing itself. This is where we are. The twentieth century is on film.... You have to ask yourself if there’s anything about us more important than the fact that we’re constantly on film, constantly watching ourselves.”
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“If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley’s footsteps....To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been increased by their means; to all eternity, falsehoods and injustice will be the weaker because they have lived.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Necessity gives the law and does not itself receive it.”
—Publilius Syrus (1st century B.C.)