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Soon after, the most important work by Holdheim appeared under the title Die Autonomie der Rabbinen, (Schwerin and Berlin, 1843). In this he pleads for the abolition of the antiquated Jewish marriage and divorce regulations mainly on the ground that the Jews do not constitute a political nation. The Jewish religious institutions must be rigidly kept distinct from the Jewish national ones, to which latter belong the laws of marriage and divorce. The laws of the modern states are not in conflict with the principles of the Jewish religion; therefore these modern laws, and not the Jewish national laws of other days, should regulate Jewish marriages and divorces (see Samuel Hirsch in Orient. Lit., 1843, No. 44). The importance of this book is attested by the stir it created among German Jewish communities, many members of which found in its attitude the solution of the problem of how loyalty to Judaism could be combined with unqualified allegiance to their German nationality. Evidence of its incisive character is furnished also by the polemical literature that grew out of it. In these discussions such men as A. Bernstein, Mendel Hess, Samson Raphael Hirsch, Zacharias Frankel, Raphael Kirchheim, Leopold Zunz, Leopold Löw, and Adolf Jellinek took part.
The foundation of the Reform Verein in Frankfurt am Main led to another agitation in German Jewry. Einhorn, Stein, Samuel Hirsch, and others deplored the rise of the Verein as a step toward schismatic separation. The obligatory character of the rite of circumcision was the focal issue discussed by no less than forty-one rabbis. Holdheim, in his Ueber die Beschneidung Zunächst in Religiös-Dogmatischer Beziehung (Schwerin and Berlin, 1844), takes the position that circumcision is not, like baptism, a sacrament of initiation, but is merely a command like any other. Nevertheless he classifies it not as a national but as a Jewish law, and pleads for its retention. Indeed, he was not unreservedly an adherent of the program of the Frankfurt Reform Verein. This is clear from his Vorträge über die Mosaische Religion für Denkende Israeliten (Schwerin, 1844). While the Verein assumed unlimited possibilities of development, according to Holdheim the Mosaic element, after the elimination of the national, is eternal. Religion must be placed above all temporal needs and desires. To yield to the spirit of the age would make that spirit the supreme factor and lead to the production of a new 19th century Talmud as little warranted as was the Talmud of the 5th century.
Mosaism as contained in the Bible is the continuous religion of Judaism. The belief in this revelation is the constant factor in all variants of Judaism. This is also the main thesis of his Das Ceremonialgesetz im Messiasreich (Schwerin and Berlin, 1845). He shows the inconsistency of Talmudism, which, assuming the inviolability of all Biblical laws, still recognizes the suspension of many. Hence the Talmudic insistence on the restoration of the Jewish state. Some ceremonial laws were meant to assure the holiness of the people; others to assure that of the priests. These ceremonies lose their meaning and are rendered obsolete the moment Israel no longer requires special protection for its monotheistic distinctness. As soon as all men have become ethical monotheists, Israel is nowhere in danger of losing its own monotheism; nor is its distinctness further required. Hence in the Messianic time the ceremonies will lose all binding or effective force. This book, too, called forth much discussion, in which Reform rabbis like Levi Herzfeld took a stand opposed to Holdheim's. Answering some of his critics' objections, Holdheim insisted upon being recognized as an adherent of positive historic Judaism. The doctrines, religious and ethical, of Biblical Judaism are, he claimed, the positive contents of Judaism; and a truly historical reform must, for the sake of these positive doctrines, liberate Judaism from Talmudism.
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