The blessing that follows a Torah reading contains the assertion that God has endowed our people with “eternal life.” The dynamic that helps explain the continuing existence of the Jewish people in the face of rejection, exile, mass murder, is our possession of a single language – Hebrew — a single law – Torah — and a single goal – reestablishing a Jewish commonwealth in the Holy Land and reinstituting the Temple sacrifices.
Surroundings changed with the advent of the French Revolution, and its principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Jews were for the first time offered full citizenship along with the opportunity for: business, political, and social integration.
Responses of the Jewish community to the new circumstances were threefold. Traditionalists feared that the new freedom would impair Jewish solidarity and loyalty to the sacred tradition. They chose to reject the proffered freedoms. Others eagerly seized upon the new opportunities, and willingly abandoned Jewish identification to become fully integrated into the larger society.
A third group, the Reformers, believed that one could possess both Jewish identification and participate fully in the larger culture, so long as basic reforms were enacted in traditional thought and practice.
The first of these was a rejection of the binding nature of halachah, i.e. Jewish law. While the Reformers believed the Bible to be divinely inspired, they viewed the ordinances promulgated by the rabbis to be matters of opinion. Jewish law had been modified with changing historic circumstances and the new opportunities called for major adjustments.
The Reformers made a clear distinction between the moral commandments — the need to practice kindness, patience, integrity — and ritual provisions which existed only to emphasize the moral rulings. One bowed the head before the open ark to practice humility before God. While at one time, one covered one’s head on entering the house of worship as a sign of respect, the contemporary Jew removed his hat for the same reason.
The country of one’s adoption was now identified as homeland. All reference to a return to the Holy Land and reinstituting the sacrifices was removed from the prayer book. With the establishment of Cincinnati as a center for American Reform, a prominent rabbi asserted: “Cincinnati is our Jerusalem.” To reject the notion of rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple, the Reform house of worship was labeled temple rather than synagogue.
Rationalism and intelligibility became new worship standards. References to miracles — six days of creation, division of the Red Sea, resurrection of the dead — were eliminated from the prayers.
The bulk of the service was read in the vernacular, with the singing of hymns a prominent element in the service. In the intervening years, many modifications have been made in Jewish thought and practice to bring them closer to the tradition.
Jay R. Brickman is Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Sinai. His most recent book is “Poetry Doodles.”
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