462 A History of Judaism
and which shall be observed in their own temple, to be erected especially
for this purpose.A new confirmation ceremony, at the age of sixteen, had already been
introduced in Kassel in 1810 by Jacobson. The new ceremony, for which
the liturgy was fluid, was felt more appropriate to the times than the bar
mitzvah at the age of thirteen because the child was more genuinely able
to take on adult responsibilities at an older age. It was open to girls as
well as to boys. By 1844, the need for spiritual reform along these lines
was expressed in heartfelt fashion from his final sickbed by the aged
Aaron Chorin, rabbi in Arad (then in Hungary):
The permanent elements of religion must be expressed in terms that appeal
to the people and are consonant with the needs of life. If our religion and
life appear to conflict with one another this is due either to the defacement
of the sanctuary by foreign additions or to the licence of the sinning will
which desires to make its unbridled greed and its false tendency authori-
tative guides for life. If we show ourselves as ready to strip off these
unessential additions which often forced themselves upon our noble faith
as the spawn of obscure and dark ages, as we are determined to sacrifice
our very lives for the upholding of the essential, we will be able to resist
successfully with the help of God all wanton, thoughtless and presumpt-
uous attacks which license or ignorance may direct against out sacred cause;
the seeming conflict will then disappear and we will have accomplished
something lasting for God.^9
Wide recognition of a need for change did not bring agreement on
the limits to be imposed. The early Reform services shortened the syna-
gogue liturgy, used the vernacular for sermons and some prayers, and
introduced organs for the accompaniment of the main choral elements
of the liturgy, but the changes made by individual congregations were
vulnerable to challenge by the local orthodox rabbinic establishment. In
June 1844, under the leadership of Abraham Geiger, a leading scholar
within the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement whose studies of
Jewish history and literature in ancient and medieval times were
designed to show (correctly, at least in broad terms, as we have seen)
how Judaism had always been constantly in a state of evolution, twenty-
five rabbis from across Germany who supported religious change were
persuaded to meet in Brunswick. Two further conferences followed, in
Frankfurt in 1845 and in Breslau in 1846 – but without agreement on
such issues of religious practice as the requirement for men to cover the