reform 463
head during prayer, the wearing of tefillin, and kosher food laws. There
was much discussion about the role of Hebrew in the liturgy (with many
wishing to retain an element), unanimous agreement that the traditional
prayers for the restoration of sacrifices in the Temple should be omitted,
and a majority decision in Frankfurt on 20 July 1845 that ‘the messianic
idea should retain prominent mention in the prayers, but all petitions
for our return to the land of our fathers and for the restoration of a
Jewish state should be eliminated’, since ‘in all contemporary additions
to the prayer book our modern concept of the Messiah may clearly be
stated, including the confession that our newly gained status as citizens
constitutes a partial fulfilment of our messianic hopes.’^10
There was a close link between these movements for religious reform
and the historical concerns of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (see
Chapter 16). At the heart of both movements was a desire to emphasize
the rational aspects of Judaism and Jewish history so that the Jews
might see themselves as like other Europeans. Many in the Hamburg
congregation had been brought up in homes in which Jewish practices
were not much observed, and the search for a rational Judaism paral-
leled the contemporary adoption of Protestant Christians, in an
atmosphere of religious revival particularly in Germany, of a meaning-
ful liberal theology based on biblical criticism.
Both historians and theologians did their best to minimize the mys-
tical traditions of the kabbalah, denigrating or ignoring such practices
as unworthy of the lofty religious ideals of an enlightened nation. But in
countries independent of the Reform movement in Germany historical
scholarship and philosophical speculation sometimes led Jews to some-
what different religious stances. Thus in Italy, Shmuel David Luzzatto
(known as Shadal) imbibed the spirit of academic criticism in his learned
Bible commentaries, which put to good use his extensive knowledge of
Semitic languages, but embraced a romantic ‘Judaism of feeling’ which
he contrasted both to the rationalism of philosophy and to the specula-
tions of the mystics, which he robustly rejected. His younger Italian
colleague Eliyahu Benamozegh, rabbi of Leghorn (Livorno), claimed
that the kabbalah deserves a status equal to the Bible and the Talmud,
and asserted that, since Judaism contains all the universal truths scat-
tered throughout the religions and myths of other peoples, Jews must
take a lead in encouraging universal belief in monotheism. Benamozegh,
known to some as the Plato of Italian Jewry, was highly esteemed by
non- Jewish readers for his attempt to demonstrate the affinities between
Judaism and contemporary Italian philosophers and the superiority of