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paragraph of the Pittsburgh Platform that Judaism is a progressive reli-
gion and the designation of the umbrella body for Reform and Liberal
Judaism as the World Union for Progressive Judaism (established in Lon-
don in 1926), it is perhaps unsurprising that change has been dramatic
over the past century. One of the most drastic changes has been a com-
plete reversal in attitudes to Zionism. In part, this seems to have been
simply in response to the shift in attitude within the American Jewish
community as a whole, whose confidence in the right to be as American
as all other Americans in a country of immigrants was not shaken by any
charge of dual loyalty to another homeland. The liberal rabbi Stephen
S. Wise, who founded in 1907 the Free Synagogue in New York, which
allowed free speech from the pulpit, combined a call for social justice
and racial equality in the United States with a strongly Zionist stance
which he promulgated in an independent seminary for training Reform
rabbis, the Jewish Institute of Religion, founded in 1922.
By 1937, the beliefs and customs of Reform congregations in the
United States had evolved so far since the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885
that a new set of guiding principles was adopted at a convention held in
Columbus, Ohio. The convention accepted, among other changes, ‘the
obligation of all Jewry to aid in the upbuilding of the Jewish homeland
by making it not only a haven for the oppressed but also a center of
Jewish culture and spiritual life’, linking the restoration of Palestine to
the establishment of the Kingdom of God. In striking contrast to their
predecessors in Pittsburgh, the rabbis in Columbus emphasized Judaism
as a ‘way of life’, and stressed the importance of customs, ceremonies,
religious art and music, and the use of Hebrew in worship:
The perpetuation of Judaism as a living force depends upon religious
knowledge and upon the education of each new generation in our rich
cultural and spiritual heritage ... Judaism as a way of life requires in add-
ition to its moral and spiritual demands, the preservation of the Sabbath,
festivals and Holy Days, the retention and development of such customs,
symbols and ceremonies as possess inspirational value, the cultivation of
distinctive forms of religious art and music and the use of Hebrew, together
with the vernacular, in our worship and instruction.^23
Some of the newly enunciated principles came under immediate
stress, such as the urge for disarmament, included in Principle 8, which
was rapidly overtaken by the call to fight against Nazism in Europe.
More change followed through the rest of the twentieth century and
continues today. But the embrace of Zionism was maintained: in 1947,