counter- reform 495
therefore to be embraced rather than endured. Judaism is to be recon-
structed and Jewish customs reinterpreted to make them relevant in the
modern age. Such an approach, bolstered by a combination of philo-
sophical and sociological argument as well as by the secular cultural
Zionism espoused by the Hebrew essayist Asher Ginzberg (known by
his pen name ‘Ahad Ha’am’), in practice brought Reconstructionists in
many aspects of practice and liturgy close to Reform communities and
encouraged the popularity in American Jewish suburbia of the notion
that a synagogue should be primarily a community centre, with prayer
and study as secondary activities. Thus the Sabbath Prayer Book edited
by Kaplan in 1945 deleted references to the resurrection of the dead and
a personal messiah, and even to the Jews as a chosen people. On the
other hand, Reconstructionists have retained from their conservative
roots a strong emphasis on the need for Hebrew in prayer and for con-
tinued practice of rituals which are seen to convey the insights of
previous generations (although such rituals may be changed on ethical
grounds if the specific historical context of their origins is no longer
seen to apply). Kaplan’s Society for the Advancement of Judaism,
founded in 1922, gave birth in 1955 to the Jewish Reconstructionist
Federation and, since 1968, it has funded its own Reconstructionist
Rabbinical College in Pennsylvania.^22
It is not accidental that the Reconstructionist movement responded
more rapidly and radically than other forms of Judaism to the changing
roles of women. The religious role of women, which had hardly changed
since the carving out of a domestic religious role for them in the early
rabbinic period, was widely recognized in the twentieth century as a
major issue requiring some sort of reform. Services of ‘consecration’ for
girls had been introduced into some orthodox synagogues in England in
the nineteenth century, but for Jews aware of female emancipation in
wider society and their entry into university education and the profes-
sions the continuing ignorance and exclusion of many women came to
seem increasingly anachronistic and unacceptable. In 1922 Kaplan was
the first to introduce a bat mitzvah ritual into the synagogue service,
when his own daughter reached the age of maturity (at twelve years and
a day), and in the 1940s women were granted full equality in the syna-
gogue rituals in all Reconstructionist congregations. Women were first
ordained as Reconstructionist rabbis in 1968, and recognition and
inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Jews has become an
integral part of the movement’s adaptation to the modern North Ameri-
can world.^23