elements of Judaism. The endeavor of reforming Judaism had two comple-
mentary aims: to make Judaism meaningful to a generation of Jews who,
having grown up in the secular age of the French Revolution and Napoleon,
were alienated from Jewish tradition; and to make Judaism compatible with
modern citizenship, thereby proving Jews worthy of citizenship.
The first reform initiatives in Germany began during the 1810s, led by
Israel Friedlander in Berlin, who remodeled the Jewish prayer service so that
it took on the decorum of a Protestant church service. In 1812, Friedlander
abolished all national Jewish prayers in his Berlin congregation, and added
prayers in German. In 1815, Israel Jacobson established a private prayer
meeting in his home, where he used an organ and a choir, and had prayers and
a sermon in German, and made sure the service was conducted with proper
decorum. A second service opened shortly thereafter at the home of Jacob
Hertz Beer. In 1817, the Prussian government closed down these “syna-
gogues,” partly in response to a request from traditional Jews, but also as a
reaction to any and all innovations, which were regarded with suspicion in an
age of political reaction.
A year later, Edward Kley, preacher at the Beer synagogue, moved to
Hamburg and organized the first lasting Reform congregation, the Hamburg
Israelite Temple Association. The very name of this congregation captured
much of its religious and social outlook: “Israelite” avoided the stigma
attached to the word “Jew”; “Association” because of the connection between
“congregation” and corporate autonomy; and “Temple” as a way of dissociat-
ing from the traditional Jewish notion of a messianic return to Zion – that is,
a permanent replacement for the Temple in Jerusalem. This congregation
introduced some of the same innovations as had been introduced in Berlin,
such as proper decorum, the use of an organ and choir, and a sermon and
prayers in German. Additional innovations included the Sephardic pronunci-
ation of Hebrew; the reading rather than chanting of the Torah portion; and
the elimination from the liturgy of prayers that called into question the wor-
thiness of Jews for citizenship such as references to the messianic return to
Zion or resurrection of the dead, and the Kol Nidrei, whose ceremonial
renunciation of vows seemed to call into question the trustworthiness of Jews
in a modern society.
In response to this new congregation, a letter-writing campaign by tradi-
tional rabbis in Germany, the Czech Lands, and Hungary culminated in the
publication of Eleh Divrei ha-Brit(These Are the Words of the Covenant), a
concerted denunciation of the innovations by the Hamburg Temple: chang-
ing the liturgy, using a choir and organ, and praying in the vernacular. This,
as will be seen presently, has been generally marked by historians as the birth
of Orthodox Judaism.
During the 1820s and 1830s, Reform Judaism spread to other parts of
Germany, and to Vienna, Denmark, and America. Until the 1840s, Reform
156 The age of enlightenment and emancipation, 1750–1880