Denominations

The History of Jewish Denominations

Until the nineteenth century, European Jewry resembled what is now known as Orthodoxy. While not all Jews followed traditional practices, those who did adhered to a single basic model. That is to say that all Jews who observed Shabbat accepted the same basic laws, all synagogues followed the same service andall those who kept kosher adhered to the same standards.

It was not until the emergence of other streams of Judaism that Orthodoxy found the need to define itself as a distinct movement. In America, Orthodox Judaism gained strength from the late 19th century immigration of traditional Jews from Eastern Europe. One result of this was the establishment in 1897 of what would later become Yeshiva University. These immigrants were more wary of modernity than the secularly-educated German Jews who constituted the earlier wave of immigration. The Orthodoxy that these Eastern Europeans Jews created therefore resisted modernity which it considered a threat to traditional Jewish practice. Modern Orthodoxy which took hold under the leadership of Joseph Soleveitchik in the second half of the twentieth century, embraced a belief that traditional halachic Judaaism is not incompatible with secular American culture. Modern Orthodoxy retains a belief in the binding nature of halacha, but encourages its adherents to gain secular knowledge and to practice professions.

Until the mid nineteenth century, German Jews found it necessary to choose between being either Jews or Germans. Reform Judaism grew from a desire to reconcile the two possibilities into an identity that included a full expression both of Jewishness and of Germanness. The movment rejected halacha as binding and instead encouraged a commitment to the spirit of Jewish Law. Reform Judaism arrived in America with the influx of German-Jewish immigraion in the early second half of the nineteenth century.

During its earliest stages in America, some leaders of Reform Judaism encouraged the movement to abandon many of the trappings of traditional Judaism. Some leaders advocated observing Shabbat on Sunday in order to better fit with American culture and many argued for elimating Hebrew in services. In modern times, Reform Judaim has retiained the idea that halacha is not obligatory and that individuals must make personal decisions about Jewish practice (after full education on the issue). It has rejected earlier anti Hebrew, anti ritual, anti Zionist positions in favour of a practice that encourages the observance of some rituals but stresses the spirit over the letter of the law.

Conservative Judaism began towards the end of the nineteenth century as a response to Reform Judaism, which appeared as moving farther and farther from traditional Jewish practice. As a response to events in the Reform world an alternative to the Reform rabbinical seminary was founded : The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. This institution, founded in 1887, committed itself to balancing tradition and modernity. Conservative Judaism considers halacha binding but continuosly developing within a defined system.

In its earliest stages, Reconstructionism was a stream of thought within Conservative Judaism. Mordechai Kaplan. a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary within 1909 to 1963, taught a conception of Judaism that rejected the Jewish notion of choseness and defined God as a process rather than a supernatural power. Kaplan considered Judaism an ‘evolving religious civilization’ that includes religion, ritual, peoplehood and culture. He developed the idea of chavurot, grassroots Jewish communities, and of Jewish community centres which would serve as the focus of the Jewish community. After Kaplan’s departure from the Jewish Theological Seminary, his followers began to organise Reconstructionism as as seperate movement. Its theological seminary, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, was founded in 1968.