The Jewish Enlightenment, Reform Judaism and Jewish National

Zionist Century - Programming and Activities- The Early Years

The Jewish Enlightenment, Reform Judaism and Jewish National Consciousness -
Background Text & Activity

by Nili Kadary

Educational Goals

The intellectual foundations of the Jewish Enlightenment in central and western Europe.
Reform Judaism.
Jewish intellectuals and the abandonment of national uniqueness.

Introduction -- Presentation of the Issue

The Jewish emancipation led to a weakening of Jewish national consciousness -- and in many cases to a willingness to forgo Jewish identity altogether. In this module, we survey the impact of certain Jewish intellectual trends upon the Jewish people.

The first and foremost of these was the Jewish Enlightenment, which called for Jews to become an integral part of the surrounding society and abandoned the idea of Jewish nationality -- which leaders of the Enlightenment saw as an obstacle to full integration with the surrounding peoples.

The Jewish Enlightenment in Central and Western Europe

The Jewish Enlightenment was an offshoot of the general European Enlightenment and drew from it a large portion of its ideas, especially re-interpreted in the context of the values of Judaism and the unique situation of the Jewish people. Its intellectual father was Moses Mendelssohn, who called for Jews to integrate socially and politically with their host nations and to learn from the positive elements of non-Jewish culture.

Mendelssohn's philosophical approach to the laws of the Torah differed from the traditional approach. He demanded that every man be granted freedom of belief and thought, based on his own belief that fear of God is a matter of intellectual conviction and -- as such -- open to debate and clarification.

Mendelssohn claimed that no obligation was promulgated to believe in God, even at Mount Sinai. Only the mitzvoth [precepts] were declared obligatory, and they were to be carefully observed in all their detail. On the issue of the respective and relative status of religion and nationality, Mendelssohn believed in separation of Church and state -- a principle widely accepted by the Europe of Enlightenment, and therefore opposed granting political powers to religious authorities. In practice, this approach would have denied Jewish community institutions their powers of internal autonomy.

It is noteworthy that Mendelssohn remained an observant Jew throughout his life, despite his original and innovative views on Judaism. His followers, however, took his thought to extreme ends:

They discounted a large number of the mitzvoth and denied the halakhic and historical value of the Talmud (the source of Jewish law by which Jews the world over live).
They claimed, rather, that faithfulness to the talmudic tradition and observance of the mitzvoth could prevent Jews from discharging their civil obligations to the nations in which they lived.

Acceptance of the ideas of the Jewish Enlightenment by a sector of central and west European Jewry, with immediate ramifications.

They were obliged to change their attitudes to concepts and values in education, society, and economics;
to develop a new approach to the concept of Redemption and its visualization;
to define a new approach vis-a-vis strict observance of the mitzvot set out in the Torah.

The leaders of the Jewish Enlightenment maintained that these modifications in the spheres of education, society, culture, and economics would bring Jews closer to their Christian neighbors and lead to complete integration with their host nations, thus advancing the process of Jewish Emancipation.

The Enlightenment and Jewish Nationalism

The question of loyalty to a Jewish homeland (moledet) and patriotic identification with it was one of the central issues addressed by the Jewish Enlightenment.

The unique connection -- of which European society was aware -- between the Jewish people and the land of Israel was an obstacle to identification with the countries where they resided lived, for it was not possible for a person to have two homelands.

The attempt by the Jewish Enlightenment to deny the connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel was a direct outcome of the desire to overcome this dilemma. Already in the thought of Moses Mendelssohn, we find an attempt to blur the connection between the Jewish people in his generation and the Jews of ancient times, -- those who lived in Eretz Yisrael.

Whereas Mendelssohn's formulation was extremely moderate, his followers, however, were more radical. David Friedlander, for example, demanded that all mention of Zion and Jerusalem be removed from the Siddur (traditional prayer book), given that "the Jews have only the Prussian Fatherland, for whose welfare they are obliged to pray." In France, Samuel Levi adopted a similar position in his declaration that

"France, which was the first country to remove the shame of her Jews, is our land of Israel. Her mountains are our Zion, her rivers - our Jordan."

It appears that in its attempts to negate the natural connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, the Jewish Enlightenment contributed to a weakening of nationalist aspirations among the Jewish people.

Reform Judaism

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, groups of Enlightened Jews began organizing with the intent of carrying out various reforms in the Jewish religion. These members of the Enlightenment, most of whom were adherents to the thought of Moses Mendelssohn, sought to advance the emancipation of central European Jewry.

The proponents of these reforms gave credence to the abstract principles of Judaism: monotheism, and pure morality (because of their similarity to the principles of Christianity), while viewing principles unique to Judaism as contributing to Jewish isolation. In practice, these reforms were meant to uproot the nationalist foundations of Jewish life, and refashion Judaism as a religious church only -- one whose communicants are partners only in faith and not in national identity.

In a number of Jewish centers in central Europe, Jews began to worship in "reformed" synagogues, which mimicked Christian houses of worship.

The standard-bearer and chief of ideologue of the Reform movement was Abraham Geiger. Geiger claimed that Judaism must rid itself of all elements that enhanced Jewish isolation.

Reform Judaism must reshape the Jewish religion in the spirit of science and wisdom.
The liturgy should be purged of all elements concerning the return to Zion and the coming of the Messiah, and emphasize, instead, the universal side of the messianic idea.
Various elements of Judaism were deemed to be impeding the rapprochement between Judaism and Christianity, and thus the process of emancipation.

Geiger sought to prove that the Jews of Germany were Germans -- of the Jewish persuasion -- and not members of a Jewish nationality. He admitted that there were differences between Jews and other Germans, but claimed these were less significant than the differences between the Jews of Germany and the Jews of France. The connection between the Jews of the world, in Geiger's opinion, was solely religious only, and there was therefore no reason for solidarity among Jews of different countries.

Thus did Geiger negate one of the most important principles of the Jewish existence throughout the ages: the unity of Israel and mutual responsibility among Jews the world over.

Conclusion

The efforts of the Jewish Enlightenment to reform Judaism met with bitter opposition from the Orthodox rabbinate, which claimed that the ideas of the reformers and their activities would lead to the assimilation of the Jewish people.

In summary, just as the nationalist awakening was beginning among the peoples of Europe, the members of the Jewish Enlightenment were aspiring to complete integration with non-Jewish society as "equals among equals." This integration could only be achieved at the price of denying Jewish nationality. Thus, the Jewish Enlightenment acted as a direct impediment to the establishment of the Jewish nationalist movement.

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