The Conservative Movement is no more - it has turned Reform

• Published date: 10 November 2021
• Author: Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

The time is long overdue for Jews who are Orthodox and Traditional (called Mesorati in Israel) — particularly in Israel where American Conservative and Reform Movement leaders with dying congregations are trying to change the fundamental connection between Judaism and the Jewish state— to grasp two truths:

1. What is called "Conservative Judaism" today is "Reform Judaism". It is not what it once was, and it never will go back. It no longer has any anchor or mooring to the Torah or to Tradition. It also has almost no followers in the USA.

2. Reform "Judaism" today is akin to Unitarian Christianity without a Messiah. Today, in public declarations made by Reform's own leaders, more than half of membership families at Reform temples are intermarried. (See page 9, "Audacious Hospitality.") With half or more of their membership non-Jewish, what are they?

The Reform Movement began in 1800's Germany. It was founded by Jews who understandably could not bear centuries of living persecuted in the ghettoes of Europe and desperately wanted to share in the Enlightenment. They fantasized that, if they "reformed" Judaism to be like the surrounding liberal Protestantism, then the German non-Jews would come to accept Jews in their society.

After centuries of deadly Crusades, the Black Death, blood libels, and so much horror, the Reform Movement's founders asserted they now were in lockstep with history and that history ultimately would validate that their 1800's "reforms" brought an end to anti-Semitism, for once and for all, in Germany. The reader is welcome to look at how history unfolded a century later to determine how "progressive" the vision of Reform "Judaism" proved to be in ending anti-Semitism, for once and for all, especially in Germany.

Among the Reform Movement's key "reforms," its founders:

1. Abandoned Hebrew and reestablished their prayers in German and in other vernaculars.

2. Abandoned all hope or desire for a return to Jerusalem. They declared Berlin their new Jerusalem.

3. Abandoned all hope or desire for a return to Zion-Palestine-Israel. They declared Germany their new Zion.

4. To symbolize that Zion was in Germany, not in Jerusalem, they re-named their houses of worship "Temple" rather than "synagogue."

5. Abandoned all belief in the coming of Moshiach (Messiah) and in revival of the dead.

6. Abandoned core Jewish practices including the dietary laws of kashrut (kosher) and Sabbath observances.

7. Introduced pipe organs into their temples because that is how Christian churches prayed.

8. Had their rabbis wear long black robes during services because that is how Protestant pastors dressed in church.

9. Prohibited men from wearing head coverings in temple because Christian men did not cover their heads in church.

10. Some moved Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday to be like the churches.

11. Some banned circumcision.

12. They banned kissing Torah scrolls or fallen holy books in Temple because they deemed that behavior unseemly, poor church-like etiquette.

The Reform Movement in America

They brought these German "reforms" with them to America primarily during the great German immigration between 1840-1860, particularly through the efforts of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise in the mid-1800s. Because Reform "Judaism" was uniquely and particularly a German invention, they established all their main American institutions in Cincinnati, Ohio — not in New York — because non-Jewish German immigrants to America had made Cincinnati their center. Thus, the Reform Movement was purely a product of mid-19th Century German culture.

Accordingly, Rabbi Wise established himself and his newspaper in Cincinnati. Hebrew Union College was established in Cincinnati to ordain reform clergy. The first reform prayer book drew heavily on German and English as it abandoned Hebrew. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), recently renamed Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), was established in Cincinnati as their temple association. The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) was established in Cincinnati as their rabbinic association. At the infamous and notorious first ordination celebration of the HUC first graduating class of Reform Rabbis, the food was so non-kosher that it is remembered to this day in American Jewish history books as "The Treif Banquet."

The birth of the...