Some American synagogues once held their Sabbath services on Sunday
Reform Judaism began in 19th-century Germany as an attempt to fit an ancient faith to modern life. In the United States it went further than anyone in Europe dared: prayers almost entirely in English, no circumcision requirement for converts, and congregations gathering for worship on Sundays as well as Saturdays.
The movement's founding figure was Rabbi Abraham Geiger, who with colleagues in mid-1800s Germany treated Judaism as a living tradition that changes over time. Reading scripture through historical criticism and modern philosophy, they cut liturgy about ideas they no longer held, such as bodily resurrection and a restored Temple sacrifice in Jerusalem, and moved much of the prayer book from Hebrew into German. Privately, they accepted that many Jews had already stopped keeping dietary and Sabbath laws.
German-born rabbis carried these ideas across the Atlantic. Between the 1860s and the 1930s, an era later labelled Classical Reform, American congregations had no entrenched traditionalists to placate. They embraced a universalist outlook that downplayed Jewish distinctiveness. Then waves of largely observant Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe pulled the pendulum back, and the 1937 Columbus platform formally revived interest in practice and peoplehood.
A second shift came in the 1970s. Leaders chose a welcoming 'Big Tent' over a tidy theology, stressing personal spirituality and community life instead of doctrine. That openness drew many newcomers but made the movement hard to define: members range from people taking up parts of traditional law to near-humanists. Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan has warned that Reform risks becoming a Jewish activities club rather than a belief system. Officially it still affirms a personal God, though humanist currents among clergy and laity have grown since the mid-20th century.
Today the phrase tikkun olam, 'repairing the world', serves as a central motto, and social activism under that banner is a main way adherents express belonging. National bodies such as the Union for Reform Judaism in North America sit under the World Union for Progressive Judaism, founded in 1926. It estimates at least 1.8 million people in 50 countries identify with it, about 1 million of them registered adult members, making Reform the second-largest Jewish denomination after Orthodoxy.
Source: Reform Judaism
