Nadene Goldfoot
Jewish history was full of rejection and people trying to kill them off such as the Greeks whose interaction caused Hellenizing Jews. The Jewish empire of Israel was tiny compared to others, but special because of what it offered to the world in the form of Moses and his revelations or laws and King David's writings in Psalms and his son, King Solomon's wisdom during his rule. People were awed but jealous at the same time.
Reform Judaism, a highly liberal strand of Judaism, similar in ways to Protestantism breaking off from Catholicism, started in the 1800s in Germany. For instance, they allowed eating non-kosher foods such as pork. I know of a teen-aged young man that brought pork into Jewish Summer Camp for boys jut to be nasty-yes was of Austrian ancestry and to show he could get away with it-something to be remembered by,, and he was.
It was a movement that ran right into Nazis hatred of Jews. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after only 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.
Reform Judaism was a modification of the traditional Orthodox Judaism. Rabbi Samuel S. Cohon who viewed Judaism as a Civilization, rather than a religion.
Solomon Bennett Freehof (August 8, 1892 – June 12, 1990) was a prominent Reform rabbi, posek, and scholar. Rabbi Solomon Freehof rose against the background of the Great Depression, when many congregations of all religions teetered on the threshold of collapse. He served as president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Beginning in 1955, he led the CCAR's work on Jewish law through its responsa committee. He also spearheaded changes to Reform liturgy with revisions to the Union Prayer Book (siddur). For many years, he served as the pulpit rabbi at Rodef Shalom in Pittsburgh, PA. Freehof advocated replacing what he felt was the sterile mood of community life, allowing isolated practices to emerge spontaneously and reincorporating old ones. He redrafted the Union Prayer Book in 1940 to include more old formulae and authored many responsa, though he always stressed compliance was voluntary.
Some of the earliest Reform rabbis to settle in what would become Israel included Rabbi Judah Leon Magnes, who was the first Chancellor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in 1938 became its President. Rabbi Meir Elk, who graduated from the liberal Breslau Rabbinical Seminary in Germany (now in Wroclaw, Poland), founded the Leo Baeck School in Haifa. Leo Baeck was born in Lissa (Leszno) (then in the German Province of Posen, now in Poland), the son of Rabbi Samuel Baeck and his wife Eva (née Placzek). He began his education at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau in 1894. He also studied philosophy in Berlin with Wilhelm Dilthey. He served as a rabbi in Oppeln (now Opole), Düsseldorf, and Berlin. He also taught at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies).
In the meantime, Nazi hatred was growing. In the nineteenth century, religion played a less important role. It was replaced by theories about the differences between races and peoples. The idea that Jews belonged to a different people than the Germans, for instance, caught on. Even Jews who had converted to Christianity were still 'different' because of their bloodline. DNA hadn't even been thought of, yet.
Hannah Arendt in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem examined Jewish cooperation with the Nazi authorities during the Holocaust, and names Baeck (Leo Baeck) as one of those functionaries who withheld the truth from their communities of the end awaiting them, believing it more "humane" to bear the secret since "living in the expectation of death by gassing would only be the harder". Baeck, according to Arendt, also thought the existence of a Jewish police force within the camps would render the "ordeal easier" whereas in her view they turned out to be more brutal. Auschwitz escapee Siegfried Lederer testified to Baeck about the death camp, but Baeck believed that revealing the truth to the Theresienstadt prisoners could cause "catastrophe".
The Great Depression (1929–1939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. In Germany, Inflation crept up slowly at first, before accelerating rapidly in late 1922. The exchange rate ballooned from 2,000 marks per dollar to 20,000 to a million and beyond in just a few months, riding on a growing wave of economic panic and mistrust.
In April 1933, German law restricted the number of Jewish students at German schools and universities. In the same month, further legislation sharply curtailed “Jewish activity” in the medical and legal professions. Subsequent decrees restricted reimbursement of Jewish doctors from public (state) health insurance funds. The city of Berlin forbade Jewish lawyers and notaries to work on legal matters, the mayor of Munich forbade Jewish doctors from treating non-Jewish patients, and the Bavarian interior ministry denied admission of Jewish students to medical school.
In the first six years of Adolf Hitler's dictatorship, Jews felt the effects of more than 400 decrees and regulations on all aspects of their lives. The regulations gradually but systematically took away their rights and property, transforming them from citizens into outcasts. Many of the laws were national ones issued by the German administration, affecting all Jews. State, regional, and municipal officials also issued many decrees in their own communities. As Nazi leaders prepared for war in Europe, antisemitic legislation in Germany and Austria paved the way for more radical persecution of Jews. The Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, which defined Jews not by religious belief but by ancestral lineage and which formalized their segregation from the so-called Aryan population.
Growing Antisemitism in Europe led German Liberals on similar paths. Rabbis Leo Baeck, Max Dienemann and Seligmann himself turned to stressing Jewish peoplehood and tradition.
The Nazis' takeover in 1933 effected a religious revival in communities long plagued by apathy and assimilation. The great changes convinced the CCAR (The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) is the Reform Rabbinic leadership organization) to adopt a new set of principles. On 29 May 1937, in Columbus, Ohio, a "Declaration of Principles" (eschewing the more formal, binding "platform"), promoted a greater degree of ritual observance, supported Zionism – considered by the Classicists in the past as, at best, a remedy for the unemancipated Jewish masses in Russia and Romania, while they did not regard the Jews as a nation in the modern sense – and opened not with theology, but by the statement, "Judaism is the historical religious experience of the Jewish people". The Columbus Principles signified the transformation from "Classical" to the "New Reform Judaism", characterized by a lesser focus on abstract concepts and a more positive attitude to practice and traditional elements.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Judaism#:~:text=Since%20its%20founding%20in%20Germany,substantially%20from%20the%20original%20teachings.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/anti-jewish-legislation-in-prewar-germany
No comments:
Post a Comment