Reform Judaism

Responding to momentous global events such as the Holocaust and the birth of Israel, participating in major domestic trends such as suburbanization and the so-called "religious revival," and caught up in the anxious political atmosphere of the Cold War years, American Jews confr…

This dissertation investigates the rhetorical practices of a tradition: the Reform Movement in Judaism. I analyze the three platforms written in 1885, 1937, and 1999 to define the collective identity of the Reform Movement in America. I begin this study by concentrating on how t…

Classical Reform Judaism rejected the historic understanding of the mitzvot , adopting a Kantian paradigm limiting religious law to ethics. Ritual became merely an aesthetic or pedagogic ancillary. This approach did not explain how Reform would determine the proper form of ritua…

This dissertation examines the development of religious reformations as wide-scale transformations of religious belief and practice influenced by state policies, economic developments, international pressures, and philosophical developments. These transformations occur on the in…