The introduction of reform into American Judaism is usually associated with the arrival of intellectual German-speaking Jews fleeing Europe’s failed republican revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and with German-born rabbis such as David Einhorn of Baltimore and Isaac Mayer Wise of Cincinnati. However, the first stirrings of American reform had native roots in Congregation K. K. Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina.
In December of 1824, forty-seven Charleston Jews led by Isaac Harby petitioned the leaders of Beth Elohim for major changes in the Shabbat service. At that time, Beth Elohim followed the Spanish and Portuguese minhag (customary ritual), which the leadership saw as the service used by observant Jews since the time of the Second Temple. The dissidents asked that each Hebrew prayer in the service be immediately followed by an English translation; that new prayers reflecting contemporary American life be added; that the rabbi offer a weekly sermon–in English–that would explain the Scriptures and apply them to everyday life; and that services be shortened.
Descended from a Sephardic family that had fled Spain for Portugal and then Morocco, London, and Jamaica before moving to Charleston in 1782, Isaac Harby was an unlikely Reformer. Harby’s father Solomon married Rebecca Moses, the daughter of one of South Carolina’s leading Jewish families. Born in 1788, Isaac became a noted teacher, playwright, literary critic, journalist and newspaper editor.
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Harby demonstrated little interest in religion in his younger years, but in the early 1820s he became alarmed by organized Protestant efforts to convert American Jews and the emergence of anti-Semitism in politics. Harby wanted his fellow Charleston Jews to defend Judaism from its critics and themselves from proselytizers, but worried that they knew too little about their religion, were ill-tutored in Hebrew or other languages, could not understand the traditional Spanish and Portuguese rituals at Beth Elohim, and were thus defenseless against the Protestant challenge.
Harby and his fellow reformers thought that services at Beth Elohim had to become more “American”–frankly, more like those services in surrounding Protestant churches. They wished to worship no longer, as they put it, as “slaves of bigotry and priestcraft,” but as part of the “enlightened world.” The leaders of Beth Elohim refused to consider their petition, citing the congregation’s constitution, which required that at least two-thirds of the membership join in any call to amend synagogue rituals or practices. In response, the reformers created an independent “Reformed Society of Israelites for Promoting True Principles of Judaism According to Its Purity and Spirit.”
Meeting at a separate site, the Reformed Society of Israelites wrote their own prayer book, introduced music into the service, and worshipped without head coverings. Harby became an active leader of the Society, serving as orator and as president in 1827. On the first anniversary of the reform petition, he delivered a lengthy and eloquent address explaining the Society’s goals, which he circulated widely as a pamphlet. Though understandably the pamphlet received a mixed reception within the Jewish community, many non-Jewish readers praised it. Even octogenarian Thomas Jefferson wrote to say that he found the reforms proposed “entirely reasonable,” though confessing that he was “little acquainted with the liturgy of the Jews or their mode of worship.”
While the Reformed Society of Israelites flourished for a few years, the leaders and loyal members of Beth Elohim never ceased their relentless criticism and ostracism of the reformers, and many members became discouraged as their families split apart on religious grounds. Harby left Charleston for New York in 1827, profoundly affected by the premature death of his wife that year (Harby himself died suddenly in 1828). Other reform leaders either died or drifted away. Although the Society never officially disbanded, it ceased to exist sometime after the mid-1830s. Most members rejoined KKBE.
However, the spirit of reform in Charleston did not die with Harby. When an accidental fire destroyed Beth Elohim in 1838, the congregation met to plan its rebuilding. The remaining reformers seized their opportunity and thirty-eight members petitioned the trustees that “an organ be erected in the synagogue to assist in the vocal part of the service.” The “Great Organ Controversy,” as it came to be known, split the congregation. The synagogue leadership again turned down the request, claiming that playing the organ during services would violate the injunction against labor on Shabbat. Following the by-laws, the reformers convened a general meeting of the congregation. After much debate, a two-thirds majority reversed the leadership’s decision.
Beth Elohim became the first synagogue in America to install an organ. This break with the orthodox minhag opened the way for other changes in the ritual, many of which had been requested a decade earlier by the Reformed Society: confirmation classes for boys and girls, abandoning the second day of festival observances, and eventually, family seating rather than the separation of men and women.
This time, the defeated traditionalists split away to form a new congregation, which they called Shearith Israel, “the Remnant of Israel.” Beth Elohim thereafter evolved at the forefront of Reform Judaism in America.
The influences on Charleston’s reformers were clearly native, not imported from Germany. They sincerely believed that Judaism in America could not survive if it could not modernize to combat conversion. The traditionalists argued, in turn, that such a watered-down Judaism was itself assimilated bend recognition. The debate between American reformers and traditionalists begun in Charleston in 1824 continues.
Chapters in American Jewish History are provided by the American Jewish Historical Society, collecting, preserving, fostering scholarship and providing access to the continuity of Jewish life in America for more than 350 years (and counting). Visit www.ajhs.org.
Sephardic
Pronounced: seh-FAR-dik, Origin: Hebrew, describing Jews descending from the Jews of Spain.
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Shabbat
Pronounced: shuh-BAHT or shah-BAHT, Origin: Hebrew, the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
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