What are the differences among Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Orthodox Judaism? b
Judaism in Five Minutes - Sarah Imhoff
Joshua Shanes [+]
College of Charleston
Joshua Shanes is Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Arnold Center for Israel Studies at the College of Charleston. He has published widely on modern Jewish history, religion, politics, and antisemitism in both academic and popular outlets such as The Washington Post, Slate, and Haaretz. He is currently completing a history of Jewish Orthodoxy from its German origins until today for the “Key Words in Jewish Studies” series with Rutgers University Press.
Description
This essay discusses the Ashkenazi Jewish religious denominations called Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox in their historical and contemporary contexts. Modern Jewish denominations emerged in Europe and America at the start of the nineteenth century under the transformative impact of political emancipation, rapid acculturation, socio-economic modernization, and the Enlightenment. Each movement negotiated the relationship between Jewishness and modernity in its own way. Each claimed that they followed the best or most authentic traditions of Judaism, even as each in fact reflected a self-conscious set of choices from Jewish texts and traditions and particular interpretations of the past.