Reform Judaism, also known as Liberal Judaism or Progressive Judaism, is a major Jewish denomination that emphasizes the evolving nature of Judaism, the superiority of its ethical aspects to its ceremonial ones, and belief in a continuous revelation which is closely intertwined with human reason and not limited to the Theophany at Mount Sinai. A highly liberal strand of Judaism, it is characterized by little stress on ritual and personal observance, regarding Jewish law as non-binding and the individual Jew as autonomous, and by a great openness to external influences and progressive values.
The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) is a Conservative Jewish education organization in New York City, New York. It is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism and a center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies. The Jewish Theological Seminary Library is one of the most significant collections of Judaica in the world.
Liberal Judaism is one of the two WUPJ-affiliated denominations in the United Kingdom founded by Claude Montefiore. It is smaller and more radical in comparison with the other one, the Movement for Reform Judaism. It is considered ideologically closer to American Reform Judaism than it is to the British Reform movement. As of 2010 it was the fourth largest Jewish religious group in Britain, with 8.7% of synagogue-member households.
The Union progressiver Juden in Deutschland is a "Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts", a publicly chartered association, founded in 1997 as the congregational arm of Liberal Judaism in Germany. It is headed by Irith Michelsohn and has around 5,200 members. It is an affiliate of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Rabbi Walter Homolka was former President and was also the most senior rabbinic figure associated with the UPJ, and the Abraham-Geiger-Kolleg serves as rabbinical seminary since 1999.
The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), formerly known as the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) until 2003, founded in 1873 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, is the congregational arm of Reform Judaism in North America. The other two arms established by Rabbi Wise are the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. The current president of the URJ is Rabbi Rick Jacobs.
The Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion is a Jewish seminary with three locations in the United States and one location in Jerusalem. It is the oldest extant Jewish seminary in the Americas and the main seminary for training rabbis, cantors, educators and communal workers in Reform Judaism. HUC-JIR has campuses in Cincinnati, Ohio, New York City, Los Angeles, and Jerusalem. The Jerusalem campus is the only seminary in Israel for training Reform Jewish clergy.
Shlomo Riskin is an Orthodox rabbi, and the founding rabbi of Lincoln Square Synagogue on the Upper West Side of New York City, which he led for 20 years; founding chief rabbi of the Israeli settlement of Efrat in the Israeli-occupied West Bank; former dean of Manhattan Day School in New York City; and founder and Chancellor of the Ohr Torah Stone Institutions, a network of high schools, colleges, and graduate Programs in the United States and Israel.
Jewish leadership has evolved over time. Since the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, there has been no single body that has a leadership position over the entire Jewish diaspora. Various branches of Judaism, as well as Jewish religious or secular communities and political movements around the world elect or appoint their governing bodies, often subdivided by country or region.
The Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism is the organizational branch of Progressive Judaism in Israel, and a member organization of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. It currently has 40 communities and congregations around the state of Israel, 13 of which are new congregations – referred to as U'faratztah communities – and two kibbutzim, Yahel and Lotan.
The World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) is the international umbrella organization for the various branches of Reform, Liberal and Progressive Judaism, as well as the separate Reconstructionist Judaism. The WUPJ is based in 40 countries with 1,275 affiliated synagogues, of which 1,170 are Reform, Progressive, or Liberal and 105 Reconstructionist. It claims to represent a total of some 1.8 million people, both registered constituents and non-member identifiers. The WUPJ states that it aims to create common ground between its constituents and to promote Progressive Judaism in places where individuals and groups are seeking authentic, yet modern ways of expressing themselves as Jews. It seeks to preserve Jewish integrity wherever Jews live, to encourage integration without assimilation, to deal with modernity while preserving the Jewish experience, and to strive for equal rights and social justice.
Women rabbis are individual Jewish women who have studied Jewish Law and received rabbinical ordination. Women rabbis are prominent in Progressive Jewish denominations, however, the subject of women rabbis in Orthodox Judaism is more complex. Although a significant number of Orthodox women have been ordained as rabbis, many major Orthodox Jewish communities and institutions do not accept the change. In an alternative approach, other Orthodox Jewish institutions train women as Torah scholars for various Jewish religious leadership roles. These roles typically involve training women as religious authorities in Jewish Law but without formal rabbinic ordination, instead, alternate titles are used. Yet, despite this alteration in title, these women are often perceived as equivalent to ordained rabbis. Since the 1970s, over 1,200 Jewish women have been ordained as rabbis.
The first openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender clergy in Judaism were ordained as rabbis and/or cantors in the second half of the 20th century.
Wolfe Kelman was an Austrian-born American rabbi and leader in the Conservative Judaism in the United States who never led a congregation, serving for decades as a mentor to hundreds of rabbis in his role as the executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, where he also prepared the initial steps for the rabbinic ordination of women in the Conservative movement.
Naamah Kelman-Ezrachi is an American-born Reform rabbi who was named as Dean of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion campus in Jerusalem starting in July 2009. In 1992, Kelman made history as the first woman in Israel to become a rabbi when she received her rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk.
Richard Jacobs is a Reform rabbi and the president of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), the congregational arm of the Reform movement in North America which represents an estimated 1.5 million Reform Jews in nearly 900 synagogues across the United States and Canada. He is the first Union president to have served most of his career as a congregational rabbi. Before being installed as URJ president in June 2012, he served for nine years at Brooklyn Heights Synagogue and then for twenty years at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York.
This is a timeline of women rabbis:
This is a timeline of LGBT Jewish history, which consists of events at the intersection of Judaism and queer people.
Temple Israel, also known as the Cape Town Progressive Jewish Congregation (CTPJC), is a Progressive Jewish congregation in Cape Town, with three centres in Green Point, Wynberg and Milnerton. As three centres combined, they are the largest Progressive congregation in South Africa, and the second largest Jewish congregation in Cape Town after Marais Road Shul in Sea Point. The congregation first started in Green Point in 1944, eight years after South Africa's first progressive synagogue, also Temple Israel, opened in Hillbrow in Johannesburg. The Cape Town congregation caters to over 3000 Progressive Jews in the city. The congregation is an affiliate of the South African Union for Progressive Judaism, which is part of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ). The congregation represents around 18% of Cape Town Jewry.
Theodore Tuvia Zvi Friedman was an American and Israeli conservative rabbi, spiritual leader, and author. From 1962 to 1964, he served as the president of The Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis. During his tenure, he supported the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
Andrew Rehfeld is an American political scientist who is serving as the 10th and current President of Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, where he is also Professor of Political Thought. His research has focused primarily on the concepts and history of political representation; exploring how institutional design and reform can strengthen democracy and advance justice.
