Aron Chorin and Leopold Löw are not names

commonly associated with the rise of Reform

Judaism during the nineteenth century.
Even afficionados of the history of religious
reform often tend to see Neolog Judaism — the
religious movement they founded — as the
Hungarian branch of German-Jewish reform.

Aron Chorin, This is not surprising given the hegemony

of the German-Jewish experience in modern

Neolog, and the Jewish historical consciousness, with its

Reform of Judaism
Howard Lupovitch
emphasis on the late eighteenth century as a
period of disjunction and discontinuity and
the ideological redefinition of Judaism as the
overarching force of change.
In general, there is still a widespread
scholarly tendency to view the religious life
of European Jewry in terms drawn from the
German-Jewish historical experience, that is,
as a combination of Orthodoxy, Reform, and
some amorphous middle ground between
them. Often Reform and Orthodox are loosely
applied terms for the most traditional and
progressive Jews in a given locale regardless of
their actual religious outlook. Yet what is often
labeled Orthodox or Reform has varied widely
from place to place. In light of the differences
among German, Hungarian, and American
Orthodoxy, it is remarkable that such dispa-
rate religious figures as Isaac Leeser, Samson
Raphael Hirsch, and Moses Sofer have all been
labeled Orthodox.
In this regard, the affiliation of an os-
tensibly reformist movement like Neolog with
the Conservative movement a half-century
ago further complicates the effort of fitting Ne-
olog into a German-Jewish paradigm. No two
Jewries had the same spectrum of religious
belief and practice. On the contrary, this spec-
trum varied widely not only between Hungary
and Germany, but among all states where Jews
resided. Such spectra were affected by external
conditions such as the path to emancipation
and the prospects for cultural integration and

35
social acceptance, and internal conditions
such as the demographic origins of the Jewish
population, that is, the proportion of unaccul-
turated Ostjuden.
At the heart of this taxonomical con-
fusion is the presumption that a progressive
religious demeanor, as well as the traditional-
ist rejection of such a demeanor, required a
self-consciously articulated ideological redefi-
nition of Judaism In fact, most Jews, in Europe
and elsewhere, engaged the changing world of
the nineteenth century not by articulating or
even embracing a new ideology. Rather, they
adapted their religious outlook gradually to
changing circumstances, ultimately balancing,
to paraphrase the tenth-century Gershom ben
Meir, “the customs of old with the needs of
the day.” For this reason, by examining the re-
form of Judaism through the prism of Neolog,
we can discover an alternative to German-
style Reform Judaism.
Knowing the contours of the Hungar-
ian alternative is indispensable in understand-
ing the dynamic interchange between tradi-
tion and innovation for two reasons. In basic
demographic terms, by the end of the nine-
teenth century, Neolog was the largest reform-
ist Jewish movement in the world, claiming
more than sixty percent of Hungary’s 900,000
Jews. A plurality of religiously progressive
European Jews, perhaps a majority, affiliated
with Neolog, not Reform, Judaism.
Moreover, the mentality of German-
style Reform emerged from a context that was
itself exceptional and did not represent the
experience of European Jews as a whole. The
loss of emancipation—a traumatic experience
unique to German Jewry—pressured rabbinic
and lay leaders in the German states to dem-
onstrate the Jews’ worthiness of citizenship
and inclusion in the ranks of the German na-
tion with far greater intensity than anywhere
else. Elsewhere Jews were second-class citi-
zens; German Jews were second-class citizens
who, for nearly a generation, had flown first
class, so to speak, and had then been banished
to coach.
Awash in a sea of German idealism,
moreover, German Jewish leaders redefined
Judaism, creating Reform, Positive-Historical,
and Neo-Orthodox Judaism. While ostensibly
different one from the other, these movements
shared one important trait in common: they
drew a sharp ideological line between the
essential and non-essential dimensions of
Judaism, defining the former as immutable or
eternal and the latter as dependent on some
extra-halachic factor, such as the Zeitgeist or
historical continuity.
The Hungarian context in which
Neolog developed was different. Hungarian
Jews were second-class citizens, but they were
placed on largely equal footing with other non-
noble residents of the Kingdom of Hungary
in 1840, a status they shared with ninety-five
percent of the population. Magyar nationalism,
moreover, increasingly welcomed Jews into
its ranks. Except for a brief period during the
1840s, moreover, inclusion was not predicated
on religious behavior but rather on the em-
brace of the Magyar language and Magyar
culture; a Hungarian-speaking traditional Jew
was generally regarded as no less a Magyar than
was a Hungarian-speaking progressive Jew.
Against this background, the emer-
gence and development of Neolog is more
accurately understood in terms of the socially
conservative and religiously traditional char-
acter of Hungarian Jewish society during the
nineteenth century. The proponents of Neolog
did not draw the hard line between the essen-
tials and externals of Judaism that characterized
the German-Jewish religious scene. Neither
the Zeitgeist, historical continuity, nor a re-
conceptualized notion of the commandments
defined Neolog, but rather the blending of a
36
commitment to halakhic Judaism with simulta- other practices, notably the use of musical
neously a commitment to flexibility and the instruments and travel by boat or train on the
adaptability of Judaism to local and temporal Sabbath and Holy Days.
circumstances. Neolog thus epitomized what Chorin and later proponents of Neolog
Karl Mannheim described as conservative regarded themselves as the bearers of authen-
reformism, preferring “the substitution of tic Judaism, the true heir of an earlier age. In
individual improvements” to “doing away with this sense, Neolog was decidedly conservative,
an undesirable fact by reforming the entire eschewing radical ideological departures from
surrounding world and tackling the system as a pre-nineteenth-century traditionalism. It was
whole.” The religious outlook of Neolog Judaism conservative, moreover, not only in comparison
was shaped as much or more by a preference to Reform Judaism elsewhere, but also con-
for a pre-nineteenth century, non-ideological servative in comparison to an ideologically
traditionalism over the ideologically driven charged Orthodoxy. Neolog helped Hungarian
religious currents of the nineteenth century. Jews strike a balance between religious tradi-
Paradigmatic of this religious mentality tion and participation in Hungarian society—
was the outlook of the founding father of at a moment when Magyar society was making
Neolog, Aron Chorin of Arad. In the conven- the very same offer. While endorsing a broad
tional narrative of Reform Judaism, Chorin is range of innovations, Neolog always held to
an enigma whom historians of religious reform the notion that halachic permissibility was the
have tried to pigeonhole as a conservative overriding guideline for any and all innovations.
or a radical. He advocated and implemented
a broad range of innovations, some of which
were quite radical. Yet his rationale for reform
was traditional and conservative. He insisted
on justifying any and all changes within the
confines and systemic principles of halakhic
tradition, thus blurring the sharp line between
essential and non-essential that defined his
German-Jewish counterparts.
In this regard, the defining moment
in Chorin’s career, and in the emergence of
Neolog Judaism, was the controversy over
sturgeon at the turn of the nineteenth century.
In 1798, Chorin defended the lenient ruling
regarding the permissibility of eating sturgeon
that his mentor, Ezekiel Landau of Prague,
had issued two decades earlier. When taken
to task, Chorin answered his assailants by cit-
ing a halakhic justification of leniency and by
affirming the halakhic precedence of a prevailing
Jewish custom. He and his disciples, notably
Leopold Löw, would continue to employ these
and other halakhic arguments in justifying

37