Reform Judaism In the 19th Century

Reform Judaism In the 19th Century The most extreme precursor to the Reform movement was a man by the name of Samuel Holdheim. He was born in 1806 in Kempo in the province of Posen. At a young age he studied at a yeshiva and received a Talmudic education. He began to study German and secular subjects after his marriage to a woman with a modern education. After their divorce several years later, he began studying …

…belief during this time period. Others like Samson Raphael Hirsch went in the totally opposite direction of Holdheim. Hirsch felt that Judaism had to be observed the way we were told to under almost any and every circumstance(Gay 154). If Hirsch wouldn't have taken this different stand a true Jewish nation wouldn't exist today. Holdheim didn't realize that he was weakening the nation and could have ultimately led to the extinction of the Jewish people