Modern culture and worship

In Russia's 1897 census, 97 percent of Jews named Yiddish as their mother tongue.3

Kol Mevasser standardized spelling and provided a venue for emerging Yiddish writers.4

Mendele, Peretz, and Sholem Aleichem raised Yiddish into a major European literature.1

The 1908 Czernowitz conference declared Yiddish a Jewish national language.5

Multilingualism helped Jews adapt to migration and economic change.7

In 1819, students and Maskilim founded the society that launched Wissenschaft des Judentums.8

The new Jewish scholarship sought university recognition and critical knowledge of tradition.9

Heinrich Heine converted in 1825 to overcome professional barriers.10

Wissenschaft inaugurated secular Jewish studies and influenced new religious movements.11

Isaac Marcus Jost published the first comprehensive modern history of the Jews.13

Heinrich Graetz published his eleven-volume History of the Jews from 1853 to 1876.14

Graetz portrayed Jews as a people possessing a national character.15

Israel Jacobson created early reform services and became a founder of Reform Judaism.16

The New Israelite Temple Association founded the Hamburg Temple in 1818.17

The Temple introduced decorum, choir, organ, German sermons, and a new prayer book.18

The new prayer book removed calls for return to Zion and a personal messiah.19

University-trained rabbis of the 1830s supplied Reform with historical and philosophical foundations.21

Abraham Geiger used history to argue that Judaism had always changed.22

Geiger denied that nationality was essential to Judaism.23

The 1845 conference divided over Hebrew's place in worship.25

Zacharias Frankel left the conference after a majority questioned Hebrew's necessity.26

Most reformers retained Saturday as the Jewish Sabbath.27

Geiger advocated women's legal majority and rejected a gendered morning blessing.29

Samuel Holdheim proposed reciprocal vows for bride and groom.30

The 1846 report recommended broader religious rights for women but received no vote.31

Organ music, vernacular worship, new prayers, and greater female equality spread gradually.33

The term Orthodoxy arose in modernity to distinguish traditionalists from reformers.34

Hirsch's Nineteen Letters articulated a self-consciously modern Orthodoxy.35

Hirsch combined Torah commitment with active participation in state and society.36

Hirsch and Hildesheimer advocated Torah education for girls and women.37

Frankel combined positive revelation with continuing historical development.39

Frankel rejected both unbending Orthodoxy and radical Reform.40

Darkhe ha-Mishnah portrayed ancient rabbis as legal innovators.41

After 1867, Hungarian Jews divided into Neolog, Orthodox, and status quo ante organizations.43

Monumental synagogues asserted permanence, citizenship, and Jewish pride.2

Budapest's Neolog community built the Great Synagogue from 1854 to 1859.44

The building combined neo-Islamic, Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic forms.45

Sydney's Great Synagogue was consecrated in 1878.47

Rome's Great Synagogue, inaugurated in 1904, occupied the former ghetto site.48

Modern transformations produced multiple religious and secular forms of Jewish identity.49