Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism » (1st Edition)

MICHAEL A. MEYER: is Professor of Jewish History at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati. He is the author of The Origin of the Modern Jew, and the editor of Ideas of Jewish History, and has published numerous articles on the religious and intellectual history of Jews in modern Europe and America.

Although Reform Judaism is one of the major branches of the Jewish faith and a crucial phenomena in modern history, it has not, until now, received comprehensive, up-to-date historical study. Filling a critical gap in Jewish scholarship, Michael Meyer traces the development of the movement from its origins in the late 18th-century, through recent events such as the renewal of American Reform Judaism in the 1970s. With great range, extensive archival research, and colorful detail, Meyer sympathetically, yet judiciously, chronicles the spread of Reform Judaism across Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, France, England, and America. Demonstrating the influence of modernity, Protestant Christianity, Darwinism, and disputes over Zionism, this book places the Reform segment firmly within its religious, social, political, and intellectual context, to provide historians, religious leaders, and the general reader with an essential historical record.