The Hamburg Temple disputes () were the two controversies which erupted around the Israelite Temple in Hamburg, the first permanent Reform synagogue, which elicited fierce protests from Orthodox rabbis. The events were a milestone in the coalescence of both modern perceptions of Judaism. The primary occurred between 1818 and 1821, and the latter from 1841 to 1842.
First dispute
Background
In the latter half of the 18th century, Jews in the German principalities were experiencing a profound transformation. Communal corporate privileges and obligations, along with those of all other groups in society, were gradually abolished by the enlightened absolutist authorities, attempting to create centralized states. Economic and civil restrictions were lifted piecemeal. A process of acculturation commenced, at a time when rabbinical courts and communal elders imperceptibly lost their means to enforce Jewish law (Halakha), like the ḥerem (excommunication), and legitimacy to wield them. In Hamburg, the government checked the jurisdiction of the strictly conservative Rabbi Raphael Cohen after repeated complaints from transgressors he punished – people who ate non-kosher food, a member of the priestly caste who married a woman forbidden to him via deception and the like – contributing to his decision to resign in 1799.Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870, Syracuse University Press, 1973. pp. 144-152. The more cultured Jews were also inspired by Enlightenment ideals, forming the small and short-lived Haskalah movement, though the influence of those was meager in comparison to the more prosaic, aforementioned factors. Growing swaths of German Jewry were becoming nonobservant and apathetic towards their religion.David J. Sorkin, "Enlightenment and Emancipation : German Jewry’s Formative Age in Comparative Perspective", in: Comparing Jewish Societies. Ed.: Todd M. Endelman. University of Michigan Press, 1997. pp. 1-12.
Concurrently, along the principle voiced by the Stanislas Marie Adélaïde, comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, "We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals... they should not be allowed to form in the state either a political body or an order", French Jews were emancipated in 1791. In 1806, the Grand Sanhedrin in Paris declared them no longer tolerated aliens, considered a foreign nation for centuries, but "Frenchmen of Mosaic Faith." All quarters in German Jewry, even the most Orthodox, gradually embraced local culture and national identification, both due to hope for the same equality and government coercion. Some circles concluded that this process must be total, and that Judaism had to be purged from any element that was or could be interpreted as political, and become strictly confessional. This sentiment, combined with aversion to beliefs and practices that could no longer be rationalized or fit modern sensitivities, and conviction that the young generation would commit apostasy – as many among the more acculturated were doing – unless religion would be thoroughly refashioned. An impetus for reform permeated the progressive strata. Several radical maskilim, like Lazarus Bendavid and David Friedländer, suggested reducing Judaism to little more than Deism, though they had barely any influence.
In 1806, the Kassel-based journal Sulamith published an anonymous article which offered, for the first known time, a revolutionary reformulation of Jewish messianic belief. The author suggested that Samuel of Nehardea's statement this world differs from the Messianic Era only in respect to the Servitude of Israel to the Nations meant that emancipation was tantamount to divine redemption. He detached it from the ancient precepts of a personal redeemer who will reign as king and lead the exiled back to Zion, as the Temple will be rebuilt and the sacrificial cult restored.
In 1808, the in the Kingdom of Westphalia was established. Headed by Israel Jacobson and Rabbi Mendel Steinhardt, it was created by the government of Jérôme Bonaparte to facilitate a civic betterment of the Jews. Jacobson, though an avowed modernist, had little ideological consistency in the religious sphere (though the very idea that Judaism could be limited to a "religious sphere" was yet new and revolutionary to most). He was influenced by the aesthetic concepts of Christian worship, quite alien to Ashkenazi Jews at the time: decorum, devotion, formality and sobriety; but he did not cross the line into principled issues. Even the ritual reforms he implemented in synagogues were quite innocuous, and were mostly adopted by Neo-Orthodox rabbis later.Michael K. Silber, Orthodoxy, The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.
On 17 July 1810, Jacobson opened a prayer house in Seesen, to serve the modern Jewish school he founded earlier. He named it "temple", a rather common designation at the time, borrowed from the French and used also by traditional Jewish houses of prayer. Certain that the lack of decorum drove the young away from synagogue, he abridged the service, introduced both prayers and an edifying sermon in German (very different from the old talmudic discourse in Yiddish), and confirmation for children. Contrary to prevalent custom, no mechitza hid from view the women sitting separately at the upper story. A choir and an organ accompanied the prayer: instrumental music in synagogue was almost unknown among Ashkenazim, and the organ was strongly associated with church services. Another feature was the use of Sephardic Hebrew, deemed more aesthetic than the traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation. Admiration for the acculturated and integrated Sephardim of Western Europe, whose emancipation was rather a formality as they already enjoyed extensive privileges, was a central element in the worldview of their Central European brethren, both of the moderate and radical cast, hoping to emulate them. It inspired the Haskalah to a great measure. The old pronunciation was associated with the Jews of Poland, considered backward and superstitious.Ismar Schorsch, The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (1989) 34: 1. pp. 55-57. Jacobson's temple elicited barely any protest. Baruch Mevorah noted that all the reforms introduced lacked either consistency or an ideological undertone.
In 1812, Friedländer penned "Ein Wort zu seinr Zeit" ("A Timely Word"). Along with exhortation for thorough reforms in all spheres, he added that the classic Messianic belief was no longer tenable or rational, enjoining Jews to excise any mention of it from their liturgy. Another progressive leader, Abraham Muhr of Breslau, rebuked Friedländer in his pamphlet "Jerubaal", published a year afterwards. He accused him of unscrupulous opportunism and disregard for tradition. On the Messianic issue, Muhr wrote that it must be retained, especially as omission would evoke a harsh response from many. He offered instead to emphasize the universalist aspects of this belief, while obfuscating the particularist ones. Mevorach observed that Muhr elucidated what was to become a tenet of nascent Reform Judaism: preserving the Messianic ideal, yet transforming it into "a Jewish hope for a universal redemption of all mankind."
Berlin and the Radiance of Justice
The Consistory closed in 1813. Jacobson moved to Berlin, where he soon became acquainted with local Jewish notables who shared his persuasion regarding the necessity of reform in services. He was supported by the wealthy Jacob Herz Beer, father of Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Ruben Samuel Gumpertz. On Shavuot (14 June) 1815, they opened a private prayer association in the residence of Daniel Itzig. It was attended by four hundred people. Copying most of Seesen's innovations, it had decorum, vestments for the cantor, confirmation, a choir and an organ playing on the feast day – operated by a gentile, which they assumed was a sufficient measure to avoid desecrating it by work – and the like. Mevorach emphasized that their abbreviated liturgy, though it dropped several segments, yet again bore no principled undertone. Michael Meyer commented that "like reforms in Westphalia, those in Berlin were limited to externals and dominated by aesthetic considerations." The private services were a great success. Leopold Zunz, who visited them on the Yom Kippur, commented that "people who did not attend a synagogue in twenty years spent the entire holiday inside; most of the young fasted." Due to lack of space, Beer began conducting similar prayers also in his Spandauer Straße 72 mansion.Michael A. Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749-1824, Wayne State University Press, 1979. p. 133-137.
The established congregation of Berlin viewed all this with apprehension. Rabbi Akiva Eger of Posen, perhaps the generation's greatest halakhic authority, published a short rebuke. He condemned the use of German in prayer, though not any other innovation, and castigated the Berlin group for wishing to emulate the "Ordinances of the Gentiles" ("neither shall ye walk in their ordinances"). The chief rabbi of Berlin, Meyer Simon Weyl, launched a formal protest to the government, utilizing a legal clause that allowed prayer only in the single recognized synagogue. On orders of King Frederick William III, both private temples were closed on 9 December 1815. Beer concluded that the only possible course of action was to vie for influence in the main prayerhouse. Seeking approbation for the reformed service, he sent enquiries to several rabbis in Italy, where he had business contacts. He did not explicitly describe the situation in Berlin, but vaguely asked about the permissibility of various practices. Italian communities, well acculturated and integrated, served as a matter of particular interest to German Jews, apart from their penchant for all things Sephardic. They had a long tradition of instrumental music in their synagogues, since the days of Salamone Rossi, making them an excellent precedent. at .