The Pittsburg Platform (1885), drawn up by Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, which rejected all Torah laws ‘such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization’, became the standard creed of Reform Judaism until 1937. It rejected the old rules on diet, purity and dress, asserted that Jews were ‘no longer a nation, but a religious community’, denied the resurrection, heaven and hell, dismissed a return to Zion, and presented messianism as the struggle for truth, justice and righteousness in modern society – in which it would participate alongside other religions and people of goodwill
...more
