The Viennese Rite and American Moderate Reform Judaism

Abstract

In the mid-nineteenth century, a group of immigrant rabbis, including Isaac Mayer Wise and Max Lilienthal, believed that they could unite the majority of American Jews around moderate Reform. In the 1870s, after decades of effort, they succeeded, and they established the enduring institutions of Reform Judaism: the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Hebrew Union College, and, ultimately, the Central Conference of American Rabbis. To achieve this unity, Wise and Lilienthal used elements of the Viennese Rite, particularly the music of Salomon Sulzer. The Viennese Rite had developed in the early nineteenth century when Isaac Noah Mannheimer and Sulzer, his cantor, unified the polarized Viennese community through a moderate liturgy, increased decorum, and a new musical treatment of nusach Ashkenaz (a local chant tradition). Its leaders successfully found a middle way between the advocates of radical reform from Berlin and Hamburg and the traditionalists, who wanted nothing changed. I will argue that this moderate reform approach was transferred from Europe and successfully adapted in mid-nineteenth century America. In 1976, Leon Jick challenged the view that rabbinic elites created American Reform in his important book, The Americanization of the Synagogue. It was Americanization that was the basis for the success of Reform Judaism in America. Only after Jews had learned English, climbed the socioeconomic ladder, and adapted to local norms did they create a Reform Judaism that matched their new American values. Reform came