JCR-UK is a genealogical and historical website. It is not the official website of the organisation discussed below.

Movement for Reform Judaism

The Movement for Reform Judaism is the second largest synagogal movement in the United Kingdom (the United Synagogue being the largest). Membership of Reform congregations in 2016 (including the three unaffiliated Reform congregations listed below) constituted some 19.4% of synagogue membership in the United Kingdom.⁽¹⁾ 

Reform is relatively traditional in comparison with its smaller counterpart, Liberal Judaism, though it does not regard Jewish law as binding. In April 2023, the Movement for Reform Judaism together with Liberal Judaism announced their intentions to merge into one Progressive Jewish movement.

History

Although the first "Reform" congregation in Britain was founded in 1840, it took more than a century before an synagogal organisation was established for the Reform movement.

The first Reform synagogue (although it was some years befor that term was adopted), the West London Synagogue of British Jews, was founded in 1840 by 19 dissatisfied members of the Bevis Marks Synagogue (Spanish & Portuguese Jews) together with five dissatified members from the Ashkanazi Great Synagogue. These members, which included the wealthy Mocatta and Montifiore (Sephardi) and Goldsmid (Ashkanazi) families, were complaining, in particular, about the rigid regulations in the two synagogue in question. Members of these families, many of whom who lived in the West End of London, were forced to walk several miles to and from synagogue on the Sabbath due to synagogue regulation banning prayer groups in a radius of six or ten miles from the existing (City) synagogues.⁽²⁾ On 15 April 1840, these families held a meeting at the Bedford Hotel in London and declared their intention to to form a prayer group for neither "German nor Portuguese" but for "British Jews". Their declaration included the following:

"We, the undersigned, regarding Public Worship as highly conducive to the interests of religion, consider it a matter of deep regret that it is not frequently attended by members of our Religious Persuasion. We are perfectly sure that this circumstance is not owing to any want of a general conviction of the fundamentsl Truths of our Religion, but we ascribe it to the distance of the existing Synagogues from the places of our Residence; to the length and imperfections of the order of service, to the inconvenient hours at which it is appointed; to the unimpressive manner in which it is performed and to the absence of religious instruction in our Synagogues."

Initially, the new congregation was essentially a breakaway Orthodox community. The new congregation had not been a deliberate premeditated breakaway but its members had been pushed into existance by the refusal of the City synagogues to countenance a West End branch congregation. However, gradually reforms were adopted deepening the ritual divide betwnn the Orthodox community and the breakaway congregation.

Other "Reform"-minded synagogues were gradually founded, in particular Manchester in 1858 and Bradford in 1872. However, these congregations were neither organised together nor had a consistent religious philosophy, to some extent the motives for succession from the main stream congregations were more political than religious. The first of these three breakaway synagogues to adopt full-fledged Reform Judaism was the West London Synagogue in about 1930.

It was not until 1942 that an umbrella organisation was established for Reform congregations in the United Kingdom, when representatives of the then six Reform synagogues met on 4 January at the Midland Hotel, Manchester and established the Associated British Synagogues, the forerunner of the Movement for Reform Judaism (for subsequent changes of name, see above).