Talk:Progressive Judaism (Germany)

Explanation of Moved/Renamed material

IZAK - I've moved a great deal of material back to German Reform movement (Judaism) and renamed this article - I understand why you did the initial rename - the duplication of material bothered me also. However, there really is a need for two separate articles on Germany. I'll be working on adding cited material today and tomorrow to the articles to make their distinction clearer. If you could assume good faith and wait until the citations and documentation are in place, I'd appreciate that greatly. In any case, if there is still discomfort, I think we can have a more informed and encyclopedic discussion with actual facts on the table. We can always move or rename the material later.

But briefly the reason is this:

• German Reform movement (Judaism). Historians generally consider the German Reform movement in the first two thirds of the 19th century influential on several different parts of the Jewish world - each of which is notable enough for its own article. This particular part of history, I suspect (but do not know) is also notable within German intellectual and philosophical history. A single article capturing this shared material is desparately needed so that all these articles can link to the material without redundancy.
  • Naming. The name used by academics for this period is "Reform movement in Judaism" rather than "Reform Judaism" or more simply "Reform movement" (cf. Meyer, Philipson). There are historical and technical reasons for this. Most importantly, the reformers of this period had no concept of a separate Judaism and were still trying to reform from within. The concept of denominations with separate rabbinical and congregational institutions, i.e. separate Judaisms, only began to develop towards the very end of this period. It was largely lay triggered and resisted by the reform-minded rabbinate.
• 'Progressive Judaism (Germany). After this period, Germany went its own way and the material in the german article won't really be relevant to any of the other movements, nor to general purpose intellectual history. It would be confusing to have articles on German philosophy or Conservative Judaism link to this material.
  • Naming. According to all the sources I have, the energy of the initial reformers died and the movement even stopped being called reform. The next generation of reformers reacted negatively and rebranded themselves as "liberal" to differentiate themselves from their parents(yup - even in the 1880's). By 1930, even the two congregations in 1930 that were still in the gov't registers as "Reform" were often mistakenly called liberal (Philipson, p. 268 or thereabout). Post world war II, the devasted German liberal community was rebuilt by the World Union for Progressive Judaism and it now calls itself either liberal or progressive. Egfrank 06:13, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Why bold.I have chosen to WP:BOLD because it is much easier to merge edit histories after the fact than to create separate edit histories from a single mistakenly consolidated history. Egfrank 06:43, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Synthesis tag

The Reforms in Belief and Practice section is a mismash of just about everything except the modern German progressive movement. Some of the things I've considered (none of which I like):

• move to German Reform movement (Judaism) - problem here is that
  • section doesn't distinguish between proposed and accepted reforms
  • mixes up correct information about the early 19th german reform period with later traditions in an ahistorical fashion
  • neglects to describe the changes and flip flops in belief over time
  • nothing is cited

• move to Progressive Judaism - problem here is that
  • treats all regions as monolithic - some reforms mentioned were adopted in some countries but not others, material in Progressive Judaism should include only shared beliefs and practices
  • nothing is cited

• keep in Progressive Judaism (Germany) - problem is:
  • nothing here is about modern germany - the modern stuff is all USA only

• delete it all as per WP:OR, WP:SYNTH - problem is:
  • there's a few snippets of good writing we may want to keep
  • the facts mentioned need to be researched and placed in their proper context - I don't think it is fair to omit the material if it can be salvaged.

Any suggestions? Egfrank 09:38, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I decided just to move it back to Reform Judaism Egfrank 15:51, 6 November 2007 (UTC)