The Struggle Over Religious Reform in Nineteenth-Century Vienna

Abstract

In 1871, the board of the Jewish community of Vienna attempted to reform Sabbath and holiday services in the two synagogues under its official jurisdiction. Following the guidelines established by the Leipzig Synod in 1869, the board decided to remove from the liturgy all prayers that called for a return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and for the restitution of the ancient sacrificial system of worship. In addition, Vienna's Jewish leaders announced that the introduction of an organ, the symbol of the Reform movement, was a good idea. The board never implemented these radical reforms. An enormous protest from Vienna's Orthodox community, as well as from numerous individuals who professed no particular commitment to religious Orthodoxy but who preferred to pray in the traditional manner, forced the leaders of the community to back down from these ideological reforms and to implement only a few, relatively minor “modifications” in the services in the temples. Viennese Jews rejected the ideological changes which were gaining in popularity in German Jewish communities in the last third of the nineteenth century.