The Dialectics of Religious Reform: The Hamburger Israelitische Tempel in Its Local Context 1817-1938

The Dialectics of Religious Reform: The

Hamburger Israelitische Tempel in Its Local

Context 1817–1938*

BY ANDREAS BRÄMER

Tradition is an integral part of human culture, basically describing all rituals, cus-toms and practices inherited from preceding generations and regulating the life of asocial group. Every society in fact knows, uses and conforms to traditions, which helpto preserve its memory of a collective past, its values and its character. Through con-stant repetition traditional practices establish such a continuity, and so strengthensocial identity historically, rather than by rationally oriented means. Eric Hobsbawm,however, argues that the common picture of an unchanging and unvarying traditionis essentially an illusion. Traditions, Hobsbawm suggests, are indeed subject tochange, and are often quite recent in origin despite appearing or claiming great vin-tage: traditions are sometimes “invented”, thus firmly establishing themselves withinonly short spans of time. Hobsbawm notes that such invented traditions are most fre-quently manifest when rapid social transformation weakens or destroys the patternsfor which more deeply rooted traditions had been designed or, conversely, when sucholder traditions and their institutional carriers no longer prove sufficiently adaptableto changing conditions.1

In not consistently adhering to its traditions but modifying some of their aspectsand removing or replacing others, modern German Jewry would appear to exem-plify Hobsbawm’s insight. Basing her own approach on Hobsbawm’s thoughts,Shulamit Volkov has thus characterised the “invention of a tradition” in Germanyas the most comprehensive Jewish project of modern times.2 While this invented tra-dition certainly did not confine itself to the domain of faith, religious aspects ofJudaism were nonetheless highly important. The institutional beginnings of Jewishreligious reform can be pinpointed to the second decade of the nineteenth centuryin the free city of Hamburg – the city where Germany’s largest Jewish communitywas located. This was the city where German Jews had first gained status as equalcitizens, only to lose it shortly after with the liberation of Hamburg from French

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*This essay is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented at a seminar in honour of the lateJulius Carlebach held at the University of Sussex on 13 March 2002.

1Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), TheInvention of Tradition, Cambridge 1994, pp. 1–14.

2Shulamit Volkov, ‘Die Erfindung einer Tradition. Zur Entstehung des modernen Judentums inDeutschland’, in Historische Zeitschrift, vol. 253, no. 3 (1991), pp. 603–628.

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occupation in 1813. On 11 December 1817, sixty-five mainly upper-middle classHamburg Jews3 met to sign the by-laws of the so-called Neuer Israelitische Tempelverein

(New Israelite Temple Association), whose main goal was the organisation of its ownreligious service. As a product and symbol of opposition, it was to exhibit a great dealof unease regarding Jewish tradition. Describing recent developments in Jewish litur-gy with metaphors of deterioration and decline, it presented itself as a timely alter-native to the synagogue:

Penetrated by the need to restore a suitable worth and significance to public prayer serv-ice – a service which had been neglected by so many, in part because of the ever-decreas-ing knowledge of the language in which it has been held, in part because of the manyweaknesses that have set in as a result – and inspired by the desire to revive nigh-frozenfeelings for our fathers’ honourable religion, the signatories below have agreed to pro-duce a worthy and organised rite in this city. for themselves and all those with the samesentiments. In doing so, we are following the example set by several Israelite congrega-tions in Germany, specifically the Berlin congregation; the service shall be held accord-ing to this rite on the Sabbath and holidays as well as other festive occasions in a templeto be erected especially for this purpose.4

Only ten months later, the early enthusiasm of its members had enabled theTempelverein to open a rented prayer house, located in the Alter Steinweg, where publicservices were held on Sabbaths and on holidays, conducted alternately by thepreachers Eduard Kley and Gotthold Salomon. While from the outside the buildingdid not reveal its identity as a place of Jewish worship, its interior design resembledthat of other synagogues in Hamburg and elsewhere in Germany. Following the tra-dition of Ashkenazi Jewry, the Torah pulpit was located in the middle of the room,and women remained separate from men in a special gallery. At the same time, theirview of the service was no longer impeded by a partition. A cantor was hired, a boys’choir established, and an organ installed; the organists, however, were exclusivelyChristian. New Jewish hymns in the German language were written, but themelodies were supplied by Christian composers. The result of the reforms was thusa somewhat peculiar Jewish prayer service accompanied by music in a style resem-bling that of the contemporary church.5

Regardless of such borrowings, the Jewish reform movement in Hamburg devel-oped in a different direction from that of the Lutheran church in one importantrespect: the church was no longer following the same rationalistic impetus that hadmarked it at the start of the century; rather, it was now propagating strict belief inthe Bible, something not generating much enthusiasm in the Hamburg Senate but

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3Their yearly income averaged 4,500 Marks, thus exceeding the estimated bare subsistence level of a fam-ily of five by 900 per cent; see Andreas Brämer, Judentum und religiöse Reform. Der Hamburger IsraelitischeTempel 1817–1938, Hamburg 2000, pp. 20f.

4‘Vereinigungs-Urkunde des Neuen Israelitischen Tempelvereins in Hamburg’, 11 December 1817, ibid.,pp. 121–125.

5See Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity. A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism, New York–Oxford1988, pp. 56f.; Edwin Seroussi, Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue Music in Nineteenth-Century Reform Sources fromHamburg: Ancient Tradition in the Dawn of Modernity, Jerusalem 1996, pp. 25–50.




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drawing many followers among both the clergy and general public.6 TheTempelverein’s desire for changes of a progressive nature stood in marked contrast tothis trend towards reinforcing inherited forms of piety – without, to be sure, any con-scious resistance to contemporary currents. The Jewish association’s founding in factreflected a conviction that Judaism needed to make up for a considerable deficit inmodernisation. Hence at stake above all was bringing the larger society’s values intothe synagogue without entirely abandoning Judaism’s distinguishing features.

The modification of old religious traditio ns and the invention of new ones was infull swing by 1819, when the Tempelverein created its own prayer book, representingthe first comprehensive reform liturgy ever published.7 Some traditional prayerswere shortened or changed in wording and content, others were removed complete-ly, replaced in the service by hymns or paraphrases in German. In this way, tradi-tional aspirations connected to the Holy Land – hopes for the Messiah, redemption,resurrection of the dead and reinstitution of the sacrificial service – were down-

The Hamburger Israelitische Tempel 27

6See Hans Georg Bergemann, Staat und Kirche in Hamburg während des 19. Jahrhunderts, Hamburg 1958, p.40; Georg Daur, Von Predigern und Bürgern. Eine hamburgische Kirchengeschichte von der Reformation bis zurGegenwart, Hamburg 1970, p. 169.

7Mendel I. Bresselau and Seckel I. Fränkel (eds.), [Seder ha‘avoda.] Ordnung der öffentlichen Andacht für dieSabbath- und Festtage des ganzen Jahres. Nach dem Gebrauche des Neuen-Tempel-Vereins in Hamburg, Hamburg 1819.

First building used as prayer house by the Hamburger Israelitischer Tempelverein, AlterSteinweg, Hamburg

Reprint from Andreas Brämer, Judentum und religiöse Reform




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played if not eliminated altogether. The partial departure from an eschatology con-sidered overly particularistic was evidently designed to reflect a new identity: that ofprofessing Jews who were also loyal citizens of the state.

The Tempelverein hoped to establish organisational structures largely resemblingthose of a kehilla – a traditional Jewish community. But unlike the Deutsch-Israelitische

Gemeinde, which every Ashkenazi residing in Hamburg belonged to by law, theIsraelite Temple was a free and voluntary congregation; its emergence reflected ageneral burgeoning of new clubs and associations throughout German society devot-ed to a wide range of ideas and purposes. The Jewish association’s members werepart of a small, bourgeois and élitist avant-garde, and reflecting this social positionthey made an effort to dissociate themselves from the rest of the Jewish community.At the same time, they were searching for new self-assurance as religious Jews.8

Nevertheless, for Jewish orthodoxy the new congregation’s founding was a provoca-tive and highly controversial act.9 In any event, despite the conviction of its conser-vative opponents that Reform Judaism was creating the problems it claimed to solve,the Israelite Temple had been founded explicitly to neutralise the effects of religiousestrangement by developing modern patterns of piety. At the same time, the newlyintroduced framework of traditions harmonised with a private way of life in whichobedience to Jewish law had lost much of its earlier significance. No effort was made,however, to develop a new system of religious ideas suitable for a Judaism no longerdetermining all aspects of a Jew’s daily life. Meyer Israel Bresselau, one of the edi-tors of the 1819 prayer book, acknowledged the ideological shortcomings of theTempelverein when he indicated that he had always restricted himself to improvingpublic worship and had never proposed becoming a reformer in the full sense of theword.10 For Bresselau as for many of the association’s rank and file, the measurestaken to “Germanise” and simplify the congregational prayer book were congruentwith limited expectations centred on a new image for Judaism.

Despite such limits, there are clear indications that the Tempelverein’s leadershipintended more than just a renewal of the prayer service. In a short printed letter cir-culated to all members in 1819, the directorate was assertive regarding efforts tobroaden the association’s range of activities. In order to govern the religious life ofits members in a way reflecting the new conditions, the association planned to takeresponsibility for all the basic rites of passage – circumcisions, confirmations, wed-dings, funerals. But the circular letter points to another reality as well – many mem-bers, it seems, lacked an urgently needed solidarity with the new congregation’s aims,and some openly expressed contempt for them, viewing the reform measures asalready violating the limits of a truly Jewish tradition. The directorate sensed that

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8Cf. Thomas Nipperdey, ‘Verein und soziale Struktur in Deutschland im späten 18. und frühen 19.Jahrhundert’, in idem, Gesellschaft, Kultur, Theorie. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur neueren Geschichte, Göttingen 1976,pp. 174–205.

9Cf. Eleh Dibre Ha-Berit [These are the Words of the Covenant], Altona 1819 (reprint. Westmead, Hants. 1969);Michael A. Meyer, ‘The Establishment of the Hamburg Temple’, in Emanuel Etkes and Yosef Salmon(eds.), Studies in the History of Jewish Society in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Period, Jerusalem 1980, pp.218–224 (in Hebrew).

10Meyer Israel Bresselau et al. (eds.), Theologische Gutachten über das Gebetbuch nach dem Gebrauche des NeuenIsraelitischen Tempelvereins in Hamburg, Hamburg 1842, p. 25.




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through their critique, such internal “enemies” could weaken what was, after all, avoluntary association, or even destroy it, and was thus prepared to threaten excom-munication: with a small but loyal nucleus of families willing to accept the associa-tion’s discipline, it would be easier to confront various orthodox opponents. IsraeliteTemple members were thus called on to either dispense with the kehilla’s religiousservices or else declare their withdrawal from the congregation:

The directorate will thus pay back a half-year’s fee for membership in the new temple toevery member indicating that his inner sentiments or circumstances are not in harmonywith being a member in the fullest sense (provided a written notice to this effect is deliv-ered to the directorate by the following Easter at the latest). Furthermore, such memberswill be freed from any further obligations to the association. With the Temple itself andits officials determining the appropriate prayer-service rules, following this period, thedirectorate will consider every action related to the service carried out by a member ofthe New Temple Association in another manner than is found acceptable by the latter tobe a definitive statement: to the effect that the member does not intend to remain in theAssociation. In this case, the directorate will remove his name from the list of membersand dispose of his place in the Temple for best use of the Association without compen-sation for the remaining membership fee.11

It comes as no surprise that Hamburg’s Jewish community board of elders was notready to tolerate radical tendencies towards segregation among the IsraeliteTemple’s leadership. What is remarkable, however, is the role of Adolf Embden –who served on the board of elders and was also a founding member of the Temple– in offering precise steps in 1819 to call that leadership to order. In expressing hisdistrust towards the new reform synagogue in a speech he gave to his fellow boardmembers, Embden was calling into question his own engagement on behalf of reli-gious progress. The Israelite Temple, he indicated, was the reflection of a new plu-ralism replacing the former unity of religious Judaism. But while such pluralism wasa fact of contemporary life that had to be accepted, it was, he argued, at the sametime necessary to subject the Temple to the laws of the community board, in orderto prevent its unrestrained radicalism from harming the community.12 Clearly, theseefforts to reintegrate the reform Temple into the kehilla’s confines were in conflictwith the Tempelverein’s self-definition as a voluntary body, free of obligations towardsthe Jewish communal corporation. However, fearing sanctions, the Israelite Templehad no choice but to accept the community’s rules.13

Embden’s engagement shows that there was a wide range of opinions concerningthe observance of Jewish religious law within the Tempelverein’s congregation. In 1823,Gotthold Salomon, employed in the synagogue as a preacher since 1818, argued thatthis situation represented a major burden – that disagreement over the congrega-tional reforms was responsible for the process of modernisation coming to a prema-ture end. Salomon was also dissatisfied with the prayer book, which he called a


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11Adolf Embden, ‘An die geehrten Mitglieder des neuen Tempel-Vereins’, Hamburg (1819). (Printed cir-cular.)

12Sitzungsprotokoll des Gemeindevorstands, 26 June 1820, in State archives of Hamburg (STAH), 522–1no. 273a vol. 2.

13See Brämer, pp. 28f.




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quodlibet that lacked accuracy and was produced without care.14 Salomon repeatedhis reproach in 1830. All hopes that the Tempelverein would be able to completelysupersede the traditional Jewish community had come to nothing:

There is no unity in this fragmented part [of the Jewish community]; enough freedom butno equality; one section allows the children to be confirmed, another is against this; marriageceremonies occur rarely; the consecration ceremony for newborn children is in fact not veryattractive; graveside sermons have simply not been held; opinions differ and deviate in thedirectorate itself, one director being in favour of moving forward, another maintaining weare already too advanced; no congregation could follow us, hence we stand alone.15

Salomon was not alone in his critique. Gabriel Riesser, who joined the Tempelverein’sboard of directors in 1840, basically agreed with the preacher, remarking in privatethat many congregation members did not have the courage to push ahead with thereform of ritual. Without these “rascals and cowards”, however, he knew it would behard even to gather a minyan for prayer. “Any people possessing ‘a notion of an idea’”,he concluded, “will certainly always form an invisible church, and no sect or society”.16

In 1839, plans to publish a second edition of the prayer book at long last sawfruition. Working together, the preachers and directors finally took the opportunityto review all the measures that had been taken to modify the synagogal service –changes that were far from welcomed by all the Tempelverein’s members. In fact, it wasimpossible for its leaders to ignore the resistance. In 1840, Marcus Samson Hertz,who had joined the Israelite Temple in 1818 at the age of forty-three, went as far asto appeal to the Hamburg Senate for support against the association, reporting thatthe synagogue had begun adding new liturgical elements and deleting others. Thesechanges, he indicated, had caused great resentment and turmoil among HighHoliday visitors to the synagogue services, nearly resulting in the intervention of thepolice authorities.17 The probably exaggerated nature of his description notwith-standing, there are indirect indications that Hertz was acting on behalf of a wholebloc of protesters – the sort of men who much later, in 1847, would threaten to can-cel their rented seats in the prayer house after rumours had spread that the reformsynagogue was going to abolish Friday evening services completely.18

The older members in particular, erstwhile modernisers, were now content withthe reform measures taken in the synagogue’s earlier period; through continuousrepetition year after year the resulting changes had themselves come to offer thecomfort of a stable, seemingly unchangeable tradition. In contrast to the tradition-

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14Gotthold Salomon to Isaak Noah Mannheimer, 10 January 1823, in Moses Rosenmann, ‘BriefeGotthold Salomons an Isak Noa Mannheimer’, in Jahrbuch für Jüdische Geschichte und Literatur, vol. 22(1919), pp 68–110, here pp. 74f.

15Salomon to Mannheimer, 1 June 1830, ibid., p. 76; cf. Gotthold Salomon, Kurzgefaßte Geschichte des NeuenIsraelitischen Tempels in Hamburg während der ersten 25 Jahre seines Bestehens, nebst Anmerkungen und Beilagen,Hamburg 1844, pp. 27f.

16Gabriel Riesser to M. Stern, 14 February 1842, in Gabriel Riesser, Gesammelte Schriften (ed. by MeyerIsler), vol. 1, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 1867, p. 383.

17Marcus Samson Hertz to Senator Martin Hieronymus Hudtwalcker, 1 September 1840, in STAH, CLVII Lit Lb no. 18 vol. 7b Fasc. 4 Inv. 3 (‘Abgewiesene Beschwerden des M[arcus] S[amson] Hertz widerdie Direction des Tempelvereins pcto Veränderungen des Ritualwesens, 1840’).

18Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums (AZJ), vol. 11, no. 37 (1847), p. 557.




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alism of the orthodox, their own conservatism was not grounded in a logical theo-logical line of reasoning but rather in emotion. At the same time, younger membersof the Israelite Temple were not willing simply to put up with a tradition that hadbeen invented for the synagogue in 1819.

Although Hertz could not convince the senate to intervene on his behalf, his fierceresistance to further changes in the liturgy was not without consequences. The sec-ond edition of the Israelite Temple prayer book that appeared in 1841 presenteditself as the result of a compromise, the preparatory committee openly acknowledg-ing the need to take a diversity of opinions into account. One member of the com-mittee, Maimon Fraenkel, felt obliged to offer a public apology, asserting that “toplease consistency, we would have had a book of strict unity, but no association; atthe most we would have isolated ourselves completely”.19 This question of (real orimagined) isolation proved a serious, recurrent issue at the reform synagogue.Officially it was declared that a middle path between radical reform and orthodoxyhad been taken without any intention of mediating opposing standpoints. Hence itwas not surprising that the synagogue ended up satisfying neither party. MosesHaarbleicher, also a member of the prayer-book committee, was dumbfounded atthe censure directed at the new prayer book. “Just because we once made a leap”, heasked rhetorically, “do we have to keep on jumping?”20

In the early 1840s, Rabbi Abraham Geiger was one of the most important liber-al critics of the Israelite Temple. Convinced that the Hamburg reform associationhad fulfilled a limited historical mission, Geiger characterised it as an “innocent insti-tution”. He did not expect salvation from an aestheticising reform to the prayer serv-ice, but wished, in fact, to see Judaism transformed from a law-centred to a confes-sional religion.21 It is interesting that some of the reform institution’s radicals actu-ally concurred with Geiger, even Gotthold Salomon, obliged to defend the prayerbook in public, judging it far from satisfying in more private moments. In the winterof 1847, a challenge arose to circumcision (the brit mila) as an essential rite of pas-sage. Salomon favoured abandonment of the ritual as a superfluous and “bloodyconsecration”; he also wished to consider more sweeping possibilities for religiousreform. When Salomon was confronted with the argument that religious practice inthe Israelite Temple was grounded in Halakhah, that is rabbinic Judaism, he conced-ed this was partially the case, while stressing the extent to which the congregationhad shaken off the yoke of Jewish religious law nevertheless. In an exchange of let-ters with the board of directors, he expressed regret that the Temple had come to a“rabbinic standstill”, and strong opposition to accommodating “rabbinic intoler-ance”. The abolition of circumcision, Salomon suggested, would prompt increasedhomogeneity, with conservatives abandoning their membership and younger mem-bers joining the congregation instead.22 But Salomon’s hopes would again be disap-pointed. Apart from the presence of its new prayer book, Israelite Temple practice


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19Bresselau (ed.), p. 10. 20AZJ, vol. 6, no. 16 (1842), p. 235.21Abraham Geiger, ‘Der Hamburger Tempelstreit, eine Zeitfrage’ (Breslau 1842), in Abraham Geiger’s

Nachgelassene Schriften (ed. by Ludwig Geiger), vol. 1, Berlin 1875, pp. 176–179.22See Gotthold Salomon’s assessment, 21 February 1848, in STAH, 522–1 no. 571c.




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remained basically the same. Clearly, the liberal synagogue’s directors had no desireto further deviate from the limits of their previous deviation.

In any case, the general development of religious indifference did not call a haltat the Israelite Temple. The institution did inaugurate a new prayer house in 1844,but in the years that followed it ran into financial difficulties, only being able to avoidbankruptcy through yearly subsidies from Hamburg’s Jewish community.23 TheTemple, in other words, was itself too much a product of religious estrangement tobe able to fight the phenomenon successfully. Its members had now become well set-tled within secular bourgeois society, a process of cultural and social integrationsharpening their sense that religious traditions and practices were becoming outdat-ed. Moreover, the new traditions invented by the Temple Association were, appar-

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23Israelite Temple board of directors to Hamburg Jewish community board, 28 February, 15 April, 25November 1850, in STAH, 522–1 no. 571a vol. 1; AZJ, vol. 14, no. 27 (1850), p. 373; Orient, vol. 11, no.37 (1850), p. 148.

The new Israelistische Tempel in Poolstrasse, Hamburg, inaugurated in 1844.By courtesy of Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte




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ently, neither capable of transforming idealistic intentions into necessary deeds, norproducing new frameworks for authentic piety. Jewish religious activity, includingSabbath prayer, had surrendered to a great extent to economic and social exigencies.In defence of his colleagues, one association member insisted in 1857 that irregularattendance at the services had not been due to indifference, but, as he put it, lifeasserting its claim peremptorily, so that a less insistent religion simply had to standback.24 Economic and social necessities, in other words, did not favour concernsgrounded in personal devoutness.

In the meantime, the controversies of the Israelite Temple’s founding years hadabated, the Jewish orthodox establishment having arrived at a more tranquil assess-ment of the reform institution. Nevertheless, tolerance had by no means evolved intoesteem. When, for instance, Jeschurun, a monthly edited by Samson Raphael Hirsch,reported on the Temple in 1854, its anonymous correspondent felt confident enoughto scoff at the resistance its liturgical changes had once sparked among traditionalJews. His conclusion was as follows:

The intentions came to nothing; we may say they turned out a complete fiasco. Duringits almost forty year existence, it was, I could almost maintain, entirely impossible for theNew Temple to alienate and win over even a single member of this old synagogue –despite the Temple’s enticements; despite the well-known cherem [religious ban] havingbeen shattered; despite the synagogue having remained on its old grounds. Those whojoined the New Temple had already fully shared the views of its membership. For oldermembers, the Temple went much too far and – herein lies the hollowness of the entireinstitution – for younger members it did not go far enough. For a long time now, songand preaching has propelled the senses of young people who grew up within the Templebeyond its confines. Only now and then, memories of a dear dead one, the old, involun-tary awe in face of the New Year and – especially – the Day of Atonement, the need, atleast on these days, to register oneself under some sort of religious rubric, impels a ten-der youthful spirit to enter the beautiful broad halls. Otherwise they remain closed onweekdays – and empty on Shabbos and holidays.25

Gotthold Salomon and Gabriel Riesser exemplify an early awareness that the reforminstitution was itself in need of reform. Still, without the consent of a majority it wasimpossible to launch any substantial changes. Whatever re-evaluation of inventedtraditions might have taken place during the years of the Kaiserreich, there were cer-tainly no systematic attempts at radical reform. On the contrary, the few traces ofsuch re-evaluation suggest a retrograde movement. “Re-reform” was, to be sure, notan easy task, requiring a radically new perception of the Jewish religion among theIsraelite Temple’s rank and file. In the absence of such a development, all efforts atimprovement would be mere patchwork.

Nevertheless, over the years debates on the necessity of a fundamental shift in direction would intensify within the Temple.26 New by-laws were passed in 1924,27


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24AZJ, vol. 21, no. 46 (1857), p. 628.25Jeschurun, vol. 1 (1854–1855), p. 216.26Cf. Jacob Sonderling, ‘Die neueren Bestrebungen des Hamburger Tempels’, in Neue Jüdische Monatshefte,

vol. 3, no. 1 (1918), pp. 12–18.27‘Satzung des Israelitischen Tempel-Verbandes zu Hamburg, 2 März 1924’, in Ina Lorenz, Die Hamburger

Juden zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik. Eine Dokumentation, vol. 1, Hamburg 1987, pp. 652–658.




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and for the first time in more than a century, a members’ assembly was broughttogether to discuss the Temple Association’s internal matters. In the course of a live-ly debate on revision of the reform synagogue’s own tradition, Felix Schönfeld dis-tinguished himself as the spokesman for “reform orthodoxy”. In contrast to MarcusSamson Hertz’s resistance to radical reform over eight decades earlier, Schönfeldfeared conservative backsliding, arguing that the Temple had already gone much toofar in a conservative direction over the years, for instance in cancelling a number ofGerman prayers, reinstating the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew, and resumingreference to religious leaders as rabbis.28 But in other respects, the objections ofSchönfeld and Hertz were remarkably similar, both men claiming allegiance to aninvented tradition that had proved questionable from both a historical and contem-porary standpoint. Schönfeld’s pious insistence on what had become the status quoin fact contradicted reformist principles, progressive Judaism’s intent being not onlyto examine orthodox beliefs and concepts but in principle, to challenge elements ofits own tradition.29 Revealing little concern for such a liberal context, Schönfeld andother like-minded Israelite Temple functionaries would continue to press their caseagainst “counter-reform”.

A new Israelite Temple building had been under discussion for around forty years.It is surprising that the plan was actually realised in 1931, in a period of economicdepression and high unemployment. The new synagogue in the Rotherbaum areacorresponded to the needs of its congregation, which had long since moved from theNeustadt – the old synagogue’s location – to the west side of the Alster river. But thenew structure was clearly not simply a reflection of convenience. It seems thoseattending the dedication were strongly aware that the ceremony symbolicallyannounced a new era. Enthusiasm for the future was accompanied by a more criti-cal view of the past, with the chairman of the board, Heinrich Levy, openly refer-ring to former areas of neglect such as scant synagogue attendance and limited socialcohesion, while expressing his optimism that the tendency of regular members toonly show up for Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah had come to an end.30

A lack of sources makes it difficult to draw an exact picture of developments inthe Israelite Temple through the 1930s. But the few extant documents point to astriking process of reconsolidation. In 1932, Rabbi Bruno Italiener, who had beenappointed to preside at the Temple a few years earlier (1927), reported that anincreasing number of men and women had begun to attend Sabbath services. Andfor the first time since the reform institution’s beginning in 1818, it was now open forprayer on Mondays and Thursdays. At the same time, very similarly to what was thecase with other German Jewish communities, the institution no longer simplyamounted to a “religious association”, a Kultusverband, its focus limited to religioussocialisation, but now represented a “cultural community”, a Kulturgemeinde, organis-ing a variety of extra-religious activities such as public lectures and study groups inthe spirit of the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt am Main. In this manner, theIsraelite Temple helped its members strike new roots in Jewish culture at a time when

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28Lothar Lubasch, ‘Eine Aussprache im Tempelverband’, in Hamburger Familienblatt, 10 April 1924, pp. 2f.29See Max Dienemann, Liberales Judentum, Berlin 1935.30‘Der neue Tempel bei seiner Einweihung am 30. August 1931. Gedenkblatt des Hamburger Familienblattes.’




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growing antisemitism had begun to shake the belief of many in a successful processof integration into German society.31

After the Nazi rise to power, a new attraction to the Jewish religious heritagebecame evident in the Israelite Temple, as in the wider Jewish community throughoutGermany. Between 1934 and 1936, membership grew by twenty-five per cent – thisdespite Hamburg’s Jewish community already suffering great losses due to emigrationabroad. While the Temple now presented itself as a place of security and comfort, therenewed stress on positive religious belief did not always lead to success in the eyes ofthose with liberal convictions: young people often found it more appropriate to reviveolder traditions and rituals which had been dropped a century earlier.32 While it is anexaggeration to speak of a return to orthodox Judaism, an ideological change involv-ing critical re-assessment of the past was definitely taking place. There was a growingrecognition that classical liberalism’s faith in a constant amelioration of human soci-


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31In 1931, the Nazi Party won 26.2 per cent of the votes in Hamburg; in 1932 it became the strongest fac-tion with 31.2 per cent. Cf. Bruno Italiener, ‘Predigt bei der Einweihung des neuen Israelitischen Tempelsam 30. August 1931’, in Gemeindeblatt der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde zu Hamburg, 2 October 1931, pp. 2f.:“Our present times are marked by a deep unease. It is the narrowness that is tormenting us. The materi-al narrowness: no longer any real room for work, for our and our children’s development. The narrow-ness of ideas: how much oppressive prejudice in social, political, and religious life. … You have lost yourfaith in the midst of all this hate by which you are surrounded? Here you can find your faith again.”

32See ‘Der Israelitische Tempelverband (Rundschreiben an seine aus Hamburg abgewanderten früherenMitglieder)’, in Gemeindeblatt der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde zu Hamburg, 26 September 1935, pp. 4f.

The new synagogue in Oberstrasse, Hamburg-Rotherbaum, 1931.By courtesy of Landesmedienzentrum Hamburg at U

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ety had been an illusion. In describing her own relation to the liberal synagogue, itsfounding fathers, and its invented traditions, Eva Stiel spoke for the generation shewas a part of. She viewed liberalism’s central task as synthesising tradition and reform:

Like the first liberal Jews, we have acquired our profession of faith from the world ofdoubt. We have learned to see and judge in the course of confronting the old. Every newstep demands independence in both thought and decision from us. If we gave up this inde-pendence and instead surrendered to tradition, we would give up the best part of ouractivity, our inner vivacity and honesty. We want to adopt from tradition only what we canrealise as whole human beings with both heart and reason. At present, we cannot have anoverview of the range of what will be adopted. But it is certain that we do not wish to sim-ply imitate without having our own inner sense of affiliation – something that would onlybring back the old rigidity against which the first Temple-founders were struggling.

This finally, is the proper venue to say what separates us from the Temple founders andwhat ties us to them. The new and separating element is the revived belief in the Bible’sliving God and a higher estimation of Jewish tradition. What unites us with them, is ourinner independence in face of tradition, and we intend to take up this independence asa legacy and nurture it further.33

Starting in the autumn of 1938 the living conditions of German Jews worsened at adramatic pace. During the November Pogrom (“Reichskristallnacht”) the liberal syna-gogue’s exterior escaped destruction, but the interior was to a great extent ruined.Soon after, the building was confiscated by the Gestapo. Liberal services continued,however, in the former local B’nai B’rith lodge until 1942. In 1943 the communalorganisation formed by the Nazi bureaucracy in 1937 for the Jews of greaterHamburg (the Jüdischer Religionsverband) received an official letter announcing that theIsraelite Temple had been removed from the list of Jewish associations in Hamburg.34

By this point most members who had not been able to leave Germany had beendeported to the ghettos and death camps in the East.

The fact that liberal Judaism in Hamburg was destroyed because of racist perse-cution rather than in the course of any internal developments, makes it difficult todraw definitive conclusions regarding the Israelite Temple’s history. What is clear isthat the Tempelverein must be accorded pioneering status within German Jewry, evenif there were preceding reformist endeavours in Berlin and other places. But such ajudgment requires a further distinction: the modern era of religious pluralism inJudaism started with but not through the Israelite Temple. In his reappraisal ofGermany’s liberal Judaism, Jacob Toury speaks of a reform that stopped short of agenuine revolution.35 Toury’s general observation is all the more valid for theIsraelite Temple in particular, its initiators counting among the first participants inthis transformation, but its members deciding at quite an early stage to dissociatethemselves from the ongoing process of German Jewish religious reform. It is thusunderstandable that historians of modern religious reform have mostly focused on

36 Andreas Brämer

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33Eva Stiel, ‘Unsere Stellung zum religiös-liberalen Judentum’, in Jüdischer Tempel-Verband in Hamburg(eds.), ‘Rundschreiben 6 an seine Mitglieder, ehemaligen Mitglieder und Freunde’, Hamburg, April1938, p. 8.

34Official notice of the Jüdische Religionsverband, 7 May 1943, in STAH, CL. VII Lit. Lbno. 18 vol. 7bFasc. 4 Inv 14.

35Jacob Toury, ‘The Revolution that Did Not Happen (A Reappraisal of Reform-Judaism)’, in Zeitschriftfür Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 36, no. 3 (1984), pp. 193–203.




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the Temple’s formative years. All the same, the history of Reform Judaism inHamburg did not end with the dedication of the new synagogue building in 1844,even if the institution would for a time receive scant public attention. Especially afterthe First World War, it would again emerge as part of a dynamic process that maybest be understood in the context of an apprehensive contemporary climate. TheTemple’s invented traditions had become unsuitable in an age of crisis, withHamburg’s liberal Jews searching for a renewed sense of security. In the ensuingyears of forced dissimilation, the Temple was, however, able to stand by its followers.But tragically, by the time the institution’s renaissance had set in, the fate of GermanJewry was sealed.


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The Dialectics of Religious Reform: The Hamburger Israelitische Tempel in Its Local Context 1817-1938

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