June 12, 2026
We have spent much of this week doing important work as we engage with our schools. On Monday, we hosted school administrators for a professional development seminar on responding to and preventing antisemitism in schools. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we hosted nearly 50 teachers from across Central Ohio for a professional development seminar in Holocaust education and the impacts of antisemitism. We are so grateful for JewishColumbus’s support in this work. We should be proud of the sacred work we are doing as we help teachers gain the tools and skills needed to support their students.
Last week, I began an email series that will last several weeks and focus on the history of Reform Judaism, with a closer look at the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform. The subsequent platforms unraveled the Pittsburgh doctrine, beginning with the 1937 Platform, which was adopted right here in Columbus, Ohio, at Temple Israel. The rejection of Jewish ritual life and a connection to Jewish peoplehood were completely overturned by the end of the 20th century.
The 1937 Columbus Platform reflected a significant shift happening in America at the time. In 1885, the American Jewish community was largely of German descent. The early 20th century brought waves of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union. With this influx of Jewish immigrants came a diversity of Jewish belief and practice, as well as a different financial status. These immigrants had either witnessed pogroms or were descendants of those who did. By the 1930s, significant quotas had limited Jewish immigration, and American Jews began to see the plight of Jews in Europe as the Nazis rose to power.
A key text on Reform Jewish history is Response to Modernity by Michael A. Meyer. Meyer shares that by 1930, when the Reform Movement was creating a new hymnal, “Hatikvah” was included in a section entitled “The Nation.” David Philipson, who had been present at the 1885 gathering of rabbis, declared, “Had anyone told me twenty years ago that nationalism would make such inroads as to succeed in having the Zionist National hymn ‘Hatikvah’ incorporated into the hymnal published by the conference, I would have thought him ready for the lunatic asylum.”
In 1935, Felix Levy, a Zionist, became president of the CCAR, only the second Zionist president to lead the Conference. Meyer writes that Rabbi Edward Israel had circulated a resolution among the CCAR’s 401 members in support of the Palestine Labor Movement. In total, 241 rabbis signed it. With more than half of the Conference made up of Zionist rabbis, the tone in the Conference was shifting. Though in 1935 the CCAR chose to allow its members to take individual stands on the issue of Zionism and would take no official stand, it paved the way for a committee to form to write a new platform.
The drafting of a new platform would not come without disagreement and strife. Samuel Cohon and Samuel Schulman were at odds with one another. Schulman, the retired rabbi of the Classical Reform Temple Emanu-El in New York City, drafted one document, while Cohon, a rabbi who held a deep connection to the Jewish people, drafted another. Other Zionists, including Abba Hillel Silver and Stephen Wise, who were part of the commission, sided with Cohon. When Schulman became ill and could not attend the 1936 convention, CCAR President Felix Levy chose to put forth Cohon’s draft. Any decision was ultimately postponed for a year. As Meyer writes, those in attendance here in Columbus not only had to decide between two platforms but also between two determined and angry personalities. Only eight opposed the new document.
The platform, entitled The Guiding Principles of Reform Judaism, represented a major shift away from its Pittsburgh predecessor. It was not a declaration of specific Reform tenets, but rather a comprehensive and concise liberal interpretation of Judaism. Regarding Israel, the Columbus Platform states, “In all lands where our people live, they assume and seek to share the full duties and responsibilities of citizenship and to create seats of Jewish knowledge and religion. In the rehabilitation of Palestine, the land hallowed by memories and hopes, we behold the promise of renewed life for many of our brethren. We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in its upbuilding as a Jewish homeland by endeavoring to make it not only a haven of refuge for the oppressed but also a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life.”
Though it does not specifically call for a Jewish state, the call for a Jewish homeland in Palestine reflects the tone of Zionist writers, Ahad Ha’am among them, who saw it as a center for Jewish culture and spiritual life, as well as a refuge to support those in danger.
From a theological perspective, the document turns away from language like “God idea” and toward an understanding of God as the source of creation and the “indwelling Presence of the world.” It introduces the language of social justice, calling for society to eliminate “man-made misery, and suffering, of poverty and degradation, of tyranny and slavery, of social inequality and prejudice, of ill-will and strife.” The Columbus Platform also brings back an emphasis on Jewish ritual life, something that had been completely rejected two generations earlier.
The early 20th century marked a significant shift in Reform Jewish life. The latter half of the 19th century saw a focus on Americanism and the desire to assimilate into the new world in which Jews were living. By contrast, the early 20th century drew on the impact of religion, faith, and Jewish peoplehood as foundational aspects of Jewish life.
As we think about the conversations taking place today, we cannot help but see the parallels in Jewish history. The early 20th century was a time marked by persecution and danger. It was arguably a time with some of the highest incidents of antisemitic undertones in American history. The debate that ensued strikes the same notes we are hearing today: Who are we as a people? What should be the center of our concern? The tension between Judaism’s universalist ideals and its particularist concern for the Jewish people continues today.
As we reflect on this history, we ask what history can teach us. Living in the Diaspora and under the Star-Spangled Banner has afforded us the ability to work toward a balance between the two. How can we continue to nurture that balance today?
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rick Kellner