URJ - History

The Union’s History
The Union for Reform Judaism was founded in 1873 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise as the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. It has grown from an initial membership of 34 congregations in 28 cities to more than 900 congregations in the United States, Canada, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. It is the largest Jewish movement in North America and represents an estimated 1.5 million Jews. In 2003 the General Assembly approved a new name, Union for Reform Judaism, to better reflect today's reality.

In 1998 on the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Union, Reform Judaism magazine published a 125-year retrospective by Dr. Michael A. Meyer, Adoph S. Ochs professor of Jewish History and HUC-JIR. The article is available online as a PDF.

Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise

The Early Years
Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, widely known as the founder of Reform Judaism in North America, was a native of Bohemia who came to the United States in 1846. As the rabbi of Congregation Beth El in Albany, NY, he introduced many reforms in worship services, such as the seating of men and women together and choral singing. These changes were not universally welcome, leading to his dismissal on Rosh Hashanah in 1850.

Four years later Rabbi Wise went to Cincinnati’s congregation Beth Eichim, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. It was in Cincinnati that Wise founded the three major arms of the Reform Movement: an umbrella organization of synagogues, a seminary, and a rabbinic conference.

In 1873 representatives of 34 congregations from 13 Midwestern and Southern states gathered in Cincinnati to found the Union of American Hebrew Congregations with one major purpose: to establish a seminary where American rabbis could be trained for American congregations.

By 1875 membership in the Union had grown to 72 congregations, including the "radical" congregations from the East Coast as well as moderate ones that would later break off to join the Conservative movement. It was that year that the Hebrew Union College was founded with Rabbi Wise as its first president. To celebrate the ordination of its first graduating class in 1883, the seminary threw a lavish banquet that included, to the horror of traditional Jews in attendance, clams, shrimp and other traif. This shattered Rabbi Wise’s dream that all Jews in the United States would be unite as the "Union of American Hebrew Congregations."

In 1885 Reform rabbis met in Pittsburgh and adopted the Pittsburgh Platform, which defined the Reform Movement, and four years later the Central Conference of American Rabbis was founded.

By the 1890s, the purpose of the Union had expanded beyond simply supporting the college. It organized the Hebrew Sabbath School Union, which issued teacher-training pamphlets and textbooks, and organized a Department of Synagogue and School Extension that supported the creation of new synagogues. In 1896 women delegates attend the Union’s convention.

When the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism was dedicated in 1961, Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath presented President John F. Kennedy with a Torah scroll that had belonged to Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise.

1900-1973
The first decades of the 20th century saw a gradual expansion of the areas in which the Union assisted congregations as well as service to affiliate bodies: sisterhoods (WRJ) in 1913; brotherhoods (NFTB) in 1923, and youth (NFTY) in 1939.

The direction of the UAHC began to change in the early 1940s with the appointment in 1943 of Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath as executive secretary, a position he later changed to president. In 1951 Eisendrath moved the Union’s headquarters from Cincinnati to New York, shifting the focus of Reform Jewish life from the Midwest to the Northeast and dramatizing the adoption of a more dynamic program of leadership within the Movement. The Union purchased its first camp in the early 1950s, and the Movement’s emphasis on Social Action began in earnest, culminating with the 1961 founding of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Under Eisendrath the Movement experienced tremendous growth, as congregations were formed in the new suburbs populated by returning GIs. By 1956 there were 536 congregations in the Union, and by 1970 the number reached 706.