The (Lukewarm) Case for Reform Judaism

Steelmanning a Major American Jewish Institution

Dear Reader,

I’m planning a series of fairly critical posts about liberal Judaism, but I think it’s only fair if I start by making out what I think to be the strongest argument in favor of it. This post is going to focus specifically on the Reform movement, as it is currently the largest Jewish denomination in America. For the moment I’m not going to focus much on its intellectual or theological ideals, as I don’t think that either (1) that is the movement’s primary contribution; or (2) your average Reform Jew knows a thing about them. Instead, I’d like to discuss its practical role in American life.

If you’ve spent time around American Jewish discourse (or read my last post), you’ve probably heard some version of the argument that Reform Judaism is a catastrophic failure. It diluted Jewish tradition, encouraged or abetted assimilation, and left generations of American Jews with too little knowledge and identity to pass on.

This narrative is particularly common on the religious right and there is frankly a lot of truth to it.

There is a strong argument to be made, however, that Reform Judaism has been a major net positive for American Jewry over the last century. It provided a viable path for millions of Jews to stay Jewish in a country that made it incredibly easy to leave. It adapted Jewish tradition to American realities, helped anchor Jewish communal infrastructure, and shaped the values and norms of American Judaism writ large, even for Jews who don’t identify with the movement.

If you zoom out and look at what Reform Judaism accomplished, the story is actually extremely impressive.

To really understand the value of Reform Judaism, you have to wind back the clock.

When the major waves of Jewish immigration from Central and Eastern Europe came to the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews faced a basic dilemma: How do you stay Jewish in a country with no state religion, no ghettos, no Jewish neighborhoods you’re required to live in, and total legal freedom to assimilate?

For a lot of Jews, the answer was simply that you don’t. Plenty of immigrants or their children opted out of religion altogether, intermarried, or just drifted off into secular life.

But Reform Judaism offered something different. It presented a version of Jewish life that was compatible with middle-class American norms — services in English, limited ritual obligations, and a synagogue-centered community model that looked structurally similar to Protestant churches. In other words, it gave Jews a way to be both fully American and recognizably Jewish.

It’s easy to criticize that from a traditionalist perspective. But if Reform Judaism hadn’t existed, a huge portion of American Jews might have walked away from Jewish identity entirely. Instead, they found a low-barrier, high-stability option that let them remain affiliated and raise the next generation in some form of Jewish community.

A second, and often under appreciated, contribution of Reform Judaism is institutional.

Through the Union for Reform Judaism, Hebrew Union College, and their affiliated congregations and camps, the movement built and sustained some of the most durable Jewish institutions in the country. These institutions created professionalized rabbinic training, Jewish summer camps, youth groups, and national advocacy organizations. Many of these innovations were later replicated across the Jewish denominational spectrum.

And crucially, these institutions adapted faster than most others to shifting cultural norms. Reform synagogues were the first to:

• Ordain women and LGBTQ rabbis;

• Conduct interfaith weddings;

• Open their doors fully to patrilineal Jews; and

• Center tikkun olam (social justice) as a religious commitment.

Right or wrong, these decisions may have helped keep large numbers of Jews inside the communal framework. (Though, as we will discuss in a future post, I think there is a persuasive argument to the contrary.)

One of the frequent critiques of Reform Judaism is that it facilitated or accelerated Jewish assimilation in the U.S. But this frankly gets the causality backward. The main forces driving assimilation are structural: secularism, upward mobility, suburbanization, and the broad decline in organized religion across the developed world. Reform Judaism didn’t create those forces. It responded to them.

In other words, Reform Judaism has been (and remains) a comfortable home for the already secularized Jew. The alternative to a Reform Jewish identity for many people isn’t Orthodoxy — it’s no Judaism at all.

And notably, Reform Jews continue to express strong Jewish identity, even when ritual observance is low. Here is some more data from the same Pew study that I discussed in my last post:

• Reform Jews (40%) are far more likely than the unaffiliated (17%) to say being Jewish is “very important” to their lives.

• They contribute to Jewish causes, educate their children at least somewhat Jewishly, and engage with Israel (albeit increasingly critically).

• They’re the largest denomination in American Jewish life, representing roughly 35–45% of American Jews.

That’s actually a fairly impressive record of cultural retention under modern conditions.

It is true that Reform Judaism faces major problems, including (but certainly not limited to) falling synagogue affiliation and declining religiosity among millennials and Gen Z. But those are not Reform-specific problems. They’re shared by nearly every mainstream religious group in America.

While Orthodox Judaism certainly has much higher retention and birthrates, it mostly exists in a smaller, often more insular, social ecosystem. Reform Judaism is operating in the broadest, most assimilated sector of American life. That’s a far tougher playing field, but arguably a more strategically important one if the goal is sustaining a large and pluralistic Jewish population.

And while many synagogues are aging, “America’s most liberal monotheism” isn’t done yet. New models of engagement are emerging from within the Reform orbit, or from people who grew up in it.

If you want to understand how millions of Jews managed to stay affiliated with Jewish life in the world’s most open and assimilation-prone society, Reform Judaism is a key part of the answer. It gave American Jews a soft landing — a way to adapt and embrace their religious and ethnic identity, rather than abandoning it. It institutionalized religious life in ways that kept the lights on. It evolved in response to social change. And it made Jewish belonging accessible to people who otherwise would probably have walked away.

You can criticize Reform Judaism for its many faults (and we will!), but you should also credit it for what it got right.