Key Card: Reform

Excerpts from: A Centenary Perspective
Adopted at San Francisco, 1976

One Hundred Years: What We Have Taught

[...] our tradition should interact with modern culture; that its forms ought to reflect a contemporary esthetic; that its scholarship needs to be conducted by modern, critical methods; and that change has been and must continue to be a fundamental reality in Jewish life.
[...] that the ethics of universalism implicit in traditional Judaism must be an explicit part of our Jewish duty; that women have full rights to practice Judaism; and that Jewish obligation begins with the informed will of every individual.

One Hundred Years: What We Have Learned

Diversity Within Unity, the Hallmark of Reform

[...] While we may differ in our interpretation and application of the ideas, [...] in all our diversity we perceive a certain unity and we shall not allow our differences in some particulars to obscure what binds us together.

1. God -- The affirmation of God has always been essential to our people's will to survive. [...]
2. The People Israel -- [...] Jews, by birth or conversion, constitute an uncommon union of faith and peoplehood.[...]
3. Torah -- [...] For millennia, the creation of Torah has not ceased and Jewish creativity in our time is adding to the chain of tradition.
4. Our Religious Obligations: [...] Reform Judaism shares this emphasis on duty and obligation. [...] Reform Jews are called upon to confront the claims of Jewish tradition, however differently perceived, and to exercise their individual autonomy, choosing and creating on the basis of commitment and knowledge.
5. Our Obligations: [...] We have both a stake and a responsibility in building the State of Israel, assuring its security, and defining its Jewish character. [...] We demand that Reform Judaism be unconditionally legitimized in the State of Israel.
   [...]
6. Our Obligations: Survival and Service -- [...] we have become freshly conscious of the virtues of pluralism and the values of particularism. [...]

Excerpts from: What is Reform Judaism?
as adapted from the pamphlet entitled "What We Believe... What We Do...", 1993 by Rabbi Simeon J. Maslin, president of the CCAR.

[...] we recognize that our sacred heritage has evolved and adapted over the centuries and that it must continue to do so. And we also recognize that if Judaism were not capable of evolution, of REFORM, it could not survive.

[...] Judaism has never demanded uniformity of belief or practice. But [...] we are all an essential part of K'lal Yisrael -- the worldwide community of Jewry.

All Jews have an obligation to study the traditions that have been entrusted to us and to observe those mitzvot [...]