The path to Reform Judaism: an examination of religious leadership in Cincinnati, 1841-1855.
American Jewish History › Vol. 90 Nbr. 1, March 2002
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The path to Reform Judaism: an examination of religious leadership in Cincinnati, 1841-1855.
One Saturday morning in 1841, the president of Cincinnati's Bene Israel congregation summoned the members of his vestry together for an emergency and extraordinary Sabbath session. He reported that Mr. Samuel Kahn had called upon him and "produced a sheep, purporting to have been killed and marked Kosher" by the congregation's shochet (ritual slaughterer). Kahn however declared that the sheep in question was in fact "Tripha" (not kosher). The president called in Samuel Bruel who "after examining the sheep pronounced it Kosher." Whereupon, "Mr Kahn then cut the head and side marks off the sheep and left them in the custody of the President." Subsequently Abraham Wolf Jr. declared the sheep kosher, but Mr. Hart Judah, the congregation's hazan and sometime shochet, judged it "Tripha." Finally, David Goldsmith, the original shochet whose skills were in question, arrived to say that "this sheep was not even the one which he killed and marked." Goldsmith also "made complaint against the butchers," presumably for identifying a sheep that he had not slaughtered as kosher. Goldsmith asked to be relieved of his slaughtering responsibilities, and the congregation responded by cutting it ties to the butcher in question and suspending the shochet until they could call a general congregational meeting to decide what to do. (1)
The chaos prompted by this problematic sheep embodies the disorder described in Leon Jick's influential study, The Americanization of the Synagogue and his observation of the tension between "the desire to maintain traditional standards and the difficulties encountered by small struggling new communities in fulfilling this desire." (2) As the opinionated procession of visitors to the Bene Israel president's home indicates, there was no clear hierarchy of religious authority within the Bene Israel congregation. The best the leaders could do was to ask the congregation to choose another butcher. This solution hardly seemed guaranteed to secure more proper observance of Jewish law. With so many individuals asserting disparate halakhic (Jewish legal) judgments, it would not be that surprising to see all claims to traditional authority eventually becoming undermined. Inde...See the full content of this document
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