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Reform Judaism - Some Questions and Answers
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16. So what is Reform Judaism?
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 Reform Judaism is a journey into the future towards a world transformed. It is both the journey
of a people and a myriad of individual journeys – yours and mine – freely engaged in, yet bound up in
the collective journey.
Reform Judaism – living Judaism – is rooted in nearly four millennia
of Jewish learning whilst actively engaged with modern life and thought.
This means both an uncompromising assertion of eternal truths and values and an open,
positive attitude to new insights and changing circumstances.
We adopt an open and positive attitude to Jews, welcoming all as they are rather than as
others think they should be. We include many whose families have been Reform Jews for generations.
We constantly welcome others whose upbringing was in orthodox communities. We are also a beacon
of welcome for those who have drifted away from formal association with the community through apathy,
antipathy or outmarriage. We welcome. We count people in. We solve problems rather than create them.
We seek to open doors, not to erect barriers. We prize our Jewish tradition of questioning.
We understand doubt and unbelief. We know that answers are often provisional, fragmentary,
glimpses on a journey towards a living truth and reality that is always before us.
In Britain, Reform Judaism is embodied in the Reform Movement which embraces some 35,000 Reform Jews
throughout Britain, more than forty synagogue communities in England, Scotland and Wales, three primary
schools, the Sternberg Centre for Judaism in North West London, the Leo Baeck College-Centre for
Jewish Education (shared, along with the schools, with ULPS) and the Movement’s organisational engine,
the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain (RSGB). We are affiliated to the World Union for Progressive
Judaism, the largest organisation of synagogues in the world. We declare again and again that Reform
Judaism is living Judaism. This emphasises that our Judaism is a living, growing, developing faith,
always moving on. It underlines our insistence that Judaism must be something that people can and
want to live by. Living Judaism is also an initiative in which many of our congregations are
currently engaged which is concerned with the renewal of the sense of Jewish journey,
rekindling the vision and the passion for Jewish learning, a multiplicity of programmes
and the valuing of each individual in the context of community. We are determined to
continue the journey towards a world transformed and want nothing more than for you
to come along with us.
Acknowledgement: ‘What is Reform Judaism' by Rabbi Tony Bayfield.
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