reform and “ol malchut shamaim”

what does the Reform movement have to say about “ol malchut shamaim”?

Emil G. Hirsch Jew­ish Reformer 1886.04.09 p. 9
“Mod­ern schol­ar­ship has spo­ken and its voice can­not be hushed. It has shown that Moses is not the author of the Pen­ta­teuch; that Sinai is not the cra­dle of what is high­est and best in Bib­li­cal Judaism… that the whole appa­ra­tus of priest­ly insti­tu­tion­al­ism is of non-Hebra­ic ori­gin: the ver­i­ta­ble “laws of the Gen­tiles.” The Abra­hamitic rite, the dietary and Levit­i­cal laws, sac­ri­fi­cial rit­u­al­ism, the fes­tal cycle and the like, are not indige­nous to the Jew­ish soil.”
Quot­ed in Michael Mey­er, Response to Moder­ni­ty a his­to­ry of the Reform Move­ment in Judaism. Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1988, p.273.

more…

Mey­er, Michael. Response to Moder­ni­ty a his­to­ry of the Reform Move­ment in Judaism. Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1988, p.273:
[Kauf­mann] Kohler described the lat­er tefil­in (phy­lac­ter­ies) and mezuzah (bib­li­cal inscrip­tions on the door­post) as : “tal­is­mans” whose ori­gin was in prim­i­tive blood daub­ing and called the wear­ing of the Tal­it (prayer shawl) “fetishism.” Such laws, spurned by Reform Jews in prac­tice, seemed total­ly dis­cred­it­ed by dis­cov­ery of their par­al­lels else­where in the ancient Near East.” [CCARY, 2 (1892): 126–128; 17 (1907): 205–229; Kohler, Hebrew Union Col­lege and oth­er Address­es (Cincin­nati, 1916), 306.]

Mey­er, Michael. Response to Moder­ni­ty a his­to­ry of the Reform Move­ment in Judaism. Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1988, p. 196–197:
“Schorr did not negate rab­binic Judaism entire­ly. He acknowl­edged that the Tal­mud con­tained pre­cious and ven­er­a­ble pre­cepts that played an impor­tant role in the spir­i­tu­al his­to­ry of Judaism. Like oth­er Reform­ers, his respect for it sim­ply declined pro­gres­sive­ly as lat­er Rab­bis more and more lost the dar­ing which had char­ac­ter­ized their fore­bears. The Phar­isees and ear­ly Tan­naim had been will­ing to abro­gate old laws and insti­tute new ones in accor­dance with their par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion. Leg­is­lat­ing for their age alone, They had not sought to bind the hands of suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions. But with the can­on­iza­tion of the Mish­nah at the end of the sec­ond cen­tu­ry and there­after, rab­bin­ism ceased to be a free process of adap­ta­tion and became the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of oner­ous restric­tions with lit­tle con­cern for con­tem­po­rary cir­cum­stance. Instead of advanc­ing reli­gious devel­op­ment, rab­bin­ism had increas­ing­ly held it back. More­over, the Rab­bis had mis­read the Bible. Their lit­er­al­ism, for exam­ple, had made them find tefil­in (phy­lac­ter­ies) in the text of the Torah, pre­vent­ing them from real­iz­ing that the com­mand­ment “Bind [God’s pre­cepts] as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a sym­bol on your fore­head” (Deut. 6:8) had to be under­stood mere­ly as a metaphor for remem­ber­ing, not as man­dat­ing a par­tic­u­lar rit­u­al act.”

if not from “heaven”, from where comes the authority of the contemporary rabbi?

Mey­er, Michael. Response to Moder­ni­ty a his­to­ry of the Reform Move­ment in Judaism. Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1988, p. 370:
“In 1965 a spe­cial CCAR com­mit­tee on rab­bini­cal sta­tus con­firmed the exis­tence of a state of cri­sis long in the mak­ing. Pre­dom­i­nant­ly it saw the cri­sis as one of wan­ing rab­bini­cal author­i­ty. Reform rab­bis no longer felt they were effec­tive lead­ers. Lack­ing the author­i­ty of revealed texts to which more tra­di­tion­al col­leagues could appeal, they found that respect for their posi­tion and per­son did not pre­vent the encroach­ments of tem­ple offi­cers and boards. Lay lead­ers had begun to regard rab­bis rate exec­u­tives who were expect­ed to per­form in accor­dance with their desires and expectations.”

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