User:Rebekah3152/sandbox

With the advent of Jewish emancipation and acculturation in Napoleonic France during the 18th Century, Jews were no longer separated from the mainstream life of Non-Jews. This led some Jews to look for ways to adapt Jewish worship to contemporary standards.

A more palatable course was the reform of worship in synagogues. In Hamburg in the early 19th Century a Reform Temple was opened introducing a number of innovations, including prayer and sermons in German, as opposed to the traditional Hebrew. The temple in Hamburg also introduced organ playing and choral music to Jewish services.

There were Orthodox Jews who believed that this deviation from tradition was a violation of Jewish heritage. Orthodox Jews berated Reform Judaism for ignoring God's commands and wanting citizen rights, as Orthodox Jews believed that all Jews were united through following God's laws. Despite heavy criticism of Reform Judaism's ideals, several German rabbis, having been influenced by the Enlightenment, began to re-examine Jewish tradition.