The Constitution of the Reformed Society of Israelites Promoting True Principles of Judaism According to Its Purity and Spirit, Charleston: B[ernard] Levy, 1825

Although the introduction of Reform into American Judaism is frequently associated with the arrival of intellectual German-speaking, the first stirrings of American Reform had native roots in Congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina.

In December, 1824, forty-seven Charleston Jews, led by Isaac Harby, petitioned the leaders of Beth Elohim for major changes in the Shabbat service. Harby was alarmed by organized Protestant efforts to convert American Jews, and the emergence of anti-Semitism in politics. He wanted his fellow Charleston Jews to be able to defend Judaism from its critics, and themselves from proselytizers, but worried that they knew too little about their religion, were ill-tutored in Hebrew and could not understand the traditional Spanish and Portuguese rituals at Beth Elohim, leaving them defenseless against the Protestant challenge.

The modifications requested by the dissidents included: rendering the service more accessible to the majority of congregants who were unable to comprehend the Hebrew ritual, by asking that each Hebrew prayer be accompanied by an English translation; the addition of a weekly discourse on the Torah portion, again to be delivered in English; and an overall abridgement in the length of the worship service, claiming that as it was currently construed, “ so much of it is hastily and improperly hurried over.” Finally, they rejected out of hand the practice of public purchase of certain synagogue honors in the midst of services, a practice they disdained for both its “uselessness and impropriety.”

To make Judaism more accessible, Harby and his fellow reformers thought that services at Beth Elohim had to become more "American" while still retaining orthodoxy’s core liturgy and teachings. They wished to worship no longer, as they put it, as "slaves of bigotry and priestcraft," but as part of the "enlightened world."

When the leadership of Beth Elohim refused to consider their petition,  the reformers responded by creating an independent "Reformed Society of Israelites" and promulgating the present constitution, to which they appended their original petition (pp. 12-15).

While the Reformed Society of Israelites flourished for a few years, but  the leadership and traditionalists of Beth Elohim maintained their relentless criticism and ostracism of the reformers. Although the Society never officially disbanded, it ceased to exist sometime after the mid-1830's.

But the spirit of reform though dissipated, nevertheless simmered just beneath the surface. In 1838, Beth Elohim became the first synagogue in America to provide organ music at services. This break with the orthodox tradition opened the way for other changes in the ritual, many of which had been requested a decade earlier by the Reformed Society: confirmation classes for boys and girls, abandoning the second day of festival observances and, eventually, family seating rather than the separation of men and women.

The influences on Charleston’s reformers were clearly native and not imported from Germany. They sincerely believed that Judaism in America could not survive if it could not modernize to combat assimilation. The traditionalists argued, in turn, that such a watered-down Judaism was itself assimilated beyond recognition. The debate between American reformers and traditionalists begun in Charleston nearly 300 years ago has yet to be resolved.

Worldcat records only a single copy, at JTS.