Modern Orthodoxy Research Paper

Judaism, like other religions, is not uniform, and has great variety, spanning from the most Orthodox to Jews who have no belief in God. The following essay will discuss the origins of Modern Orthodoxy and Reform Judaism, as well as their different philosophies and approaches to the Torah and the Talmud. Both of these movements began during the period of the Western Enlightenment, which provoked a period known as the Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah. The Enlightenment lead to Jewish emancipation, and the possibility for Jews to become more integrated with the non-Jewish societies in which they were living, and the idea of rationalisation also influenced Jewish thought (De Lange and Freud-Kandel 2005, p.81). Jewish philosophers such as Moses Mendelssohn (1729 – 1786) embraced this and encouraged the reviewing of Judaism. Reform Judaism stemmed from this, in multiple ways. More progressive views were adopted, and many …show more content…
Modern Orthodoxy, countering the Reform movement, adhered more firmly to the practices and beliefs of Judaism. Orthodox Judaism proclaimed the Torah to be the divinely revealed word of God, dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai (Shamir 2015, p.218). This meant that neither the Torah nor the Talmud could not be subjected to any criticism or reinterpretation. Nevertheless, Modern Orthodox Jews did still begin to integrate with Gentile society (De Lange and Freud-Kandel 2005, p.83), whilst keeping their own laws. Despite its rejection of criticism and autonomy, Modern Orthodoxy is considered a modern movement due to its basis in intellectualism and it stands between traditionalism and modernism (De Lange 2010,