GUEST POST: SEPHARDIM REJECT REFORM

Reform — with rebuke for existing forms inherent in the very word — was by its nature incompatible with traditional Sephardic orthodoxy.  Reform, an attempt to bring Judaism “up to date,” to make Judaism appear to be at home with existing American religious patterns, was attacked by traditionalists as a subversive attempt to “Christianize” Judaism. 

Under Reform, women would come down from their secluded balconies in synagogues, and worship side by side with their husbands.  Men would take off their tall silk hats.

[Reform] synagogues would look more like churches. English would replace Hebrew.         

SOURCE: The Grandees: the Story of America's Sephardic Elite(chapter 14, page 192) by Stephen Birmingham, year 1971, First Lyons Press paperback edition, ISBN: 9781493024681 ISBN: 149302468X

“…it [Reform Temple Emanu-El, in year 1868 CE] represented — on a national scale — a triumph for the Reform movement, which the Sephardimhad so long opposed.”

SOURCE:The Grandees: the Story of America's Sephardic Elite(chapter 18, page 253) by Stephen Birmingham, year 1971, First Lyons Press paperback edition, ISBN: 9781493024681 ISBN: 149302468X

“While Reform Judaism was remaking the pattern of Jewish life, threatening to topple the traditional orthodoxy, these [Sephardic] Jews knew nothing of it.”

SOURCE:The Grandees: the Story of America's Sephardic Elite(chapter 21, page 273) by Stephen Birmingham, year 1971, First Lyons Press paperback edition

“…the insistence of the Sephardim on retaining the Orthodox form of worship — against the trend toward modernization and Americanization that has been marked among Jewry all over the country …”

“To this day there is no Sephardic synagogue which is not strictly Orthodox.

Although not all Sephardic Jews are personally Orthodox, Orthodoxy has remained the official Sephardic tradition.  Nowhere in the entire Sephardic world has Reform or Conservative Judaism penetrated.”

SOURCE:The Secret Jews (chapter 3, page 99) by Joachim Prinz, year 1973, Random House, ISBN-10: 0853031851 ISBN-13: 978-0853031857

“The Reform leaders did not rest on their laurels, and continued agitating until they had obtained a foothold in virtually every single kehillahin New York.

Out of 100 shuls that had been established in the early 1800s, only a pitiful ten percent, ten shuls in all, remained Frum[Orthodox].

Three or four of the ten [synagogues that remained Orthodox in New York] were Sephardic shuls, and the rest were Ashkenazi shuls that had heroically managed to withstand the pressure of the Reform movement.”

SOURCE:The Rav HaKolel and His Generation 5^thEdition (chapter 7, page 53) by Rabbi Yonah Landau, year 2014 CE, 68 Lee Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211

We affirm the eternality of our holy Torah, the Jewish nation, and the Holy Land of Israel.

We affirm that our Judaism is solely determined by the teachings of our Holy Torah, both written and oral, as passed down through the generations, all the way to Sinai. 

Movements such as Conservative and Reform are foreign to our Torah tradition, and their executions of halachic rites such as: marriage, divorce, and conversion will NOT be recognized.

SOURCE: RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE IRANIAN RABBANIM IN THE UNITED STATES AT ITS FIRST NATIONAL RABBINIC CONFERENCE, 2017 JUNE 7 * YEAR TAF SHIN AYIN ZAYIN, SIVAN 13, IN ONTARIO, CALIFORNIA