Reform and Liberal approve historic merger as Progressive Judaism

Representing around a third of synagogue-affiliated Jews in the UK, the new movement will be the largest Jewish denomination in terms of member synagogues with 80 under its umbrella.

Dr Ed Kessler, chair of the advisory board that has overseen the process, said, “This is the biggest change and most significant development in British Judaism since the Second World War. For the first time, this country now has a single, unified Progressive Judaism – providing a voice and a space that brings together timeless Jewish tradition with the diversity and values of 21st-century Jewish life.”

Leaders said it was the first ever known union of two Jewish denominations - and the first merger of any two religious streams since the Presbyterian and Congregational Christian groupings formed the United Reformed Church in 1972.

The partnership was guided by the CEOs of the two denominations, Rabbi Josh Levy of Reform, the larger of the two movements, and the Liberals’ Rabbi Charley Baginsky.

“This is a moment of profound optimism,” Rabbi Baginsky said as leaders enjoyed a champagne l’chaim after the votes came through..

Both Reform and Liberals welcome mixed-faith families, hold dual-heritage wedding blessings and recognise Jewish status can be inherited from either parent when a child is brought up as Jewish. Both campaigned for the introduction of same-sex marriage in the UK.

Half of their clergy are women and a fifth LGBTQ.

Liberal chair Karen Newman said: “Our new Progressive Judaism, just like the two movements which have come together to create it, will manifest from day one its commitment to a Judaism that is non-dogmatic, inclusive and celebrates diversity in policy, prayer, and practice.”

Her Reform counterpart, Paul Langsford said, “As a unified movement, we will now be stronger, our voice will be louder and we will be able to bring even greater benefit not just to our own members, but to the whole Jewish community and wider British society.”

Reacting to the news, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, who is convenor of the Reform Beit Din, said: “This is a profoundly religious moment… an act of faith to say we can overcome divisions and work together for the greater good. I am also sure that Progressive Judaism will now become a major player in the life of British Jewry.

“The greatest obstacle to the merger going through was not any difference in values or practices, which are now closely aligned, but the fear of change among some rabbis and synagogues – but the vision of a stronger united Progressive Jewry prevailed.”

Cardiff Reform had been one of the few communities to oppose unification. The rabbi of Brighton Progressive Synagogue, Gabriel Kanter-Webber, had made known his dissent in a recent sermon. Recalling that on matters such as same-sex marriage, the Liberals had been ahead of Reform in introducing ceremonies, he said he could not “buy into the idea that our two movements are similar enough to become one”.

Raising the image of a pantomime horse, he said, “If one wants to gallop forward into a new, radical, inclusive future, while the other wants to hold back, cautiously – either the horse stands still or the costume rips.”

United: Rabbis Josh Levy and Charley Baginsky say a prayer on the formation of the new Progressive movement at the Montagu Centre, Liberal HQ (photo: Zoe Norfolk)[Missing Credit]

Issues remain to be resolved. While individual synagogues will retain their prayerbooks, it is not yet clear whether the movement’s two batei din and rabbinical assemblies will be folded into one.

Their youth movements will remain independent, but are collaborating more and share a single director.

“This is a sense of the possibility that could be,” Rabbi Baginsky said, so each [youth] movement keeps its own sense of what it offers the world, but they are learning from each other, they are thriving together. That’s the beauty of this, it is not about reducing our offerings, it’s about growing our offerings.”

The new movement’s task was “not to impose uniformity”, Rabbi Levy stressed, but to respond to communities’ needs.

Both have often been asked whether the union is a prelude to the creation of a Progressive chief rabbi.

To which Baginsky responded, “Progressive Judaism does something different. It isn’t a replication of, or competition with the United Synagogue or the Office of the Chief Rabbi. We are about representing Judaism in its diversity and its many multiplicity of voices and Josh and I in our differences, in our complementary skills, are exactly an epitome of me that.”

She said they enjoyed “a really good relationship” with the United Synagogue and the OCR, met Rabbi Mirvis regularly and noted that he referred to the two Progressive leaders in public as “rabbis”.

The move was “not about challenging or taking any one’s voice away,” Levy said. “This is about us enabling the diversity of voices in the Jewish community to be amplified.”

The two have travelled widely to promote the unification plan to communities up and down the country over the past couple of years and worked closely on the practicalities of amalgamation. “We can name the days we have been apart,” she said.

Apart from its egalitarianism, what has increasingly become apparent is the greater willingness within the Progressive camp to publicly criticise Israeli policy than within central Orthodoxy - most recently in letters published in the Financial Times by members representing several Progressive constituencies on the Board of Deputies and by a significant number of rabbis.

“Both our movements are deeply Zionist but we also have a shared value as well,” Levy said. “Which is firstly, criticism of an Israeli government is not disloyalty. But secondly we thrive when we disagree, when we strive together - there isn’t a value when we try to close down conversation.”

The vast majority of UK Jews, he said, “whatever their synagogue denomination, want the hostages back, they want an end to the war, they want humanitarian aid to get into Gaza. The only questions are do we agree about how that happens and do we talk about it in public. And the value of Progressive Judaism is that we don’t have to have one view on those things.”

Whether the FT was the best place to grapple with those issues was a question, he acknowledged, but Progressive Judaism did not believe Im the suppression of disagreement. “Because we don’t define it as washing our dirty linen in public. We define it as the diversity of the Jewish community coming to the fore and the amplification of voices which we think strengthens us. It doesn’t make us weaker.”

Baginsky added, “Judaism teaches us we learn in the machloket [argument], that we learn in being able to disagree with each other,. It is an incredible asset of Judaism.”

She and Levy had been doing a monthly “open house” where members of the movements could speak to them directly. One of the most powerful reactions they had received was in acknowledging that sometimes “we struggle, we are internally conflicted”.

It was important to recognise “sometimes it is not between us we have a machloket,” she said, “internally in ourselves we have one”.

main image: Celebrating after result, (from top left clockwise) Paul Langsford, Karen Newman, Ed Kessler, Rabbi Charley Baginsky and Rabbi Josh Levy (photo: Zoe Norfolk)

Timeline of change: Progressive Judaism

1775 – The Haskalah, also known as the Jewish Enlightenment, begins in Berlin and spreads across Europe – heralding a new era of Jewish thought and integration.

1810 – Progressive Judaism is born with the founding of Jacob's Temple – the first Reform synagogue – in Seesen, Germany. Services, liturgy and rituals are made more accessible.

1817 – Two girls have a Jewish coming-of-age ceremony at the Beer Temple in Berlin. The practice spreads in Germany, France and Italy, with the term bat mitzvah first used in 1847.

1840 – Twenty-four families from Britain’s Sephardi and Ashkenazi congregations form the West London Synagogue of British Jews, introducing modernised practice and teaching. Further Reform communities follow in Manchester and Bradford in 1857 and 1873.

1841 – Britain’s first Reform prayer book is introduced. Forms of Prayer Volume I: Daily and Sabbath Prayers modernises and shortens the Shabbat service, with an English translation.

1851 – In America, which got its first Progressive synagogue in 1824, Congregation Beth-El of Albany introduces “family pews” – the Progressive practice of everyone sitting together.

1857 – The first recorded UK use of the term Progressive Judaism (in the Jewish Chronicle).

1899 – Liberal Judaism begins to form. A service takes place at Marylebone’s Great Central Hotel in 1902, with The Liberal Jewish Synagogue founded in 1911. Building on innovations of the UK’s Reform communities, further advances are made in equality and accessibility.

1926 – The World Union for Progressive Judaism is created in London. It now serves an estimated 1.8 million members in more than 1,250 congregations across 50 countries.

1955 – The practice that Jewish status can be inherited from either parent (whether mother or father), where the child is brought up as Jewish, is introduced.

1956 – Leo Baeck College is established as Britain’s first Progressive rabbinic seminary. The College has since ordained more than 200 Liberal and Reform rabbis.

1967 – Following the 1935 ordination of the world’s first woman rabbi, Leo Baeck College begins accepting female rabbinic candidates. Britain’s first woman rabbi is ordained in 1975.

1980 – British Progressive Judaism embraces the UK’s first openly LGBTQ+ rabbi. In 1984, openly LGBTQ+ students enter the rabbinic programme at London’s Leo Baeck College.

1992 – Progressive clergy begin to lead wedding blessings for dual heritage couples. From 2012, these take place in synagogue, as part of a full inclusion of mixed faith families.

1995 – Liberal Judaism’s Siddur Lev Chadash is the first prayer book in Europe to use gender-inclusive language for God. Words subsuming women under men are also changed.

2008 – Reform Judaism releases Seder Ha-T'fillot: Forms of Prayer – Britain’s first siddur containing a complete transliteration (Hebrew words written in English) for Shabbat..

2013 – Already conducting blessings for LGBTQI couples, Progressive synagogues start to host full equal weddings after campaigning for a change in the law to be able do so.

2025 – Britain’s Reform and Liberal communities vote to unite as one Progressive Judaism for the UK – the culmination of 250 years of history, progress, innovation and change.

Source: Progressive Judaism