The Philadelphia Principles - 1869
Article 3. The priestly service of the Aaronites and the Mosaic sacrificial cult were only preparatory steps for the true priestly service of the whole people which in face began with the dispersion of the Jewish nation. For inner devotion and ethical sanctification are the only pleasing sacrifices to the All-Holy One. These institutions which laid the groundwork for the higher religiosity went out of existence once and for all when the second Temple was destroyed. And only in this sense have they educational value and may they be mentioned in our prayer.
Article 5. The selection of Israel as a people of faith, as a bearer of the highest idea of mankind, is to be emphasized as strongly as it has been in the past, but only to the accompaniment of equal emphasis on Israel's universal mission and of the equal love of God for all His children.
Pittsburgh Platform - 1885
First. We recognize in every religion an attempt to grasp the Infinite, and in every mode, source or book of revelation held sacred in any religious system the consciousness of the indwelling of God in man. We hold that Judaism presents the highest conception of the God-idea as taught in our Holy Scriptures and developed and spiritualized by the Jewish teachers, in accordance with the moral and philosophical progress of their respective ages. We maintain that Judaism preserved and defended, midst continual struggles and trials and under enforced isolation, this God-idea as the central religious truth for the human race.
Second. We recognize in the Bible the record of the consecration of the Jewish people to its mission as the priest of the one God, and value it as the most potent instrument of religious and moral instruction. We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domain of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of Judaism, the Bible reflecting the primitive ideas of its own age, and at times clothing its conception of divine Providence and Justice dealing with men in miraculous narratives...
Seventh. We reassert the doctrine of Judaism that the soul of man is immortal, grounding this belief on the divine nature of the human spirit, which forever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness. We reject as ideas not rooted in Judaism, the beliefs both in bodily resurrection and in Gehenna and Eden (Hell and Paradise) as abodes for everlasting punishment and reward.
Guiding Principles of Reform Judaism - 1937
1. Nature of Judaism. Judaism is the historical religious experience of the Jewish people. Though growing out of Jewish life, its message is universal, aiming at the union and perfection of mankind under the sovereignty of God. Reform Judaism recognizes the principle of progressive development in religion and consciously applies this principle to spiritual as well as to cultural and social life. Judaism welcomes all truth, whether written in the pages of scripture or deciphered from the records of nature. The new discoveries of science, while replacing the older scientific views underlying our sacred literature, do not conflict with the essential spirit of religion as manifested in the consecration of man’s will, heart and mind to the service of God and of humanity.
2. God. The heart of Judaism and its chief contribution to religion is the doctrine of the One, living God, who rules the world through law and love. In Him all existence has its creative source and mankind its ideal of conduct. Though transcending time and space, He is the indwelling Presence of the world. We worship Him as the Lord of the universe and as our merciful Father.
3. Man. Judaism affirms that man is created in the Divine image. His spirit is immortal. He is an active co-worker with God. As a child of God, he is endowed with moral freedom and is charged with the responsibility of overcoming evil and striving after ideal ends.
4. Torah. God reveals Himself not only in the majesty, beauty and orderliness of nature, but also in the vision and moral striving of the human spirit. Revelation is a continuous process, confined to no one group and to no one age. Yet the people of Israel, through its prophets and sages, achieved unique insight in the realm of religious truth. The Torah, both written and oral, enshrines Israel’s ever-growing consciousness of God and of the moral law...
6. Ethics and Religion. In Judaism religion and morality blend into an indissoluble unity. Seeking God means to strive after holiness, righteousness and goodness. The love of God is incomplete without the love of one’s fellowmen...
9. The Religious Life. ...Prayer is the voice of religion, the language of faith and aspiration. It directs man’s heart and mind Godward, voices the needs and hopes of the community and reaches out after goals which invest life with supreme value. To deepen the spiritual life of our people, we must cultivate the traditional habit of communion with God through prayer in both home and synagogue...
Reform Judaism – A Centenary Perspective - 1976
I. God
The affirmation of God has always been essential to our people’s will to survive. In our struggle through the centuries to preserve our faith we have experienced and conceived of God in many ways. The trials of our own time and the challenges of modern culture have made steady belief and clear understanding difficult for some. Nevertheless, we ground our lives, personally and communally, on God’s reality and remain open to new experiences and conceptions of the Divine. Amid the mystery we call life, we affirm that human beings, created in God’s image, share in God’s eternality despite the mystery we call death.
A Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism - 1999
God
We affirm the reality and oneness of God, even as we may differ in our understanding of the Divine presence.
We affirm that the Jewish people is bound to God by an eternal b’rit, covenant, as reflected in our varied understandings of Creation, Revelation and Redemption.
We affirm that every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, and that therefore every human life is sacred.
We regard with reverence all of God’s creation and recognize our human responsibility for its preservation and protection.
We encounter God’s presence in moments of awe and wonder, in acts of justice and compassion, in loving relationships and in the experiences of everyday life.
We respond to God daily: through public and private prayer, through study and through the performance of other mitzvot, sacred obligations bein adam la Makom, to God, and bein adam la-chaveiro, to other human beings.
We strive for a faith that fortifies us through the vicissitudes of our lives — illness and healing, transgression and repentance, bereavement and consolation, despair and hope.
We continue to have faith that, in spite of the unspeakable evils committed against our people and the sufferings endured by others, the partnership of God and humanity will ultimately prevail.
We trust in our tradition’s promise that, although God created us as finite beings, the spirit within us is eternal.
In all these ways and more, God gives meaning and purpose to our lives.
Judaism teaches that religion must not be a mere internalized experience, even of the most intense kind, but rather the very fulfillment of life. Though this may seem a mere verbal distinction, it is really a distinction within the soul. Only the right deed places man in the presence of God at all times and only it can be demanded of him at all times. Through it alone can man reach that deep inner unity with God, as well as that other unity with his fellow man. If the ideal embraces everybody and imposes its demand upon all, then men are brought together into a community of God. In the pious deed is the sustaining foundation of the confession of faith. It provides the secure religious foundation, common and equal to all, for the love of God and the trust in God. We cannot truly believe in what we do not practice. He who has not become sure of God by doing good, will not achieve a lasting realization of God's being through a mere inner experience. It is through man's deed that God reveals himself in life. "We will do and we will hear" (Exod. 24:7), says the old phrase in the account of the revelation in Exodus, with a meaning which overflows the vessel of its words. And as the Talmud later expresses it, "Take the commandments of God to your heart, for then you will know God, and you will have discovered his ways." Knowledge too proceeds from the will - the will for the good.
Rabbi Leo Baeck, 1926
First, modern religiosity, including the Jewish, is more certain of people than of God. Thus its typical procedure is to move from some certainty about human beings toward what people reasonably call God. Religion has thus always been a personal spiritual search or quest, as secure or as ambivalent as its human base allowed. This definition had the virtue of encouraging people to use their power, individual and communal, to do the good, a liberation that contributed in countless ways to the betterment of human lives. This reliance on human knowledge and activism came in conscious rejection of that "premodern" religiosity dominated by God. Thus in Judaism, God descends on Mount Sinai, gives the Torah, and thereby transforms an aggregate of slaves into the people of Israel. So in the Bible and prayer book God speaks, commands, listens, answers, observes, judges, rewards, punishes, forgives, helps, saves, and much else. These events had the great virtue of bringing stability and security into Jewish lives and investing them with an admirable holiness. But they tended to make Jews so dependent on God that, by modern standards, they seemed passive. This perspective made the new freedom a means to fuller humanhood and thus highly attractive. But we can now see that modernity's self-confident activism tended to have human judgment fully replace God as the ground and guide of human value, a gross overestimation of human goodness and discernment.
Rabbi Eugene Borowitz, 1983
As storytellers together, we and God write our lives. God presents Us with inevitabilities, with opportunities and constraints.We present God With our choices and responses. Because of our power of choice, things also, as it were, happen to God. God as powerful Other, as the one who perceives beyond the bounded perspective, who permits into our stories elements we experience as disruptive, as agonizing, is the lightning rod for our rage and fear, awe and dependency. To continue to affirm that we are in relationship with this God is not to affirm God-as-power or God-as-patterner in some abstract sense, but rather to assert that we as actors have moral weight: we matter to God. This does not necessarily require from us passive acceptance of God's will. Our indignation is an equally powerful act of trust: it presumes that our covenant partner can be held accountable in relationship...expunging anthropomorphism from the language of prayer, even if it were possible, would be undesirable. We can still include the beautiful images of God as bird or rock or water. But these images alone are not sufficient to sustain relatedness. Anthropomorphism is necessary because stories are necessary. We know God from the stories we and God inhabit together. Stories are a human genre. For God to step into the story for us, God must clothe Godself in metaphor, and especially in anthropomorphic metaphor, because the most powerful language for God's engagement with us is our human language of relationship.
Rabbi Dr. Rachel Adler, 1998