Episode 2: History and halakhah

Moses Mendelssohn had already acknowledged that Jews in the modern era can make choices about how to practice and believe in Judaism, or whether to keep it at all. A range of choices then emerged in response to this new freedom, including ultra-Orthodoxy, the neo-Orthodoxy of Samson Raphael Hirsch, Reform Judaism, and the emergence of Conservative Judaism with Zacharias Frankel, when he said “yes” to both history and halakhah. (transcript)

Further reading:

Zachariah Frankel in Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World (2nd ed., 1995), 194-197, 178-182