Walter Jacob

book went much further and discussed the entire range of mar­riage, rabbinic rights versus the civil authority, and the very nature of Jewish marriage. The status of women was to change, as marriage was to consisted of two parts. The civil obligations were enforceable by the state whereas the religious ceremony con­ducted by the rabbi dealt with the moral and ethical basis of fam­ily life. For him dina demalkhutah dina governed marriage and divorce, although traditionally this was not so. This was part of Holdheim ’s struggle to solidly establish the civil rights of Jews and to answer Bruno Bauer and others who asserted that Judaism did not permit a proper allegiance to the state.'® His lengthy argu­ments buttressed by numerous rabbinic quotations led to a response by Zacharias Frankel .

Frankel was unwilling to place marriage and divorce into the category of dina demalkhuta dina or to consider marriage as pri­marily an economic act and therefore easily transferable to the state.” He considered it unnecessary for Jews to give up their marriage and divorce laws in order to become fully equal citizens of the state. Although also a reformer, he was among the most conservative and wished to preserve as much of the traditional approach to halakhah as possible. This was also a judgement of how far it was possible to take the German Jewish communities that were recognized by the government and that consisted of a broad range of opinion. His views became influential, as they were expressed through the rabbinic seminary in Breslau , which he led(1854-1875) and its graduates. Later, Geiger’s views were expressed through the Hochschule fiir die Wissensciaft des Juden­tums in Berlin(1872).

The fourth scholar , Leopold Loew , was rabbi in Szegedin , Hungary . His studies should also remind us of the central role that Hungarian Jews played in the development of Reform Judaism. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, this group was forgotten, although it made up a considerable per­centage of Hungarian Jews . He approached the status of women in marriage through a series of essays demonstrating how mar­riage laws and customs had developed through the centuries. He then dealt with modern times and the changes he consid­

ered necessary.’ Loew began with a discussion of Frankel ’s approach to the various issues and also placed them in the con­