DANIEL SCHIFF

and to punish its participants for their sins against fellow human beings and against God .

CLASSIC ADULTERY FROM A MODERN JEWISH PERSPECTIVE

With this unequivocal traditional position as an inheritance, it would seem reasonable to expect that, of all the modern branches of Judaism , Reform Judaism would have had a particular interest in expressing itself on the subject of adultery. Post-Enlightenment Orthodox Judaism , of course, saw no need to deviate from the tra­ditional halakhic approach to the issue.** But Reform Judaism— b particularly in America —declaratively shed any sense of full adher­¢ tnce to the halakhic past and, instead, elevated the ethical as the critical concern of a revitalized Judaism : The Pittsburgh Platform Clearly stated that“today we accept as binding only the moral

Jaws ”; and the Columbus Platform emphasized that“in Judaism religion and morality blend into an indissoluble unity....” The road to Godliness and holiness in Reform Judaism was paved with ethics.

In addition to ethics, American Reform Jews have given Brat prominence to the Ten Commandments as the chief corner­pone of Jewish adherence. It was no less a figure than Isaac Mayer

5¢, who—echoing an idea promoted in the pioneering days of American Reform—attested that the Ten Commandments were licrally revealed and transmitted by God to Moses on Sinai; all the 1°sLof the Torah represented human expansion.’ It is small wonder = ever since Wise, many Reform Jews have followed in his » Steps, venerating the Ten Commandments as the divinely \"ined foundation of the Jewish contribution to the world.**