RICHARD ROSENTHAL

Our particular issue, milat gerim, was discussed at the Conference. In Kohler’s opening address to the Conference, he said that the regulation of admission of converts needed to be changed. Echoing Geiger’s letter to Zunz , he declared"...to have a grown man who from conviction has with all his heart and soul become a Jew , in order to be admitted, undergo the act of circumcision, is a barbarous cruelty which disfigures and disgraces our ancestral heirloom and our holy mission as priests among mankind. The rite is a national remnant of savage African life, and has no bearing upon the religion preached by Isaiah, Jeremiah and the great Deuteronomic law-giver. It certainly has no sacramental character." He went on to appeal to common sense over"the fanciful and twisted syllogisms of Talmudic Law."

Immediately after adopting the platform, the rabbis turned to Kohler’s proposal:"We hereby declare that anyone who joins our faith and accepts for himself and children the mission of the Jewish people to live and work for the pure belief in the Only One God

and the idea of man as the son of God , is to be accepted as Jew , whether he submits to the Mosaic-rabbinical ordinance or not."' In the discussion which followed, Isaac M. Wise objected to the lack of clarity in the resolution,"there must be some form of admission." No one was opposed to Kohler’s proposal, but some felt that people in the congregations were not ready for such a radical step. In the end, the discussion closed with the passage of a resolution to appoint a committee to formulate a report to be submitted to the next Conference.

This discussion leaves us with the feeling that the rabbis’ were ready to abandon milah but did not quite have the courage to proceed. Thus, they decided to wait.

The next Rabbinic Conference following Pittsburgh was the

organization of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1889. It saw itself in its founding resolution as the continuation of all

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