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The Case of Feminism— Mechanisms of Change 67

difficult in those communal settings and with the conservative governments. He did what Samuel Holdheim might have undertaken. However, he did not limit himself to writing, but used a meeting. Kohler understood the divide between the radical Reform rabbis in the East and the more conservative western rabbis led by Isaac Mayer Wise in Cincinnati . In 1885 Kohler therefore called a meeting in Pittsburgh , neutral territory half way between the two camps. It provided an opportunity to create a document that would go beyond the specific decisions of Philadelphia and place them into an ideological setting. Kaufmann Kohler came with a fully prepared text that with some modifications became the Pittsburgh Platform.

This represented another major innovation. Creedal statements had been created by some leading thinkers of the past, including Maimonides (1135-1204). Even this statement of the greatest medieval Jewish scholar was never fully accepted by the Jewish Community, although it is printed in the private devotions of the traditional prayer book. Here, however, was a statement of principles that was adopted by a group of rabbis for a the Reform movement. It dealt with theology, the entire range of religious life and observance® and represented a striking innovation. As the Reform movement changed similar documents were later prepared, debated, and became the official pronouncement of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and of the Reform movement. This occurred in Columbus (1937), San Francisco (1976), and Pittsburgh (1999).

Kohler was concerned about the position of women in Reform Judaism and in modern Jewish life. The address presented to the assembled rabbis, therefore, included a major section on women and Pointed to all that women do for religious life and education.

They do the work of charity everywhere, and their sympathies are broader and more tender than those of the stern struggler for existence in the business mart. Indeed, none of the greater