time-absorbing tasks of Congregational life is discharged with the same self-denying devotion and enthusiastic zeal by our men, few of whom find even the time for our Sabbath School work on Sunday, as it would be done by ladies. Our religious life in America demands woman's help and participation. And I do not hesitate to claim for myself the priority of the claim for women’s full admission into the membership of the Jewish Congregation. Reform Judaism has pulled down the screen from the gallery behind which alone the Jewish women of old was allowed to take part in divine service. Reform Judaism has denounced as an abuse the old Hebrew benediction:“Blessed be God who has not made me a woman,” borrowed from Plato who, notwithstanding his souls lofty flights in the highest realm of thought, never realized the high dignity of women as the co-partner and helpmate of man. Reform Judaism will never reach its higher goal without having first accorded to the congregational council and in the entire religious and moral sphere of life, equal voice to woman with man.”
No statement of this nature, however, found its way into the Pittsburgh Platform and we do not know why. The broad outline of the published proceedings contains no discussion of any portions of this major document. This may have been intentional in order to provide a show of ideological unity. The Platform was radical and including a paragraph on women should have caused no concern. The bold statements which set the course for what was called“Prophetic Judaism” was not extended to women at this meeting..
The radical Pittsburgh Platform adopted in 1885 followed the democratic pattern set forty years earlier. It made a conscious break with the past and contained no halakhic references whatsoever.” Oddly enough, discussions on specific ritual matters toward the latter part of the meeting cited traditional texts.
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