FOUNDED: Early nineteenth century C.E.
RELIGION AS A PERCENTAGE OF WORLD POPULATION: .06 percent

Overview

Reform Judaism is a movement that believes in modifying traditional Jewish law and practice to make it consistent with contemporary social and cultural conditions. The movement began in the early nineteenth century, when Jewish reformers, responding to political and other changes in western and central Europe, began altering the Jewish worship service. Over time rabbis and laypeople sympathetic to these changes coalesced as a distinct group, and by the middle of the century, they had developed a set of ideological principles distinct from traditional Jewish doctrine. This Reform movement spread throughout most of western Europe, and by the end of the nineteenth century it had become a prominent feature of American Judaism.

Reform Jews are a minority of the Jewish population in most countries around the world, but they are a...