Ask the Expert: Sunday Services

Are there any Reform Temples that still have their main service on Sunday?


Question: When did Reform Temples begin holding worship on Sundays, and what caused the shift from Saturday, which is the regular Jewish Sabbath?
–Keith, CA

Answer: Today, so many of us are accustomed to our synagogues and Temples holding their main services on Saturday that a lot of people don’t realize that wasn’t always the case. You’re on top of your game, Keith–for many years, Reform Temples tended to have their main service of the week on Sunday morning, not Saturday.

How did this happen? The story begins in Germany in the early 19th century, when Reform Judaism was just beginning to develop. Rabbi Samuel Holdheim was the head of a group of Reform rabbis in Berlin who were making a lot of changes to Jewish practice. Among the changes he instituted was moving the main weekly service to Sunday at the synagogue where he worked. Why the change? At that time, Germany was observing a six-day workweek, with only Sunday as a day off. This meant it was nearly impossible for many people to attend services on Saturday, because they had to be at work.

Ask the ExpertHoldheim concluded that it was better to preserve the Jewish religion than to maintain the importance of a specific day. Observing Shabbat by attending services was, he held, very important; so much so that it should happen even if that meant holding Shabbat services on a different day of the week. It’s important to note, though, that Holdheim only advocated the move to Sunday in places where Saturday services had outlived their sphere of usefulness and “succumbed in the struggle against the demands of life.” He treated his Sunday service as if it was Saturday, in terms of liturgy, ritual, and sermon.

Holdheim’s policy was slowly adopted by a handful of Reform institutions in Germany, and when Reform Judaism made its way to America, the Sunday service came along. In 1885, the Reform rabbinical conference in Pittsburgh unanimously agreed that Shabbat was too important to be limited to Saturday.

They wrote, “It cannot be denied that there is a very large number of Jews who, owing to economic and industrial conditions, are not able to attend services on our sacred day of rest; be it resolved that in the judgment of this conference there is nothing in the spirit of Judaism to prevent the holding of divine services on Sunday, or any other day of the week, where the necessity of such services is felt.”


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