Blurb:

This essay discusses the Ashkenazi Jewish religious denominations called Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox in their historical and contemporary contexts. Modern Jewish denominations emerged in Europe and America at the start of the nineteenth century under the transformative impact of political emancipation, rapid acculturation, socio-economic modernization, and the Enlightenment. Each movement negotiated the relationship between Jewishness and modernity in its own way. Each claimed that they followed the best or most authentic traditions of Judaism, even as each in fact reflected a self-conscious set of choices from Jewish texts and traditions and particular interpretations of the past.