On the evening of July 11, 1883, some 200 people gathered for dinner in a Cincinnati restaurant to celebrate the 8th council meeting of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the graduation of the first class of rabbis from Hebrew Union College. The dinner was sponsored by a group of prominent Jews and featured seafood, meat, and dairy desserts, violating the dietary precepts that distinguish between permitted (kosher) and non-permissible (treif or taref) foods. In the history of American Judaism, it is known as the «Treif Banquet» and was one of a series of events that ultimately led to the split between the Reform and the more traditionalist factions.

This separation was cemented when the Reform movement adopted the principles of the Pittsburgh Platform, which in 1885 discarded the observance of mitzvoth and deemed the concept of the “Jewish people” anachronistic.

Following the banquet, a group of moderate rabbis and scholars, including Sabato Morais, Henry Pereira Mendes, Alexander Kohut, and Cyrus Adler, sought to establish a more traditional rabbinical seminary that would reflect the historical conception of Judaism as an evolving religion, much as Zechariah Frankel had done at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau in 1854.

In January 1887, the Jewish Theological Seminary Association was founded in New York City, with the goal of preserving “the knowledge and practice of historic Judaism.” The seminary would teach Bible, history, and philosophy, in addition to providing traditional Ashkenazi rabbinical training. In its first fifteen years, it graduated 14 rabbis and 3 chazanim, including Joseph H. Hertz, who would become the chief rabbi of the British Empire, and Mordechai Kaplan, a theologian who taught at the seminary for many years and founded the Jewish Reconstructionist movement.

From its inception, the seminary suffered from serious financial problems and was on the verge of closing in 1902. As early as 1890, some of its leaders began to discuss the idea of ​​bringing in Solomon Schechter, professor of Talmud at Cambridge University and discoverer of the Cairo Genizah, to preside over the seminary. Schechter initially declined, citing the institution’s poor financial situation, but thanks to the work of Cyrus Adler and a group of volunteers, the financial problems were resolved, and Solomon Schechter accepted the position.

 In March 1902, he took office as president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS). Schechter never imagined that the seminary would become the source from which a new movement within Judaism, the Conservative movement, would emerge. He sought to offer an alternative to Reform Judaism, with a traditional, enlightened, and Americanized Judaism. In addition to being a professor of Jewish theology at the seminary, he dedicated himself to laying out in various documents the ideological foundations of what he believed the practice of Judaism in America should be.

But some rabbis disagreed with his position and left the seminary to form Agudat Harabanim, an Orthodox organization. Another group of rabbis formed the Orthodox Union, which, while maintaining some ties to the JTS, took a different direction.

No one is entirely sure who was responsible for serving treif food at that banquet. But indirectly, that incident marked the course of Judaism in the United States and around the world. Neither Isaac Mayer Wize, father of the Reform movement, nor Solomon Schechter, ideologue of the Conservative movement, nor the founders of Agudat Harabanim and the Orthodox Union, sought to divide Judaism. All sought, from their perspective, the best path for the Jewish people. Perhaps a kosher banquet to clarify differences might have been the solution.

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: Conservative Judaism by Neil Gillman and other sources.