David Einhorn. Das Bild der Verlobung Israels mit Gott.

An important sermon: “The Image of the Engagement of Israel with God.” The leading intellectual architect of Reform Judaism in America, David Einhorn (1809-79) immigrated to the United States in 1855. Due to his strident abolitionism Einhorn was frequently at odds with other American Jews, yet the theological views he espoused ideas dominated Reform Judaism in the United States until well into the 20th century. Key elements were a rejection of the aspiration for a Jewish state and an attempt to unhinge Judaism from devotion to outmoded ceremonies in favor of a concentration on the ethical components of Jewish law. The divine law, he insisted, had a “perishable body” and an “imperishable spirit.” Einhorn located the perishable in ceremonial rites and regulations practiced by Orthodox Jews and the imperishable in the enduring moral principles of Jewish law. See P.M. Cohen, David Einhorn: Biblical Theology as Response and Reform (Brandeis University Ph.D dissertation, 1994).