Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), who belongs to a much later period, is revered not only as a philosopher, but as the emancipator of the modern Jew from the thraldom of the Ghetto. What is known as Reform Judaism started in Germany about 1845. It has recast the ancient belief in the election and mission of Israel. On the one hand, the founders " have reinterpreted the Messianic i hope n the prophetic spirit, as the realization of the highest ideals of a united humanity. On the other, they have rejected the entire theory that Israel was exiled from his ancient land because of his sins, and that he is eventually to return there and to restore the sacrificial cult in the Temple at Jerusalem. Therefore, the whole view concerning Israel's future had to undergo a trans formation. The historic mission of Israel as priest of humanity and champion of truth assumed a higher mean ing, and his peculiar position in history and in the Law necessarily received a different interpretation from that of Talmudic Judaism or that of the Church " (Kohler). The movement known as Zionism (q.v.), through the activities of Theodor Herzl, began to make great progress after 1895. On the whole, it is, or has become, nationalistic and cultural rather than religious. " The nationalists expect the Jewish nation to awaken from a sleep of eighteen hundred years to new greatness in its ancient home, not as a religious, but as a political body, and in renouncing all allegiance to the priestly mission of Israel and its ancestral faith they are as remote from genuine Orthodoxy as from Reform Judaism." Dr. Kohler
emphasizes the necessity of distinguishing two opposite fundamental tendencies in Judaism, the one expressing the spirit of legalistic nationalism, the other that of ethical or prophetic universalism. " These two work by turn, directing the general trend in the one or the other direction according to circumstances. At one time the centre and focus of Israel's religion is the Mosaic Law. with its sacrificial cult in charge of the priesthood of Jerusalem's Temple: at another time it is the Synagogue, with its congregational devotion and public instruction, its inspiring song of the Psalmist, and its prophetic con solation and hope confined to no narrow territory, but opened wide for a listening world. Here it is the reign of the Halakah holding fast to the form of tradition, and there the free and fanciful Haggadah, with its appeal to the sentiments and views of the people. Here it is the spirit of ritualism, bent on separating the Jews from the influence of foreign elements, and there again the spirit of rationalism, eager to take part in general culture and in the progress of the outside world " (p. 13). See G. A. Barton, R.TV., 1917; Rel. of Isr., 1918.