Prayers for the Messiah in the Thought of Early Reform Judaism

The reworking of the Jewish prayer book was one of the first projects of the nascent Reform Movement in early nineteenth-century Germany,and for some decades it was also one of the most significant ones for the understanding and self-understanding of the Reformers. The ideas fueling the reform of the siddur already contained almost all the concepts of what would become a fully developed liberal theology at the end of the century, but they also indicated very clearly the overall motives and goals of the Reformers in their attempt to give Talmudic Judaism a new character.