Hamburg Temple disputes

The Hamburg Temple disputes (German: Hamburger Tempelstreite) were the two controversies which erupted around the Israelite Temple in Hamburg, the first permanent Reform synagogue, which elicited fierce protests from Orthodox rabbis. The events were a milestone in the coalescence of both modern perceptions of Judaism. The primary occurred between 1818 and 1821, and the latter from 1841 to 1842.

In the latter half of the 18th Century, Jews in the German principalities were experiencing a profound transformation. Communal corporate privileges and obligations, along with those of all other groups in society, were gradually abolished by the enlightened absolutist authorities, attempting to create centralized states. Economic and civil restrictions were lifted piecemeal. A process of acculturation commenced, at a time when rabbinical courts and communal elders imperceptibly lost their means to enforce Jewish law (Halakha), like the anathema, and legitimacy to wield them. In Hamburg, the government checked the jurisdiction of the strictly conservative Rabbi Raphael Cohen after repeated complaints from transgressors he punished – people who ate non-kosher food, a priest who married a woman forbidden to him via deception and the like – contributing to his decision to resign in 1799. The more cultured Jews were also inspired by Enlightenment ideals, forming the small and short-lived Haskalah movement, though the influence of those was meager in comparison to the more prosaic, aforementioned factors. Growing swaths of German Jewry were becoming nonobservant and apathetic towards their religion.

...
Wikipedia