30,000 in Canada. Based on these, the URJ claims to represent 2.2 million people. It has 845 congregations in the U.S. and 27 in Canada, the vast majority of the 1,170 affiliated with the WUPJ that are not Reconstructionist. Its rabbinical arm is the Central Conference of American Rabbis, with some 2,300 member rabbis, mainly trained in Hebrew Union College. As of 2015, the URJ was led by President Rabbi Richard Jacobs, and the CCAR headed by Rabbi Denise Eger. The next in size, by a wide margin, are the two British WUPJ-affiliates. In 2010, the Movement for Reform Judaism and Liberal Judaism respectively had 16,125 and 7,197 member households in 45 and 39 communities, or 19.4% and 8.7% of British Jews registered at a synagogue. Other member organizations are based in forty countries around the world. They include the Union progressiver Juden in Deutschland, which had some 4,500 members in 2010 and incorporates 25 congregations, one in Austria; the Nederlands Verbond voor Progressief Jodendom, with 3,500 affiliates in 10 communities; the 13 Liberal synagogues in France; the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism (5,000 members in 2000, 35 communities); the Movement for Progressive Judaism (Движение прогрессивного Иудаизма) in the CIS and Baltic States, with 61 affiliates in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and several thousands of regular constituents; and many other, smaller ones. History Beginnings With the advent of Jewish emancipation and acculturation in Central Europe during the late 18th century, and the breakdown of traditional patterns and norms, the response Judaism should offer to the changed circumstances became a heated concern. Radical, second-generation Berlin maskilim (Enlightened), like Lazarus Bendavid and David Friedländer, proposed to reduce it to little above Deism or allow it to dissipate. A more palatable course was the reform of worship in synagogues, making it more attractive to a Jewish public whose aesthetic and moral taste became attuned to that of Christian surroundings. The first considered to have implemented such a course was the Amsterdam Ashkenazi congregation, Adath Jessurun. In 1796, emulating the local Sephardic custom, it omitted the "Father of Mercy" prayer, beseeching God to take revenge upon the gentiles. The short-lived Adath Jessurun employed fully traditional argumentation to legitimize its actions, but is often regarded a harbinger by historians. A relatively thoroughgoing program was adopted by Israel Jacobson, a philanthropist from the Kingdom of Westphalia. Faith and dogma were eroded for decades both