At any time in any religious institution, there are three areas appropriate for innovative reform: beliefs, ritual, and ethics.

The classical Nineteenth Century Reformers in Judaism shifted emphasis in belief from a supernatural Messiah promising individual salvation and bodily resurrection to the notion of a Messianic Age of universal salvation for all.

In the Twentieth Century, Mordechai Kaplan did pioneer work in "reconstructing" Jewish belief. To Kaplan, the notion of the Jews as a people uniquely chosen for special providence was untrue and offensive. Any relevant form of contemporary Judaism must continue that heritage of innovation  by discouraging dogmatic assertions and references to an anthro-centric. patriarchal diety. Torah and revelation ought be viewed as on-going natural processes, always open to multiple interpretations, rather than as static, one-time, dogmatic assertions of truth. It is indeed regretful that the Reform and Reconstructionist movements, so proud of the innovations they made in Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, have become fossilized admirers of what they once accomplished, but no longer practice.

Shalom Spiritual Resources makes significant modifications in both liturgy and in the interpretation of holidays and life-cycle ceremonies. Services are meditative and contemplative in nature, rather than petitionary and supplicatory. God-language is employed judiciously, but images of a deity possessing male secondary sexual traits and notions of theo-supernaturalism are omitted. The "High Holy Day" period of Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) is no longer viewed as a time when the serious Jew lives in terror of exclusion from the "Book of the Living" and punishment by death. Rather, this is seen as a time of introspection and self-searching directed toward examining where we as individuals and as Jews have fallen short of our expectations. Viewed in this way, the "Days of Awe" become an opportunity to seek new ways of more satisfactory living in the future.