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His family emigrated from Germany to the USA when he was six.
Founder of the Ethical Culture Society, New York (1876)

The following statement attributed to Felix Adler in 1877 is
taken from:  Great Ages and Ideas of The Jewish People. (Schwarz, Leo
W. (Ed) (1956).The Modern Library. Random House, p. 366).

"The extent of Reform varied. Extreme reformers like the
members of the Frankfort Reform Society in the 1840s and later Felix
Adler in New York, rejected even circumcision. To Adler, at that time
a professor of philosophy at Columbia University and soon thereafter
founder of the Ethical Culture movement, this ritual appeared as
'simply barbarous in itself and utterly barbarous and contemptible in
its origin.' Coming from a former rabbinical student and son of the
leading Reform rabbi, Samuel Adler, this declaration called forth
sharp condemnation even from Isaac Mayer Wise, one of the recognized
leaders of the Reform movement, who dismissed Adler as an 'unknown
little Professor of Semitic languages'. The issue was debated time
and again in both Germany and America. Yet circumcision has remained
the accepted form of admission to the Covenant of Abraham among the
overwhelming majority of Reform Jews."

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