LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 PRINCETON. N. J. 
 PRESENTED BY 
 Vhe Jewish Tmatitute of Religion. 
 BM 197 .W57 1924 c.1 
 
 Wise, James Waterman, 1901- | 
 Liberalizing liberal Judais 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 httos://archive.org/details/liberalizinglibeOOwise 
 
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LIBERALIZING 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 NEW YORK « BOSTON + CHICAGO - DALLAS 
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 LIBERALIZING 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 BY 
 JAMES WATERMAN WISE 
 
 JQew Pork 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1924, 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
CopryricHt, 1924, 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 
 
 Set up and printed. 
 Published September, 1924. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America by 
 J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK 
 
TO 
 MY MOTHER AND FATHER 
 IN REVERENCE AND LOVE 
 
yeti 
 
 ‘a Weak ; 
 hhh ae 
 
 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Liberal Judaism, for years a pariah, anathematized. 
 by traditional Jewry, has in the last decades clothed 
 itself in the vestments of religious respectability. It is. 
 no longer thought of as a “Movement,” for a move- 
 ment implies progress of one sort or another, and Lib- 
 eral Judaism has ceased to advance. I do not imply 
 that individuals within its ranks have abandoned their 
 search for religious truth, but that it has definitely 
 lost its character as an insurgent force, vitalized by 
 the necessity of securing and justifying its own 
 existence. 
 
 The fate of all successful reform movements has 
 overtaken Liberal Judaism. In its turn it has be- 
 come an established religion. Those doctrines of the 
 older Judaism which the founders rejected, trouble 
 their successors no more, while the positive beliefs 
 which these pioneers championed are become the very 
 stuff of which Liberal Judaism is fashioned. 
 
 Yet these beliefs and doctrines are no longer what 
 they were. A change has taken place. When we say 
 that the earth revolves about the sun, we state a com- 
 
 monplace. Some centuries ago Galileo very nearly 
 7 
 
8 FOREWORD 
 
 died for saying the same thing. The truth is the same 
 to-day as it was then. The difference lies in the psy- 
 chology of the enunciator. Something very similar 
 has happened in Liberal Judaism. The beliefs which 
 were so vital to Einhorn and Hirsch and Wise that 
 they found it necessary to expatriate themselves in 
 order to establish them, we breathe cheaply in the 
 common air. They are no longer a driving power; 
 they have lost their edge. And beliefs without an 
 edge cannot evoke that devotion which alone is able to 
 give them life and meaning. 
 
 Nor is this subjective criticism all. Liberal Juda- 
 ism in itself is full of faults, faults to be found in 
 doctrine and practice alike. And no sorrier comment 
 could be made on the intelligence of Liberal Jews 
 than that they are content with the achievements, in- 
 tellectual and spiritual, of the forties and fifties and 
 sixties of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The last word in Judaism has not been said. There 
 are no “last words” in the realm of the spirit. Our 
 faith must be re-examined. Reverently and with love 
 we must search into the truths of our fathers, but re- 
 solved that where they are for us no-truths, we must 
 deny them; where they are half-truths, we must alter 
 them; and where ourselves can catch a glimpse of yet 
 unseen truths we must not fail to follow the gleam. 
 
 A wise teacher of another faith has said that re- 
 ligion lives through the death of religions. I believe 
 
FOREWORD 9 
 
 that he is right, and that the end of our searchings and 
 strivings will be not a lesser but a greater faith, which 
 in its turn will call forth, as did the faith of our 
 fathers, loyalty and love and devotion. 
 
 J. W. W. 
 Cambridge, England. 
 
 March, 1924. 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 TOREWORD Microtek alice tla ees 7 
 CHAPTER 
 
 DRELINDAMENTALS( 0ic5) eeniiigh oh ah desta yitie tia RR od itiaiGd 
 PEPBRWELY CLUDATSM Cie leer et Cea ACM MMe abhi til ase 
 Lie WHAT LIBERAL JUDAISM 1S...) cy Ua el ee bo 
 UV Se HE QUESTION, OF ATTITUDES 35. Cu eh oser ici Go 
 V. Wuat or “THe Mission oF ISRAEL”? . . . 58 
 VI. Reticious EpucaTIoNn For JEWIsH CHILDREN . 74 
 
 PLU NCERMR MARRIAGE hfe Url unig ied iaehls) diets al sua hee th ao 
 VIN. THe Puace or Jesus 1n Mopern Jupaism. . 112 
 IX. Tue Function or tHe Munistry . . . . 135 
 ROSTSCRIPT (iti: red opal euutnres ty 9). | reek ltenht se Rane a 
 

 
LIBERALIZING 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 

 
LIBERALIZING 
 LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 FUNDAMENTALS 
 
 Judaism is of course a religion. But as a neces- 
 sary corollary the fact must be added that it is the 
 religion of a particular group of people. There is 
 more than the grammatical criticism to be made of 
 the statement oft repeated by Jews, “We are a re- 
 ligion, not a race.” Judaism is a religion, but beyond 
 Judaism there is the fact of Jews and Jewishness. 
 Nor does this fact depend upon the assertion or denial 
 of belief in a monotheistic creed. 
 
 True it is that Jews do not form a race or nation 
 in the literal or scientific use of those terms. But 
 on the other hand the unique bond between them can- 
 not be explained, or explained away, as a purely re- 
 ligious one. Many great men are Jews in the eyes 
 of the world as in the eyes of their fellow-Jews, 
 although their theological and religious beliefs have 
 no affinity with the principles of Judaism. Neither 
 adherence to nor neglect of Judaism can alter the 
 
 15 
 
16 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 conception in the mind of others that they are Jews.” 
 
 If then his religion is not the only, nor even the 
 chief, sign and token of the Jew, the question arises as 
 to what is that peculiar allocative characteristic of 
 certain people, which I have chosen to call their Jew- 
 ishness. Definitions and descriptions are beyond num- 
 ber, but the essence of it is so simple that it seems 
 to have escaped detection. Does it not lie in this? 
 Jews are primarily the descendants of believers in 
 Judaism, and their Jewishness consists of the quali- 
 ties, customs, beliefs and mannerisms which in greater 
 or less degree and in common with other Jews, they 
 have inherited.” ? How they will view their Jewish- 
 ness,—whether it will seem a curse and a disability, 
 or a privilege and a blessing, is a matter for indi- 
 vidual decision; as is the acceptance or rejection of 
 Judaism the religion. The unalterable fact, the fact 
 of their Jewishness, remains in any case. Like mind 
 and matter it can neither be created nor destroyed! ® 
 
 * Examples may be found in all lands and times, and I mention 
 but a few outstanding names. Spinoza, Heine, Disraeli, and 
 Bergson, are figures centuries apart in time, and are claimed by 
 four different lands. And all four are known throughout the 
 world as Jews despite complete disassociation from the faith 
 of Judaism. 
 
 * This definition is not meant to be a permanent one. A hun- 
 dred years ago it would have had little meaning. A hundred 
 years hence it may have even less. All the characteristics which 
 mark the Jew to-day may in the course of time disappear and 
 he may once again be known only as the adherent of a certain 
 faith. But whether this event occur or not, (and in Western 
 Europe and America it is not at all unlikely that it will) the 
 definition given above seems to me true at the present time. 
 
 *In pointing out the fact of Jewishness as distinct from the 
 belief in Judaism I do not refer to Political Zionism or the 
 philosophy underlying it. Zionism accepts the fact of Jewish- 
 
FUNDAMENTALS 17 
 
 My subject is however Judaism the religion, and 
 if it be necessary to define what Judaism is and is 
 not, it is even more important to explain just what I 
 mean when I use the term religion. Many writers 
 have pointed out in recent years the utter futility of 
 attempting any brief comprehensive description of 
 the phenomena of religion. They have shown that its 
 manifestations are infinite, and infinitely varying, 
 and I shall not defend my failure to essay a defini- 
 tion. James in his “Varieties of Religious Expe- 
 rience,” * dealing with this problem of definition, 
 says: “The field of religion being as wide as this, it 
 is manifestly impossible that I should pretend to 
 cover it. My lectures must be limited to a fraction 
 of the subject—yet this need not prevent me from 
 taking my own narrow view of what religion shall 
 consist in for the purpose of these lectures, or out of 
 the many meanings of the word, from choosing the 
 one meaning in which I wish to interest you particu- 
 larly, and proclaiming arbitrarily that when I say 
 ‘religion’ I mean that.” 
 
 Religion, however as a problem for objective study 
 and scientific research, and as such requiring a 
 “meaning” does not concern us here. But as a vital 
 
 ness and advances from that position to the belief that the duty 
 of Jewry is to preserve and to develop, in Palestine at all events, 
 its inherited national and racial characteristics. Whether such 
 an inference is justified or not, and what the implications of this 
 position are, do not affect this problem. Here I am dealing only 
 with the fact from which they have arisen. 
 
 4Page 28 “Varieties of Religious Experience.” (The Italics are 
 James’.) 
 
18 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 force, as a living agent affecting the lives of those who 
 touch and are touched by it, with this sort of religion 
 we have to do. And religion in this form is not so 
 much concerned with an academic definition, as with 
 a statement of its aim or purpose. I shall not, there- 
 fore, even choose a ‘meaning.’ Instead I lay down 
 as my basic principle, arbitrarily chosen, that, what- 
 ever its meaning or definition may be, the purpose of 
 religion is: To help man to live well. This I term 
 the fundamental purpose of religion. 
 
 It is necessary to point out two consequences, im- 
 mediately resultant from this conception, for they 
 directly affect the problems to be discussed. (1) If 
 the purpose of religion be to help man to live well, 
 (and by the word well I refer here to the things of 
 the spirit as distinct from, perhaps opposed to, the 
 things of the material world), it follows that religion 
 must include far more than any doctrinal definition 
 would allow. It must recognize that influences, other 
 than itself, in the development of character, are on a 
 parity with it in aim, and often above it in achieve- 
 ment. Education of the right kind, a home which 
 seeks to evoke the best from its members, and friend- 
 ships which are definitely formed and firmly kept on 
 a spiritual level, all these have a part in teaching 
 man to live well. 
 
 While it is possible arbitrarily to circumscribe 
 religion in order to define it as distinct from the other 
 influences which go to make up character, such de- 
 limitation ought not to be made. Intolerable to those 
 
FUNDAMENTALS 19 
 
 who feel that religion might be a vital force is the 
 chasm, grown almost so great as to be unbridgeable, 
 between faith and life. The two must be brought 
 together, welded into one. It is as though religion 
 had so long been placed in a compartment, closed and 
 sealed against what have been considered the cor- 
 roding influences of life and experience, that it has 
 withered and shrunk in its seclusion, through lack 
 of the very contacts, which, it was feared, would de- 
 stroy it. And the logical consequence of this method 
 of preservation is now apparent. What it was sought 
 to preserve has so dwindled in dignity, that it is but 
 a shadow of its former greatness. The spirit has dis- 
 appeared. And until the spirit return, the form and 
 garb of it are less than nothing. 
 
 Many remedies for this living death have been pre- 
 scribed, but the only one that bids fair to be suc- 
 cessful lies in interrelation, conscious and deter- 
 mined, between religion and the other forces that 
 affect human life. Religion must be made once 
 more to relate itself vitally to life. Its “noli me 
 tangere’ attitude must be abandoned. It must stand 
 upon its own feet. It must make a place for itself. 
 Religion must no longer be circumscribed or set 
 apart, but must be included among (perhaps ulti- 
 mately to include), all the influences which help men 
 to live well. 
 
 (2) From the statement of the purpose of religion 
 made above, it follows that its aim must not be to per- 
 petuate itself. It is needful to make mention of this, 
 
20 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 for established religion is too prone to assume that 
 its customs and teachings are necessarily good and 
 valid, and that one of its highest functions is to pre- 
 serve itself unaltered. As a result of this attitude 
 established religion looks with pious horror on any 
 tendency toward change as affecting itself. The ar- 
 gument (usually left unspoken) for any established 
 religion is that its own form embodies high moral 
 teaching, and presents a way of life that is good. It 
 teaches truths that have been tested by time. It is the 
 faith by which have been lived countless noble lives. 
 It is founded not on dogma but on experience, and 
 the task of the established religion is to pass on its 
 body of religious truths, unchanged, in order that 
 future generations may in their turn rejoice in and 
 profit by them. 
 
 The conclusion is plausible enough but the argu- 
 ment from which it is derived fails to consider two 
 fundamental facts. The first is a fact of history, the 
 second of psychology. The first deals with the 
 founding of every powerful established religion, the 
 second with its future. Yet in reality, the two facts 
 are one. 
 
 The history of every established faith was orig- 
 inally the history of one great soul, or of a small 
 company of souls, dissatisfied with the established 
 religion of their own day. This dissatisfaction 
 coupled with spiritual insight and resistless deter- 
 mination supplied the impetus to overthrow the old 
 and to attempt to bring a better order in its place. 
 
FUNDAMENTALS 21 
 
 Now established religions of our own day do not 
 seek to minimize these facts. They stress them. The 
 great advance, the new light, as seen by the founders 
 of their religion, is made much of. ‘The established 
 religion is admittedly the result of religious progress. 
 But these very religions repudiate the principle of 
 progress when it affects themselves. The advance on 
 which they are based is conceived by them to be the 
 last advance. The word of truth which they preach is 
 preached as the last word in truth! And here we 
 meet the second fact, the psychological factor, which 
 established religion fails to take into account. 
 
 Just as in the days of Hebrew prophecy, just as at 
 the beginning of the Christian era, just as during the 
 Reformation of the sixteenth century, there are those 
 today who are dissatisfied with what religion is. They 
 see errors and feel incompleteness in the teachings 
 of established religions quite as truly as did the 
 founders of those religions in the faiths of their own 
 day. The great advance which the founders made 
 beyond the beliefs and practises of bygone eras no 
 longer satisfies these men.® They perceive the good 
 in the faith of their day, but they see even more 
 clearly that its good is not sufficient for them, will 
 be even less sufficient for their children. And though 
 they respect the work of the old masters in religion, 
 
 5For one thing the advance seems to be in name only. It is 
 adopted in creed but that is all. Belief and works are still dis- 
 tinct and disparate. The question arises whether or not they 
 can ever be made one, and whether the profound ethical insights 
 of great religious teachers do not serve largely to make more 
 marked in most men the difference between conduct and creed. 
 
22 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 they feel even more strongly that “God fulfills him- 
 self in many ways, lest one good custom should cor- 
 rupt the world.” The spirit still seems to them to 
 be imprisoned by the letter, and they hold it their 
 highest duty to liberate the spirit though they destroy 
 the walls that shut it in. Such men become in name 
 rebels and betrayers of their fathers’ faiths, but in 
 fact they are the true descendants,—the children of 
 the spirit,—of the great teachers whose work as it 
 now stands they would seem to destroy. 
 
 I have said that the purpose of religion is to help 
 man to live well, and religion with such an aim must 
 take account of and give due recognition to those who 
 are dissatisfied with what it advocates. Dissatisfac- 
 tion when turned to account is a powerful force in 
 character building. Spiritual striving is always en- 
 nobling. Religion must not see in these things dan- 
 gers to be avoided, but allies to be welcomed. They 
 are the vital part, the inward part of faith. Religion 
 ignores them to its peril. And by the effort to per- 
 petuate itself, to keep itself unchanged, religion does 
 ignore them. 
 
 When religion discovers that it is out of harmony 
 with the strivings of the spirit, that it no longer satis- 
 fies the spiritual longings of men, it is time for re- 
 ligion to question itself. Honest self-examination 
 must be the first step, and if such examination reveal 
 weakness and failure, religion must be brave enough 
 to admit them and big enough to seek to remedy 
 them. ‘The attitude to be assumed must be one of 
 
FUNDAMENTALS 23 
 
 self-forgetfulness. Such an attitude, firmly main- 
 tained, will make impossible the attempts at self- 
 perpetuation which serve only to bring into merited 
 disrepute that which it is sought to glorify. A re- 
 ligion, the purpose of which is to help man to live 
 well, cannot and must not itself remain unchanged, 
 when change is needed. 
 
 Summing up those concepts which I hold to be 
 fundamental for the purpose of this enquiry, and 
 which have been dealt with in this chapter, it appears 
 that Judaism is a religion, the religion of a particular 
 group of people; that the purpose of religion is to 
 help man to live well; that to achieve this end re- 
 ligion must consciously seek to relate itself to all of 
 life; that it is inconsistent for religion to aim at self- 
 preservation, and that if occasion arise it must be 
 prepared to lose itself in order to find itself more 
 
 fully. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 WHY JUDAISM? 
 
 The answer to the question “Why Judaism?” is 
 neither simple nor self-apparent. To say that it is 
 the duty of Jews to preserve their religion is not 
 enough. Judaism for its own sake is not enough. 
 Nor is the argument valid that those who are born 
 Jews owe allegiance only for that reason to Judaism. 
 They do not. Religion is a personal matter—the rela- 
 tion of the individual to whatever he conceives to be 
 ennobling, and no religion has a claim on any indi- 
 vidual purely because of circumstances of birth, of 
 tradition or of environment. Only insofar as a 
 religion is spiritually compelling may it rightfully 
 hope to enlist the loyalty of the individual. 
 
 The preservation of the religion of the Jew for 
 its own sake cannot then answer the question “Why 
 Judaism?”. But the very fact of its inadequacy to 
 
 *This religious philosophy is directly opposed to that which 
 insists that Judaism for its own sake is worth serving and say- 
 ing, and that it is the first duty of the Jew to preserve it for 
 the good of all Jews. Such a position places the Jew as Jew 
 first and as individual afterwards. I place the individual as 
 individual first and as Jew afterwards, contending that it is 
 impossible to speak of any duty which the Jew owes to Judaism, 
 
 except that feeling of duty which comes as an inevitable result 
 of the love of the individual Jew for his religion. 
 
 24 
 
WHY JUDAISM? 25 
 
 do so suggests the province in which the answer, if 
 answer there be, must be sought. It is in the province 
 of the individual. The individual supplies the only 
 criterion by which the question “Why Judaism?” 
 can be answered. Rephrasing the question, then, 
 I would ask: Is Judaism worth while, or worthful ? 
 enough for the individual to will to make it a vital 
 part of his life? Can it satisfy the spiritual needs 
 of the individual? Can it help him to attain the 
 end of living well? ° 
 
 I have spoken of the individual so far without 
 qualifications but it must be clear that I do not mean 
 all individuals or even most individuals. We shall 
 consider later whether Judaism ever can appeal to the 
 world in general, whether it is likely ever to be ac- 
 cepted by the world at large. But in speaking of 
 individuals here I am speaking of those individuals 
 who will have Judaism presented to them as the 
 logical religion for them to choose, in other words, 
 descendants of believers in Judaism. And to qualify 
 the term individual still further, I am considering 
 
 21 use “Worth” in its spiritual sense; that is worthful which 
 contributes to the upbuilding of character, to the strengthening 
 of the moral fibre; the things which delight without making 
 demands upon us being often of less worth than the things which 
 exact and call forth service and sacrifice. 
 
 * As the purpose of this book is to examine into what Judaism 
 is or may become, it might be objected that this question is out of 
 place here and should be reserved until the end. My answer is 
 that the present question does not deal with the ultimate worth 
 of Judaism but rather with its prima facie value. Is there enough 
 of spiritual value in Judaism as it first comes into the horizon of 
 the individual to make it worth his while to accept it even pro- 
 visionally ? 
 
26 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 primarily Jews who dwell in Western Europe or 
 America, and of such Jews only those who are so far 
 removed from rigid orthodoxy that the choice between 
 Judaism and other religions stands as a genuine and 
 vital option for them. With unquestioning Orthodox 
 Judaism I cannot deal here. 
 
 The problem with which I shall deal is the prob- 
 lem of the individual of Jewish parentage, living in 
 a land in which he faces the same duties and enjoys 
 the same privileges as all other citizens. In such a 
 land he is in continual contact with non-Jews, he 
 comes to know externally at least their religious life 
 and customs. He sees that there are good and true, 
 as well as bad, persons adhering to faiths different 
 from his own. Those faiths may even, when he comes 
 to know them, appeal to him strongly, and seem to 
 him to contain many elements of worth which his own 
 faith, as he knows it, has never shown him. 
 
 Yet one must not imagine that the problem of such 
 an individual is as simple as an intellectual choice 
 between two or more forms of faith. Although I 
 have spoken of the civic equality which Jews enjoy in 
 certain lands, it would be folly to ignore the fact that 
 even in these lands the Jew is marked off in greater 
 or in less degree, but always to some degree, from his 
 non-Jewish neighbor. The habit of twenty centuries 
 is not overcome in a generation! Where the Jew is 
 not met with prejudice and contempt and hostility, 
 where these cruder forms of discrimination have 
 vanished, there still remains that sense of difference, 
 
WHY JUDAISM? Xt 
 
 of fundamental unlikeness of background and tradi- 
 tion, which is only in rarest instances overcome. And 
 this feeling of difference at all events the individual 
 Jew must be prepared to meet. 
 
 This is the individual whose problem must be 
 considered.* How can his spiritual nature best be 
 developed? Can the religion of Judaism satisfy his 
 spiritual needs? Can it be of real service to him in 
 teaching him how to face life? Or will he be 
 better served by dissociation from the faith of his 
 fathers? 
 
 It is at this point that the gravest objection to Juda- 
 ism and especially to Liberal Judaism appears. It 
 is the implicit objection of such faiths as Theosophy 
 and such groups as that of the Ethical Culture Move- 
 ment. And much of.their objection is valid. Let us 
 examine it. KEclecticism, as represented by the groups 
 I have mentioned and by others, offers itself as the 
 logical outcome of liberalism in religion.’ If, so its 
 argument runs, all religions are agreed that the even- 
 tual brotherhood of man is desirable and that the end 
 to be sought is a religiously undifferentiated com- 
 
 ‘Although the number of individuals to be considered has by 
 these qualifications been greatly reduced, it must not be imagined 
 that that number is a small one. In the United States practically 
 all the descendants of German Jews and ever increasing numbers 
 of East Kuropean Jewry come within this category. And while 
 the number is less in Western European lands it is nevertheless 
 in proportion to the number of Jewish inhabitants. 
 
 °In designating these religious groups as eclectic I do not imply 
 that that is their only or their chief characteristic. It is not. But 
 it is the one which stands opposed to the theory of the survival of 
 
 special religious groups, whether Jewish, Christian or of any other 
 kind. 
 
28 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 munity of spirits, is it not the duty of those who no 
 longer believe that right living and salvation are a 
 matter of church or creed, boldly to abandon their 
 various little ‘‘isms’’? Is it not their duty to take the 
 best from each, and to seek and find religious life 
 in the service of the good, in ethical development 
 (both of themselves and others), and in spiritual 
 achievement? 
 
 Such an appeal is not lightly to be ignored, and 
 out of hand attempts at refutation of the philosophy 
 behind it are not likely to prosper. Nor do they 
 serve any worthwhile purpose. Let us face the fact 
 frankly; Eclecticism in religion is appealing and es- 
 pecially to Jews. The very sweep of its universalism, 
 similar, it is true, to the universalism preached in the 
 Old and New Testaments, but made a more vital and 
 central teaching, touches responsive chords in the 
 hearts of many Jews. To them this form of religion 
 suffices. It answers their spiritual needs. It fulfills 
 the purpose of religion; it helps them to live well. 
 
 And because of the attraction of these faiths (the 
 more attractive because there is absent in regard to 
 them the ingrained antagonism of the Jew to the ac- 
 ceptance of Christianity), there are “lost” to Judaism 
 goodly numbers. I put the word “lost” in quotation 
 marks for it is the common term, but in truth it ex- 
 presses ill what has occurred. We have seen that a 
 religion has no claim to survival for its own sake. 
 And if the descendants of Jews can truly find the 
 life of the spirit through a faith other than that of 
 
WHY JUDAISM? 29 
 
 Judaism, and if they feel more deeply compelled to 
 grasp the new faith than to cling to the old, I count 
 them well lost. Only the event can show how much 
 of an impression these faiths will make upon the 
 numbers of those who might otherwise accept Judaism. 
 But be it great or small we shall not fear the event.® 
 
 I have said that some Jews are deeply moved by 
 the appeal of such groups, but it must be made equally 
 clear that their numbers are negligible (at present at 
 all events). The great problem remains, the problem 
 of the mass of Jewish individuals. What of their 
 spiritual life? How shall they learn to live well? 
 Shall they drift along waiting for some religion to 
 claim them as its own, or, as is more probable, shall 
 they lose all religious interest and aim? 
 
 It is not necessary to spend more than a passing 
 paragraph on the point of view that the individual 
 needs no religion, that his natural goodness and in- 
 nate sense of right will suffice him as far as his 
 spiritual education is concerned; and that all re- 
 ligions are but gaudy trappings which show off to 
 poor advantage that which they seek to beautify. 
 This theory is far less common to-day than it has 
 been in the past. Were the facts on which it is 
 based true, the conclusions would indeed make it 
 difficult to defend religion from the point of view 
 
 °The criticism has been made, and justly, that ethical philos- 
 ophies and eclectic morality do not appeal to the mass of man- 
 kind. They require too much intellection, and are too neutral and 
 abstract to grip thesouls of the many. And they lack the warmth, 
 the impulsiveness of religions like Judaism and Christianity. 
 
30  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 of its value for the individual. But history and 
 psychology and the science of education all show it 
 to be false. What we call the ethical attitude and 
 the spiritual point of view we now know to be no in- 
 alienable possession of every individual. These are 
 the hard-won achievements of centuries of effort, and 
 must be won afresh by each generation. They are 
 no more to be looked for as a matter of course in 
 the individual, than a natural appreciation of the 
 best in music or art or literature can be expected 
 without training in those fields. Even though cer- 
 tain negative attitudes as regards wrong doing may, 
 by contact with the world, be forced upon the in- 
 dividual, yet the knowledge of how to live well, the 
 spiritual point of view, must be as truly inculcated in 
 the individual as any other branch of education. And 
 this, the most important branch of all, is the province 
 of religion. 
 
 It is a matter of record that the moral, the ethical, 
 the spiritual have all been inextricably interwoven 
 with the religious in the history of the life of man. I 
 do not imply that they have advanced pari passu. At 
 times certainly they have been bitterly opposed to 
 each other. But the strife has always been internal. 
 They have parted company in one form, only to be 
 more firmly reunited in another. And while the life 
 of the spirit and religion are by no means inter- 
 changeable terms, we nearly always find the most 
 perfect examples of the one closely connected with 
 the other. For religion sets out to enhance the spir- 
 
WHY JUDAISM? 31 
 
 itual, while the spiritual on its side seems to find ulti- 
 mate satisfaction in one form or another of the 
 religious. 
 
 In the case of most individuals the knowledge of 
 how to live well, when attained, is in one way or 
 another the outcome of religious training. It is 
 the religious side of education that stresses right 
 living. And though there are countless men and 
 women who have learned to live well quite unaided 
 by religion in any form, yet the vast majority of noble 
 lives have been and are being influenced by the 
 religious spirit. 
 
 Thus the answer to the problem I have presented, 
 the problem of the Jew in relation to the life of the 
 spirit, is to be found in his religion. Jews just as 
 all other individuals must get their first spiritual in- 
 struction, the rough draft of their life’s plan, from 
 religion. They may fill in the details as they will, 
 and bring added adornments from whatever place 
 they choose, and so they may erect a lovely structure. 
 But first of all come foundations, and foundations 
 which are principles they will find in the teachings 
 of religion. 
 
 Here also lies the answer to the question, “Why 
 Judaism?” For religion to be foundational must be 
 rooted in the depths of the consciousness of the in- 
 dividual. It must be one of those impressions which 
 through primacy and vividness become an integral 
 part of the individual’s being. Thus only Judaism 
 can answer these basic religious needs of him who is 
 
32 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 born a Jew. Only Judaism can furnish him with a 
 religious background. Only in Judaism can the roots 
 of his spiritual consciousness find soil which may be 
 fruitful. And this is inevitable because in the begin- 
 ning at all events it is only to the religion of Judaism 
 that the Jew has access. 
 
 I shall consider later whether Judaism offers a 
 complete education of the spirit, whether it does or 
 should satisfy ultimate spiritual longings. But what 
 is of vital importance, what cannot be emphasized too 
 strongly, is that the Jew at the outset of his life (or 
 if his spiritual development be delayed beyond the 
 years of childhood, at the outset of his spiritual 
 career), needs as an individual, needs terribly, the all- 
 underlying moral strength which he can get, and can 
 only get from Judaism. It matters not what the end 
 of that spiritual career. It may be the complete 
 abandonment of the beliefs with which he set out. 
 It may be that experience will show him that through 
 those beliefs there is made possible the fullest, the 
 most perfect and satisfying way of life. But no mat- 
 ter what be the final judgment, the point of departure 
 must be Judaism. Judaism, at the outset at all 
 events, is for the Jew the sine qua non of the spiritual 
 
 life. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 WHAT LIBERAL JUDAISM IS 
 
 We have seen that individuals of Jewish antece- 
 dents, born or living in Western lands, need Judaism 
 to furnish at least the foundations of their spiritual 
 growth. Judaism on its side derives its raison d étre, 
 at least in respect to these individuals, from the value 
 which it possesses for them. Jews need Judaism it is 
 true, but Judaism must be able to satisfy their needs. 
 The question then to be answered by those interested 
 in the life of Jews living in Western lands, is whether 
 or not Judaism as presented to such individuals is 
 performing its essential function. Is it helping them 
 to live well? And if not, why not? 
 
 In speaking of Judaism as it is presented to Jews 
 living in Western lands, I am referring to Liberal, or 
 as it is sometimes called, Reform Judaism. For it is 
 Liberal Judaism with which they come into contact, 
 which for the most part it is expected they will pro- 
 fess. And by great numbers of such Jews it has been 
 accepted and is being observed. Were this the whole 
 story there would be little need to continue this book, 
 save perhaps as an exposition of the present prin- 
 ciples of Liberal Judaism. But this is not the whole 
 
 story. 
 33 
 
34 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 Liberal Judaism does appeal to many “emanci- 
 pated” Jews. But there are many, many more, whom 
 it fails completely to interest or to hold. Increasing 
 indifference on the part of Jews and especially of 
 young Jews * is incessantly complained of by Liberal 
 Jewish teachers and preachers. And the failure of 
 Liberal Judaism to interest them is, for the most part, 
 unhesitatingly laid at the door of these young Jews 
 or of their parents. In reality, however, the failure 
 cannot be ascribed to them but arises from either one 
 or the other of two quite different causes. 
 
 Either (1) Liberal Judaism has no access to these 
 young people, has no avenue by which it can approach 
 them, and is therefore unable to present itself to their 
 notice or (2) where Liberal Judaism has been pre- 
 sented to them and has failed to hold them, only itself 
 is to blame. 
 
 “When Duty whispers low, ‘Thou must,’ 
 The youth replies, ‘I can.’ ” 
 
 The poet’s insight was sound. The eternal readiness 
 to respond to a summons which is compelling is an 
 unchanging characteristic of youth. But the sum- 
 mons must be compelling. The duty must make itself 
 heard and felt. If it does not there is little good 
 
 *The failure to gain and hold the interest of young Jews, and 
 the necessity for averting such failure in the future, were key- 
 notes of the recent Golden Jubilee convention of the Union of 
 American Hebrew Congregations, held in New York during the 
 winter of 1923. Speaker after speaker gave evidence of the gray- 
 ity of the situation, and the main addresses of the occasion were 
 devoted to discussions of the problem and suggestions as to how 
 to meet it. For further reference see “Report on the Golden 
 Jubilee Convention of the U. A. H. C.” 
 
WHAT LIBERAL JUDAISM IS 30 
 
 to be gained by cavilling at the unresponsiveness of 
 youth, or at the evil of the times. The heart of youth 
 is ever ready. And religion which fails to evoke a 
 response from youth does ill to blame aught but itself 
 for the failure. In all probability it is a no-religion. 
 
 With the problem of Liberal Judaism and those 
 Jews to whom because of external causes it has not 
 been able to present itself, I shall not deal. The prob- 
 lem with which I shall deal is the problem of Liberal 
 Judaism and those Jews to whom it has been offered, 
 but in vain. Why is Liberal Judaism not a compelling 
 faith to these many Jews? What has it lost that is of 
 value, that it no longer grips men? What has been 
 added to it that should not have been added? 
 
 Thus the matter of responsibility is shifted, as in 
 the main it must be, from a consideration of the faults 
 and virtues of the individual to a consideration of 
 the faults and virtues of the religion. The individual 
 is the constant factor; the religion is the variable. 
 And rightly to adjust the relation of the individual 
 to his religion, when they appear to be out of harmony 
 with each other, it is necessary to inquire how far 
 the variable must be changed. This can be done in 
 the case of Liberal Judaism only by a critical examin- 
 ation into its present principles and into the practises 
 or lack of practise to which they give rise. And I 
 shall attempt to state just what Liberal Judaism is 
 and teaches at the present time, and then to inquire 
 into the validity and serviceableness of its character 
 and teachings. 
 
36 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 Liberal Judaism first arose as a protest against 
 religion, and more particularly Judaism, conceived 
 of as law. Its aim was the enfranchisement of the 
 spirit from those customs and traditions of Rabbinic 
 or Orthodox Judaism which had ceased to have mean- 
 ing and purpose. Its leaders were for the most part 
 as Dr. Israel Abrahams puts it, “the intellectually 
 and socially ‘emancipated’ ”’* and the real struggle 
 for reform came about because of their belief, first 
 championed by Abraham Geiger, that thought and 
 religion must be “‘syncretized, not put into separate 
 compartments.” I shall not give the history of this 
 struggle, nor trace the evolution of the religious phi- 
 losophy of Liberal Judaism, a philosophy which took 
 definite form during the last decades of the nineteenth 
 century. This evolution is as noble a chapter as any 
 that the history of religious development affords, 
 being the record of the struggles of men utterly de- 
 voted to Judaism, yet firmly determined to place it in 
 a position in which it could command the intellectual 
 respect as well as the purely emotional devotion of its 
 adherents. 
 
 But it is the result, the final stage in this evolu- 
 tion, with which I am here concerned. And the fact 
 that there was a final stage must be emphasized. Lib- 
 eral Judaism gradually developed a number of dis- 
 tinct and separate dogmas of its own. It came in 
 time, both in its own eyes and in the eyes of Ortho- 
 
 Si Se ea on Liberal Judaism, Encyclopedia of Religion and 
 ‘thics. 
 
WHAT LIBERAL JUDAISM IS vt 
 
 dox Judaism and of the world, to be thought of as the 
 expression of a definite religious point of view.* What 
 was for years a chaos of varying opinions and doc- 
 trines held by different and differing Liberal Jews, 
 emerged before the end of the nineteenth century into 
 an orderly and clearly connected whole. The stage 
 of controversy over what the beliefs and teachings of 
 Liberal Judaism were came to an end. ‘The era of 
 common creed, varied only in the details of expound- 
 ing it, set in. It is necessary therefore to turn to 
 Liberal Judaism, or to the redaction of it accepted 
 by almost all Liberal Jews, and to state its beliefs, 
 its teachings, and its religious philosophy. 
 
 The positive affirmations of Liberal Judaism arise, 
 as is not unnatural, out of its denial of the funda- 
 mental conception of Rabbinic Judaism, the concep- 
 tion of religion, interpreted as law. Rabbinic 
 Judaism holds that observance of the law, written 
 and oral, beginning with every detail of the Mosaic 
 code, and ending with the precepts of the final au- 
 thoritative compilation known as the “Shulchan 
 Aruch” is the first duty and privilege of every Jew. 
 It draws no distinction between the moral and the cere- 
 monial command. It considers them, in theory at 
 least, of equal importance. Directly opposed to this 
 position is that of Liberal Judaism which holds that 
 the ceremonial and moral laws are not of equal im- 
 
 *This viewpoint is perhaps most clearly and succinctly set 
 forth in what is known as the Pittsburgh Platform, a statement 
 issued in that city in 1885 by a large and representative group 
 of Reform Rabbis. 
 
38  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 portance. It insists that the moral law and only the 
 moral law, whether found in the Bible or in post- 
 Biblical literature, is eternally binding. The cere- 
 monial law is to be observed and valued only insofar 
 as it strengthens and supports the moral law. And 
 when it ceases to do so, and becomes an obstruction 
 and hindrance to the moral law, it is to be abandoned 
 as a garment once serviceable and necessary, but 
 like all garments made of perishable stuff. I can- 
 not do better here than to quote from Dr. Philipson’s 
 admirable work, “The Reform Movement in Juda- 
 ism.” He says: * 
 
 ‘“‘No ceremonial law can be eternally binding. No 
 generation can legislate for all future ages. Man- 
 kind grows. The Biblical books and the Talmudical 
 collections, when approached in this spirit, yield 
 wonderful results. The stream of change and devel- 
 opment is perceptible throughout. The universal 
 commands implanted in the heart of man, and de- 
 pendent on neither time nor place, are the essentials 
 which never change, as Abraham Ibn Ezra puts it; 
 the special laws, however, which arise from temporary 
 and local conditions, are not written indelibly in 
 the eternal scheme of things. This test reform Juda- 
 ism applies to the traditions, and in all its develop- 
 ment this has been the guiding principle. Not that 
 Reform Judaism repudiates tradition or has broken 
 with Jewish development as is often charged erro- 
 
 ‘The Reform Movement in Judaism” by David Philipson 
 (1907), pp. 6-7. 
 
WHAT LIBERAL JUDAISM IS 39 
 
 neously; it lays as great stress upon the principle of 
 tradition as does Rabbinical Judaism, but it discrim- 
 inates between separate traditions as these have be- 
 come actualized in forms, ceremonies, customs and 
 beliefs, accepting or rejecting them in accordance 
 with the modern religious need and outlook, while 
 Rabbinical Judaism makes no such discrimination. 
 In a word, Reform Judaism differentiates between 
 tradition and the traditions; it considers itself, too, a 
 link in the chain of Jewish tradition. . . .” 
 
 But while the central point of Liberal Judaism is 
 its championing of the religion of the spirit as dis- 
 tinct from, and even opposed to, that of the letter, 
 the position which it took in regard to certain tradi- 
 tional beliefs and dogmas of Judaism is perhaps 
 even more original. It is well to note that its atti- 
 tude toward them is made possible only because of 
 its fundamental viewpoint that Judaism is a re- 
 ligion unchanging in basic moral principles, but 
 varying from age to age in the practises to which it 
 adheres. Holding this view Liberal Judaism ‘re- 
 verses almost entirely the position of Rabbinic Juda- 
 ism in regard to such important matters as: (1) The 
 Messianic Nationalism of Judaism, to use the phrase 
 of Emil Hirsch, the conception of Israel as a nation, 
 and the expectation of its return to Palestine. (2) The 
 supposed mission of Israel. (3) The advent of a 
 personal Messiah. (4) The Resurrection of the 
 Body. (5) The relative importance of the Mosaic 
 and the prophetic portions of the Bible. 
 
40  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 I refer again to Dr. Philipson’s work.° “The 
 burden of the thought of Rabbinical Judaism is na- 
 tional. The hope expressed in the traditional prayer 
 is that the Jews will return to Palestine, again be- 
 come a nation under the rule of a scion of the house 
 of David, reinstitute the sacrifices under the minis- 
 tration of the descendants of Aaron, and worship 
 in the temple rebuilt on the ruins of the temple of 
 old. The Jews, in their dispersion among the na- 
 tions are in a state of exile; their century-long suf- 
 ferings are a punishment for the sins committed by 
 the fathers while living in Palestine; when the meas- 
 ure of the expiation will be full, the restoration will 
 take place. Agains: this doctrine reform Judaism 
 protests. It contends that the national existence of 
 the Jews ceased when the Romans set the temple 
 aflame and destroyed Jerusalem. The career in Pal- 
 estine was but a preparation for Israel’s work in all 
 portions of the world. As the early home of the 
 faith, . . . Palestine is a precious memory of the 
 past, but it is not a hope of the future. With the dis- 
 persion of the Jews all over the world, the universal 
 mission of Judaism began. The Jews are citizens and 
 faithful sons of the lands of their birth or adoption. 
 They are a religious community, not a nation.” 
 
 In addition to its definite exposition of the doctrine 
 of Liberal Judaism in regard to Palestine and the 
 conception of Israel as a religious community, the 
 passage quoted above alludes to the Messianic hope 
 
 °“The Reform Movement in Judaism” (1907), pp. 7 and 8. 
 
WHAT LIBERAL JUDAISM IS Al 
 
 and to the Mission of Israel. On these questions, too, 
 Liberal Judaism has a distinct doctrine of its own. 
 It rejects completely the teaching of the coming of 
 a personal Messiah. His function in Jewish tradi- 
 tion was to have been the redemption of all the Jews 
 scattered throughout the world, and the effecting of 
 a return to Palestine of all of them, there to estab- 
 lish the Kingdom of God upon earth. 
 
 The desirability as well as the likelihood of such 
 an occurrence Liberal Judaism denies, and partly as 
 the result of this denial, partly because of its objec- 
 tion to the theory behind the conception, it rejects 
 the doctrine of the coming of a Messiah. 
 
 But though it foregoes the hope of a Messiah, Lib- 
 eral Judaism offers in its place what it terms the 
 Messianic hope for the final establishment of Truth, 
 Justice and Peace among all men. In 1869 at the 
 first important conference of Liberal Jews held in 
 America it was laid down as fundamental that ““The 
 Messianic aim of Israel is not the restoration of the 
 Old Jewish state under a descendant of David, .. . 
 but the union of all the children of God in the con- 
 fession of the unity of God... .” 
 
 From these newer conceptions of Israel as “‘re- 
 ligious community” and not as nation, and of an 
 approaching Messianic state of affairs, rather than 
 a state, over the affairs of which a personal Messiah 
 is to rule, arose this most important doctrine of Lib- 
 eral Judaism, its doctrine of the mission of Israel. 
 The unity of God, the prophetic ideal of Justice and 
 
42 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 Righteousness, the era of peace and good-will, these 
 are the great teachings entrusted to Israel by God, 
 who sought out and trained Israel that it in turn 
 might carry His message to all the peoples of the 
 world. This mission is not to be thought of so much 
 as a privilege or a favor, as it is to be regarded as 
 a duty and a responsibility. As Emil Hirsch put 
 it: “Israel is itself the Messianic People, appointed 
 to spread by its fortitude and loyalty the monotheistic 
 truth over all the earth, to be an example of recti- 
 tude toward all others.” ° 
 
 And until its mission is accomplished, until the 
 far-off divine event comes to pass, Israel is God’s 
 witness upon earth. Mr. Claude Montefiore writes: 
 “The word of the prophet, ‘Ye are my witnesses’ is 
 still accepted and believed by us. Sometimes wit- 
 nesses through silence, sometimes through speech and 
 teaching, at all times witnesses by our lives and ex- 
 perience, ‘we have to remain true to what we believe 
 to be the ordinance and will of God.” * 
 
 This belief in the all-importance of Israel’s mission 
 conditions in its turn the point of view of Liberal 
 Judaism concerning its practises and observances. 
 Only those which are in keeping with the spirit of its 
 nature and mission must be adhered to. Prayers for 
 the reéstablishment of the sacrificial offerings are not 
 in keeping with that spirit. They are abolished. Diet- 
 ary laws are held to be no longer of any importance. 
 
 * Article on Reform Judaism in the Jewish Encyclopedia. 
 *“Outlines of Liberal Judaism,” 1912, p. 170, 
 
WHAT LIBERAL JUDAISM IS 43 
 
 They are declared null and void. And whatever of 
 tradition does harmonize with present day life and 
 thought is to be impregnated with the relation which 
 it bears not only to the past but to the future. All 
 the festivals and observances of Liberal Judaism are 
 closely bound up with its hope for the coming of the 
 day when to the one God “every knee will bend and 
 every tongue give homage. When all men shall rec- 
 ognize that they are brethren, so that one in spirit 
 and one in fellowship they may be forever united.” 
 For to the furtherance of these ends Liberal Judaism 
 is unequivocally committed. 
 
 The only other important doctrine which Liberal 
 Judaism holds is its assertion of the immortality of 
 the soul. This in itself is not new to Judaism; it is 
 an old belief; but it is particularly emphasized by 
 Liberal Judaism because of its concomitant denial 
 of the bodily resurrection. We find in Rabbinic 
 Judaism the two doctrines held together. In accord- 
 ance with the fundamental principles stated above, 
 Liberal Judaism asserts its right and duty to empha- 
 size the one, while abandoning the other. 
 
 In concluding this rapid examination of the main 
 principles of Liberal Judaism it is not amiss to state, 
 as so many of its leaders have done, that it is in es- 
 sence a return to prophetic Judaism—not to the letter 
 but to the spirit of the Hebrew Prophets. Their uni- 
 versalism, their love of justice, their insistence on 
 the importance of ethical principles rather than out- 
 ward forms of religion; all these teachings adapted 
 
44. LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 to the needs of the age Liberal Judaism has accepted. 
 It is based, it is true, on the Mosaic law as found in 
 part or in parts of the Pentateuch. But its surest 
 sanction, the bulwark of its strength is its oneness with 
 the teachings and with the spirit of the prophets. It 
 is this Liberal Judaism which I now propose critically 
 to examine. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE QUESTION OF ATTITUDE 
 
 The beliefs and teachings of Liberal Judaism were 
 briefly stated in the last chapter. No comment was 
 there made, however, either on their validity or 
 value; and no criticism either adverse or favorable 
 was offered, except such criticism as was implicit 
 in pointing out that for some reason or reasons this 
 body of teaching no longer exerted as vital an influ- 
 ence as once it did. 
 
 Yet the fact that Liberal Judaism does not influ- 
 ence men and women as it should do, furnishes the 
 basis for this chapter, and indirectly for all the rest 
 of this volume. If Liberal Judaism has been pre- 
 sented to “emancipated” Jews and has failed to win 
 devotion and loyalty from them to any considerable 
 extent, it is necessary to inquire just where the trouble 
 lies. An answer must be found to the question, What 
 shall be presented to these Jews in the name of re- 
 ligion? What is presented is Liberal Judaism. And 
 in large degree Liberal Judaism has failed. What 
 can be done to remedy that failure? 
 
 What is needed and wanted by men and women 
 to-day, particularly by younger men and women, is 
 
 45 
 
46  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 aid in solving the many problems which life presents. 
 What they desire is counsel, thoughtful counsel which 
 will help them to solve, not the riddle of the uni- 
 verse, but the problems great and small of their daily 
 lives. First there is the problem of values. What 
 are the things in life which are worth while? What 
 is worth striving for, worth achieving, worth pos- 
 sessing? What standards are to be followed or is 
 standardlessness a perfectly justifiable way of life? 
 What if anything can “impart to man’s fleeting days 
 an abiding value?” Is there anything to which man 
 can hold with certainty, and yet not blindly, and 
 which will not in the end prove to be vanity of vani- 
 ties? These are some among the problems of values. 
 
 In the less philosophical matters of life men and 
 women are perhaps even more in need of thoughtful 
 aid. For in the province of action they are met with 
 what seem to be even graver questions. What is to 
 be the measure of their Jewishness, their humani- 
 tarianism, their honesty? What is to be their atti- 
 tude toward the very real problems which are met 
 with constantly in the realms of business, of politics, 
 of the home, in the relations between the sexes? 
 
 Now these problems are the problems of religion. 
 They are its reasons for existence, and most religions 
 to-day realize and recognize this fact. Liberal Juda- 
 ism is among them. It admits the existence of these 
 problems and asserts its complete competency to meet 
 with and to solve them. It finds however that its 
 solutions are constantly rejected and its aid no longer 
 
THE QUESTION OF ATTITUDE 4.7 
 
 sought. And it wonders what is the reason for its 
 failure. 
 
 Yet the reason ought to be very clear. The funda- 
 mental attitude of Liberal Judaism is wrong.’ For 
 Liberal Judaism like all religions is essentially an 
 attitude of mind, not a body of teachings and beliefs. 
 Teachings and beliefs are little more than the result, 
 the outgrowth of the attitude which is taken. And 
 I maintain that the attitude taken to-day by Liberal 
 Judaism is in essence wrong! It is not this or that 
 belief or teaching which is at fault. What is imper- 
 atively necessary is a sweeping change in the whole 
 conception of the purpose, the scope and the sanction 
 of Liberal Judaism, a fundamental change in outlook 
 and in attitude. And the task to which this book is 
 bound, is to make clear in outline at least the direc- 
 tion in which the change must be made and to sug- 
 gest at least some ways in which that change may be 
 effected. 
 
 (1) The attitude of Liberal Judaism to-day (and 
 when I refer to Liberal Judaism in this connection I 
 refer to Liberal Jewish leaders, particularly Rabbis 
 and teachers, for they determine its attitude), is first 
 of all unconscionably dogmatic. Liberal Judaism 
 arose, it is true, as a protest against certain kinds 
 
 *It is perhaps only fair to add that the attitude of Liberal 
 Judaism is not more wrong than that of Orthodox or even 
 Liberal Christianity. In fact as far as its underlying attitude 
 is concerned Liberal Judaism is identical with Christianity. The 
 difference is in the minutiz, important though these may be, of 
 dogma and ceremonial. 
 
48  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 of dogma, particularly ceremonial and _ liturgical 
 dogma, bit it has retained as much theological 
 dogma (though of a different kind in detail) as 
 Orthodox Judaism ever had, and in addition it has 
 emphasized what may be called ethical or spiritual 
 dogma. 
 
 By theological dogma I mean the ultra-positive 
 assertion of the existence of God and of the immortal- 
 ity of the soul. Liberal Judaism asserts these things 
 as sure, teaches them as facts established beyond 
 the question of a doubt. And this, it seems to me, is 
 wrong. 
 
 It would be the sheerest folly not to admit the 
 intense, one might almost say universally intense 
 human longing for some supernatural being, who 
 may be worshipped, the longing which in the Judaism 
 of old evolved into the belief in an entirely personal 
 God. And perhaps with even more persistence the 
 human mind and heart have longed and hoped and 
 dreamed for assurance that there is to be a life after 
 death, a life beyond life, the life eternal. These are 
 matters which, whether we like it or not, concern 
 every one of us. But they are not matters upon 
 which we may speak with certainty, and surely not 
 dogmatically. They are problems which affect every- 
 one; they are not problems for which anyone or 
 anything can provide a final solution. That is their 
 majesty. That is the secret of the age-long hold that 
 they have kept upon the minds and hearts of men. 
 They are forever insoluble, forever inscrutable, and 
 
THE QUESTION OF ATTITUDE 49 
 
 the finite minds of men will never fully comprehend 
 them. 
 
 Yet Liberal Judaism claims by the attitude which it 
 assumes to have plucked out the heart of their mys- 
 tery. Liberal Judaism tells us unhesitatingly that 
 God does exist, that all depends on his existence, and 
 that there is and must be a life after death. And then 
 it wonders why it fails to hold the youth of to-day 
 with its teachings! ? It does not understand that the 
 very certainty of its attitude touching these certainly 
 insoluble problems is enough to repel. Men and 
 women in this age who think, know that these are 
 things of which no man, nor age, nor faith can be sure. 
 They realize that every individual, in every age who 
 earnestly strives to understand, to know, concerning 
 God and the future life must walk often if not always 
 through the valley of the shadow of doubt, and they 
 can neither respect nor honor a religion which as- 
 serts dogmatically and finally conclusions concerning 
 matters which they feel to be essentially and eter- 
 nally problematic. 
 
 So that when Liberal Judaism promulgates as 
 dogmas its beliefs in the existence of God and in the 
 immortality of the soul, it loses, as it deserves to lose, 
 the confidence of those among its followers who 
 
 ?'With the attitude, the state of mind, and the teachings, of 
 Liberal Judaism it is no wonder that it is rejected as unservice- 
 able and worthless in solving such problems as those which have 
 been indicated above. The wonder would be if it were widely 
 accepted. The wonder, to my mind, at least, is that it is accepted 
 even as much as it is! 
 
90 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 think for themselves. It is its attitude which is at 
 fault; it is its outlook which must be changed. 
 
 (2) Liberal Judaism is based on the past, the his- 
 torical, the religious past of the Jewish people. This 
 is inevitable. But that its attitude toward the present 
 should be one of interpretation solely or even chiefly 
 on the basis of past teachings is neither inevitable 
 nor right nor wise. It must be made perfectly clear 
 that I do not underestimate the tremendous value of 
 the religious life of the past for the religious life of 
 the present. But Liberal Judaism places a wrong em- 
 phasis upon the relation of the present to the past, 
 Assuming the validity of the ethical and spiritual 
 teachings of the past, it invokes them as the answer 
 to the questions of the present.® 
 
 These teachings include what is best in the 
 Bible, particularly the prophetic portions of the 
 Bible, and in addition some later Jewish teachings, 
 which are really amplifications and interpretations 
 of the earlier point of view. This is the equipment 
 with which for the most part Liberal Judaism offers 
 to grapple with the problems which search men’s 
 souls to-day. And talk as we may about eternal veri- 
 
 * Basing itself on these teachings, it can, it is true, hardly do 
 less. For if they are invalid or even insufficient the religious 
 form which embodies them no longer deserves to live. The con- 
 ception which Liberal Judaism seems to have of its mission, 
 namely the administering and conserving of the truths of the 
 past, might be likened to that of a group of trustees whose sole 
 or chief business function was the administering and safeguarding 
 of a large inheritance or trust fund. Should the securities of 
 which the fund consisted prove to have deteriorated in value in 
 the course of time, would it be honest for the trustees to act as 
 if the securities had remained unchanged in value? 
 
THE QUESTION OF ATTITUDE ol 
 
 ties and unchanging realities, this equipment, while 
 not obsolete, is woefully insufficient. 
 
 Just as men and women to-day refuse to accept dog- 
 matic assertion of theological beliefs, so they refuse 
 to accept dogmatic assertion of moral and ethical - 
 teachings, especially when such teachings are based 
 upon a past which is no longer thought of as the 
 world’s golden age of the spirit. Men and women no 
 longer believe that all virtue belongs to the past and 
 that the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets are 
 ultimate and all-inclusive. Most important of all, 
 they deny that, however valid and true those insights 
 may have been and still are, they are sufficient to meet 
 the problems of the present. No past however glorious 
 can serve as the key to the future. Present problems 
 can only be intelligently solved by decisions fashioned 
 under the impact of contemporaneous forces; they 
 become compelling solutions, moreover, only through 
 the consciousness that it is a present impact which 
 produces them. Men and women no longer value 
 a religious opinion because of historic primogeni- 
 ture; on the contrary, they are inclined to look 
 askance at that which offers itself as the solution of 
 a problem, when its chief qualification for that 
 function is its relation to the past. The problems of 
 to-day must evoke the solutions of to-day. 
 
 The indignant cry of Liberal Judaism will be 
 raised. “What! Deny the past, cut ourselves off from 
 all the age-long, painfully acquired, wisdom of tradi- 
 tion? Lose the strength which has sustained us so 
 
52 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 long?” Certainly not! Cherish the past. Honor it. 
 Reverence it. But not blindly! Use the teachings of 
 the past to help solve the problems of the present, 
 but do not offer them as the solution. ‘That is the 
 mistake, that is the offense. For offering the past as 
 the solution has only the unhappy effect of alienating 
 from it the present which is prepared to recognize its 
 virtues, but which will not close its eyes to its defects. 
 The past may help solve the problems of the present; 
 knowledge of it will undoubtedly throw much light 
 upon them; but that is all. Nothing but the present 
 light can meet the present’s need. Nothing but cur 
 own solution is vital enough, whether it be correct 
 enough or not, to satisfy ourselves. Again it is a 
 question of attitude. 
 
 (3) The third criticism to be made of Liberal 
 Judaism arises indirectly from its attitude of seek- 
 ing to interpret the present by means of the past. 
 Such an attitude leads inevitably toward moral stand- 
 ardization and ethical uniformity. And shaping its 
 viewpoint concerning problems of the present accord- 
 ing to the teachings of the past, Liberal Judaism 
 naturally insists that this viewpoint be accepted, at 
 least by all those who call themselves Liberal Jews. 
 
 If the premise be allowed, one can hardly hope to 
 object to the perfectly logical conclusion. If the 
 teachings of the past rightly interpreted can solve 
 the problems of the present, and if the vast majority 
 of Liberal Jewish teachers interpret them similarly, 
 it follows that the thing for all individual Jews to do 
 
THE QUESTION OF ATTITUDE o3 
 
 is to attempt fully to grasp these interpretations and 
 to apply them to their own lives. 
 
 But the premise as I have said is false. Just as 
 the past cannot furnish the key to the future, so the 
 interpretations and judgments of one individual can- 
 not and ought not be expected to furnish standards 
 for other individuals. The problems of any given 
 individual are different from the problems of any 
 other individual, or of all individuals, and the aim 
 of religion ought not be to provide one solution for 
 many diverse problems, as Liberal Judaism too often 
 does, but to stimulate each individual to think through 
 and solve his own problems for himself. The func- 
 tion of religion must not be to erect a universal stand- 
 ard of action, but to present in clearest fashion 
 various possibilities and viewpoints to the individual, 
 with the purpose of aiding him as an individual in 
 choosing those which will be in fullest accord with his 
 own highest nature, and which therefore will be of 
 greatest service to him in meeting his particular prob- 
 lems. Thus religion is not to provide an example for 
 the individual to copy but is to stimulate him, as a 
 wise teacher of ethics has put it, to express his own 
 nature in his own way. 
 
 Summing up the present attitude of Liberal Juda- 
 ism, it appears that it offers to the Jew a distinct teach- 
 ing of its own. This teaching is based first on certain 
 theological dogmas. These it holds to be eternally 
 true and valid, and these condition its existence. Its 
 teachings are further based on the religious ideals of 
 
54 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 the Hebrew prophets as reinterpreted in the light of 
 the present, and from these teachings it constructs a 
 way of life which it offers for acceptance to its ad- 
 herents. This is the attitude of Liberal Judaism,— 
 in each phase, it seems to me, a wrong attitude. And 
 although in dealing with each phase of it, I have at- 
 tempted to show why it is a wrong attitude, and in 
 doing so have hinted at what the attitude ought in 
 each case to be, it is not amiss here to make a more 
 coherent and inclusive statement of the positive 
 aspect of what I term the problem of attitude. 
 
 Life presents itself as the problem of all problems 
 to each individual. He must meet it, come to grips 
 with it, seek to read its riddle. In this effort he will 
 make use of any aid or instrument which lies at 
 hand. Such aid is to be found for some individuals 
 in the belief in and worship of a supreme being whom 
 they designate as God. For others strength is derived 
 from the belief in a life after death, a coming to- 
 gether once more with the loved ones of earth. Still 
 others find help in allying themselves to a past whether 
 religious or political and in trying to live in com- 
 munion with the spirit of that past. And finally large 
 numbers of individuals gain strength to live their 
 lives well from the wisdom and inspiration which 
 great spiritual teachers have given to the world.* 
 
 *It ought to be explained here that these different aids are 
 not conceived of as being used, one by one individual, another 
 by another individual. In almost all individuals there will be 
 found a combination of all of them or most of them, though 
 some one or two are likely to predominate in any one indi- 
 
THE QUESTION OF ATTITUDE DO 
 
 These are some of the aids by which individuals 
 seek to grapple with life. The business of religion 
 is to help them. And the business of Liberal Judaism 
 is to help those among them who are Jews. The 
 question is how best to help. Dogmatism, whether 
 theological or ethical, is not the answer, and having 
 renounced that broad and easy path there must be 
 found another way. The idea of God and of the 
 immortality of the soul must not be preached as cer- 
 tainties, but pondered over and dealt with as vital pos- 
 sibilities. Liberal Jewish teachers, instead of giving 
 more or less scholastic proofs of the truth of these 
 things, must admit frankly that these are definitely 
 personal matters, and offer only the testimony of their 
 own personal experience for what it may be worth. 
 And they must learn to invite, not to discountenance, 
 serious disagreement. 
 
 Instead of offering general solutions for present- 
 day problems based on the teachings of the past, Lib- 
 eral Judaism must make perfectly clear that the solu- 
 tion of these problems can at best be only indirectly 
 aided by the teachings of the past, that present prob- 
 lems must be approached with what in any age may 
 be called the impulse of the present point of view, 
 and must be dealt with in a different manner by every 
 individual. It must emphasize and not minimize the 
 
 vidual’s experience. And it might be further stated that there 
 are great numbers of individuals who do not find aid in any of 
 these ways. Hither their training or their personal peculiarities 
 may lead them to seek aid in entirely other and even unrelated 
 fields. 
 
56 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 importance of diverse opinions, of differing points 
 of view. 
 
 Up to this point I have deal with the attitude of 
 religion gua religion and I have purposely made no 
 reference to what may be termed the distinctly Jew- 
 ish elements of Liberal Judaism. How can they be 
 retained or is there any need of retaining them if 
 the attitude of religion is to be thus abruptly changed? 
 The answer is almost the same as that given at the 
 end of the chapter which dealt with the problem, 
 “Why Judaism?” Judaism must serve as the founda- 
 tion, the cornerstone of spiritual development. The 
 individual Jew, to meet adequately the many prob- 
 lems which life presents to him, must have a spir- 
 itual background, and this background Judaism fur- 
 nishes. His past, the belief of his fathers, was 
 Judaism. It served them well, but his problems are 
 not their problems and he must examine whether or 
 not what was true for them remains true for him. 
 
 Yet with Judaism he must commence. He must 
 first of all learn what the teachings of his past and 
 the history of his people were. For these will assist 
 him in fashioning his own life whether he accept 
 or reject them ultimately. Liberal Jewish teachers 
 must present Judaism to the Jew as his spiritual her- 
 itage. But they must not insist upon it as his final 
 spiritual home. They must first instruct him con- 
 cerning the customs, beliefs, traditions of the past 
 and then with him examine into their value and truth. 
 
 In this examination’ Liberal Judaism must be 
 
THE QUESTION OF ATTITUDE od 
 
 strong and fearless, applying to the problems with 
 which Judaism attempts to deal any help which it 
 may find outside its own particular sphere. Socrates, 
 Jesus, Emerson, Kant, the spirit and the word of any 
 or all of these as well as of countless other teachers, 
 must be invoked by Liberal Judaism when the need 
 arises, to complete its teachings, perhaps at times, 
 even to supersede them. And if the objection be 
 raised that this may in the end take the Jew away 
 from Judaism, rather than strengthen his love for it, 
 the answer may perhaps best be given in the word 
 of the psalmist. “Who shall dwell in thy holy 
 hill? . . . He that sweareth to his own hurt and 
 changeth not’! If the principles which lead to such 
 an attitude and viewpoint as that which I have out- 
 lined are valid, Judaism dare not shrink from apply- 
 ing them when they affect itself. 
 
 True it may be that this attitude will cause some, 
 perhaps many, to find spiritual light and life else- 
 where, but Judaism will obtain the more than compen- 
 sating joy of knowing that the faith of those who, 
 having known and heard all, have yet chosen Judaism 
 as the deepest and clearest of all spiritual faiths, 
 is founded as upon a rock. Liberal Judaism must 
 dare to liberalize itself. 
 
 5 Any religion which is unable to stand a searching scrutiny 
 can hardly expect to retain its influence. A refusal to be exam- 
 ined in the light of the knowledge of the present would be tanta- 
 mount to an admission that it possessed intrinsic defects. If, on 
 the other hand, a religion be sure of itself, it will welcome testing, 
 secure in its own opinion of itself at least. And in any case if 
 these or any tests which are justifiable prove it to be worthless, 
 it cannot in conscience be preserved. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 WHAT OF “‘THE MISSION OF ISRAEL’? 
 
 I have said that religion, the purpose of which is 
 to help men to live well, must be characterized by an 
 attitude very different from that of Liberal Judaism 
 to-day. The difference has been shown to be three- 
 fold. It lies, first of all, in abandoning dogmatic 
 assertion relating to matters of theological belief, 
 and in substituting for such dogmatic assertion open- 
 minded and intelligent consideration of viewpoints 
 quite dissimilar, and even conflicting. 
 
 In the next place, a change in attitude was shown 
 to be necessary in the emphasis placed upon the re- 
 lation between the ethical teachings of the past and 
 those of the present. The past is not to be employed 
 as an index to the problems of the present, but is to 
 be consulted rather as a supplementary and secondary 
 help in dealing with them. 
 
 Finally the attitude of Judaism is not to be one 
 of seeking to discover and to teach the right or the 
 good way of life; Judaism must recognize and act 
 upon the fact that it cannot find any one way which 
 can be commended to all individuals. Judaism must 
 realize that the right and good way of life for any 
 
 58 
 
WHAT OF “THE MISSION OF ISRAEL”? 59 
 
 person is, and must be, quite different from that of 
 any or all other persons, and that its own sphere of 
 effort must lie, first in preparing the individual to 
 find the way which is best for him, and then in stim- 
 ulating and encouraging him to persist in that way. 
 
 It may be charged that such fundamental changes 
 in attitude as are here suggested, would, if adopted, 
 quite. vitiate the character of Judaism. The adoption 
 of such an attitude by a religious movement which is 
 in the formative stages to-day might (it may be 
 added) not be amiss. But in a religion whose place 
 and purpose are as old and well-established as are 
 Judaism’s, the introduction of such changes would 
 do little but bring about confusion, and the service 
 that they might render would be infinitely less than 
 the harm which they would probably do. I believe, 
 however, that the changes which the adoption of this 
 attitude would necessitate, will prove neither danger- 
 ous nor destructive in character but will act, rather, 
 as a needed corrective and stimulant. And I be- 
 lieve that it is the business of those who hold that this 
 attitude is a right and necessary one, to bend all 
 their energies to an attempt which they consider not 
 only justifiable but imperative. Feelings of appre- 
 hension and doubt concerning the outcome of such 
 sweeping changes, real as they * must be, vanish be- 
 
 1'When the fundamental point of view concerning any religion 
 which was laid down in the first chapter is recalled, i.e., that its 
 aim must not be to perpetuate or to preserve itself, but that 
 when occasion arise it must be prepared to sacrifice itself, it will 
 appear clearly that nothing bars the way to such an attempt. 
 
60  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 fore the possibility of progress and development 
 which such a course presents. Judaism must be 
 reborn. 
 
 It will be necessary in the course of the following 
 chapters to deal with certain aspects of the life of 
 Jews living in Western lands, which Liberal Juda- 
 ism, as it exists at present, has not touched. It will 
 be necessary to relate the principles of religion, and 
 therefore of Judaism, to questions which have not 
 hitherto been considered as lying within its province. 
 But the most important changes which the new Juda- 
 ism, at which I have hinted, will inaugurate, must 
 affect the fundamental teachings of Liberal Judaism. 
 It is the doctrines and beliefs of Liberal Judaism 
 which will undergo the most marked changes. For 
 the changes in them will condition further advance. 
 
 Such questions as what the “Mission of Israel” is, 
 whether intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews 
 is a practise to be discountenanced, as it has been in 
 the past, and what the relation of Judaism to other 
 faiths and teachings, particularly the faith and teach- 
 ings of Christianity, is to be, are questions upon 
 which Liberal Judaism now holds a very definite 
 point of view. And if the attitude of Liberal Juda- 
 ism be in great part altered, its teachings concerning 
 these matters must necessarily undergo the same 
 change. 
 
 Perhaps the pivotal conception of the social and 
 religious philosophy of Judaism has been its belief 
 in the Messianic character of the Jewish people, the 
 
WHAT OF “THE MISSION OF ISRAEL”? 61 
 
 belief that Israel was a nation burdened and ex: 
 alted by a particular mission. In Rabbinic Judaism 
 this belief was at first not dissimilar from that which 
 Liberal Judaism now holds. Israel was conceived 
 of as the messenger people, the bearer of the truth 
 of the one God to all the nations of the earth. But 
 as the second dispersion proved to be a lasting one, 
 and as century after century of intolerance and perse- 
 cution went by, and the world gave no sign of being 
 anxious or even willing to accept the message which 
 Israel offered, Jews everywhere came gradually to 
 place less emphasis on the importance of their mis- 
 sion. Instead of longing for the day when they 
 themselves should enlighten the world, they began 
 to concentrate their hope on the coming of a Messiah 
 who should first of all (for this was far more urgently 
 needed) relieve the oppression of Israel. The desire 
 to fulfill its mission, although it never vanished from 
 Judaism, grew less keen. That mission became asso- 
 ciated in a rather hazy way with the return to Pales- 
 tine under the leadership of the Messiah. Simul- 
 taneouly with that occurrence the eyes of all men 
 would, it was believed, be miraculously opened, all 
 would unite to adore the one true God, and the mission 
 of Israel would automatically be accomplished. 
 When Liberal Judaism arose it rejected utterly, 
 as we have seen, the doctrine of the personal Messiah, 
 with which doctrine the conception of the mission of 
 Israel was bound up. But the belief in a mission it 
 clung to firmly. It went further. It emphasized and 
 
62 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 magnified that belief. It went so far as to associate 
 all of Jewish history from earliest times, even the 
 tragedies of that history, with the missionary concep- 
 tion, and to interpret them in its terms. In an era 
 of universalism, the universal message of Israel to the 
 world was seized on, and made the cornerstone of the 
 new movement.” In 1869 the first representative body 
 of reform Jews to make any responsible public state- 
 ment declared: “We look upon the destruction of the 
 second Jewish commonwealth not as a punishment 
 for the sinfulness of Israel but as the result of the 
 divine purpose . . . which . . . consists in the dis- 
 persion of the Jews to all parts of the earth, for the 
 realization of their high priestly mission to lead the 
 nations to the true knowledge and worship of God.” 
 And forty years later I find in Montefiore’s Out- 
 lines of Liberal Judaism the following passage: 
 “More and more in the modern world Israel is becom- 
 ing conscious of its religious mission. . . . And the 
 wider conviction of the mission together with the de- 
 velopment and growth of Liberal Judaism, and a 
 gradual change in external circumstances, may all 
 work together for the better carrying out and accom- 
 
 ? Liberal Judaism clung to the belief in the mission of Israel 
 because its early teachers were firmly convinced that such a 
 mission really did exist for their people. But it is interesting to 
 note that this conception of a mission served two purposes. Not 
 only did it furnish Liberal Judaism with an aim, a purpose 
 toward the accomplishment of which it could strive, but the 
 missionary conception was offered also as the chief reason for 
 the preservation of the Jewish identity when once the conception 
 of Israel as a nation had been abandoned. 
 
WHAT OF “THE MISSION OF ISRAEL”? 63 
 
 plishment of the Jewish mission in many quarters of 
 the civilized world.” But it is hardly necessary to 
 adduce proofs that this belief exists. It is the very 
 heart of the teachings of Liberal Judaism. 
 
 Although almost all Liberal Jews are united in the 
 belief that Israel has a certain mission, it is necessary 
 to note that there is no such universal agreement as 
 to its character, and if there were differences as to 
 the details of the mission only, it would hardly be 
 necessary to point them out. But the differences in 
 the viewpoints concerning Israel’s mission are so 
 marked that it will be necessary to deal with them 
 separately first, in order to deal ultimately with the 
 whole missionary conception. It is possible to find 
 however in the various shades of belief two outstand- 
 ing points of view which include many others. Ac- 
 cording to the first, the mission of Israel is primarily 
 religious—the propagation throughout the world of 
 the belief in God’s unity. The other view is that 
 Israel’s mission is social, and consists in establishing 
 Justice and Peace upon earth. These conceptions 
 must now be analyzed.° 
 
 The belief in what I have called a religious mission 
 for Israel has arisen from the doctrines that Israel 
 stood and still stands in a peculiar relation to God, 
 
 It must be made clear that these two conceptions of Israel’s 
 mission are often held together. But I deal with them separately 
 because they touch entirely different fields of belief and action, 
 and beause, even where they are avowedly held together, one finds 
 for the most part that either one or the other conception pre- 
 dominates to a very large extent. 
 
64  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 that he has imparted to Israel his highest teachings 
 and that the greatest degree of truth to be found in 
 any faith lies in the faith of Judaism. Even Liberal 
 Jews, while they are willing for the most part to admit 
 that their non-Jewish neighbors may possess a certain 
 amount of religious truth, still claim with undimin- 
 ished assurance that the purest, the highest form of 
 this truth is possessed by them. The religious mis- 
 sion is held to be the ultimate winning over of all the 
 world to see and to acknowledge that this is so. 
 
 The fact that the world has shown no inclination 
 in the past to be so won over, and gives little promise 
 of doing so in the future, has not shaken the belief 
 of Judaism in its mission. That there has been no 
 sign of the attainment of Israel’s aim would in itself 
 be no reason for abandoning that aim. It is the aim 
 itself, the conception underlying the belief in Israel’s 
 mission which I would question. Is it a true and a 
 good one? Or is it the result of persecution without 
 and prejudice within, and out of harmony with the 
 spirit of enlightenment which religion to-day must 
 fearlessly invoke? Can we still intelligently hold 
 that any one religion or any large group, even our 
 own, is possessed of deeper religious knowledge and 
 higher religious truth than all the other peoples of 
 the world? 
 
 I firmly believe that we can not. The whole trend 
 of modern religious and philosophical thinking is 
 away from the belief, held through so many centuries, 
 that there is or can be one truth or one religion which, 
 
WHAT OF “THE MISSION OF ISRAEL”? 65 
 
 above all others, is worthy to be adopted and cher- 
 ished by all men. Even the backwash of the reaction 
 against the comparative standard in the study of re- 
 ligion and ethics has failed to engulf the conviction 
 that no one set of truths is so constituted as to be fit 
 for the use of all mankind. The fact has been firmly 
 established that the beliefs which are the heritage 
 of any religious group bear on them not the stamp 
 of universal truth, but are, and by their nature can 
 be, true only for that group whose spiritual heritage 
 and possession they are. Every group evolves the 
 beliefs which are best for it, and this fact is recog- 
 nized by all the leaders of religious life and thought 
 who allow themselves to see life steadily and see it 
 whole. 
 
 Such leaders if they be Christians admit frankly 
 that Christianity cannot claim to be the one religion 
 fitted for all men. They know that Christianity can 
 only hope to serve the religious needs of those men 
 and women who, either through education or because 
 of certain individual religious tendencies, are likely 
 to be influenced by it. And the same is true of Juda- 
 ism. Few among its religious teachers have faced 
 the fact that the belief in a best and highest form 
 of spiritual truth, one that is destined to be univer- 
 sally accepted, must in the light of modern thought 
 and feeling be abandoned. But more and more 
 Jewish men and women are coming to realize and to 
 accept that fact. 
 
 Moreover, religious truths are achieved but slowly, 
 
66 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 and the efforts which go into the discovery and secur- 
 ing of these truths play so important a part that with- 
 out the psychological reinforcement which their mem- 
 ory brings, the truths themselves lose much of their 
 value. “For God fulfills himself in many ways,” 
 and in any particular instance, background and his- 
 tory are a most important element in the fulfillment. 
 Thus Judaism and the truths which it teaches are 
 infinitely more true for Jews because of their Jewish 
 background, and the history and teachings of Chris- 
 tianity are of far greater worth to Christians because 
 of the specifically Christian memories that are bound 
 up with them. To long for the day when Christendom 
 will accept the truths of Judaism, or vice versa, is to 
 lose sight of the very inmost character of those truths. 
 The words ““The Lord is our God, the Lord is one” 
 (quite apart from their philosophic truth) are vital 
 and true to the Jew because he is a Jew and to no 
 other race or group or religious brotherhood, can 
 they ever be so vital and so true. Just as the Chris- 
 tian “Pater Noster’ and the Moslem creed are far 
 more true for those who utter them than the Jewish 
 confession of the unity of God could ever be. 
 
 It is not as if Judaism existed in a savage or un- 
 tutored world, a world of primitive peoples without 
 any religious life save that which might be found in 
 tribal superstitions. When the Jewish conception of 
 God first came into being such a state of affairs may 
 have existed. But it exists no longer. Since that 
 time the world has changed. Great religions have 
 
WHAT OF “THE MISSION OF ISRAEL”? 67 
 
 arisen. Profound systems of religious thought have 
 been developed by minds as able and far-seeing as 
 those which fashioned the religion of Israel. And 
 these religions have evolved through the course of 
 centuries. They embody, as does Judaism, the re- 
 sults of the efforts of countless thousands of devoted 
 men and women to find truth. These facts Liberal 
 Judaism cannot ignore. To continue to hold that the 
 struggles for truth of these men and women, and 
 the visions which they caught, are unequal to those 
 which Judaism has achieved, would be to brand our 
 faith as bigoted and unenlightened. Each of the 
 great religious faiths has at its best caught a high 
 glimpse of truth, and none of them possesses so 
 much of her as to be worthy of replacing all the 
 rest. 
 
 It is evident then that the truths embodied in one 
 religion cannot take the place of truths cherished by 
 another. But even were it possible I do not believe 
 that it would be a desirable end. I have said that 
 for members within a group, religion ought not to 
 lay down any one theological belief or moral law, but 
 that it must seek to stimulate every individual to 
 find what is for him the best way of life and to help 
 him to go in that way. Now if a religion is not to 
 formulate one moral law or one theological creed 
 for acceptance by individuals within its group, it cer- 
 tainly ought not attempt to do so for members out- 
 side its own group. On the contrary its aim in re- 
 gard to the adherents of differing faiths ought be to 
 
68  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 stimulate them to develop their own religious con- 
 sciousness in their own way! 
 
 The aim of Judaism, for example, must not be 
 to win Christendom away from its belief in the triune 
 character of the deity. In consonance rather with 
 the principles laid down in Chapters I and IV, 
 the aim of Judaism in relation to Christianity ought 
 to be to help it in every way possible to develop to 
 the fullest its trinitarian doctrine. Judaism must 
 look forward, not to the day when Christendom shall 
 recognize that God is, and can be, but one, but to the 
 coming of the time when the religion which believes 
 in the union of the person of the Christ with God and 
 the Holy Spirit, shall hold that belief in the broadest 
 and fullest possible manner. Just as Judaism has 
 the right to insist on the opportunity of maintaining 
 and developing itself for the Jew, so there is laid upon 
 it the duty of helping, if, and whenever it can, to 
 make Christendom fully and perfectly Christian. 
 Thus the conception of a religious mission for Israel 
 in the sense of bringing the peoples of the world to 
 admit the unity of God is untenable. 
 
 In effect this conception has already been aban- 
 doned for there are no efforts made to win converts 
 to Judaism.* Yet in any but a fatalistic religion, if 
 
 *This was not however always the case, and it is true that 
 external causes rather than a change of viewpoint put an end to 
 the missionary activities of Judaism, since after the rise to power 
 of the Christian church it became too dangerous for Jews to 
 proselytize. But in recent years in lands where the Jew is quite 
 free to win adherents to Judaism practically no efforts to do so 
 have been recorded. 
 
WHAT OF “THE MISSION OF ISRAEL”? 69 
 
 it were seriously believed that certain of its truths 
 were destined to be accepted throughout the world, 
 an attempt would certainly be made to begin at least 
 the active propagation of those truths. Judaism’s 
 failure to make such an attempt to-day shows quite 
 clearly that it does not really believe that the truths 
 which it so cherishes will ever be accepted by man- 
 kind. Judaism may, though I believe it ought not, 
 regret that fact. But it does recognize it. And hav- 
 ing recognized it, the thing to do is not to avert its 
 gaze in order to shut out what it has seen, but to begin 
 taking stock of its truths anew, and of the new rela- 
 tion in which they must be thought of as being bound, 
 to the other peoples of the world. The religious mis- 
 sion of Israel must be renounced in name. It has 
 already been renounced in fact. 
 
 The second conception of Israel’s mission is of a 
 social character. The service to be rendered is 
 thought of in social terms. Justice, peace, universal 
 brotherhood, these are the boons which Israel has 
 been elected to bestow upon the world. These great 
 ideals were the burden of prophetic teaching. Their 
 realization is the most urgent need of the present era. 
 And Liberal Judaism, basing itself on the prophetic 
 teachings, holds it to be the function of Israel to 
 bring them to pass. Not even the wildest imagina- 
 tion however would dream that Israel alone is to 
 accomplish this great task. Nor does the Liberal 
 Jewish belief in its social mission contemplate such 
 a possibility. All the peoples of the earth are to 
 
70 = LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 play a part in the world transformation, but to Israel 
 is reserved the mission of leading and guiding the 
 rest.” Dr. Abrahams has put it: ““The Messianic idea 
 now means to many Jews a belief in human develop- 
 ment and progress, with the Jews filling the réle 
 of the Messianic people, but only as primus inter 
 pares.” 
 
 The question again arises as to whether this concep- 
 tion of the mission of Israel is a valid one. Or is it, 
 like the belief in a religious mission for Israel, at 
 variance with the finer purposes and ideals of our 
 times? Certainly the same criticism cannot be made 
 of it as was made of the conception of a religious mis- 
 sion. For the social ideals of the Hebrew prophets, 
 unlike the religious teachings of Judaism, are no 
 longer the subject of difference of opinion and belief. 
 Their validity is no longer questioned. They have 
 long since been accepted, in theory at least, by the 
 civilized world. In practise however they seem little 
 nearer realization than when they were first enunci- 
 ated. So that if Jews everywhere were to attempt 
 to bring about that order of things foretold and de- 
 manded by the prophets, they could not be accused 
 of imposing alien beliefs and customs on the other 
 peoples of the earth. They would only be doing the 
 very important work of accepting, and of causing 
 others to accept, in deed what has long since been 
 accepted in creed. The attempt would be wholly 
 laudable. 
 
 ®“Religions Ancient and Modern”; “Judaism,” p. 94. 
 
WHAT OF “THE MISSION OF ISRAEL”? 71 
 
 But this work can no longer be conceived of as the 
 particular and peculiar mission of Israel. The desire 
 to establish justice in the gate is no longer an exclu- 
 sively Jewish desire, and the hope of an abiding 
 and universal peace is no longer a particularly Jew- 
 ish one. They were, but they have ceased to be. 
 Non-Jews are quite as strenuous in their efforts to 
 bring these things to pass as are Jews, and the realiza- 
 tion of the prophetic ideals is as intense a longing of 
 many Christians as it is of many Jews.° The finest 
 and noblest spirits of all peoples and faiths are now 
 uniting to bring about that which the Hebrew prophets 
 first demanded. To continue to say that the fulfill- 
 ment of their prophecies is particularly or even 
 primarily the function of the Jew is to lose sight of 
 the truth that they have become the property of all 
 mankind, and that not Jews alone but the more en- 
 lightened among Jews and non-Jews alike must share 
 the high mission of bringing them to pass. 
 
 The great social ideals of justice, peace, and the 
 brotherhood of men were Jewish in origin. But they 
 have been caught up by eager spirits everywhere, 
 and the children of men now engaged in the struggle 
 
 *It is impossible when we think or speak of the efforts being 
 made in recent years to bring about an order of justice and 
 peace to ignore or to minimize the fact that so much is being 
 done toward this end by non-Jews. And while the Jew may do 
 and should do his share in building a world order that shall be 
 good, he must recognize that figures such as Tolstoy and Henry 
 George, Lord Robert Cecil and General Smuts, none of whom 
 are Jews, are quite as deeply imbued with the sense of a social 
 duty and mission as are any members of the Jewish group. 
 CaN as much as ours is the cause of justice and peace upon 
 eart 
 
72 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 for their achievement are to be found in every re- 
 ligious camp throughout our world. Israel can no 
 longer be thought of as “primus inter pares.” There 
 can be no one Messiah people, no one savior people 
 to redeem mankind. All the world struggling to- 
 gether and with neither first nor last must unite to 
 save itself. The social, like the religious conception 
 of the mission of Israel, proves to be one which can 
 no longer be retained. 
 
 Yet the belief in a mission for Israel has in the 
 past played an important part in the religious con- 
 sciousness of many Jews. ‘To take it away and to 
 offer nothing in its place would be to impoverish 
 spiritually those who cherished it, and it may justly 
 be asked, what can be offered to replace that which 
 will be lost. Can some other conception which will 
 not be out of harmony with the basic principles of re- 
 ligion be found to take the place in Judaism of the 
 belief which it now cherishes in regard to the char- 
 acter of its mission? 
 
 I believe that it can, and although I shall not here 
 develop the conception in full, I must point out the 
 direction in which the new trend of belief will lie. 
 That trend will lie away from a hazy and uncon- 
 sidered notion that Israel’s mission is somehow to 
 bring about the acceptance of the truth of God’s 
 unity by all mankind, and that Judaism must keep 
 that truth pure and unchanged until the coming of 
 the longed-for event. The end to be achieved will 
 not be thought of as the preserving, one might almost 
 
WHAT OF “THE MISSION OF ISRAEL”? 73 
 
 say, embalming of the religious truths, which Israel 
 has attained. But realizing that they are, and must 
 ever be, its alone, Judaism will press forward to 
 their further development. And instead of passively 
 waiting for other religious groups to abandon their 
 distinctive beliefs and to accept those of Judaism, an 
 active effort will be made to stimulate those other 
 groups to religious self-development, similar to that 
 which Judaism will itself attempt. 
 
 Instead of the belief that Israel has a mission as 
 guide and leader in the achievement of the great 
 ideals of civilization, a far finer and nobler concep- 
 tion will arise. Israel’s task will be thought of as 
 fitting itself to take its place not before, but among 
 the other peoples of the world, not as guide but as 
 comrade, not as having priority over other peoples, 
 even in the field of service, but as peer and equal 
 having a work to do, not superior or greater, though 
 in some respects, perhaps, distinct and different from 
 the rest. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION FOR JEWISH CHILDREN 
 
 There are few problems that receive closer attention 
 to-day than the problem of education. What shall 
 be taught children, how it shall be taught, and when, 
 are subjects which have been widely and carefully 
 discussed. Parents and professional educators are 
 alike coming to see the truth of the old saying that 
 a nation’s greatest asset is its man (and woman) 
 power. And they realize that the quality and char- 
 acter of this power depend in largest part on the 
 training of the nation’s boys and girls. This new real- 
 ization of an old truth, coupled with the always 
 earnest desire of parents to have their children well 
 prepared to meet the problems of life, has led to 
 reéxamination and to revision of aims and methods 
 in our schools and colleges. 
 
 Religious education, the Sabbath and Sunday 
 schools, of Judaism and Christianity have also under- 
 gone marked changes. ‘Those responsible for the 
 religious education of children have followed the 
 general trend of affairs and have been reasonably 
 quick to see the advantages and benefits to be derived 
 from the new pedagogy. Yet they have lacked one 
 
 74 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 75 
 
 great advantage, an advantage with which educators 
 working along secular lines have had, namely the 
 stimulating interest of parents. For parents no longer 
 seem to consider religious education a vital problem 
 as affecting the lives of their children. 
 
 This was not always so. In America both among 
 Jews and Christians the religious training of a child 
 was once held to be of primary importance. A child, 
 it was believed, could be called good or bad largely 
 on the basis of its efforts and achievements in the 
 religious school, and parents, strict churchgoers and 
 regular attendants at Synagogue alike, placed the 
 utmost importance on the religious school records of 
 their children. Being themselves deeply religious, 
 they naturally took the keenest interest in the work 
 of the religious school. Plans and projects concern- 
 ing it concerned them, for they were anxious to have 
 it discharge its functions wisely and well. 
 
 All this has changed. And the chief reason for 
 the change les in the fact that the parents of to-day 
 are not themselves vitally interested in Church or 
 Synagogue. Living well is no longer conceived of 
 as synonymous with regularity of attendance at a 
 place of worship. Men and women find that they can 
 live their own lives, on terms quite satisfactory to 
 themselves, without the help of religion. Conse- 
 quently they take less and less interest in the religious 
 education of their children. Nor are they entirely 
 to blame. What parents prize for themselves they 
 are likely to prize for their children, and what they 
 
76 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 themselves disprize they can hardly be expected to 
 commend to their boys and girls. When men and 
 women drew real strength and help and inspiration 
 from their religion, they desired with their whole 
 hearts that these things be vouchsafed their children. 
 If they feel, as so many have come to feel of late 
 years, that religion has little to offer to them, little 
 which will enrich or ennoble their own lives, they are 
 quite right in questioning its value for the young 
 lives whose destiny they are in part to shape. This 
 is their point of view, and just as they grudge the 
 Sabbath hours of freedom from their workaday tasks, 
 which religious devotion demands of them, so they 
 guard the hours left free to their children by the 
 schools, ofttimes resenting the claims on those hours, 
 small though they be, which are made by religious 
 education. 
 
 The case must not however be overstated, nor 
 should it be imagined that religious education, partic- 
 ularly Jewish religious education, has ceased to play 
 a part in the life of American Jewish communities. 
 In some communities the Sabbath or Sunday school 
 (as so many Liberal Jewish congregations have, in 
 accordance with the fact, called it) is the most hope- 
 ful part of the religious life. There are Rabbis, not 
 a few, who, feeling despondent over the lack of re- 
 ligious interest manifested by the adults, turn all 
 their energies to inculcating and developing religious 
 interest in the children. But since the religious train- 
 ing of their children does not seem to most parents 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION iv 
 
 as important a matter as their secular training, re- 
 ligious educators have been bereft of a great ad- 
 vantage,—the active interest and assistance of 
 parents. 
 
 On the other hand there are some Jewish parents 
 who desire that their children shall be instructed in 
 the faith of their fathers. Some of these parents 
 have no synagogal interests themselves and take little 
 part in the religious life of their comunities. Yet 
 they feel, paradoxically enough, that their children 
 will derive benefit from that which they have ceased 
 to value for themselves. Tradition is still on the side 
 of religious education, and, while such parents may 
 drift away from the synagogue, they do not wish to 
 break entirely with tradition. And so their children 
 receive religious instruction. 
 
 There is one further class of Jewish men and 
 women, of no inconsiderable numbers whose children 
 attend religious schools. They are the supporters of, 
 and believers in, the synagogue. They do not send 
 their children grudgingly or half-heartedly to the 
 religious schools. Firmly convinced of the value 
 of their religious faith, they insist that that faith be 
 taught their children. They attend religious services 
 themselves. They intend that their children shall 
 do so too. But I must again point out that this group, 
 while it still exists, has grown and is growing pro- 
 portionally smaller than the other groups. 
 
 The problem with which I deal in this chapter, is 
 not, however, how to bring the children of those Jews 
 
78  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 uninterested in Judaism under the influence of Jew- 
 ish religious education. What is of more importance 
 is, what shall be taught those children who are now 
 under its influence. What is to be the aim and method 
 of the religious education designed for Jewish boys 
 and girls? The importance of the problem need 
 hardly be stressed. On its solution rest in large part 
 the character of the Judaism of the future, and not a 
 little of the individual character of great numbers 
 of Jewish men and women. 
 
 The teachings of the religious school will reflect 
 very largely the attitude of the elders of a congre- 
 gation toward religion. I have tried to show that 
 the attitude so widely held at present is, in some of 
 its fundamental aspects, a wrong one, and that, if 
 religion is to become a vital force, much of it will 
 have to be changed. The dogmatism, the stress laid 
 on uniformity, the wrong emphasis placed on the re- 
 lation of past teachings to the faith of the present, 
 these must go. And what ought not to be the belief of 
 adults must certainly not be taught to children. The 
 teachings about God, about the Mission of Israel, and 
 other important matters must be greatly altered. The 
 attitude of open-mindedness, of tolerance for “‘other- 
 ism,” of individual effort to find truth, which has 
 been commended to its elders, must be presented to 
 the child in a manner adapted to its capacity and 
 understanding. But it is not necessary to recapitulate 
 all the changes in outlook which such an attitude 
 will engender. They have been indicated elsewhere. 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 19 
 
 There remain however several points which pertain 
 particularly to the question of religious education 
 and to a consideration of these I would now turn. 
 The object of all education is, or should be, to 
 form character. And it is necessary to emphasize the 
 fact that religious education is in a very real sense a 
 part of the education which a child receives.* It was 
 pointed out in the chapter on Fundamentals that, 
 while the purpose of religion is to help men to live 
 well, the mistake must not be made of imagining that 
 it is the one or even the chief influence effective in 
 attaining that end. It was explained that there are 
 many other influences in the life of the individual 
 working to the same end. Similarly while it is the 
 task of religious education to help to develop charac- 
 ter, to instil in the individual a moral sense, it must 
 not be imagined that religious education has a monop- 
 oly of this function. It is the task of all education, 
 rightly conceived, secular as well as religious. Even 
 secular education, it might be added, is but one of 
 the factors in building character. For just as real, 
 though perhaps far more subtle, are the influences 
 toward that end, of the home and of friendships and 
 associations. And religious and secular educators, 
 aiming as they do at the development of character 
 1A very important part it is true, but still a part. We know 
 that the part cannot be as great as the whole, and the whole in 
 its turn retains its unity only as long as all its parts are present. 
 Religious education is not to be confounded with the whole of 
 education, though it is perhaps even more necessary to empha- 
 
 size the fact that education is incomplete without the religious, 
 which is one of its most important, elements. 
 
80  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 in the individual, must realize that their efforts are 
 but the conscious part of a process, infinitely varied, 
 and in the main to be found working on the subcon- 
 scious levels of the individual’s life. 
 
 Now character is achieved through the training 
 of the intellect and the training of the will. The 
 training of the intellect teaches the individual to un- 
 derstand life. It helps him to think and to reach 
 decisions concerning the problems of his own be- 
 havior and concerning his relation to the social groups 
 of which he is a member. ‘The training of the will 
 prepares the individual to carry out his decisions, to 
 conquer himself, to master the difficulties which he 
 meets. These two branches of education must not, 
 however, be thought of as separate. They form the 
 main strands, inextricably interwoven in the web and 
 woof of character. The training of the intellect, 
 knowledge, and understanding, are worthless unless 
 the will can turn them to account. And the perfect 
 will, which is power, is ineffective unless there be be- 
 hind it the guiding hand of reason. ‘Together, the 
 trained intellect and the trained will form character. 
 
 If the purpose of religious education, like the pur- 
 pose of all education be to develop character, it 
 must in its own way assist in training the intellect 
 and the will. Nor is it difficult to assign to religious 
 education certain provinces both of the intellect and 
 of the will which may be strictly called its own. 
 There are whole departments of knowledge, vital 
 departments, which no agency but religious education 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 81 
 
 attempts to touch. And as regards the training of 
 the will, the religious school is expected to instil in 
 theory, and to a certain degree in practise, those habits 
 of action which are essential to the formation of 
 character. 
 
 This is particularly true in America. For the 
 complete separation of church and state has thrown 
 almost the entire task of systematic moral instruc- 
 tion upon the religious school. Ethics, or the science 
 of conduct, is not taught in the schools of America, 
 nor is instruction given in biblical or religious his- 
 tory. It is not necessary to inquire here”? whether 
 such a policy is a right one in a republic. I am con- 
 cerned rather with its result, and the result has been 
 to leave the responsibility for these two very impor- 
 tant parts of education, the science of ethics (a part 
 of the training of the will) and the history of the 
 Bible and of religion (a part of the training of the 
 intellect), to the religious schools of varying denomi- 
 nations. 
 
 It is necessary then to consider how Liberal Juda- 
 ism ought to set about its task of moral instruction. 
 How can it best instruct the Jewish child in the science 
 of ethics or conduct? What shall it teach the child 
 concerning its religious past, concerning the Bible, 
 
 The question has in recent years been raised as to whether 
 moral instruction of a non-sectarian character ought not to be given 
 in the public schools. Numerous plans have been suggested, and 
 against all of them objections have been raised. For a full dis- 
 cussion of these plans see Felix Adler’s “Moral Instruction of 
 
 Children,” pp. 3-16, published in the International Education 
 Series, Vol. XXI. D. Appleton and Company. 
 
82 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 and concerning the relation of Judaism to other 
 faiths? The last of these questions is in many ways 
 the most important. For the answer to it will de- 
 termine the greatest part of the religious outlook of 
 the child. To put that question in another way I 
 would ask, How far is the child to be taught concern- 
 ing all religious matters, as a Jewish child? Is it 
 to be taught only Jewish ethics and only about the 
 Hebrew Bible and its heroic figures? And if other 
 religious beliefs and figures are presented to it, in 
 what light are they to be placed? How far is the 
 desire to make of the child a good Jew or a good 
 Jewess to determine the character of the instruction 
 it receives? 
 
 These questions cannot be easily answered. Like 
 so many questions touching the science of pedagogy, 
 the answers to them will vary greatly with the varying 
 ages of the children concerned. It is clearly impos- 
 sible to attempt to instruct a child of seven or eight 
 in comparative ethics and religion; on the other hand, 
 it ought be equally clear that after ten years of re- 
 ligious instruction it is impossible to present the 
 same clear-cut teaching concerning such matters as 
 the existence and character of God, or the peculiar 
 task of Judaism in the world, as the child received at 
 first. As it grows older and meets with non-Jewish 
 children, and with beliefs other than those taught to 
 it, the child will wonder concerning the truth of 
 what it has learned, and it will begin to feel the need 
 of relating its particular religion to the world without. 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 83 
 
 Jewish religious schools must prepare to meet the 
 needs of this later period. They must attempt to 
 prepare the child for the problems which it must face. 
 
 Yet there is no doubt that the Jewish child must be 
 taught Judaism first of all. By Judaism I mean Jew- 
 ish beliefs, customs, history and ethics. These are 
 imperative both as background and as foundation. 
 They alone can furnish the child with self-respect, 
 as a member of the Jewish group. And self-respect 
 the child must have, for it will live either with Jews, 
 or, if away from them, will be looked upon by others 
 as a Jew. In either case, it is essential to the devel- 
 opment of his character, that he know his past, that 
 he be fortified and dignified by the knowledge of the 
 great tradition behind him. 
 
 With the Bible as the basis of Judaism, the child 
 is to begin. For in the study of the Bible both the 
 intellectual and the volitional life will be quickened. 
 On the intellectual side it is impossible to over-empha- 
 size the value of a thorough knowledge of the Bible. 
 Goethe has said that “The greater the intellectual 
 progress of the ages, the more fully will it be possible 
 to employ the Bible not only as the foundation, but as 
 the instrument of education.”* The story that it 
 tells, the figures that it presents, the life that it por- 
 trays, are all bound up in a unique way with the his- 
 tory and culture of mankind. It has largely shaped 
 the thoughts of men of the Western world, and at all 
 
 *Quoted in “A Book of Jewish Thoughts,” p. 139. Oxford 
 University Press, pub. 1920. 
 
84 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 times it has indirectly influenced them. When it has 
 not been cited as authority, it has been alluded to 
 as reference. The history of literature, of art, of 
 music, have been for centuries closely bound up 
 with it. To understand them fully in later years 
 the child must come to know and love the Bible 
 early. 
 
 But I would attach even more importance to the 
 moral and spiritual teachings of the Bible, and to 
 the effect which those teachings can have upon the 
 training of the child’s will. The best of them have 
 stood the test of time and have been found true. They 
 are the moral heritage of mankind and upon them has 
 been built much of what is finest in our civilization. 
 Every child, Jewish and Christian, can be greatly 
 strengthened by an understanding of the moral prin- 
 ciples set forth in the Bible, and the will of any child 
 must be fortified by an earnest attempt to put those 
 principles into practise. 
 
 Yet in a particular sense they are the possession 
 of the Jewish child. I would not imply that a non- 
 Jew cannot, for example, understand and practise 
 the commandment, ““Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself” quite as well as can a Jew. But there can 
 and should be a peculiarly intimate feeling, a feeling 
 of almost filial affection, on the part of the Jew for 
 this and other of the great spiritual teachings of the 
 Bible. Such affection implanted during the years 
 of childhood will deepen later into a conscious at- 
 tempt to put into practise what was so early loved. 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 85 
 
 It is the task of the Jewish religious school to instil in 
 the Jew that feeling of affection. It is the business 
 of the Jewish teacher to inspire the child with the 
 desire to claim its own. 
 
 Yet the child must be led gently. The Bible must 
 not be forced upon it. And it must be remembered 
 that the Bible is to be taught not for the Bible’s sake, 
 but for the sake of the child. Its teachings must be 
 fitted to the child’s comprehension and not vice-versa. 
 Nor are all children to be taught the Bible in a uni- 
 form way, as the multiplication table might be taught, 
 —an unvarying and impersonal affair. Rather must 
 the child be stimulated as an individual spirit to seek 
 and to find the glory of the Bible for itself. And the 
 glory of the Bible lies not chiefly in the uniformly 
 applicable character of its teachings, but rather in 
 the fact that it is so wide and grand of scope, that 
 within it there is contained the possibility of infinitely 
 diverse, infinitely personal inspiration. 
 
 “It is a low benefit,” says Emerson, “to give me 
 something. It is a high benefit to enable me to do 
 somewhat for myself.” I would apply his word to re- 
 ligious education. It is a little thing to give the 
 child the priceless spiritual treasures of the Bible. It 
 is a great thing to help the child to find those treas- 
 ures in its own time and way. Yet this is seldom done. 
 And I cannot better emphasize what is meant than 
 by quoting the word of an able Jewish educator on 
 this subject. In a paper on the “Sunday School and 
 Religious Consciousness,” Rabbi Louis Grossman 
 
86 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 writes: * “We insist that our children shall know 
 Jewish history and the formulated articles of belief. 
 But they require throughout their tried careers, to 
 orientate themselves in the crossing roads of human 
 experience, to find their way toward the true, the 
 good, the beautiful in God’s world. Being led to 
 them is not half as good nor half as satisfactory nor 
 half as wonderful nor half as happy as finding them 
 themselves. In fact, religion consists in discovering 
 the wisdom and the wonders of life. Only fresh and 
 genuine initiative counts for something genuine be- 
 fore God and men. We have allowed nothing to 
 initiative, nothing to spontaneity, nothing to the per- 
 sonal fact in the soul. Religion is a prescription to- 
 day, just as much as it was in ancient days. We 
 have taken the freshness out of it for young souls that 
 reach out for the hand of God, who long to see things 
 with their own eyes and to touch the world of won- 
 ders with their own hands. . . . Instead of allowing 
 youthful nature to speak its language of marvel, we 
 interpose our articles and threshed-out history.” This 
 is a serious indictment from a religious teacher. But 
 the indictment is true. Herein lies the greatest defect 
 in the religious education of the past. Against this 
 defect let the religious education of the future be on 
 its guard. 
 
 The training of the Jewish child in Jewish history 
 and ethics is however but half the problem. To 
 
 *Yearbook of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, 
 Vol. XXX, p. 306. 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 87 
 
 teach the child only about his own faith would pre- 
 pare him almost as little for contact with the world 
 as to teach him nothing concerning it. Nor would 
 it serve to introduce him to other faiths as though 
 they were of inferior quality to his own. Such a 
 course might strengthen his adherence to Judaism, but 
 it would in no way help him to form an intelligent 
 conception of the problems which he must face. The 
 Jewish child will meet intolerance enough. And the 
 weapon with which to fight intolerance is not intoler- 
 ance. Intolerance can only be met and overcome 
 by understanding and knowledge and insight. 
 
 An understanding of faiths other than his own, 
 of viewpoints differing from his, is required as part 
 of the child’s religious training. Nor need it be 
 feared that this will weaken the beliefs that the child 
 holds. He will rather achieve a sense of value, and 
 of perspective. He will respect his own religior 
 for pointing out the good in other faiths. He will be 
 tolerant of others, respecting the sacredness of the 
 right of other faiths to their peculiar individuality, 
 and thus he will be immeasurably strengthened in 
 demanding tolerance and respect for his own faith. 
 And finally the sympathetic study of other religions 
 will help the Jewish child to take part in the 
 greatest task before all America to-day, the task 
 of ending race and religious hatred, an dof estab- 
 lishing an order of tolerance and good will and 
 understanding. 
 
 The whole question is not unlike the problem of 
 
88  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 what shall be taught American school children con- 
 cerning the history of other nations. The American 
 child must certainly learn American history first. It 
 must know the past on which it stands, the heroes of 
 its own people, and the principles on which the gov- 
 ernment, under which it lives, rests. But that is not 
 all that it must learn. To help the child to under- 
 stand fully the world it lives in, to prepare the child 
 for the larger citizenship of international affairs, it 
 is taught the history and customs of other lands. And 
 were the teaching is wise and far-sighted the history 
 and customs of these lands are not disparaged. They 
 are not taught to demonstrate the superiority of Amer- 
 ican history and customs, but to give the child a 
 sympathetic insight into the life of other peoples. 
 They are taught not to bring out the bad, but the good 
 that is in them. And just as surely as such a course 
 is necessary to promote international peace and good 
 will, so surely is it necessary in order to bring about 
 inter-racial and inter-religious peace and good will 
 within the nation ° that the Jewish child be taught first, 
 about his own faith, and then, not disparagingly but 
 in sympathetic manner, about faiths other than his 
 own. 
 
 It is impossible here to go into the details of 
 
 °It is of course at least equally important that the Christian 
 child on its part be taught in the same way, and with the same 
 end in view. But the fact that the Christian child is seldom 
 taught in this way is no reason for the Jew not to adopt such a 
 course, if it .eem to him right. “So act that thine action might 
 
 be made a universal law” is a particularly applicable principle 
 in this connection. 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 89 
 
 the plan of religious instruction suggested above. 
 Whether the beliefs and histories of other religious 
 groups can be fairly presented will depend largely on 
 the type of teachers which the religious school is able 
 to command. Nor is it necessary to state exactly at 
 what age, or stage in the religious education of the 
 child such presentation should be made. These and 
 similar matters concerning the curriculum of the re- 
 ligious school must be left to the judgment of who- 
 ever is in charge. What I would insist upon is the 
 principle that the child ought learn about religions 
 other than its own. 
 
 But while I cannot deal with the minutiz of the 
 course of religious instruction, there is one question 
 on which it is necessary to dwell. That is the ques- 
 tion of confirmation. It is the custom among Liberal 
 Jewish religious schools to have a yearly service at 
 which those girls and boys who have reached a cer- 
 tain age, usually between thirteen and fifteen, and 
 who have been prepared by successive years of re- 
 ligious school training, are confirmed, that is, make 
 public confession of their belief in God, and swear 
 eternal devotion and loyalty to their religion. But 
 though this ceremony is one bound up with the his- 
 tory of the reform movement in Judaism, it seems to 
 me to be neither wise nor right. I believe it is out 
 of harmony with the dominant spirit of religious life, 
 and that in its present form at least it ought to be 
 abolished. 
 
 The article on confirmation in the Jewish Ency- 
 
90 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 clopedia ® says in part: “It does not mean initiation 
 into the faith or admission into the Jewish community, 
 but is a solemn declaration of the candidates, after 
 having been sufficiently instructed in their duties as 
 Jews—to be resolved to live as Jews and Jewesses.” 
 And again, speaking of the various forms of the con- 
 firmation service, “Thus some introduce a formal 
 confession of faith, while others prefer a statement 
 of principles.” 
 
 Now could anything be more absurd than a “con- 
 fession of faith” by a child of fourteen or fifteen, or 
 a “‘statement of principles” or a “‘solemn declaration” 
 of loyalty to Judaism? ‘True, these can very easily be 
 elicited. During these years the child is in an im- 
 pressionable state and can easily be led to believe 
 that what it says is of a binding character. But it 
 is a tragic mistake to use or to misuse the malleabil- 
 ity of the child’s religious conceptions in this way. 
 Just when the adolescent period of struggle and doubt 
 is about to grip the child, it is the height of unwis- 
 dom to exact or even to accept from it a confession 
 of faith or a statement of principles. The difficulties 
 of the years to follow will not be made éasier thereby. 
 The child will not be satisfied, when its soul is seeking 
 and questioning after religious truth to know that 
 it has been “confirmed.” For what young man or 
 woman will or should consider the vows and confes- 
 sions made at so early an age as binding? 
 
 It is, moreover, the gravest misunderstanding of 
 
 Vol. IV, p. 220. 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION oF 
 
 the principles of pedagogy to attempt to give “‘stabil- 
 ity” to the child’s belief at this age. It is the period 
 of growth, of change, of a new outlook on every fun- 
 damental problem of life. Work, play, the relations 
 between the sexes, the meaning and place of religion 
 in life, all these conceptions may, in the years fol- 
 lowing confirmation, be radically changed. To at- 
 tempt in any one field to prevent such a change is ut- 
 terly impossible. We do not desire a statement from 
 children as to their life calling at the age of fourteen! 
 We should be shocked if the choice of a partner in 
 marriage were required or permitted at this time. 
 Yet without the slightest hesitation religious teachers 
 allow and encourage children, admittedly far too 
 young to decide other important questions for them- 
 selves, to pledge lifelong allegiance to God, to Juda- 
 ism, and to the principles on which it rests!‘ It is 
 absurd. It is contrary to all that science and thought 
 and feeling teach. Confirmation at this age is nothing 
 less than a violation of the sacredness of childhood. 
 
 There is yet another reason, perhaps even more 
 cogent, why the confirmation service ought be abol- 
 ished. It is urged by those who admit the impos- 
 sibility of confirmation for children of fourteen and 
 fifteen, that at a later age, perhaps between the ages 
 of sixteen and eighteen, when the period of storm and 
 
 7Let it not be imagined that it is proposed to prevent the 
 child at this age from thinking and discussing with its teachers 
 concerning these problems of the religious life. It is fitting that 
 it should do so. But progressive thought and instruction con- 
 cerning these matters are very different from a confession of 
 belief or of principles, whether publicly or privately made. 
 
92  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 stress is passing, there be such a service. I will not 
 discuss the doubtful feasibility of this plan. I would 
 point out, rather, that at this age, or at any age, 
 public confirmation is opposed to the innate spirit of 
 religion. The heart of my contention against con- 
 firmation lies in the fact that it makes public an act, 
 which by its very nature, ought to be of a private and 
 a purely personal character. Public confirmation em- 
 phasizes outwardness and show and ostentation in 
 religion. Whereas the confirmation of the spirit must 
 be made in silence and alone. 
 
 This the child must be made to understand. And 
 the child can understand it. With its yearning after 
 the ideal, with the impressionability of its youth, the 
 child, far better often than the adult, can be made 
 to feel that the still small voice, the inner faith, is not a 
 thing to be broadcasted in a parade of two minute 
 “confessions,” designed chiefly to titillate the senti- 
 mentality of admiring relatives and friends. The 
 child soonest of all will feel, if it be but given the 
 chance, that the trappings and show of religious exer- 
 cises, must in the highest interest of religion be 
 brought to an irreducible minimum. The child 
 (who, it is said, desires so much the public service of 
 confirmation) will be the readiest, if touched by a fine 
 spirit, to forego a ceremony so out of keeping with 
 the essentially simple and inner spirit of faith. Can 
 as much be said for the elders of the child? 
 
 It were foolish however to overlook the fact that 
 some ceremony is necessary at this period in the re- 
 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 93 
 
 ligious education of the child. Some point in the 
 development of its religious school activity towards 
 which the child may strive, and which will mark a 
 certain achievement in its religious training, will 
 prove helpful as a stimulus to the child’s interest. The 
 nature of what that function should be can best be 
 described as an exercise of graduation, very similar 
 in many respects to the graduation exercises of a 
 secular school. The purpose of it shall be to give 
 evidence not of future faith or belief, but of past 
 attainments in the field of learning. And if any re- 
 ligious “view” is to be expressed by the child, that 
 view is not to be in the spirit of a promise of adher- 
 ence, of “lifelong devotion” to Judaism, but is rather 
 to voice the desire to live well, to live intelligently, 
 to live helpfully, in the light of all the noblest teach- 
 ings of the world. Nor is there to be confession of 
 belief in God. If anything there is to be expressed 
 the ardent will to find Him.* 
 
 *On this subject see the paper on “The Religious Influences 
 of Childhood upon Adolescence” by Rabbi Montague N. A. 
 Cohen in the Yearbook of the Central Conference of American 
 Rabbis. Vol, XVII, pp. 248-9. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 INTERMARRIAGE 
 
 The teachings of a religion depend on the religious 
 attitude underlying it. When that attitude is a wrong 
 one, the teachings which are based on it are not likely 
 to be good or wise. Liberal Judaism presents an 
 example of what is meant. It has been shown that in 
 several respects the attitude underlying Liberal Juda- 
 ism is wrong, and it follows that some of the teachings 
 which it offers are likely to prove false as well. 
 Indeed it has already appeared upon examination 
 that the greatly stressed conception of Israel’s mis- 
 sion to the world, based neither on right ideals nor 
 on a right reading of the facts of history, is a false 
 one, and that in the highest interests of Judaism it 
 must go. 
 
 Another very serious problem confronting Liberal 
 Judaism is the question of intermarriage, and what 
 the attitude of Judaism ought to be towards those 
 Jews who choose to marry outside the ranks of Israel. 
 There is a generally “‘accepted teaching” on the part 
 of Liberal Judaism concerning intermarriage; but by 
 the term “accepted teaching” I do not mean to imply 
 
 94 
 
INTERMARRIAGE 95 
 
 that it has been accepted by all or most Jews who 
 come in personal contact with the problem of inter- 
 marriage, nor that it has helped in any very large 
 degree in achieving a solution of the problem. What 
 I do mean is that the teaching of Liberal Judaism con- 
 cerning intermarriage has become standardized, that 
 in the pulpits and from the platforms of Judaism 
 there is heard an almost uniform doctrine. That doc- 
 trine must be carefully examined for it rests on prin- 
 ciples which are in many respects unsound, the 
 acknowledged principles of Liberal Judaism to-day, 
 and like some other doctrines of our faith it may 
 prove to be unsound and no longer tenable. If it does 
 so prove, neither the universality with which it is held, 
 nor the power of the tradition behind it, will avail 
 it aught. 
 
 That the question of intermarriage is a most im- 
 portant one it is hardly necessary to explain. That 
 it is recognized as such is witnessed to by the amount 
 of discussion which it has occasioned; although in 
 recent years discussion about the problem has lapsed 
 more and more into the statement of the now recog- 
 nized teaching of Liberal Judaism concerning it. But 
 while uniformity of doctrine on this point has grown 
 with the years, that uniformity has neither checked 
 nor diminished the number of marriages between 
 Jews and non-Jews to any appreciable degree—yet 
 to check and diminish their number has been the 
 avowed object of Liberal Judaism. Something is 
 clearly wrong, but whether the fault lies with the 
 
96  LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 teaching of Judaism or with the Jews to whom it is 
 supposedly taught, is not so clear. 
 
 When the founders of Liberal Judaism proclaimed 
 their belief that the Jews were not a race but a re- 
 ligious brotherhood, and that a return to Palestine 
 was not the aim of modern Judaism, but that its aim 
 was to seek to spread the truths of Judaism in all 
 places where Jews might live, they hoped they had 
 solved the age-old difficulty of the politico-social status 
 of the Jew in the land of his adoption; and the even 
 more difficult and delicate problem of the relations 
 between the Jew and his non-Jewish neighbors. The 
 Jew, they declared, was to consider himself, and to 
 be considered, as a citizen of the land in which he 
 lived, having just the same rights and duties as any 
 other citizen, and as being not a whit less loyal than 
 others in his devotion to his country. The Jew, it 
 was further said, was to take part in the development 
 of the country in which he lived, and to make every 
 contribution in his power towards its civic and cul- 
 tural advancement. In short, as far as his citizen- 
 ship was concerned there was to be no difference be- 
 tween the Jew and other members of the state.* 
 
 +The difference between the old and the new Judaism can be 
 seen, even though greatly exaggerated, in the bombastic utterance 
 made by the first reform Rabbi in America, who in the course 
 of the dedication of his synagogue said: “This country is our 
 Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our tem- 
 ple.” (Quoted in Philipson’s “The Reform Movement in Juda- 
 ism,” p. 467.) It must be added in fairness, however, that this 
 was not the spirit of the wisest or noblest among the leaders of 
 
 the Reform movement. They were facing a serious problem, 
 the status of the Jews in the various countries in which they 
 
INTERMARRIAGE ie 
 
 Only in the realm of religious belief and worship 
 was the Jew to be marked off from others. Only in 
 his adherence to the teachings of the Hebrew prophets 
 and to the Mosaic law was he to be different from 
 his non-Jewish neighbors. And as the reformers in- 
 terpreted that law and those teachings, there was 
 nothing in them to prevent social intercourse on the 
 friendliest of terms between Jew and non-Jew. (In- 
 deed the points of similarity and identity between the 
 two groups were stressed almost ad nauseam and the 
 efforts of some Jews, under the spell of this sort of 
 teaching, to ape and imitate the customs and habits 
 of those around them, form one of the sorriest chap- 
 ters in Jewish history.) In accordance with what they 
 believed to be the mission of Israel, the early reform- 
 ers held that such friendship and interchange of ideas 
 were not only permissible, but even desirable and nec- 
 essary. For in what other way, they asked, could the 
 world come to know of the message which Israel had 
 been chosen to bring? 
 
 These early reformers were not slow to see how- 
 ever that there were certain practical difficulties with 
 which their teachings would have to cope. For the 
 theory of the underlying similarity of Jew and non- 
 Jew,” and the doctrine that social and intellectual 
 lived, and in the main they dealt with the problem with utmost 
 wisdom. 
 
 *,No phrase was to be heard on the lips of reform Jews more 
 often than the words of Malachi: “Have we not all one father? 
 Hath not one God created us?” words -which were interpreted 
 
 to demonstrate the essential unity between the children of Israel 
 and others. 
 
98 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 intercourse between the Jew and the world without 
 was desirable, led to events of which the reformers 
 did not approve. Chief among these was the increase 
 in the number of marriages between Jews and non- 
 Jews. That this should occur was inevitable. With 
 all the barriers to social intercourse down which it 
 lay in the power of the reformers to destroy, with the 
 increased facility of meeting between young Jews 
 and Christians, it was but natural that a certain num- 
 ber of marriages between members of the two faiths 
 should take place. But as the number of such mar- 
 riages increased, the reformers felt that it was neces- 
 sary for Liberal Judaism clearly to define its attitude 
 towards the whole problem. 
 
 At first a certain amount of toleration was shown 
 towards intermarriage, as evidenced by the resolution 
 passed on that subject by the Brunswick Conference 
 of 1844. But as time went on and as it appeared 
 that when intermarriage occurred the Jewish party 
 to it usually became defiliated from the Synagogue, 
 and that the children of such marriages were seldom 
 reared in the Jewish faith, leaders of the reform 
 movement came gradually to oppose it and to state 
 with more or less uniformity that it was contrary to 
 the teachings of Liberal Judaism; and that, while 
 the Synagogue recognized the validity and the bind- 
 ing character of such marriages, it opposed their 
 being made, and would take no part in solemnizing 
 them. 
 
 This opposition was based on two grounds. (1) It 
 
INTERMARRIAGE 22) 
 
 was held that intermarriage would tend to disinte- 
 erate Judaism, to weaken the bonds of Jewish 
 solidarity, and thus to interfere with the effective per- 
 formance of Israel’s mission to the world. (2) Mar- 
 riage between members of two different religious 
 groups was bound, it was asserted, to bring in its train 
 discord and unhappiness, and that as such marriages 
 could not even approximate to the high Jewish ideal 
 of what marriage should be, it could not be sanctioned 
 by Liberal Judaism. 
 
 On both grounds intermarriage was condemned. 
 There was however one way in which, it was held, 
 a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew could be 
 recognized by the Synagogue. That way consisted in 
 the conversion of the non-Jewish party to Judaism. 
 This, it was said, would eliminate both objections. 
 There would, strictly speaking, be no intermarriage. 
 Such conversion would, it was argued, unite both 
 parties in their devotion to Judaism, and would do 
 away with the danger of an imperfect union because 
 of religious differences.* And as the conception of a 
 Jewish race or nation had been abandoned, there was 
 no objection possible to the admission of any person 
 into the Jewish religious fellowship. 
 
 This is the attitude of Liberal Judaism toward the 
 problem of intermarriage, an attitude which seems to 
 
 *It is well to note that this attitude was not universally ac- 
 cepted, and that some Liberal Jews held that even when con- 
 version occurred, intermarriage was a most undesirable event 
 because such conversion would, of necessity, prove meaningless 
 and evanescent. But this point of view was, and is held by but 
 the fewest of Liberal Jewish teachers. 
 
100 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 me to be fundamentally wrong. Not only the reasons 
 advanced against intermarriage, but the suggested 
 solution of the problem, in and through the conver- 
 sion of the non-Jewish party, are utterly at variance 
 with the underlying principles of religion and are 
 false to the ideal which Judaism ought to cherish. 
 The thesis of all the foregoing chapters has been that 
 the purpose of religion is to help the individual to 
 live well, and to live well in his own way, and that 
 religion must not be forever seeking to preserve itself 
 at any cost. The position of Liberal Judaism to-day 
 in regard to intermarriage inverts both these under- 
 lying principles, and it is necessary to examine a little 
 more closely the arguments on which its position is 
 based. 
 
 The argument that, because intermarriage will 
 prove harmful to Judaism and will tend to disinte- 
 grate it, it is to be discountenanced by Judaism, is not 
 sound. Because, priceless though Judaism may be, 
 its prolonged existence must not be purchased at the 
 cost of the right of the individual Jew, in matters 
 such as this, to be himself. For that right, if clearly 
 understood, will be seen to underly Judaism itself, 
 to be the cornerstone upon which the edifice of Juda- 
 ism has been reared, and on which it must continue 
 to rest. Disapproval of intermarriage, based on the 
 ground that it will hurt the Jewish cause, loses sight 
 of the personal character of the problem under con- 
 sideration. So intensely personal is that problem 
 that, even though the belief of David Einhorn that 
 
INTERMARRIAGE 101 
 
 “TIntermarriage is the nail in the coffin of Judaism” 
 were proved to be correct, Judaism would not be jus- 
 tified in demanding of individual Jews that they do 
 not intermarry. It must be remembered, to para- 
 phrase the word of Jesus about the Sabbath, that 
 religion is made for man, and not man for religion. 
 And opposition to intermarriage which is based on 
 the harm which it may do to Judaism, places the indi- 
 vidual in a position of subordinate importance to 
 religion, a position which, from the religious point of 
 view itself, is clearly impossible. 
 
 Nor is the demand sometimes made by Liberal 
 Jewish teachers justifiable, that the Jew make the sac- 
 rifice of giving up the contemplated marriage with a 
 non-Jew, as an evidence of religious devotion, and as 
 a laudable example of self-denial. For the contem- 
 plated marriage implies that both persons have de- 
 cided that they are fitted and fated to live together, 
 to become man and wife, and that it is vitally neces- 
 sary to them that they do so. And once two people 
 come to feel about each other in this way (and unless 
 they do there ought be neither marriage nor inter- 
 marriage) they owe no duty to religion or to family 
 or to friends which would prevent their union. Their 
 duty is to themselves and to each other! No one, 
 whether it be parent or religious teacher, the home or 
 the Synagogue, has the right to demand the sacrifice 
 which renunciation of one another’s love would imply 
 for each. There is a certain limit beyond which self- 
 sacrifice may not decently be asked to go. For, en- 
 
102 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 nobling though it ofttimes be, sacrifice may, at times, 
 be less of a virtue than a fault. 
 
 Taken on its own merits, however, the opposition 
 to intermarriage on the ground that it will cause the 
 disintegration of Judaism does not seem to be 
 valid. Apart from the religious teachings of Judaism 
 on the subject of intermarriage, there is a marked 
 endogamous tendency among Jews, a tendency to 
 marry among themselves, which, I believe, is far 
 stronger and more generally prevalent than the ten- 
 dency to marry members of another faith. It is 
 true that there has in recent years been an increasing 
 number of intermarriages, but are not many of them 
 due to the reaction from the long centuries of enforced 
 Jewish marriages, the inevitable rebound from the 
 over strict tribalism of long ages? 
 
 That rebound, however, has in Western lands at all 
 events, already spent the greatest part of its force, and 
 although a certain number of intermarriages will un- 
 doubtedly continue to occur it will not be long before 
 the percentage of such marriages will become stabil- 
 ized by the counteractive tendency—the tendency of 
 the Jew to marry within the Jewish group. In the 
 terms of modern psychology, the subconscious inhibi- 
 tions surrounding intermarriage will gradually be 
 removed, and the desire to intermarry will weaken 
 and not strengthen, in inverse proportion as those 
 inhibitions disappear. Although I would not offer 
 this as the chief reason (there are far weightier ones) 
 why the opposition of Judaism to intermarriage ought 
 
INTERMARRIAGE 103 
 
 be abandoned, I would suggest that it may help to 
 allay the fears of those Jews who, like Einhorn, read 
 in the percentage of intermarriages recorded in 
 Western lands the destruction of Judaism. Those 
 fears, as I believe, are hysterical in character, having 
 no basis in the actual facts. 
 
 The second reason on which is based the opposition 
 to marriage between Jews and non-Jews is that such 
 marriage must inevitably fall far short of the Jewish 
 ideal of what marriage ought to be, and that in sanc- 
 tioning it Judaism would be disloyal to its high ideal. 
 The argument has been ably propounded by the Rev. 
 Dr. S. Schulman, who says: *- “There could not be 
 that complete union of souls, and there could not be 
 that perfect harmony and unity of household between 
 two people who hold with serious conviction dif- 
 ferent views of religion.” In that statement there 
 is a certain amount of truth, and if instead of saying 
 that “there could not be” this perfect union, it were 
 stated that such union inevitably becomes more dif- 
 ficult of achievement, I should be prepared to accept 
 it. For there is little doubt that differences in belief 
 do make it far more difficult to achieve the perfect 
 harmony which marriage implies, if it is to fulfill the 
 high ideal of what marriage can and ought to be. 
 Such differences clearly do make the task more 
 difficult, and should be pointed out to people who 
 
 *Cf., his paper on “Mixed Marriages in Their Relation to the 
 Jewish Religion,” pp. 317 ff. in the Yearbook of Central Con- 
 ference of American Rabbis, Vol. XIX. 
 
104 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 contemplate such a marriage, but the difficult must 
 not be confused with the impossible. Far greater 
 difficulties have been overcome by the power of love. 
 
 But even though the statement of Dr. Schulman be 
 correct, with this modification, it is not a valid argu- 
 ment either against intermarriage or for the opposi- 
 tion of Liberal Judaism to it. Closely examined and 
 _applied to conditions as they exist, it serves rather to 
 explain most clearly why Judaism has no right to op- 
 pose the marriage of Jews to members of other faiths, 
 on the ground of probable marital infelicity. It is 
 said that two persons “who hold with serious convic- 
 tion different views of religion” will not attain happi- 
 ness in marriage. But granting that this were 
 unconditionally true, it would not serve to condemn 
 intermarriage to-day because, while it may not be 
 pleasant to reflect upon, the fact is that most young 
 Jews and Jewesses, and particularly those who con- 
 template marrying outside the ranks of Judaism, do 
 not hold views on religion with serious conviction! 
 
 It is not necessary here to consider the problem 
 of the non-Jew who contemplates intermarriage. I 
 am dealing with the Jewish aspect of the question. 
 And the average young Jew, even though he may have 
 been trained religiously in a Jewish school, and 
 though he or his parents may be members of a Syna- 
 gogue, is not likely to hold any views either on Juda- 
 ism or on religion in general, which are so different 
 from the views of a non-Jew as inevitably to cause un- 
 happiness in the home. Even when the Jew does feel 
 
INTERMARRIAGE 105 
 
 his Jewishness distinctly, it is in the rarest instances 
 that his Jewish beliefs play so important a part in his 
 life that, unless they were shared by another, he would 
 be deeply unhappy. 
 
 It is true that a community of interests and an un- 
 derlying sympathy in outlook and belief are neces- 
 sary for a marriage that is to be a perfect union. But 
 the fact must be faced that his Judaism no longer 
 determines the fundamental outlook and belief of the 
 Jew. If it did Liberal Judaism would be justified in 
 refusing to sanction intermarriage. But it does not. 
 The young Jew or Jewess of to-day may, and usually 
 does, hold very serious convictions. But those con- 
 victions are not convictions about religion. And this 
 fact Liberal Judaism must recognize. It serves no 
 good purpose to protest that intermarriage must lead 
 to unhappiness because of grave differences, when 
 those differences have ceased to exist! The argu- 
 ment advanced to justify the opposition of Liberal 
 Judaism to intermarriage proves to be the strongest 
 reason why such opposition can no longer be main- 
 tained. 
 
 In the attitude of Liberal Judaism toward the prob- 
 lem of intermarriage there is another factor, and that 
 is the solution it offers. In those cases where inter- 
 matriage does take place, that solution consists of the 
 conversion to Judaism of the non-Jewish party to the 
 marriage. But like the opposition of Liberal Juda- 
 ism to intermarriage, this solution is hopelessly out of 
 harmony with what should be the underlying spirit 
 
106 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 of religion. It has been shown that the attitude of 
 opposition to intermarriage is not a justifiable one, 
 and there remains therefore little need of dealing at 
 great length with the proposed solution of a difficulty 
 which does not exist. Regarding such conversions it 
 may however be pointed out, that when they do take 
 place they are not likely to be of a very deep or pers 
 manent kind. They must obviously be made in a 
 period of intense emotional stress, the period im- 
 mediately preceding marriage, and they can hardly 
 be expected to have any very real or lasting effect. 
 
 On the contrary, after a time the converted person 
 is more than likely to feel a sense of irritation and 
 grievance against the religion which summarily de- 
 manded adherence in so short a time, and whatever 
 statements were made by the converted person will 
 have little more meaning than statements exacted from 
 prisoners under torture. The parallel may be neither 
 fortunate nor exact, but the psychological conditions 
 and reactions are similar in both cases. Liberal Juda- 
 ism must recognize this and must realize that ““The 
 loose and easy conversions that are often performed 
 for the sake of intermarriage add no strength to the 
 Jewish cause.” ° 
 
 But even if a real pre-marital conversion were pos- 
 sible it ought not be attempted by Judaism. Such con- 
 version requires the surrender of the religious indi- 
 
 °Of., paper on Intermarriage, by Rabbi Mendel Silber, deliv- 
 ered before the Central Conference of American Rabbis and 
 published in the Year Book, Vol. XVIII. 
 
INTERMARRIAGE 107 
 
 viduality of one member to the marriage. And there 
 is no valid reason why that surrender ought be re- 
 quired of the non-Jew any more than of the Jew. If 
 Liberal Judaism were as concerned, as it lays claim 
 to being, about the ideal of marriage, it would recog- 
 nize the unwisdom and the injustice of asking one 
 party to a marriage to abjure that which it insists that 
 the other party retain and cherish. If Liberal Juda- 
 ism really cared to ensure at least a reasonable likeli- 
 hood of happiness in the marriage of a Jew with a 
 member of another faith, it would respect and seek to 
 safeguard the religion of the non-Jew just as much as 
 the religion of the Jew. It would realize that the 
 surrender of the religion of one party to a marriage 
 sets the whole marriage relation on a wrong footing 
 from the very outset, and that no good purpose is 
 served by insisting that the non-Jewish party to the 
 marriage accept something which at the time must 
 necessarily be alien. 
 
 Upon examination, then, the objections raised by 
 Liberal Judaism against intermarriage appear to be 
 groundless, and the solution of the problem which it 
 offers no solution. If, however, the attitude of oppo- 
 sition and categorical disapproval is wrong, and is 
 to be abandoned, something must be offered to 
 take its place. For intermarriage occurs very fre- 
 quently among Jews, and Liberal Judaism must define 
 anew its attitude towards it. Shall approval take the 
 place of the old attitude of disapproval, and if not 
 one of approval what shall the new attitude be? 
 
108 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 As in the other questions which have been consid- 
 ered, the teaching of Judaism in regard to intermar- 
 riage will be determined by the religious principles 
 on which Judaism is held to rest. And to Judaism 
 based on the principles laid down in these chapters, 
 intermarriage must necessarily seem perfectly permis- 
 sible and in no way to be condemned. It is not im- 
 plied that every marriage between a Jew and a non- 
 Jew would be approved of by Judaism. (Such ap- 
 proval would depend on individual circumstances just 
 as in the case of marriage between Jews). But in 
 the theory of intermarriage, in intermarriage itself 
 there is nothing to which objection can, or ought, 
 be made by Liberal Judaism. It is necessary to ex- 
 plain a little more fully just what is meant. 
 
 I have said that the purpose of religion is to help 
 men to live well, and that the aim of Judaism must 
 be to help Jews to live well. Intermarriage does not, 
 as has been urged against it, impair the possibility 
 of happiness or right living for the individual, and it 
 may well help the individual to achieve these ends. 
 For this reason Liberal Judaism must abandon its 
 opposition to it, and substitute therefor an attitude 
 of complete tolerance and sympathy towards those 
 Jews who choose to marry a member of some other re- 
 ligious group. It must be recognized by Judaism that 
 if a Jew or Jewess has come deeply to care for a 
 non-Jew, it is the highest duty of Judaism, regardless 
 of the effect which a marriage between such indi- 
 viduals may have on church or synagogue, to further 
 
INTERMARRIAGE 109 
 
 and not to hinder their union. The attitude of Juda- 
 ism must be one of stimulating and encouraging the 
 individual to follow his or her own highest nature 
 in arriving at a decision concerning marriage. And 
 that encouragement and stimulus must neither be with- 
 drawn or lessened even where they might lead the Jew 
 or Jewess to a union with a member of another faith. 
 If such the event should prove, there is every reason 
 why that union ought to be consecrated. There is no 
 valid reason why it should be prevented. 
 
 There is one further aspect of the problem of inter- 
 marriage on which it is necessary briefly to dwell. Al- 
 though the general attitude of Liberal Judaism has 
 been one of opposition to intermarriage, there have 
 been some Jews who have urged that intermarriage is 
 not only permissible, but that it is both desirable and 
 necessary, and that, far from opposing it, Liberal 
 Judaism ought to give it recognition and encourage- 
 ment. The grounds for this view are two. First it 
 has been held that by means of intermarriage the in- 
 fluence of Judaism would be widened and that it 
 would eventually be adopted throughout the world. 
 And since this was the acknowledged aim of Judaism, 
 it ought welcome the aid which intermarriage could 
 bring to it.© The other argument advanced in favor 
 
 *Intermarriage, favored for this reason, is based, of course, 
 on the supposition that conversion of the non-Jewish party to 
 the marriage will take place. Such conversion, however, Juda- 
 ism has no legitimate right to demand or to expect. For a 
 statement of the position of those Liberal Jews who favoured 
 intermarriage see the “Jewish Times,” Vol. I, re the controversy 
 between Einhorn and Samuel Hirsch. 
 
110 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 of intermarriage is that, if it were to take place on a 
 large enough scale, it would put an end to anti- 
 Semitism and to the persecution of the Jews, as there 
 would in time be Jewish members in every non-Jewish 
 family and vice versa. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to go into the details of either 
 of these plans, or to question their possible results. 
 But it is necessary to point out the underlying fal- 
 lacy of the conception behind them. The fallacy is 
 the same as that which has appeared in the arguments 
 advanced against intermarriage. It has been forgot- 
 ten in both cases that marriage and intermarriage are 
 alike purely personal matters, and that religion can 
 adopt no one attitude toward the problem, whether of 
 approval or disapproval. It would be just as unjus- 
 tifiable for Judaism to counsel or to insist that Jews 
 marry outside Judaism, as it is for Judaism to at- 
 tempt to discourage and to prevent them from doing 
 so. Either attitude implies a complete lack of under- 
 standing both of the province of religious teaching 
 and exhortation, and of the infinitely delicate mar- 
 riage relation. 
 
 Indeed in regard to this problem there can be no 
 general attitude or rule or regulation. Judaism must 
 realize that its own interests have no place in this, 
 the most personal of decisions which the individual 
 is called upon to make. Judaism must neither frown 
 upon nor yet advise intermarriage. Its duty is rather 
 to attempt to make clear that intermarriage is a per- 
 sonal problem, to be decided afresh by each indi- 
 
INTERMARRIAGE 111 
 
 vidual who is faced by it. And it must also make 
 clear that the decision is not to be made with the pres- 
 ervation or propagation of Judaism in mind, but 
 according to the best wisdom and thought and feeling 
 of the persons involved.’ 
 
 It has been urged by those who oppose intermarriage that 
 where it occurs the children of such a union are in danger of 
 being brought up without a knowledge of either parent’s re- 
 ligion, and without religious education of any sort. There is no 
 doubt that this sometimes happens and every individual con- 
 templating intermarriage ought well to consider this aspect of 
 the problem. And the religions of both the parties to such a 
 marriage ought to point out to the individuals concerned their 
 responsibility to the child and the duty of preparing and arrang- 
 ing to meet that responsibility. 
 
 It is also said that in the event of intermarriage the spiritual 
 ideals of Judaism will be lost to the next generation. This 
 fear does not seem to me to be justified. Ideals are not “lost.” 
 Where they are a real factor in the individual’s consciousness, 
 hey will remain and will be transmitted by the individual to his 
 children, And while the ideals of the Jewish parent may lose a 
 certain amount of their specifically Jewish quality and character, 
 they will nevertheless persist in one form or another. And it is 
 the ideal after all, not the quality of Jewishness attached to it, 
 which is of greatest value. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE PLACE OF JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM 
 
 For almost nineteen hundred years Jesus has been 
 excluded from Judaism. His personality and his 
 teachings alike have played no part in the inner life 
 of the Jewish people. As far as any direct influence 
 on Judaism is concerned, Jesus might never have lived 
 and taught and died. Yet indirectly Jesus has deter- 
 mined the whole course of Jewish history and Judaism 
 has never been unmindful of his life. Christendom 
 has made that impossible. The religions which have 
 called themselves by his name have determined in one 
 way or another the world history of Israel for more 
 than fifteen centuries. No matter what interest, or 
 lack of interest in Jesus, Judaism may have felt, 
 Christendom never forgot for a moment the relation 
 between them, and never allowed the Jew to forget 
 that he and his children’s children must bear the re- 
 sponsibility, and atone for the crime of Jesus’ death. 
 
 It is not necessary here to do more than recall in 
 passing the centuries of persecution and oppression, 
 of suffering and shame, which have in truth “made 
 the people of the Christ into the Christ of peoples.” 
 But recalled they must be in order to understand the 
 
 112 
 
JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM 113 
 
 tragic irony of fate, which has kept the Jew from lov- 
 ing the person and knowing the prophecies of Jesus, 
 and yet has wriiten his name in blood across every 
 page of Jewish history. True it is that Judaism has 
 had for centuries no desire to know aught of him 
 whose name has been alike upon the tongue of per- 
 secuting prelates and of the murderous rabble in the 
 streets. For aught the Jew could see or was made to 
 feel, there was not an iota of truth or goodness in the 
 teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. “By their fruits 
 shall ye know them,” Jesus had said, and the only 
 fruits of his teachings with which the Jew was 
 familiar were violence and hatred and oppression. 
 And, worst of all, masquerading under the name of 
 Love! 
 
 Nor was this the only reason why the Jew adopted 
 an attitude of aloofness towards everything connected 
 with the name and teachings of Jesus. Even had he 
 desired to learn something about the Nazarene Jew, 
 to discover why it was that the world looked on him 
 as a divinity, there were reasons why he could not. 
 Any word, every word, which the Jew wrote or spoke 
 concerning Jesus was, and well he knew it, likely at 
 any time to be turned terribly against him. Were 
 the word one of praise, it would be seized on to help 
 in converting other Jews to Christianity. Were it a 
 word of disapproval or of censure, it might be fraught 
 with the possibility of torture and of death for thou- 
 sands. In silence lay the Jew’s only safety, and it 
 is not to be wondered at that he avoided anything, in 
 
114 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 any way associated with the life and doctrine and 
 death of Jesus. 
 
 Half the Jews of the world still live under condi- 
 tions such as these. To the millions of Jews in East- 
 ern Europe the central figure of the Christian religion 
 is still the dominating factor in Jewish suffering. But 
 in Western lands this is no longer so. Despite tempo- 
 rary flurries of medieval fanaticism, the prevailing 
 spirit is one of liberalism and of tolerance. The Jew 
 is able to follow his own religious beliefs without in- 
 terference, and in consequence he is enabled to revise 
 and to re-formulate his opinions about the religious 
 beliefs of other groups. While the Christian world 
 still holds that Jesus was uniquely divine, it no longer 
 seeks to impose that conviction on others by means 
 of the sword and of fire, and the Jew is free to find 
 out for himself what it is in the life and teachings 
 of Jesus that has so gripped the imagination of man- 
 kind. The Jew is free to go to the sources of the 
 life of Jesus instead of deriving knowledge about him 
 from Christian creed and theology. 
 
 How he will use this freedom remains to be seen. 
 It may, for a time, be very difficult for him to ap- 
 proach the subject in a way which will do it and him 
 justice. Yet to those who feel that in the estrange- 
 ment which has so long existed between Jesus and his 
 people there is something deeply regrettable, who 
 hold that there is very much in the teaching and life 
 of Jesus which can be of inestimable value to the 
 Jew even to-day, the hope must remain that some- 
 
JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM 115 
 
 how, and at some not too distant time, Jesus will be 
 reclaimed by Judaism, and will assume the place 
 which should be his in the minds and hearts of his 
 fellow Jews. 
 
 The objection may be urged that there is no real 
 need to include the teachings of Jesus within the 
 volume of Jewish lore, and that while his life may 
 have been an inspiring one, and his doctrines, in part 
 at least, forceful and true, Judaism stands in no need 
 of them to-day. It may be urged that Judaism has 
 gotten along very well for nineteen hundred years 
 without Jesus, and that it can do without him in the 
 future. This objection, I say, may be raised. But I 
 cannot really believe that it will be. At all events it 
 is not in keeping either with the teachings of Liberal 
 Judaism or with the informing religious spirit of our 
 times, and represents an attitude which is becoming 
 far less common to-day than it has been in the past. 
 It is not amiss however to recall the fundamental 
 principle, emphasized earlier in this book, of the 
 duty of Judaism to seek and to use whatever it is 
 thought may prove of help to the Jew in living well. 
 The Bible, it was there explained, is no longer to be 
 the one religious text book of the Jew, but wherever 
 a teaching is found which may serve the religious 
 end it is to be utilized regardless of the source from 
 which it may have been derived. 
 
 This principle would in itself justify the inclusion 
 of any great religious teaching as part of the teaching 
 of Judaism. But in the case of Jesus there are further 
 
116 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 and far more cogent reasons for his inclusion within 
 the company of those to whom the Jew may turn for 
 spiritual guidance. Jesus is, after all, a unique figure 
 in the history of the world, unique both in what he 
 taught, and in what he was, and Judaism, if it is to 
 serve the real needs of the Jew to-day, cannot ignore 
 this master spirit. The appeal of Jesus, it has been 
 justly said, is universal. He may not mean “all 
 things to all men,” but to any man he may mean 
 much. In his personality, as revealed by the gospels, 
 there is something irresistibly appealing, something 
 which touches answering chords in the hearts of men 
 and women and children.’ Not the least of the 
 tasks of Judaism to-day is to find out what this power 
 is and how it can be adapted in order that it may give 
 strength and inspiration and joy to the Jews of our 
 generation. And it must never be forgotten that Jesus, 
 world-figure that he has become, was a Jew, and that 
 Judaism in seeking him out to-day is not taking to 
 itself an alien or a stranger spirit, but is rejoicing 
 once again to find and to love an older brother and a 
 friend. 
 
 Perhaps there is no phase of modern Judaism more 
 interesting and important than the beginning, the very 
 limited beginning, it has made toward the rediscovery 
 
 *The power of appeal of Jesus is evidenced by the very dif- 
 fering things which his life and teachings have connoted to 
 different ages,—and to different men in any one age. ‘The 
 details and the manifestations of the appeal have varied pro- 
 foundly. But the appeal itself has remained constant in in- 
 tensity and power. 
 
JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM LY 
 
 of Jesus. Judaism is beginning to feel that in the 
 life, in the teachings, in the suffering of this Jew 
 there was somewhat utterly Jewish, utterly human, 
 of which it would no longer remain in ignorance. 
 The modern Jew, separated by centuries from Jesus, 
 begins to feel a very real kinship with him; not with 
 Jesus the Christ, not with the Jesus of supernatural 
 miracles or of the resurrection, but with Jesus the 
 Jew, with Jesus the man, with Jesus of Nazareth, who, 
 in the word of Matthew “went about the land doing 
 good.” 
 
 Liberal Judaism has taken the first step. The 
 ablest among its leaders have for some years insisted 
 upon the essentially Jewish quality of the teachings 
 of Jesus. Many of them have voiced their profound 
 admiration for the man and for his teachings, and 
 have rejoiced to claim him as a great Jew. They 
 have insisted that Jesus was not alien to Judaism, but 
 that he was one of, perhaps the greatest of, the great 
 company of Hebrew prophets, and that both his life 
 and teachings were in every way permeated by the 
 spirit of Judaism at its highest. 
 
 Liberal Judaism has advanced far in its attitude 
 towards Jesus. But it has not gone far enough. 
 While it has recognized Jesus as a great Jew, Liberal 
 Judaism has stopped there. It has made no effort to 
 re-include him, in fact as well as in theory, among 
 the long line of Jewish teachers, whose lives and 
 works so largely determine what Judaism is to-day, 
 and whose histories are impressed by rabbi and 
 
118 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 teacher alike upon the Jewish consciousness.” Lib- 
 eral Judaism admits freely that Jesus was a great 
 ethical teacher, a teacher fully worthy of his fore- 
 runners, the prophets. But it fails to examine into 
 what made Jesus a great ethical and spiritual power, 
 what the doctrines were which he taught, and which 
 of them, when tested by the standards of our 
 own religious conscience and consciousness, can 
 be of help to Jews to-day. In other words Liberal 
 Judaism admits that the personality of Jesus 
 was a great and truly religious one, but it has 
 so far failed to make use of that personality in 
 shaping the lives and characters of the Jews of this 
 generation. 
 
 Centuries of silence and repression cannot be over- 
 come in a moment, and it is not to be wondered at that 
 Jews have been slow to apply to their own lives the 
 lessons to be drawn from the teachings of Jesus. But 
 the time has come when Jews living in Western lands 
 can approach without fear the story of a Jew who 
 came to preach the high gospel of love! The Jew 
 to-day is ready to reclaim Jesus, to learn for himself 
 what it is in the message of Jesus that has so appealed 
 to all ages and in all lands, and to incorporate in his 
 
 7It is true that Jesus is the subject of many sermons and 
 lectures from Jewish pulpits and platforms. But the burden of 
 the message of those who have dealt with the subject has been 
 to prove that Jesus was a Jew, and never desired to be anything 
 else. The attempt has never to my knowledge been made on 
 the part of Jewish teachers, to consider with their fellow Jews 
 just what the fundamental teachings of Jesus were and how 
 they may be applied to the Judaism of the present. 
 
JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM 119 
 
 own life whatever of the teachings of Jesus seem to 
 him good and true. 
 
 In attempting to understand the personality and 
 teaching of Jesus, the Jew possesses one important 
 advantage over other peoples. Not only is he ac- 
 quainted with the background out of which Jesus 
 appeared, and without an understanding of which, 
 Jesus can never be fully understood, but he can go 
 directly to the man and to his work. He can brush 
 aside, as of no importance for his purpose, the theo- 
 logical veil which has so often hidden Jesus from 
 those who sought to know him. The few can come 
 to know the inspiringly simple man of the gospel 
 narratives, and can afford to ignore the metaphysical 
 and credal interpositions which have been placed 
 between him and the world. Indeed the necessity for 
 separating the history and teachings of Jesus from 
 the history and teachings of organized Christianity, 
 cannot be emphasized too strongly. And, despite fre- 
 quent assertions to the contrary, that separation can 
 and must be made. It is quite true that Christianity 
 would be a meaningless phrase without the back- 
 ground of the life of him who is believed to have 
 been its founder, but that is no reason why the teach- 
 ings of Jesus may not be studied and loved and fol- 
 lowed, without any reference to the creed and dogma 
 which were later founded upon them. 
 
 Thus it will be seen at once that there are certain 
 problems connected with the figure of Jesus which 
 need not concern the Jew. For example, the whole 
 
120 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 question of his messiahship, of the unique incarna- 
 tion in him of the spirit of God, of his perfection and 
 sinlessness, and of his atonement and mediation for 
 all men—all this the Jew can afford to ignore. Jewish 
 scholars may and should deal with these problems in 
 order to make clear the Jewish point of view in regard 
 to the theological and eschatological questions in- 
 volved. But to the Jew who wishes to know and to 
 understand Jesus they are not of importance. The 
 ideas involved in them can never be very meaningful 
 to great numbers of Jews. For they seem neither 
 necessary nor even plausible in the world which the 
 Jew knows and in which he must live, and moreover 
 they seem to him to be out of harmony with present- 
 day life and thought and feeling. Nor can the Jew 
 accept the argument that Jesus himself dealt with 
 and stressed these ideas. In regard to them he will 
 agree with Emerson that “The idioms of his language, 
 and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the 
 place of his truth.” 
 
 Nor need there be any fear that there will be little 
 or nothing left when the dogma and the creeds sur- 
 rounding the figure of Jesus have been removed. 
 Much will remain. Indeed all that is of real worth 
 will still be left. There will, in truth, be no sub- 
 tracting from the personality of Jesus in this process 
 of dedogmatization. What in reality will take place 
 will be the removal of what have come to be obstruc- 
 tions and superfluous superstructures, the dogmas 
 which obscure the true splendor of the radiant spirit 
 
 =< 
 
JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM 121 
 
 of Jesus. And when these have been done away 
 with (and to the Jew they need never be real obstruc- 
 tions), there will remain the striking character, the 
 inspiring history, and the sublime ethical teachings of 
 the man.* 
 
 Before examining the teachings of Jesus I would 
 dwell briefly on his personality, and in what way it 
 may help to serve the spiritual needs of the Jew to- 
 day. It is evident of course that personality and 
 teaching must be closely connected in the case of a 
 figure such as Jesus. It is impossible to think, for 
 example, of his noble doctrine concerning the out- 
 casts and the pariahs of society, without remember- 
 ing how he himself lived with them and was their 
 friend. And it is equally impossible to think of the 
 occurrences of his life and the tragedy of his death, 
 without connecting them always with the message that 
 he preached. 
 
 But despite this obvious connection the gospels do 
 give us, even though it be but in fragmentary and 
 broken manner, the picture of an inspiring and in- 
 spired personality, which, apart from all question of 
 teaching or doctrine, commands respect and love. 
 And to the Jew who would find in the history 
 of Jesus a present help and strength, no starting 
 
 *This view of Christian dogma concerning Jesus cannot, in 
 fairness either to Jews or to Christians, be called the Jewish 
 view alone. For it is also the view of great numbers of liberal 
 Christians, who, as the conflict between the Modernists and the 
 Fundamentalists shows, are trying to pierce through the screen 
 which theology has erected, and to draw inspiration anew from 
 the simple faith and noble personality of Jesus. 
 
122 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 point could be more appropriate than his luminous 
 personality. 
 
 Figures enough can be found in the Old Testament 
 and throughout Jewish history that have been up- 
 right and just and brave; prophets who like Jesus 
 “preached righteousness in the great congregation,” 
 but there is no figure in all history whose nature was 
 so compact of sympathy and of courage and of kind- 
 ness; who was as firm as he, and yet as gentle, and 
 who like him ministered to men in tenderness and 
 love. The Jesus who went about the land doing good 
 can be recalled to-day to serve greatly in the shaping 
 of the character of Jewish men and women. He can 
 again be made a living force in stimulating our gener- 
 ation to become, in some degree at least, like him. 
 Nor must it be objected that his was a nature so far 
 above that of most men, that it is one impossible to 
 follow. We must not forget that even if men fail to 
 live as he lived: 
 
 “When the high heart we magnify, 
 And the sure vision celebrate, 
 And worship greatness, passing by, 
 Ourselves are great!” 
 
 In dealing with the teachings of Jesus which can be 
 of real value to Jews living in our day, I cannot make 
 it too clear that it is impossible here to discuss all 
 of them, or to do full justice to those which I shall 
 consider. No more can be done than to outline some 
 of his greater teachings. They must be dealt with 
 eventually with far more thoroughness and compre- 
 
JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM 123 
 
 hensiveness than they will be dealt with in this chap- 
 ter. But a beginning must be made, and to this 
 beginning I now turn. 
 
 Before examining the teachings of Jesus, however, 
 it is necessary to mention an attitude current among 
 many Jews in regard to them. That attitude is one 
 of refusing to admit that there is any originality in 
 them. Jesus, it is said, taught nothing new, and made 
 no original contribution to the fields of morals and of 
 ethics. He only restated in a novel way, it is held, 
 the truths which the Hebrew prophets had long since 
 enunciated and the only contribution which he made 
 was in the manner and not in the matter of what he 
 taught.* That there is no truth in these assertions 
 has been so abundantly proved that it is hardly neces- 
 sary to answer them here. In many respects, it is 
 true, Jesus did re-state the teachings of the prophets, 
 and adapt them to meet the needs of his own time. 
 But in addition he taught certain doctrines that were 
 clearly his own, which are indelibly stamped with 
 the originality of his own unique personality. To 
 state that he did nothing more than to re-phrase the 
 teachings of the prophets is as absurd as it would be 
 to state that Amos did no more than to re-phrase the 
 
 This peculiar view is not only the product of Jewish research 
 and scholarship. There have been Christian writers and teachers 
 not a few who in recent years have held the same opinion. Nor 
 must it be imagined that all or even the best among Jewish 
 writers have denied originality to the teachings of Jesus. In 
 increasing numbers Jews are beginning to recognize that orig- 
 inality—and to rejoice in finding it, instead of admitting it 
 reluctantly. 
 
124 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 teachings of Elijah, and that Isaiah went not a step 
 beyond Amos, except in the manner of his presenta- 
 tion of the truth! The old and the new must always 
 intermingle in every religious teaching, but it is as 
 pointless to say that in the teaching of Jesus all is old 
 and nothing new, as it is to say that all is new and 
 nothing old. 
 
 Among those teachings which Jesus emphasized in 
 common with the prophets may be classed his insis- 
 tence that inward piety was more acceptable to God 
 than the trappings and the show of religious worship. 
 And like the prophets Jesus emphasized the fact that 
 worship of God was worse than a mockery unless it 
 were founded upon justice in dealings between man 
 and man. On these fundamental religious questions 
 Jesus stood exactly where the prophets had stood 
 before him.° 
 
 In dealing, however, with the teachings of Jesus 
 which are ethically and spiritually original, his dis- 
 tinct contribution to the spiritual wealth of our world, 
 it is impossible, I believe, to find any one underlying 
 doctrinal unity running through them. Certain fun- 
 damental points are stressed by Jesus again and again, 
 
 * But even in regard to these questions there is in the teachings 
 of Jesus something of real value. Although he was at one with 
 his predecessors concerning them, he stood as it were upon their 
 shoulders, and with keen vision he could see still further into 
 the spiritual truths which they had glimpsed. And he taught 
 moreover in a way, which if it missed something of the titanic 
 grandeur of the prophets, surpassed them in warmth and human- 
 ness, and in the power to make personal appeal. So that even 
 
 where the teachings of Jesus coincide with those of the prophets, 
 the Jew will find much in them which may inspire and guide him. 
 
 te | ll i a a 
 
JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM 125 
 
 but these points are not brought into any sort of rela- 
 tion with each other, which would justify one, on the 
 basis of the gospels alone, in building up a system- 
 atic religious philosophy, and attributing that phi- 
 losophy to Jesus. There is no unified doctrine that 
 Jesus taught.® 
 
 It must always be remembered that Jesus dealt, not 
 with theoretical morality, but with life. His words 
 and thoughts, though they must have been deeply 
 pondered over when he was alone, in the years before 
 his active ministry began, were delivered to multi- 
 tudes, in answer often to unexpected questions, and 
 in a manner very much simpler than the ordered 
 manner of closely reasoned theology. Jesus did not 
 prepare his message (except, perhaps, the sermon on 
 the mount) in the secluded closet of the scholar. He 
 dealt with spiritual problems as they arose, and it is a 
 sorry misunderstanding of his teaching to attempt to 
 wring from his compelling and stirring words a con- 
 sistent and consecutive religious philosophy. It can- 
 not be done. The only real unity in the teachings of 
 Jesus is to be found in the purpose that informed and 
 underlay them all, the ever present will of Jesus to 
 minister unto men, “to be about my father’s busi- 
 ness.” That unity will then be pre-supposed and his 
 teachings will be dealt with, in the only way in which 
 they can intelligently be dealt with, that is separately. 
 
 *Indeed one can point to numerous inconsistencies and even 
 contradictions, but these will not lessen the value of the teach- 
 ings that are good and true. 
 
126 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 Of the many doctrines of Jesus which may be called 
 essentially his own, his teaching concerning the 
 divinity of man seems to me the most important. Be- 
 fore his time it had been shown that God stood in very 
 close and loving nearness to human beings. But Jesus 
 first insisted that in man himself, in man at his best, 
 at his highest, the divine dwelt. Jesus it was who 
 taught that every human being had within him at 
 every moment of his life the potentiality of divine be- 
 ing, that, if man would but will it, he could make 
 himself as one with God. 
 
 Nor must this fundamental teaching of Jesus be 
 confused with the doctrine of Christianity concerning 
 his unique divinity. As Emerson has explained: 
 “Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of 
 man. One man was true to what is in you and me. 
 He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and 
 evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his 
 World. He said in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 
 ‘T am divine. Through me God acts; through me, 
 speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, 
 when thou also thinkest as I now think.’ But what 
 a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in 
 the same, in the next, and the following ages! There 
 is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be 
 taught by the Understanding. The understanding 
 caught this high chant from the poet’s lips, and said 
 in the next age, “This was Jehovah come down out of 
 heaven. I will kill you if you say he was a man.’ ” 7 
 
 *Emerson’s Divinity Address. 
 
JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM 127 
 
 But because of the “distortion” which his teaching 
 suffered its greatness must not be overlooked, and his 
 insistence on the innate divinity of man remains an 
 imperishable contribution to the religious outlook of 
 the world. It is a doctrine which undoubtedly bears 
 within it the seed of exaggerated mysticism, and if 
 carried too far it may easily lead men away from a 
 clear understanding of the facts of life, of the earthly, 
 the material basis, on which the spiritual possibility 
 here implied, depends. But it is a noble teaching 
 none the less, a teaching which it will be well 
 worth the while of Jews living to-day carefully to 
 consider. 
 
 Closely connected with his belief in the divine 
 nature of man was the insistence of Jesus upon the 
 worth and importance of the spiritual judgment of the 
 individual. It was he who first insisted that the indi- 
 vidual had the right, the duty, to speak out as he was 
 moved, to oppose his own spiritual insight and judg- 
 ment to the insight and judgment of the world. There 
 are no words in all history more meaningful and 
 moving than his oft-repeated “But I say unto you.” 
 He, the single man, in defiance, not only of the powers 
 and principalities of earth, but of tradition of re- 
 ligious custom and of established belief as well, in- 
 sisted upon the spiritual duty of speaking the truth 
 as he saw it, upon “Pure passion’s high prerogative, 
 to make, not follow precedent!” 
 
 Dealing with this insistence of Jesus upon the val- 
 idity of his own teaching, it is said in the article on 
 
128 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 his life in the Jewish Encyclopedia that, “The 
 prophets spoke with confidence in the truth of their 
 message, but expressly on the ground that they were 
 declaring the word of the Lord. Jesus adopted equal 
 confidence; but he emphasized his own authority apart 
 from any vicarious or deputed power from on high.” ® 
 Always in opposition to the phrase “It hath been said 
 by them of old time,” is flung back the prophetic, 
 “But I say unto you!” Truly in this word of Jesus 
 lies the magna charta of the spiritual freedom of 
 mankind. And in this teaching there is much by 
 which the Jew of to-day can profit. It emphasizes 
 what is of greatest importance in the spiritual life, 
 the worth which must be ascribed to individual ethical 
 insight; it emphasizes the right, the privilege of all 
 men to be themselves, to follow their own conscience 
 in accordance with their own best judgment. Traced 
 through the life and the teachings of Jesus, this em- 
 phasis on the right of the individual to face life’s 
 problems in his own way, can inspire the Jew to dare 
 to voice whatever of the spirit he feels speaking 
 through him, and it can help to strengthen the Jew 
 in the knowledge that one with God is always a. 
 majority. 
 
 Another problem with which Jesus dealt, and con- 
 cerning which he made a strikingly original contribu- 
 tion, is the problem of evil, and how evil may be 
 coped with. It is impossible, in dealing with his 
 teaching in this connection, to do better than to quote, 
 
 * Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, p. 163. 
 
JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM 129 
 
 even if at some length the exposition of Felix Adler 
 concerning it. Jesus he says, commands men to “Re- 
 sist not evil, resist not oppression. Shall then evil 
 triumph? Is the victim helplessly at the mercy of the 
 injurer? Shall he even be told that in a servile spirit 
 he must accept the indignities that are put upon him? 
 No; this is not the meaning. Quite a different mean- 
 ing is implied. And here the teaching of Jesus takes 
 its novel turn. There is a way, he says to the victim, 
 in which you can spiritually triumph over the evil- 
 doer, and make your peace with irresistible oppres- 
 sion. Use it as a means of self-purification; pause to 
 consider what the inner motives are that lead your 
 enemy, and others like him, to do such acts as they 
 are guilty of, and to so violate your personality and 
 that of others. The motives in them are lust, greed, 
 anger, wilfulness, pride. Now turn your gaze in- 
 ward upon yourself, look into your own heart and 
 learn, perhaps to your amazement, that the same evil 
 streams trickle through you; that you, too, are sub- 
 ject, even if it be only subconsciously and incipiently, 
 to the same appetites, passions, and pride, that ani- 
 mate your injurers. Therefore let the sufferings you 
 endure at the hands of those who allow these bad 
 impulses free rein in their treatment of you lead you 
 to expel the same bad impulses that stir potentially in 
 your breast; let this experience fill you with a deeper 
 horror of the evil, and prove the incentive to secure 
 your own emancipation from its control. In this way 
 you will achieve a real triumph over your enemy, 
 
130 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 and will be able to make your peace with oppres- 
 sion.” ® 
 
 Again concerning the command of Jesus to love 
 one’s enemies, Adler says: ““To bless them that curse 
 you, to bless them that despitefully use you, means to 
 distinguish between the spiritual possibilities latent 
 in them and their overt conduct, to see the human, the 
 potentially divine face behind the horrible mask, and 
 to invoke the influence of the divine power upon them 
 in order that it may change them into their purer, 
 better selves.” *° 
 
 The next teaching of Jesus with which I would 
 deal, has occasioned so much dispute and misunder- 
 standing, and has become so much a matter of po- 
 lemic and controversy, that it is with difficulty that 
 one can come at the heart of what it contains. I refer 
 to his teaching concerning love. And at once it must 
 be said that in the words of Jesus, and in his spirit, 
 there is to be found none of the antithesis of love and 
 law, or love and justice, which has been so commonly 
 attributed to him since the time of Paul. Dealing with 
 the spirit of love and its place in life, he does not op- 
 pose love to law in general, or to the law of Israel in 
 particular, nor does he offer love in the place of jus- 
 tice. True he emphasizes love as it had never been 
 emphasized before, but love is to act through the law 
 and through justice, and not to oppose them; it is to 
 be the crown of justice, a transforming and a trans- 
 
 ®“An Ethical Philosophy of Life,” pp. 33 and 34. 
 “Op. cit., p. 38. 
 
JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM 131 
 
 figuring crown. But no pseudo-interpretation or al- 
 legorization is able to do away with the words, ““Think 
 not that I am come to destroy the law of the prophets. 
 I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” Jesus un- 
 derstood that law and justice were always indis- 
 pensable. But he insisted that beyond and above 
 these, though based upon them, love must exalt men, 
 love which is after all the very salt of life, the salt 
 without which all life loses its savor. 
 
 It must not be imagined that love had been neglec- 
 ted in the Old Testament, or that Jesus gave the con- 
 ception of love to the world. Jesus himself insists 
 that the first and greatest commandment in the law 
 is to love God, and that the “‘second is like unto it. 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The con- 
 ception of the love of God and man was an old one. 
 What Jesus did was to ascribe to it a new meaning 
 and to emphasize an aspect of love which had not 
 before his time been considered. I refer to the active 
 aspect of love, in virtue of which, as Mr. Montefiore 
 has said, “Love goes forth, and gives freely, and 
 yearns to help and save, in virtue of which it seeks 
 to succor and redeem the sinner, and is ever ready to 
 renounce, to sacrifice and to endure. .. .”’ It is this 
 aspect, or rather these qualities of love, which Jesus 
 first clearly understood, and commended to mankind. 
 It is an aspect which is still well worth the consider- 
 ation of Jew and non-Jew alike. 
 
 These are in broadest outline some of the teach- 
 ings of Jesus which are essentially his own and es- 
 
132 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 sentially true, and which may prove to be of vital: 
 help and inspiration to the Jew living to-day. But 
 the question very naturally arises: if these teachings 
 are in reality so fine and true, if they do represent 
 such a great advance beyond the religious teachings 
 of the prophets, and if Jesus verily does appear to 
 be so luminous and inspiring a personality, why 
 should not Jews accept the religious teachings of 
 Jesus as a whole and follow them entirely? They 
 would not have to become Christians or accept Chris- 
 tianity. For as Lessing put it “Christianity has been 
 tried for eighteen hundred years, but the religion of 
 Jesus remains to be tried!”” Could and should not 
 the Jew be the first to put it into practice? 
 
 The answer to this question must be in the nega- 
 tive. In the first place, it may be pointed out that 
 noble and inspiring as many of the teachings of Jesus 
 are, they do not contain the last word to be spoken 
 in the fields of religion and ethics. That word it was 
 explained has not been and cannot be spoken at any 
 one time or by any one person, and the Jew must 
 no more accept the religion of Jesus than he must 
 accept the teachings of the Old Testament, as ade- 
 quate to meet all his religious needs. Nor ought the 
 acceptance by the Jew of the teachings of Jesus prove 
 in any way inimical to his love for and loyalty to 
 other Jewish teachers. The Ol dand New Testament 
 (at least that part of the New Testament contained 
 in the gospel histories of the life of Jesus) need 
 not and ought not prove mutually exclusive. They 
 
JESUS IN MODERN JUDAISM 133 
 
 ought rather supplement and complement each 
 other.” ** 
 
 The Jew cannot enroll himself as a follower of 
 Jesus, because his teaching, inspiring and noble as it 
 was, is not enough. It was pointed out in the chapter 
 on The Outlook of Liberal Judaism that no past teach- 
 ing, however fine, and no spiritual insight, however 
 clear and true, are sufficient to meet the problems of 
 
 the present; that the problems of to-day must in the / 
 last analysis evoke to-day’s solutions. Thus the Jew 
 
 cannot accept the teaching of Jesus as possessing such 
 power and cogency that they can meet and solve his 
 problems; and it would be a step backward to assume 
 that his words and actions, any more than the words 
 and actions of the seers of the Old Testament, are 
 capable of supplying the Jew with a comprehensive 
 spiritual chart or guide. 
 
 The teachings of Jesus cannot alone solve the prob- 
 lems of the Jew, nor can the Jew consider the word 
 of Jesus to be the last or truest word in the spiritual 
 progress of mankind. Yet his was a noble teaching 
 
 417t must be made clear, however, that even together they can- 
 not determine the whole spiritual outlook of the Jew to-day. 
 Beside them there are other teachings and other religious doc- 
 trines which, while they may be less inclusive than those of the old 
 and New Testaments, may none the less serve and help the Jew 
 to-day in the effort to live well. Plato and Marcus Aurelius and 
 Epictetus, for example, had no knowledge of the writings which 
 are included in the Bible and hence drew none of their own 
 teachings from that source. But each of them contributed greatly 
 to the spiritual wealth of the world. And in the works of each 
 there are ethical doctrines which are lofty and inspiring and 
 which in their own way may form a vital part of the equipment 
 with which the Jew will attempt to face life’s problems. 
 
 ee, 
 
134 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 and he spoke a blessed word. In them the Jew can 
 and should find much that will light up the course of 
 his own life, much that may inspire and stimulate and 
 strengthen him to live that life in the spirit of Jesus 
 himself, in the high and holy spirit of love. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 In the preceding chapter I have tried to outline 
 some of the problems which confront Liberal Judaism 
 to-day, problems which it must frankly face if it is 
 to remain a vital force in the lives of Jewish men 
 and women. In regard to many of these problems 
 it has been pointed out that the attitude and outlook 
 of Judaism appear at present radically wrong, and 
 that they must be greatly changed. In addition to 
 those questions which have been dealt with there re- 
 main others which have not been discussed. Among 
 them are such problems as the place and value of 
 ritual and religious tradition in the Judaism of to- 
 day, and the very difficult question of what the rela- 
 tion of Judaism and of American Jews ought to be 
 in regard to Zionism, or more correctly, in regard to 
 the Jewish National Homeland, now in the process 
 of being reestablished in Palestine.t And _ besides 
 these, there are numerous minor questions which have 
 not been touched upon. 
 
 +] have failed to deal with these two problems for quite dif- 
 ferent reasons. In regard to the first, I believe that the point 
 of view emphasized throughout is capable of being applied very 
 simply to questions of ritual and tradition, and of their place in 
 modern Judaism. It does not seem necessary to elaborate at 
 
 135 
 
136 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 There remains one problem however which is of 
 such great importance that it cannot be overlooked. 
 I refer to the problem of the Jewish ministry, its 
 general function, and its relation to the religious 
 questions which have been discussed. That the rela- 
 tion is a very intimate one will readily be appreciated. 
 It will be seen to what a large extent the attitude of 
 Judaism is the attitude of its ministers and teachers 
 and leaders. “Like people, like priest” is an old 
 proverb and a true one, but perhaps it would be even 
 truer to-day to say “Like priest, like faith!” For it 
 is the clergy of the great faiths of the Western world, 
 who determine almost entirely the character of re- 
 ligions in our day. While on the other hand there is 
 the fact that the character of the ministry, whether 
 Jewish or Christian, in our day does not determine 
 the character of the people. A fine ministry no 
 longer ensures a fine laity. On the contrary, I have 
 known of instances not a few, where the average of 
 goodness and fineness of members of a community 
 has been above that of the ministers and priests who 
 were supposed to be its spiritual guides.” 
 any length upon the principle that ritual and tradition are to be 
 retained and valued, only insofar as they prove meaningful and 
 helpful to those Jews for whose spiritual development they are 
 intended. 
 
 As to the other question, the relation of Jews individually, 
 and of Judaism as a whole to Palestine and to Jewish achieve- 
 ments and aspirations there, I have not touched upon it because 
 it does not seem to me to be essentially a religious question. 
 And in this book I have attempted to deal only with problems 
 of the religion of the American Jew. 
 
 2'The reason for the lessening of the moral rapport between 
 people and priest is to be found in the dissociation, which has 
 
 eS Oe eee. 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE MINISTRY 137 
 
 But while the character of the ministry no longer 
 determines the character of the lives of laymen to the 
 great extent that it once did, there has grown up in 
 recent years an increased dependence of the character 
 of religion itself upon the ministry. When ordinary 
 men and women were deeply concerned with the prob- 
 lems, both theological and practical, of religion, they 
 and the minister together determined what the char- 
 acter of their faith should be, and, while the ministry 
 influenced them in their religious beliefs and prac- 
 tises to a large degree, they in their turn influenced it. 
 
 But the interest in and zeal for religion on the 
 part of members of churches and synagogues have 
 in our own day flagged. Men and women have come 
 to feel less keenly their responsibility in determining 
 the character of their faith. And the responsibility 
 and the power of determining it have come gradually 
 to rest almost wholly upon the ministry. At all 
 events that is the case with Liberal Judaism to-day. 
 What it is and what it is to become depend almost 
 entirely upon the rabbinate of America. Whether 
 for good or ill, the indifference of the ordinary lay- 
 man and laywoman to the vital problems of religion 
 has placed in the hands of the Rabbi the greatest 
 degree of power in determining the character of 
 Judaism.? 
 for years been growing up in the minds of educated persons, 
 between nobility in the conduct of life, and religious observance. 
 It is being perceived that the two need not go together, even 
 though in so many cases they do. 
 
 ?To guide and direct the religious beliefs of the community is 
 the natural task of the minister. But to-day the minister no 
 
138 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 In some senses it may be said that it is a very barren 
 power which the rabbinate possesses, a power over 
 the empty forms of religion, rather than over the lives 
 and character of those to whom it seeks to minister. 
 Yet that power is not wholly barren. Some Jews there 
 
 are who still apply with earnestness and with con-— 
 
 scious effort the dicta of Judaism to their own lives. 
 And there are always the great number of children, 
 whose religious training and spiritual inspiration 
 depend largely upon the religious head of the com- 
 munity. Because of them, and in the hope that it 
 is not yet too late to bring the teachings of religion 
 again into direct contact with daily life, it is neces- 
 sary to determine what the attiude of the Jewish 
 ministry ought to be in regard to the more important 
 questions with which this book has dealt. 
 
 It is unnecessary here to discuss the Jewish min- 
 istry in its intimate workings, or the way in which 
 it has served American Israel. Its virtues, and it 
 has many, are in no danger of being overlooked. And 
 concerning most of its faults the Jewish ministry is 
 itself acutely conscious. (Although it is significant 
 that one very sane and deeply Jewish person to whom 
 these chapters were shown said in all seriousness, 
 that the faults of the Judaism of to-day were not 
 attributable to Judaism itself, but that almost uni- 
 formly the case was one of right beliefs and doctrines 
 longer seems to be leading and guiding the people. On the con- 
 trary, ministers and laymen seem to be traveling and progressing 
 
 upon entirely different planes, planes which do not even inter- 
 sect, 
 
 be- Ss 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE MINISTRY 139 
 
 being misread and mistaught by the wrong persons. 
 To how large an extent this is true it would be difficult 
 to decide, and not very profitable to discuss. I men- 
 tion it only to make clear that a problem does exist, 
 as to the real serviceableness of what has been at 
 least a devoted rabbinate.) The problem to be dealt 
 with may be stated as follows: What is the attitude 
 of the ministry to be in regard to those questions of 
 belief and conduct which are so vexed to-day? How 
 and in what spirit is the minister to discharge his 
 - function? * 
 
 It is necessary at the very outset to recall once 
 more the fundamental principle laid down in the first 
 chapter of this book. That principle was that the 
 purpose of religion is to help men to live well. Upon 
 its acceptance or rejection will depend in largest part 
 the attitude which the Jewish ministry will adopt. If 
 the minister is to be concerned not so much with com- 
 mending to men the religion of Israel in the hope that 
 it may answer their spiritual needs, as in helping 
 them to live well, no matter in what way, or at what 
 cost to traditional Jewish beliefs, it will be seen that 
 the function and the attitude of the ministry will 
 necessarily undergo a great change. 
 
 This change will perhaps appear most clearly in 
 relation to the preaching and teaching of the min- 
 
 *In all the questions dealt with in these chapters some refer- 
 ence has been made to the necessity for a change in attitude on 
 the part of the Jewish ministry. What I wish here to do is to 
 find some broad underlying principles of outlook and attitude 
 which shall characterize the teachings of the rabbinate in America. 
 
140 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 ister on ethical problems. His aim will no longer be 
 to commend to the souls of his hearers one particular 
 standard or law of life. He will rather attempt to 
 stimulate them as individuals to form their own stand- 
 ards according to their own best judgment and the 
 highest law of their own being. This does not mean 
 that the minister is not to express his own convictions 
 as strongly as he desires or that he is to abate by one 
 whit the ardor with which he champions what he 
 conceives to be the moral law. What it does mean 
 is that the minister will no longer present the doc- 
 trine which he preaches and the beliefs which he 
 upholds, as the one and only means of salvation for 
 all individuals. Instead he will offer his own faith, 
 or the faith of Judaism as he understands it, that those 
 who hear him may know what that faith is, that they 
 may compare it with their own beliefs, and that they 
 may apply whatever in it seems of worth to their 
 own lives. 
 
 Similarly in the fields of dogma and of creed, the 
 minister is not to attempt to impose either his own 
 beliefs or the traditional beliefs of Judaism upon 
 his hearers. Problems such as the existence of God, 
 the character of God and the immortality of the 
 soul, must not be dealt with as if there were one 
 solution which it is the business of the minister to 
 expound. ‘There exists to-day among all groups a 
 wide divergence of beliefs touching these questions. 
 Men and women hold very different opinions on 
 them, opinions which are often radically different 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE MINISTRY 141 
 
 from the opinions of past generations, and from the 
 contemporary teachings of most religions. And these 
 men and women will not, and should not, tolerate a 
 dogmatic assertion of belief by ministers. Despite 
 dogmas of church and synagogue there can be no one 
 single answer, capable of satisfying all men, to the 
 great questions concerning God and the human soul. 
 And men are beginning to realize this. 
 
 The ministry of the future will deal with questions 
 of belief, just as with questions of ethics. The his- 
 toric conceptions of them will be expounded and made 
 clear. The personal belief of the minister will be 
 presented by him, as his own personal belief, and then 
 the men and women to whom he speaks will be urged 
 to consider and to weigh the matter for themselves, 
 and to arrive in their own way at their own decisions. 
 Nor will ministers falter or repent in this attitude, 
 even when it appear that the conclusions reached by 
 those to whom they speak differ from their own, or 
 from the dogmas which their religion has always 
 cherished. 
 
 An example of this new attitude of the ministry 
 is to be found in an address, recently delivered by a 
 great preacher in New York on the subject of immor- 
 tality. Beginning with a frank admission of the im- 
 possibility of any scientific proof or any definite or 
 certain knowledge on the subject, he goes on to affirm 
 his own unshaken belief in immortality, and to ex- 
 plain just how and why he holds that belief. And in 
 concluding his address he makes clear that the belief 
 
142 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 which he cherishes so dearly, is one which many men 
 cannot accept, and that therefore it is not and cannot 
 be, in any sense, a final solution of the problem. 
 
 This is the attitude which the ministry will adopt. 
 It is an attitude which freely recognizes that uni- 
 formity in creed is an impossible and an undesirable 
 achievement, and which understands the value of 
 doubts, and of difference of opinions. It so hap- 
 pened that this man believed firmly that life does not 
 end with death and so expressed himself; but even had 
 he not held this faith, even had he doubted deeply 
 concerning a future life, it would have been of just 
 as much importance that he speak his thought to his 
 people. It is not only as the protagonist of orthodox 
 doctrine that the minister must speak to-day. If 
 doubts and questions are in his own soul, then he 
 must share those doubts and questions with his hear- 
 ers. He must let their wonder feel that he has won- 
 dered, and their doubt that he has doubted. 
 Questionings and doubts are the very stuff of which 
 the life of the spirit is made; they are a vital part 
 of the life of thoughtful men and women. And the 
 minister must not seek to hide this aspect of his 
 being. Asa great American teacher put it, “The true 
 preacher deals out to the people his life,—life passed 
 through the fire of thought.” 
 
 The function of the ministry is, then, not to be 
 thought of in terms of perpetuating and inculcating 
 certain ethical ideals and dogmas. Rather is it to 
 consist in stimulating and inspiring the individual 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE MINISTRY 143 
 
 to formulate his own ideals and to arrive at his 
 own beliefs. Indeed if there is any one religious 
 point of view, or any one attitude, which the min- 
 ister is to commend and to emphasize, it is the neces- 
 sity of self-ministry. Individuals must be made to 
 feel the importance of the command, Minister ye unto 
 yourselves! For it is all-important. 
 
 Our age is frankly individualist; perhaps even 
 more individualist in tendency than in its present 
 status. It marks the rise in place and power of the 
 individual, in his relation to the family, to society, 
 and to the state. And so it is in his relation to re- 
 ligion. The individual has become to an unprece- 
 dented degree its standard and its test. The indi- 
 vidual’s needs and the way in which his needs are 
 met are fast becoming the criterion of the value of 
 his faith. The individual has become the sole judge 
 of the spiritual values in his own life. He has become 
 in large part and is becoming ever more his own 
 minister. And the problem of religion to-day is how 
 to induce the individual to accept consciously and 
 earnestly the great responsibility which is his. Church 
 and Synagogue have lost their power to regulate the 
 spiritual values and ethical decisions in the lives of 
 men. That power is now largely in the hands of the 
 individual. It is a mighty weapon, a weapon which 
 may be used either for good or evil. And it is a 
 weapon which, if it is to be used for good, must be 
 well understood. To make men understand how to 
 use this weapon, is the chief function of the ministry. 
 
144. LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 In these days of changing power and of shifting 
 values the ministry is called upon to aid the individual 
 in preparing for the struggle which lies ahead. That 
 struggle the individual must wage largely against 
 himself. For the newly acquired duty of ultimate 
 ethical decision concerning life will surely bring to 
 pass a deep conflict of ideals within him. And upon 
 ministers everywhere rests the responsibility of pre- 
 paring man to face his problem. The minister can- 
 not presume to decide that problem for the individual, 
 and the minister can no longer take the burden of 
 that problem upon himself. The individual alone is 
 capable of solving it. But the minister can still, in a 
 very real sense, be of service. He can instruct the in- 
 dividual in the spiritual geography of the country to 
 be traversed. He can point out the alternate goals 
 towards which the individual may set his face, and, 
 most important of all, he can, and must, make it 
 absolutely clear that with the individual alone, the 
 issue rests. 
 
POSTSCRIPT 
 
 These chapters have been discussed with a number 
 of persons who have criticised them with perfect can- 
 dor and without reserve. Many of their suggestions 
 have been incorporated without acknowledgment 
 throughout these pages. Others I have felt forced to 
 reject. But for all of them I am deeply and sincerely 
 grateful. 
 
 There are, however, three critical judgments on 
 this work, which can neither be accepted wholly nor 
 yet be completely ignored. Two of them deal with 
 the fundamental thesis of the book; the third with a 
 practical danger to which it may give rise. And each 
 of them emphasizes so important an aspect of the 
 problem, that there could be no better way of sum- 
 marizing the content of what I have written than by 
 rehearsing and dealing with these criticisms. 
 
 The first questions the basic principle that the 
 purpose of religion is “to help men to live well.” 
 What, it is asked, is to be the definition of living 
 well? What are the social implications of that term? 
 To both queries I would make answer, first, that my 
 object has not been to deal with the religious duty of 
 the individual Jew, or to set forth the laws of conduct 
 by which he is to shape his life. These are, of course, 
 
 145 
 
146 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 alluded to, though indirectly. But the fundamental 
 question with which this book seeks to deal, is the 
 question of what ought be the attitude and obliga- 
 tions of religion itself in relation to the individual 
 and to society, rather than a discussion of the duties 
 laid upon the individual by his religion. 
 
 But though it was unnecessary to dwell on, or to 
 amplify at great length, the definition of the term 
 “living well,” it may make clearer the goal toward 
 which religion is to strive, if what is meant thereby 
 be briefly stated. By living well I mean the conscious 
 effort of the individual to pitch his life upon the 
 highest plane to which he feels capable of rising. 
 More simply perhaps: An individual, to live well, 
 must live according to the highest that he knows.* 
 This implies both the fact of the consciousness within 
 the individual of the possibility of moral decision, 
 —of the reality of the choice between a better and a 
 worse way of conduct, and, more important still, the 
 belief that when that better way is surely felt and 
 known the natural desire of the individual will be to 
 follow it. 
 
 As to the social implications of living well, I would 
 say that these are inherent in any definition of that 
 term. The individual verily is “an abstraction apart 
 from society,” and no intelligent person can fail to 
 
 * This, it is true, leaves far more to the “innate goodness of the 
 human heart” than is usually left nowadays, Yet on that good- 
 ness have been founded the great hopes of humankind, and in that 
 goodness the believer in the potency of the spirit must ultimately 
 trust. 
 
POSTSCRIPT 147 
 
 realize the intimate relation in which he stands to 
 others. On the contrary, he will feel that he is a 
 member of an “infinite community of spirits, similar 
 though not identical to his own.” And he will realize 
 negatively that no ill of theirs can really subserve his 
 gain; and positively, that the achievement of what is 
 noblest in him must be wrought with due considera- 
 tion for, and in true harmony with, the right of others 
 to similar achievement. 
 
 The second criticism with which I would deal, is 
 that in presenting the purpose of religion as the at- 
 tempt to help men to live well, I have not added that 
 it is impossible for a Jew to live well unless he live 
 Jewishly,? and further that I have not defined what 
 living Jewishly, or as a Jew, implies. Yet that ad- 
 dition [ cannot make. 
 
 Unfortunate it may be, yet the fact remains that 
 there are literally hundreds of thousands of Amer- 
 ican Jews whose life is lived in an orbit practically 
 untouched by Jewish interests or activities. Jews they 
 remain because their heritage is Jewish. Yet Judaism 
 has failed to touch their souls. And the light of the 
 spirit, as they have seen it, has not appeared to them 
 (as it doubtless did to their fathers), merely as the re- 
 flection of the teachings of the Synagogue. To ask 
 these Jews to live a fully Jewish life, is to ask them 
 
 2Namely, by experiencing the consciousness of identification 
 with world Israel, a consciousness which ought become operant 
 through communal participation in Jewish religious activities, and 
 through the effort of the individual Jew to interest himself in the 
 needs, the problems and the possibilities of the Jewish group, 
 both within and without his own land. 
 
148 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 suddenly to accept as a vital part of their lives a set 
 of values and beliefs which have no vital meaning 
 for them. And to insist further that they cannot 
 live well unless they do accept them is clearly im- 
 possible. 
 
 For such Jews have been dissociated by their up- 
 bringing, by their surroundings, even by their religion 
 itself, from a Jewish life.* Judaism has failed to 
 move them, and yet their lives are not without spirit- 
 ual gleams. It were vain to tell them that they cannot 
 live well without living Jewishly, that they cannot be 
 spiritually minded without being Jewishly minded. 
 For they know this is not so. And their knowledge 
 is based not on theory but on experience. Instead 
 of reiterating that the Jew cannot live well except 
 qua Jew, let Liberal Judaism face the facts as they 
 are, and strive slowly, even painfully, to give the Jew 
 that background of Jewishness which will eventually 
 make inevitable the Jewish quality of his life. 
 
 Finally it is alleged that the result of the suggestions 
 made throughout this book (were they to be adopted) 
 would be to weaken rather than to strengthen, 
 to attenuate rather than to liberalize Liberal Judaism, 
 and to make less rather than greater the loyalty of the 
 
 * Conditions such as these do not, however, obtain among all 
 Jews. Many Jews are possessed of backgrounds and connections 
 which are so Jewish that to live well they must needs live Jewishly. 
 The “ought,” as it touches their conduct in life, touches it largely 
 in relation to their faith, and to their fellow Jews. For such Jews 
 the further definition of living Jewishly in order to live well may 
 be made. But the Jewish community of to-day, particularly that 
 
 portion of it with which, by circumscription, this volume deals, 
 consists neither wholly, nor even largely, of such Jews. 
 
POSTSCRIPT 149 
 
 Jew to his faith. In reply to this I would point out 
 that this is exactly what was urged against the 
 founders of Liberal Judaism sixty and seventy years 
 ago by the champions of orthodoxy. And in circum- 
 stances very similar. For the orthodoxy of their gen- 
 eration was as lifeless as is the reform of our own! 
 
 Liberal Judaism has failed to meet the present need. + 
 It has built its mighty temples, but those temples have 
 become the mortuary chapels of the living faith which 
 once inspired it. Liberal Judaism is no longer com- 
 pelling to American Israel. Its attitude conflicts with 
 the principles which men to-day feel must be the 
 foundation of a real religion. These I have tried to 
 outline. And if it is claimed that they will lead the 
 Jew away from Judaism, I answer that Liberal Juda- 
 ism has done that already! Liberal Jews are very 
 little, and grow ever less, Jewish in their habits of 
 mind and life. 
 
 Yet Liberal Judaism blindly and blandly pursues 
 the even tenor of its way, seemingly unconscious that 
 it stands in terrible need of a reformation, a refor- 
 mation whose aim will be far more than renewed loy- 
 alty to the principles of the Liberal Judaism of the 
 past. Rather will it search out fearlessly the vital 
 needs of the Jew to-day, and seek to meet those needs. 
 It is this reformation that I urge. In it may lie the sal- 
 vation of Liberal Judaism, the seed of religious re- 
 birth for the Jews of this land. And at all events it 
 cannot lead American Israel farther from a real loy- 
 
150 LIBERALIZING LIBERAL JUDAISM 
 
 alty to its faith than, under the influence of Liberal 
 Judaism, it stands to-day. 
 
 On the contrary, my earnest conviction is that 
 through such reformation may come a love of 
 Judaism, based not so much on empty protestations 
 respecting its eternal value as on a clear understanding 
 of how it may be used to ennoble the life of the 
 individual Jew, and to enrich the character of the Jew- 
 ish group. I would not substitute new lamps for old, 
 —worthless innovations for the priceless treasures 
 of the past, but, if the old lamp is to serve the new 
 need, if it is to burn as a steady illuming flame, it 
 must be filled again with oil; the encrustations which 
 have dimmed its brightness must be removed; and 
 the wick within it must be trimmed afresh. 
 
 To this end these chapters have been written. The 
 changes which must take place will not come over- 
 night. Nor are the outlook and attitude suggested in 
 this volume, together with their application to concrete 
 problems, likely to be accepted entirely, or at once. 
 They are not meant to be. In form they are neither 
 full nor final. They embody rather some intimations 
 of the direction in which we must move, if Liberal 
 Judaism is to become once again a living, moving 
 force in this generation and in the generations that 
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